loose!

Mac asks every couple of weeks when he will get a loose tooth and then I usually check his teeth to see. Same thing happened yesterday except that this time I FOUND ONE!

My big five year old has his first loose tooth!

When we found it last night, both him and I were a little in shock and we were both about to jump up and do a happy dance. Mac was so excited he had a really hard time falling asleep. 

He had to call both sets of grandparents to share his great news.

It isn't super loose, so it will be a bit before it comes out. But we are all very excited for this cute boy of ours. In the picture below it is the bottom, left (his right), middle one. You can kinda tell since it is the only crooked tooth he has now. 

I made sure I got some pictures of his cute smile before it changes forever.

Next up, Kindergarten registration in a couple of weeks.

12

I am so late on posting anything about this, but that is life. 

This last Sunday was our twelve year anniversary. TWELVE!!

Unfortunately I was really sick the whole night before and all day on our anniversary. 

Nothing says love like taking care of your sick wife.

It was a miserable night and day!!

But I am so grateful for this man, and grateful for every up and down we have experienced the last twelve years. I love that I have forever with him!

He got me some beautiful earrings (you can kind of see them in the picture) and the day after our anniversary was the last day of tax season so we went to his firms end of season banquet (picture is of us heading out the door for it). I usually dread being at it but love the night out with my hubs and to not have to cook dinner. 

My parents had our kids, so the next day we headed up to Portland to attend the Temple. It had been way too long, like eight months. It was so wonderful to be in the Temple again and with Hubs. Afterwards we went out to eat and then headed to my parents house to pick up our kids. 

Maybe one day we will be able to celebrate our anniversary with a fun, fancy trip. But for now, it was just perfect (except for the being sick part).

A little bit about our Oak...

 Oak is in a stage I think a lot of kids, probably mostly girls, go through. I knew it would happen eventually with her. She likes to changes her clothes...A LOT! On average she goes through about three outfits a day. At least one of those outfits is her ballerina clothes, and another would be a skirt of some sort. Sometimes she has such an urge, like this morning, that she gets down in the middle of breakfast to go find something else to wear. I feel like my laundry load has doubled all of a sudden and there are clothes strewn about the house constantly. Most of the time I just go with the flow and let her change as much as she wants, but someways it just wears on me. But mostly I am just grateful I have this beautiful little girl in my life and I get to watch her go through all of these cute and typical girl stages.

She also has a favorite sweater that she has to be wearing at all times. Awake and asleep. She calls it her "cozy sweater" because, as she says, "It's SO comfortable." She has to show and tell everyone about it.

She is starting to learn her letters. She recognizes about ten letters correctly (A, B, W, T, F, L, O, S, V, M are the ones I can think of). She can write the letter A, although it is usually upside down.

She can quote movies really well. She will just randomly blurt them out through out the day. The other day she had gone potty and hadn't put her underwear on yet but was up at the sink washing her hands. As she was playing around in the sink and trying to wash her hands, she started shaking her little bare bum and started yelling, 'BEST DAY EVER!" from Tangled.

She can do the whole potty thing pretty much on her own, with out much help. Although, playing in the sink and making a huge mess when she should be washing her hands has been a bit of a problem.

She talks REALLY well!

Big words I have heard her use recently: comfortable, disappointed, respectful.

Phrases she uses that crack me up: "You betcha!" and "Sure is!"

She doesn't say her R's very well and words like "more" sounds like "maww".

She has a great memory and remembers everything.

Funnies:

Grandma Wilma was staying the night and Oak kept on asking her (as if she was worried that she wouldn't stay) if she was staying the night. Daddy was taking Oak to bed and asked him if Grandma was staying the night and he said yes. Then she said, "Don't let her leave, okay?" We were cracking up!

Oak woke up in the morning and I went to get her. She asked if Grandma was still at our house (because she had stayed the night). She then said, "Mom, don't let me forget, I have a presentation for her, but I need to color it." A little while later I was getting stuff out for her to color her "presentation" and told her she could color it now, and she said, "Not right now mom."

I went to get her out of bed one morning and she said to me, "Mommy, my nose isn't working!!" and then said she couldn't smell anything. So cute!

March in pictures

Although the kids spent the first two weeks being sick, I really felt like we got to enjoy the nice weather we have had and we are excited as the days get longer and warmer. And only one week left of tax season and we will get to see daddy more.

The treats I put together to take to a few friends for my birthday.

We have had a ton of beautiful weather this month. Daddy had just mowed the back yard for the first time this year and we were having fun playing and kicking balls while daddy did yard work.

Daddy let Mac play with this old drill that used to be his grandfathers to keep him occupied while Daddy worked on fixing the lawn mower.

This is how Mac decorated his pancakes for breakfast one morning. So cute!

Our friend works at the local fire station and the kids had been begging to go and see the trucks so we called him up and headed over. Mac is sitting in the antique fire truck, which is my favorite there.

Mac had a plan to make up a game, but first he had to figure out how to keep the robbers from stealing his idea. This is what we will dress up in to scare the robbers away. L to R: Mac will be Frankenstein, Mommy will be a Vampire Bat, below me is Oak who will be a "live pizza" as Mac called (not sure why), and Daddy will be a mummy. Love his drawings.

Grandma had stayed a few nights with us and she was heading home here.

The kids helping me make snickerdoodles to give to a few friends for my birthday.

We had some pets for one and a half days. Spur of the moment grandma and grandpa bought the kids some gold fish. We have absolutely no idea how to take care of them and Mac's fish, Blackie (because he was black), died after having less than 24 hours and Oak's fish, Cutie (because he was orange like a cutie), died the next morning. Mac was devastated and cried for a few days about it, and Oak just said, "We will just get a new one!" (We now have some pet frogs, much easier).

After being cooped up in the house for nearly two weeks with these two being sick we needed to get outside. We went on a little walk and the kids wanted to pose with the stop sign for some reason, silly kids.

Mac had his yearly appointment with the allergist for his tree nut allergy and afterwards we went on a little date to McDonald's for lunch (his choice) and then to the movie theater to watch Rise of the Guardians. I love getting the chance to take my kids out by themselves, because you get to see a different side of them.

There was a lot of this going on while we were stuck inside sick. 

We had gone and visited my parents for the day and as we left their house to come home the skies were black and I thought we would be driving home in a nasty storm. But we ended up being ahead of the storm once we got out and the skies looked like this most of the way. It was beautiful to witness as my kids were sound asleep behind me.

Mac just after his hair cut at the barber shop. My kids love this little barbershop for the cute dogs that they have and the suckers.

Oak is obsessed with this hat and it is just so cute on her.

A little bath time fun!

We call this "Taekwondo play date". It really isn't a play date but all the little sisters that are there to wait for their older siblings practice their taekwondo. They are all so cute together. Oak always looks forward to seeing her friends there.

Before church. Silly kids!

Mac drew this of our family at church. LOVE!

Oak helping me make breakfast. Malt-o-meal is the preferred breakfast in our house.

I had to clean out this cupboard because the shelf broke and spilled and broke a few dishes. I had cleaned it but hadn't put everything back and the kids had fun playing in it for awhile.

Mac has been doing really well at sounding out words and trying to spell them (phonically).

The first two lines says, "Wonder Woman" and the last lines says, "Spider Man".

I finally let Mac climb these rocks he is always wanting to when we go to throw rocks. He did really well. I am always so afraid he is going to fall and cut himself on those jagged rocks.

Oak playing in the water.

And jumping in the water.

Mac caught this frog and he is now our pet. We are loving having a pet frog and watching him eat crickets. 

Easter Sunday...

They are so stinking cute!!

Glad I got these pictures before church because Mac got a bloody nose on the way home and his shirt and tie were covered in blood.

We went to church where Hubs spoke about the resurrection. He did an amazing job!  We left church a bit early so that we could run home, change, get our stuff together and leave to Portland to eat dinner with Hubs' sister and his parents. We had a great time there and we also did our traditional family egg hunt.

Mac had so much fun playing with his cousins and his fun Uncle Jared that he cried and hid when it was time to leave. He hasn't done that in a long time, so I contribute the melt down from the loads of candy from the last two days. Now to detox my kids :)

This is pretty much how Oak spent most of the weekend. Crying over everything and running off to pout. Once again, too much sugar.

Oak found this bow at their house and she was so excited to be Merida. We might need to get her one.

Easter Saturday

We like to spend Saturday doing all the fun Easter celebrating, so we have talked to the Easter Bunny about how important it is to us to spend Sunday focusing on the Savior, and he has been great about bringing our baskets Saturday morning. The kids each got two books and a squirt bottle and a movie to share. 

I think Oak was excited about the candy.

Mac is beyond regular story books, so we got him some chapter books for us to read to him.

Then it was off to our local Easter egg hunt. This was our fourth year going.

Oak really wanted to see the Easter bunny. I promise I didn't force her too. When Oak is a bit scared of something she tends to be intrigued by it too and so she puts on a brave face just so she can check it out.

Right after this, the little local newspaper took a picture of her with the Easter bunny (she had a better smile for it) and took her name down. And will probably be in the newspaper this week.

Mac giving the bunny a high five.

They do the hunts by age groups but had very few eggs for the two year olds. Oak only got two eggs and there weren't that many kids looking for them. She got a few extra from the bunny helpers.

I totally missed Mac looking for eggs, because I couldn't find him and daddy. But he got quite a bit.

I always get a picture of Mac and Daddy in front of the fire truck (the bunny's ride there). This year Oak joined in and Grandma and Grandpa came with us. 

The kids also got free story books.

Later on, we dyed Easter eggs. 

And the rest of the day we played outside and I cleaned the van out and washed it.

Before bed we did the 12 Easter eggs that hold the symbols of Christ's last days (My sister-in-law gave it to us last year). The kids loved it! And then we watched the church video of Christ's last days. 

When we were doing the little egg activity, we were talking to Mac about what it meant when the soldiers mocked Jesus. And Mac wanted to make sure he understood so he acted out with Daddy what the soldiers did. So Mac acted like the soldier and talked to Daddy how he thought they had talked to him. And then he immediately felt bed and was super quick to apologize to Daddy and was really worried he had hurt his feelings. It was really sweet.