Mount Humphreys / Adorable Baby

 

 Kadence has really come a long way in the past couple of weeks. First of all, after a few LONG days of additional fussiness and crying, she now has two pearly white teeth!! She is also not afraid to use them if you get your hands near her mouth. She is much better at eating solids now and loves to do so. She still, however, generally prefers her bottle and her thumb! Kadence maintains her sassy demeanor and will whine and bawl around until she is picked up (no tears... all for attention). Once she is being held, she is all smiles and cute as ever. Even though she is usually being held, she somehow has almost learned to crawl (goes through the motions, but no forward progress yet) and just learned how to get herself into a sitting position. Since she demands a lot of my time and energy, I have had to get creative about getting anything accomplished. To feed her, I make a bottle and lay her down on my bobby pillow, wrap a blanket around her neck/chest to prop the bottle up and then if she is particularly restless, I will put a show on to keep her entertained until she is done. When she is done with her bottle, she spits it to the side and then I usually find her goofing off like so:

 When I get Kadence out of bed or if she is tired (or just in an otherwise cuddly mood), she always uses she same form. Her left hand grips the collar of my shirt,  

 and her right hand grabs my shirt from the back while sucking on her thumb.

 And this is just her cute chubby face.

I just thought this was kind of a funny picture... you know you have young kids when your loaded dishwasher is this colorful!

 

Averi and Kadence continue to be little buddies. Averi loves to help out and whenever Kadence cries, she will go try to entertain her or give her a toy to keep her happy. Sometimes in the car she can even give her a bottle which is SO nice since she cries a lot while driving. Doesn't she sound like a joy to be around? Haha! She really is though...I just love her to pieces.

 

Doug has recently gotten the new calling as Boy Scout Master. He already went on his first camp out / hike to Mount Humphreys. They slept one night and then went on an 9 mile hike straight up to the highest peak in Arizona.

 

  

He had a blast but I was glad to have him back :)

Cute Babies

Just had to post come pics of the cutest girls ever! :)

 

Averi is in a really great phase lately where we hardly ever have meltdowns or tantrums. It is a nice change of pace from a few months ago. She also goes to bed with no problems now and she is generally really obedient. She is hilarious too. For instance, right at this moment, she is prancing around with her purse, and telling us that she is going to "patience school". I have no idea where she comes up with her big ideas. When she is playing, she will often exclaim "OKAY! This is my special job!" (refferring to nothing in particular). What a goof.

Here is a candid photo shoot of the cutest baby in town. Kadence is not so much obedient as she is naughty. :) Her cuteness MORE than makes up for  it though. She gives out smiles pretty freely too so that is super fun. I just wanna squish those chunky baby thighs!

 

 

PS- Kadence is proud to announce that she can sit up on her own now! :)

First day of Pre-school!

Averi had her very first day of (structured) pre-school on Thursday. I was anticipating tears but no such thing. She did so well. She walked right in and started playing with the blocks. She didn't really want me to go but she didn't cry. What a big girl :)

 "cheese!"

 My little girlie-girl playing with the cars and trucks.

When I picked her back up, her teacher said that she was actually pretty talkative and didn't seem too shy. Yay for Averi!

Visit from Uncle Matt

Dougs brother Matt was in town for work so we met up with him for dinner downtown. It was super fun to see him again and to catch up. We ate at the TGIFridays that is part of Chase field so we had a fabulous view of the gorgeous field. Averi was pretty silent the whole time of course and wouldn't talk to him. After we left, however, she kept talking about how she "saw Uncle Matt yesterday".

No this picture was not meant to look like a Chevy ad :)

 Kadence has been enjoying her hand-me-down excersaucer lately. I love watching her play with toys. My favorite, though, is when I see her in the rear-view mirror and all I can see is her two tiny hands reaching up for her toy frog hanging from the car-seat handle. Cute little bug!

 I have tried to feed her rice cereal and she is really interested (she tries to grab the spoon from me and shove it into her mouth herself). Her toungue still thrusts it right back out though so it justs ends up being a huge mess and she hardly gets eny down her throat. She enjoys it though, as you can see from the pic :)

 Averi had quite the fun day on Saturday. After coming with me to play volleyball at the church we went to my friend Shalise's house to fulfill my dog-sitting duties (just for the weekend while they are out of town). She loves coming with me because she has 3 tiny little dogs that are just her size! Then we went to a birthday party in Phoenix of her friend Soren's. It was at Jambo amusement park for kids. She had a blast with Ezra going from ride to ride. They rode on the flying elephants, the swings, the train, and surprisingly they had the attention span to play mini golf for quite a while too. They were feeling pretty independent since they were able to go on all the rides themself with only the help of the staff member. Since Ezra's parents weren't there, I think Ezra was feeling a little reserved at first. But Averi would grab hold of his hand and drag him to whichever ride they had their eye on at the time. They were getting on the train when I happened to see that Averi put Ezra's seat belt on, then her own. She is such a little mother... or maybe wife :) I am lame and forgot to take the camera but I did get this shot of her conked out on her bed right when we got home. Face down on her pillow at the foot of the bed. Wierdo.

Happy Birthday Averi!

So this post is a week late but c'mon...who has time to blog when the Olympics are on?! I love it!

Anyways, Averi's birthday party last weekend was so much fun. We kept it low key and just had a BBQ with friends at the pool. Most of Averi's friends were able to come (with their families) and they all had fun swimming and eating.

Averi enjoying her cake. I just got it from Costco but it was SOOO yummy!

 We decided since Averi already has so many toys that we were going to do a "no gifts" party and just accept donations on behalf of Los Ninos Childrens Hospital. Well, some people are just too nice and can't help but to bring a gift so Averi lucked out ;) She is a great gift-opener. She always gives a very satisfying response. Here she is giving her "I can't believe it. I have always wanted one of these!" face.

We were able to get quite a stash together to take to the hospital and the staff was really appreciative. Thank you to all of our friends that donated!

Kadence was a good girl during the party. And by "good girl" I mean she slept most of the time. Then she woke up and partied with us for a bit. Then here she is again konked out on the couch. Yep she is still a thumb sucker.  When I put her to bed every night, I rock her and feed her. Then when she is done eating, her thumb goes right in her mouth and she's out like a light! I love love love it!

 Sunday was her actual birthday so we had some more left-over cake and opened her presents from the family. My parents sent her this gorgeous painting of Christ. It is seriously so beautiful and precious. Averi will cherish it forever, I'm sure.

Cousin Kenley sent her some princess lip glosses which she dove right in to. She puts them on about 10 times a day. :) She also gave her a super fun sticker activity book and Strawberry Shortcake movie.

She also got an adorable dress from Nammy and Papa along with a super cute doll. She got books, squinkies, and a mini kids computer thing (we call it her iPad) from Doug and me. Grandma and Grandpa also gave her tons of fun bath toys. She never wants to gets out of the bath now...which is quite the contrast from her never wanting to get in!

Just the cutest picture of Kadence enjoying Averi's special day. :) She is so smiley, I love it. I always just wanna eat her up!

Some noteworthy facts about Averi:

She LOVEs to sing and dance. Sometimes she will be doing her own thing and will just start singing while she is playing or while sitting in the car. Lately she usually sings Twinkle Twinkle or I am a Child of God. She also will prance around the house at least once a day and just sing/dance and be crazy. She is pretty shy in general but at times she thoroughly enjoys it when all eyes are on her.

She speaks well but enjoys making up her own words and occasionally her own entire language. Example: (at the pool playing pretend)

Averi: Mommy I'm making you some juice!

Me: Oh yummy, what kind of juice?

Averi: It's Pete juice!

Another Example: (at home doing nothing in particular)

Averi: Mommy, I have a great idea!

Me: You do? What is it?

Averi: Cada sigh dee donna seedu beet!

It is so funny because it sounds like she should be making sense but she definately is not!

She says "crum" instead of "from".

Says "Kay-nence" instead of "Kadence". Sometimes I even find myself calling her that since I hear Averi saying it all day long.

Says "Duh-got" instead of "forgot".

If I ask her if she is something in particular (like a dog, a boy or just cute or something), she will say, "I not a doggie, I a good girl!"

Anything past-tense to her happened "yesterday". She will occasionally tell me that Kadence came out of my tummy yesterday.

Anything future tense will happen "next time". When she sees kids swimming at the pool across the street, she will say "Mommy, I wanna go swimming next time". It makes it pretty easy because I can always reply with "Okay! Let's go swimmming next time!"

Averi is a pretty picky eater. The only vegetable she will eat are tomatoes and occasionally cucumbers. Her favorite foods are tomatoes, applesauce (which she calls "ah-paws"), frozen go-gurts (which we call "yogurt-pops". I think it makes her like them more because she associates them with otter-pops), mac and cheese, chicken, and spaghetti.

Averi is a great big sis to Kadence and always likes to give her toys to play with and make her happy. She always gets excited when Kadence smiles at her. So fun. They will be great play mates pretty soon!



Josue and more!

Josue was a fifteen year old boy when Doug taught him about the church on his mission in Brazil. He has since been baptized as well as his whole family. He now serves in the bishopric in his ward in Brazil. He came to the states to visit a friend in Idaho last week and flew home through phoenix. Luckily for Doug, he missed his connecting flight so he stayed with us last Friday night. It was really amazing to meet him and for Doug to see him again after all these years. He is about the nicest guy I've ever met and such a great example. Hopefully one day we will be able to see him again in HIS home town!

 Averi holding Meiko. Meiko is really thrilled about this if you can't tell.

 Averi has learned how to use scissors reently and had since become obsessed with cutting paper. She will make one cut with the scissors and then put them down and rip the paper where she made the cut. I finally went and at least bought her some "pre-school" scissors that aren't so threatening. Averi is really quite obedient and wouldn't cut anything that she knew she wasn't supposed to (knock on wood!). But the other day she woke up really early and came into my room. I wanted to keep sleeping so I told her to go play with her scissors (great parenting, huh?!) and that she could get some paper out of the printer. When I came downstairs, this is what I found:

Hey, I told her to do it so I guess I can't be mad :)

With monsoon season upon us we have had some good wind lately. The other day we busted out the kite I got for Averi's birthday and we flew it just outside our house. The neighbor kids loved our barbie kite and Doug loved showing it off. :)

 Averi was really interested for the first five minutes or so. :)

 Kadence is becoming a little more social every day. She is learning to "play" with her toys more lately and it is so fun to watch. Of course she will only self-entertain for about five minutes and then she absolutely HAS to be held or the world as she knows it will surely end.

 Averi had a play date with her friend Tommy the other day. He has a baby sister too so consequently Kadence had her first play date too. They had the time of their lives as you can see! :)

Look Who's Rolling Over!

Kadence rolled over for the first time on Tuesday (4 months 1 day old). Ever since then she can't stop showing off her newfound skill and is rolling over constantly. Then she whines until I flip her back over or pick her up. She just loves the challenge I guess!

I happened to see her trying to do it the first time so I got some progression pictures:

 agh!...

...a little help??...

 Ta da!!

 Piece of cake!