Abigail's First Birthday

What a cutie!  Yes, this post is going to be a brag post.  'Cause she's just adorable.  Her huge personality is adorable, too.  She loves to giggle and smile and she's even learned how to tease a little.  She's always on the move, except right now she's fast asleep after a long morning of play, play, play.  She loves to play peek-a-boo and thinks it's hilarious that mom can't find her under the blanket.  It's fun to watch her reactions at stores to strangers, she'll either give them a perfect poker face no matter how they try to coax a smile or she lights up and flirts with them.   Don't worry if she gives you a crusty look, though, it's more about her mood and if her tummy is full and her sleep ratio is good than if she likes you or not.  Mostly she's a sunny baby that sleeps all night long and is always game for something new.  Her favorite things?  Animals delight her and she doesn't even mind the licking from dogs.  Water to swim in, she always is trying to get into someone else's bathwater and when we go to a pool she splashes with the best of them.  She's been such fun and a real blessing.

 

I took a picture of her every month (mostly on her monthly birthday) on the same blanket with her rabbit stuffed animal (she was born in the Chinese Year of the Rabbit).  Well, I took one every month but her 12 month because we had an incident with the camera before I could get that one.  And I took one on her second month, but it's stuck in a flashdrive that won't open.  I'm planning on taking it to a computer store to see if we can get it fixed.  Any suggestions on a good place?

So here she is, growing every month:

NEWBORN

We took this picture right when we got home from the hospital, she didn't even have a name at this point.

1ST MONTH

She hardly ever took a binky, this is one of the few pictures with one. 

Very different from our Binky Boy Seth.

 

3RD MONTH

 

 

 4TH MONTH

5TH MONTH

 

6TH MONTH

Whoosh, al the sudden she's moving!

 

7TH MONTH

8TH MONTH

Such a big change in one month!

9TH MONTH

 

 

 10TH MONTH
 

 

 11TH MONTH

 

 

Hopefully we'll get the camera fixed so we can get a picture of her in all her one year old sunshineiness.

 

We did have my sister take a One Year Picture of her.  My grandpa was a photographer and he took pictures of all the granddaughters on their first birthday. Me and my sisters all hung above the piano for so long!  Since he passed away when I was little, Nicki took over the family photography and all the great granddaughters in our family have special pictures now, too.   

We took these on her birthday at the party at the Twin Falls.  She loved getting her picture taken, except for that pesky flower Mommy kept putting in her hair.  Still, they turned out so cute, thanks a ton, Nicki! 

 Sisters!

 

 In this one, she was trying to put that flower back in her hair.  She managed to blance it on her shoulder and thought it was funny that we were all laughing.

 

Love that cute little face! 

Happy first birthday Abigail!



Felicity and the BIG 1-0!

 Felicity turned 10 this year.  Wow!  Wasn't she just a giggly chubby little baby just the other day? Well, she's still giggly.  Felicity is our story teller, our question asker (if you watch a movie with her, be prepared to answer questions every two minutes), our little mother and our horse lover.  She also reads her books so hard you almost need an explosion to get her attention.  She's grown a lot this year, getting taller and more mature.  She's decided she wants to go by Lissy mostly, maybe because it sounds better than Issy, which is what Seth calls her.

She started piano lessons this year and she loves it.  She'll make up songs or just play with the piano.  She's always been a music maker and this is a fun outlet for her. 

And, of course, she's still our cowgirl.  She's constantly plotting on how to get a horse.  In church the other day a young man spoke and said something about how the youth shouldn't listen to people who tell them they can't do something.  As soon as he said that, I knew we were in trouble (Joseph's little eyes gleamed and I could see ideas jumping around in his head).  Felicity heard it, too, and came up with a scheme about getting a job to buy a horse and all the trappings because she can do anything, including getting a job.  Thank you, Mr. Speaker, we had to have a talk with the kids on how Dreams and Goals are good, but some things you really can't do.  No Joseph, you cannot drive a car.

Felicity has always been a little bit of a Mother Hen (which is a great help to me, usually!) and when a Baby Sister was born, the day after Lissy's birthday, it kicked into hyper drive.  She loves her brothers and sister, even when she has a hard time because they don't listen to her!  Yup. Felicity, I share your pain.  She was so very excited watching Abby take her first steps, and loved taking her to any new places or experiences.  Proud big sis.

Felicity was in her first play this year and did such a good job as Nala in The Lion King.  I think a lover of theater is starting!  Yay, I'll have someone to go to plays with me!

 

The day before her birthday, Felicity had her cousin come over and cut our shapes from fondant to decorate her birthday cake.  She wanted to be completely in charge!  I did tell her only four Littlest Pet Shop animals on top, but as you can see, she squeezed on a few more. 

 

For her birthday...we drove to Idaho.  Let's hear a hurrah for a three and a half hour drive!  She was ok with it, though, because of the fun that waited at the end of the drive.  And we hung birthday streamers for her and had her favorite dinner (pizza) the night before and her favorite breakfast (German Pancakes) that morning before we left. 

 

At Grandma's house she opened one present and then decided to save the rest for her birthday party the next day.  We gave her 10 Littlest Pet Shop animals (ebay, yay) and one to grow on.  She requested horses, so four of them are horses, she immediately started naming them.

 

 

 Saturday was Abby's birthday so we combined parties and had lots of family together. We went to the Twin Falls, just outside of the city of Twin Falls, Idaho.  It's beautiful there and not as crowded as the Shoshone Falls.

I finally decided that I was never going to get a chance to quilt the quilt top I made for felicity about two years ago, so I just turned it into a duvet cover that we could put her current quilt into.  Whew,  so much easier than quilting and one more unfinished project done.  And it was a hit, she loves it on her bed.

 

 

Her grandparents, a lot of her aunts and uncles and a lot of her cousins were able to come, she had so much fun at the party.  Then to continue the celebrations, we went swimming on Monday so we could fulfill her last birthday wish.  Except for that pony, of course.

 

Happy Tenth Birthday Felicity! We love you so much!

Wanting to repaint!

So...I'm awake at 11:09 because sweet little (almost 1 year old!) Abigail took a late nap today and has now decided to pull an all nighter.  We'll see.  At the moment she's pretty giggly and wide awake.  That brings me to cruising around a little on the Internet, and I found this great post from I am Momma hear me roar:
http://www.iammommahearmeroar.net/2012/07/master-bedroom-final-reveal-with-chip-it.html
It's a reveal from her newly redone bedroom and I love it, the colors are fun and the headboard is awesome and the spool reminds me of the giant one we had for a playhouse growing up. AND she's having a giveaway for $1000 visa gift card and $200 at Sherwin-Williams to a lucky person so they can do some remodeling, too.  I could stand that.  And I could repaint our living room--getting tired of the red walls. So go check out the remodel, it looks great and actually doable without hiring a carpenter or electrician. 
And coundown to Felcitiy's 10th birthday as only five days and Abby's first is only 6 days.  Time for that 48 hours of fun we promised Felicity when Abigail was born the day after her birthday!

Joseph: 6; July: 4; Girls Camp: 24; Abigail: 11

We've had a few busy weeks lately! THANKS to those who helped us, particularly my mom and sis-in-law, Tarilynn, who took care of the kids while I was wandering the wilderness with my Sassy Celestialites (more on that later). 

Our Super-Dee-Duper, hilarious, giggly, on the move, snugly boy with a huge imagination turned 6.  I can hardly believe it even though he'll be in first grade soon...gosh, time has flown by since he was born in the middle of the night in Gallop, New Mexico.  Oh, no one can make us laugh like this little boy.  I wonder what he will be doing when he turns 15...25...35...45...heck, it's kind of quiet at the moment, I wonder what he's doing right now  (OK, it's all good, he's just playing). 

The boys got some fun things from Chad and Tarilynn, much more things to throw around, which is always a good idea with these two.  (Please not in the house)

Another always good present, a flashlight.

 Hurrah for after Christmas sales, we got an awesome Cars2 Lego set, he was dancing around the room.  I mean, more than usual. Look at that cheeser grin. Happy Birthday our funny little boy, so happy to have you making our family a little gigglier.

Just a cute picture, Abby loves to help Felicity during her piano practice.  Which, by the way, is going very well, she loves it and is always pushing to learn more songs and fooling around making her own songs.  So glad she gets this chance!

And then on July 4th, we were invaded.  It was just our nephews, but they still looked a little different.  Every year my family meets in my dad's hometown for all the fun small town festivities.   Farris ran the 10K and I did the 5K (I won't say ran, I just "did" it),we ate the town pancake breakfast, rode the Newey family float, had a yummy lunch with cousins I haven't seen for awhile, and just enjoyed the day very much.  During the fireworks we stayed in my aunts backyard and then when it was done, the kids wrapped themselves in glow sticks and gave us a show.  We got into a glow stick fight with my cousin Travis, which ultimately ended after everyone went to bed: Travis got up at 4:00 to head back to work and dumped the nephews out of their tent before he left.  Wait until next year Trav, they'll be prepared!

The Monday after the 4th I headed up to Heber Valley Camp  for Stake Girls Camp as the camp director for our ward.  Such a great place, so amazing.  The stake theme was Tribes and Testimonies, each ward was supposed to pick a tribal name--something with an -ite on the end--for each ward to focus on.  After throwing out the girls first pick (I won't even say it), we settled on Sassy Celestialites.  Thanks for the idea Nicki!  Our girls definitely have a little sass going on, and I wanted the girls to know that they are on the path to the celestial Kingdom and that should be their goal.  Lots of preparation went into this week and it went so well.  We had 24 girls, one just for the last day, and they were wonderful, love them.  So many things I was afraid would fall through or not work, or people would be bored or mad or all kind of things go wrong, but it was smooth, fun, spiritual and very, very tiring!  The campground has a lake to canoe on (and none of our girls tipped over, although we almost had a couple dunks), an amazing challenge course and these incredible couple missionaries that run everything and are excited to be around the girls.  Awesome, awesome, and well worth all the prep we did for it.  Thanks to the other leaders and our fabulous Bishop, everyone worked hard and helped me remember all those things I forgot to do.  Thanks to Farris who worked so hard to get that 24th girl up to camp and made sure everything at home was going smoothly.  What a good week! 

There's our girls!!

In the middle of the week that I was at camp, Abigail turned 11 months.  She did so good while I was gone.  We were afraid, she's such a mommy's girl, but mom and Tarilynn were great.  Me, however, I missed my baby.  Just a little bit.  Heh.  I told just a few...maybe a little more than a few...that she was turning 11 months and that I missed her, and that I hoped she was doing o.k, and that she was So. Very. Cute.  But in the end she (I) lived throught the separation.  So, anyway, here's a few highlights of the past month:

**She got two more teeth, on the top, but they aren't the middle, they are her cute little fangs.  So we have our Vampire baby.  And she does bite, so be careful.

**She officially took her first steps.  She's up to 9 steps at a time, but if you are expecting a show, sorry, she's no performing monkey.  She walks when she wants to, thank you. 

**We have a gate at the top and and one at the bottom of our long set of stairs (no, Chad, not to lock them in the middle), and she's figured out how to crawl through the one on the bottom and climb up all 12 steps.  Coming down safely is still a problem, we'll have to work on that, especially now that she can get through the bottom gate.

**She's still such a happy baby, loves to clap and wave good bye, she likes to be really loud in church and tries to crawl under the benches, her favorite things are her brothers and sister, but mom and dad get good hugs, too.  She's quick on those little knees and dresses bug her because it's hard to crawl in them, she gets up on the hands and feet with her little bum in the air, so cute.  My favorite thing is when she starts dancing, she'll jam to any music.  She likes to help lead the music in church or during FHE, too.  Our musically happy little baby.  Only one more month until she's a year old!  Crazy, crazy. 

There's that cute grin!

 Look out Jedi, here she comes.

I was playing on Picaso, loved how this one turned out.  Nice that I can do it with just one little button, since I'm photoshop illiterate.  I might have to do one of these for each of the kids, wouldn't that be a cute grouping?  Hmmmm, much more to do.

Abigail's 10 months and summer fun

Happy to be 10 months!!!

Yum, tasty

Well, hello

La-la-laaaa!

Yes, Abby is 10 months old now.  She's trying to walk, doing a little bit of cruising along furniture.   She's even standing for longer periods of time,  she'll go for about 30 seconds and we can see her chubby little legs just shaking with concentration to not sit down,it's cute.  Her favorite sound to make is "da-da-da-da" which makes Farris really happy, of course. Although she's not doing too much that is new-new, but she's doing everything harder and better and longer.  The other day she discovered our little toy walker and she spent a lot of time zooming up and down the hallway downstairs. (I'm trying to load the video...having problems with the new blogger, if any of you know how to do it, let me know!)

For our playgroup the other day we had a parade!  The kids could dress up in costumes and decorate bikes or wagons, and then there was the noise! The noise, NOISE, NOISE, NOISE, NOISE! (heh.  anybody recognize where that quote comes from?  hint: it's a Dr. Seuss book :)  The kids had a lot of fun with some noise makers, actually had a lot of fun.  We went up and down the street from our church and we made a few smiles from people passing by in cars.  We also invited Brother Wharton to join us as our Grand Marshall, but he declined. 

Felicity reprised her Cowgirl costume from Halloween, including tying her stick horse onto her bike.  Caleb was a soccer player but I didn't get a picture of his soccer field he decorated his bike with (he was moving too fast!) and Joseph couldn't decide what to dress up as, so he just smiled his charming little smile and enjoyed the parade.

Seth was a noisy dinosaur!

And Abigail was a sweet little princess.  Who didn't like her hat and spent most of the time trying to eat it. 

We went to our city's splash pad one day. Their favorite thing to do is sit on the fountains, giggle, giggle, giggle.



Seth spent the whole time running back and forth, getting wet, drying off, getting wet, and drying off.  Such a cutie.

 

Caleb loves it.

Felicity loved packing Abby around through the fountains.  Abby wasn't too sure, she liked to get her hands wet, but then it would hit her face and she'd look stunned.  I can't wait to try her out in the pool later this summer. 

Father's Day is always fun, the kids love looking for gifts for Dad.  This year we made a special card (umm, yes, the idea from Pinterest) where we traced all the kids right foot and then Farris' right foot and then glued them in a stack with the words "Following in Daddy's Footsteps."  It turned out really cute, although Felicity was disappointed because Caleb's foot was exactly the same size.  I had to pull her foot up a little higher so we could see it at all.  Joseph's foot is only a size or two bigger than Seths.  Yup, I can already tell who is going to be the tall ones in our family. 

And now I have to tell a Joseph Quote.

Joseph came running into the kitchen this morning.  "Mom!  Can I have a monkey?"

I was a little alarmed "What? You want a monkey?"

He turned red. "I mean, can I have a banana?" 

It made me laugh.  Because I can totally see him asking me for a monkey. 

Caleb's Baptism

Caleb turned 8 years old on May 29th!  He was so excited, not just for his birthday, but also that he was going to be baptized in just a few days.  He wanted a Lego cake, so I decided to try fondant for the first time.  I got a recipe off of Allrecipes.com that was called butter cream fondant, it said that it tasted better than regular fondant....but it kind of melted so I had to shlop (that might not be a word, but it's what it felt like) it on and pat it in place.  Anyone have a recipe that works better? 

He still liked it (even all shloppy), and the kids loved the marshmallow nubs on the top. 

We gave him a Lego City police boat set, he loved that it actually could float and after it was all together we had to try it out in the kitchen sink.

We managed to catch the perfect expression with this present from grandma Child--a light saber.  Now he can give up on using sticks or forks or...socks...and actually have something respectable.  He also got a Moon Phase light from G-ma and G-pa Newey which he has really been excited about.  He knows he wants to be a scientist, he just keeps bouncing from space or marine or insect, I think he just likes learning about things. 

 On June 2nd, he was baptized.  What a blessing!  We had much of our family there (we missed those of you who couldn't come!) Caleb really enjoyed having so much support and love.  After all the preparation the actual baptism happens so fast, but the Spirit was strong and Caleb has been writing about it in his journal so I hope that moment is what he will remember the most.

 This is all the Newey cousins (minus Tanner who is still on his mission), I love this shot because of Rachel doing some kind of crazy Chicken Dance.  SHE IS HILARIOUS!  Of course, Seth wasn't being an angel at the moment either, as you can see he's in take off mode.  And Blake wasn't really sure why we handed the baby to him. 

 The picture with the adults was a little more sedate.  I think we threatened them with something, but I can't remember what it was...we're just missing my brother Robert and Tanner, of course.

 And here's the Child family, we're missing Geri and Cody and family, Desi and Nick and family, and Sam and Kolleen and (I guess we can count Audi the dog) family.  We have another baptism on this side coming up soon, so I hope we'll get to see them there. 

 For our traditional Baptism Present, we give the kids their own set of hardback scriptures and a journal with their names engraved on it.  He's been asking for a set, and a bigger scripture bag (which is in the works) for awhile so he was pretty happy with it.

And I don't have any pictures, but we've been enjoying summer break.  We've stuck to the schedule of chores, reading time, then free time so far.  Hmmm, I hope we make it all summer! It's been a hot summer so our garden is kind of fried, but my sis brought a new plant for us to try.  It's called Stivia (I'm not sure I'm spelling it right) but it's sort of a sugar plant.  The leaves can be steeped or ground and then put in whatever you want sweetened, so there is less processing than with white sugar, sooo it's supposed to be better for you and since it is sweeter than white sugar you use less of it.  It should be an adventure, anyway, and I'm excited!  Also growing at our house now is an ivy plant my aunt brought to us.  It's an ivy plant with history!  It's from a start from the ivy we had at our wedding receptions.  I'm not the best at keeping house plants alive (yeah, my degree is for OUTSIDE plants.  Heh) and managed to kill off the two we kept, so it's sweet to have a little bit of our history back.  But if anyone managed to keep one of those goldfish alive that we had a the receptions, that's ok, you can keep it.  I am very sure a fish wouldn't last too long in this curious household.

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And now I just have to share some cute pictures...

 

I'm still trying to get a "stinky face" picture.  She just doesn't want it captured for posterity, I think.  We'll try to sneak it out of her.