My Beautiful girls

I had my girls' pictures taken this summer...I think they are beautiful, but I may just be a little biased :)

Girls Weekend

For my birthday, Jake gave me a weekend away. I am eight months pregnant, so we thought we'd better stay somewhat close. We stayed at the Marriott downtown at City Creek. We met up with Jill and Melissa for dinner and went shopping afterwards. Saturday, we went and got manis and pedis and shopped until our feet hurt! I was so exhausted!! It was so nice to be with my family. We always laugh and have a good time. We all stayed in one room and I felt bad my mom and Angie slept on the floor, but I guess you just make it work! 

Jaymie-due Aug 19th (boy) , Melissa-due Sept 25th (girl), Me-due Oct 4th (girl), and Aubrey-due Dec 23rd (boy)

Happy 5th Birthday, Avery girl!

For Avery's birthday, I finally convinced Jake that we needed something for the kids to do out in the backyard. We either needed a trampoline or a swingset....well, we got a tramp for Avery's birthday. Josh and Jake put it together the night before and we surprised her the next morning. She was so cute and so excited!

Being pregnant, the thought of doing a birthday party sounded like A LOT of work. Needless to say, it was! I wanted to go somewhere where we could just have the party and they would take care of all the monotonous things and we could come home to a clean house. Well, there are just too many little kids in our neighborhood, and I didn't want to leave anyone out and the cost of taking a lot of little kids would have been way out of budget....so we stayed home and had a Despicable Me party! You would think that because the second one had just come out, they would have party supplies with the logo on it...ya, not! There wasn't a single thing. And because I had left it until the last minute, shipping would have cost just as much as the supplies itself....so....I made them myself! My ankles were so swollen and I was so exhausted from being on my feet all day, but hopefully she will enjoy it!

My little Minion army! Yes, Pintrest to the rescue!

My attempt at a Moon.

We bowled and hit Minions

We also shot the alien....

And played pin the goggles on the Minion.

Their gift bags to go home with...phew!

Avery's cute friends
Back row: Claire Trimble, Rylee, Grace VanLeeuwen, Avery, Ella Hagen
Front row: Carter Anderson, Luke Payne, Reagan Lund, Kiara Shurtliff, Madison Jackman, Rylee Blackwell, and McCoy Johnson

After the friend party....the family came over...we opened presents and had cake and ice cream. I was so exhausted but had so much fun celebrating my sweet little girl's 5th birthday! Happy Birthday Avery girl! I love you to the moon and back!

First Day of Kindergarten!

Rylee wanted in on the action too!!

I thought for sure I would be a wreck today. In fact, I told Jake the week before that he needed to be the one to take Avery to school and take her pictures and all of that. I was a mess the Friday before. I was mortified to send her on the bus. We have had a little boy in our neighborhood who has had a rough childhood, but has done some naughty things to girls around our neighborhood, and I am feeling so protective of my baby. I called the school to see if he rides the bus and they couldn't tell me either way. I just don't want anything to happen to my sweet little girl. I feel like I can't protect her from everything but the one thing I can protect her from, is not letting her ride the bus. I can prevent anything from happening on the bus if she doesn't ride it. I think all of my neighbors think I'm a little crazy, but if that's the one thing I can control, why wouldn't I? But she wants to ride the bus SOOO bad. That's all she talks about. We talked about him and if he rides the bus and she knows that if he does ride the bus, she isn't to sit by him. AHHH...I'm not ready for this. I feel like there are so many emotions right now that I haven't experienced yet as a parent and it's kind of scary. I hope I have taught her right from wrong, I hope she is smart enough to stand up for herself. Lots of crazy things go through your head with all these new milestones. I guess this is part of growing up. 

 Luckily, Avery was so excited to go to school, that it was actually really fun to take her. As we were walking out to the bus stop, she told me "I'll go by myself"...I'm thinking..um, no...this is for me more than it is for you!! It's hard to believe I have a kindergartener already. Time goes by so fast. She is so ready to go and thinks she is so big. She goes in the morning from 9-12, she is on A track and her teacher is Ms. Calhoun (she is so cute!). Hopefully kindergarten will be a good experience for all of us. It will give me time in the morning with Rylee and the new baby and it will be a good break in the day. 

Waiting at the bus stop: Hayden and McKoy Johnson, Avery, Sydney Searle

Playing before the bell rings!

Okay, this picture totally cracks me up! The girls went to the first day, which happened to be on a Friday, which happened to be short day. Yes...a total of 2 hours of school....Well, we wanted an after picture and NONE of them wanted anything to do with it!  So DRAMATIC!!!