Mothers Day

Mother's Day was very nice this year. We woke up, went to church, opened presents and went to my brothers house for dinner. Cirdan and the kids got me some nice gifts...pillows, flowers, perfume, ramekins and a wall hanging for the kitchen. The kids also made me some nice gifts at church and preschool. I scanned them and attached them below.

Some of the yummy food the guys made for mothers day.

What Kaiya gave me. Some of her answers were...questionable.

What Ella made me...

Jett decorated the pot in nursery and the teachers put the flowers in them. So cute!!

Ella at 4 Years Old

Ella's Answers...


Fav food – noodles with butter, salt and lots of pepper and cereal

Fav cereal – life (she has to have this almost every morning)

Fav color – pink

Fav thing to do – play on iPod

Fav show – Austin and Ally and Jessie

Best friend – Starley

Fav animal – giraffe and pig

Fav treat – lollipops

Fav part about preschool – snack time

Ella loves accessories (bracelets, necklaces, earrings etc), reading stories, playing outside with her bike and playing out in backyard. She loves to dance and go to preschool. Ella has just gotten to the age where she gets shy and doesn't want to get up in front of people. We took her out of hip hop because she was too shy to do it now.  She loves to dance hip hop but didn't like the environment.  Parents gawking (group of 20) at the window....too much spotlight took the fun out of it.  She's all about making up hip hop dances and Kaiya makes up dances for her too. 


Ella has recently become a willing care taker of Jett.  She loves being the big sister and loves to help out.  They've become good buddies and enjoy playing together.  Ella has grown up quite a bit in the last few months, it's amazing to watch her evolve.  She's a very affectionate little girl.  Ella loves getting and giving hugs and kisses.  Her smile is huge and she can light up a room.  Ella is very thoughtful and enjoys pleasing others.  She goes out of her way to be helpful.  She always thinks about her siblings, if she gets something she wants Kaiya or Jett to have on also.  She has a very kind and generous little spirit about her.  Most people remember her big smile after meeting her.  

Doctor Visits - 18 Months and 4 Yrs Old

Cirdan and I took Ella and Jett to their doctor checkups. Ella had her 4 year and Jett had his 18 month. They both are healthy and happy. Here were their stats...

Ella -
Height - 41" (75%)
Weight - 39.6 (80%)

They checked her hearing and vision and she can both hear and see well. :)

Jett -
Length - 32" (40%)
Weight - 22 (10%) small guy
Head - 19 1/2 (95%) lots of brains

Jett at 18 Months

He is such a snuggler and would snuggle with me all day if he could
Loves Books - Especially books about animals
Hates Milk
Climber - I have to keep my chairs down around the table because he will scoot the chairs and try to climb on the counters
If he puts something in his mouth he knows he shouldn't, he will bring it to me. He wears a sneaky grin on his face and I know something is in his mouth. He even will come all the way downstairs just to find me with his sneaky grin. He knows.
He loves playing with water. Cirdan had to shut off the water on one of the faucets in our bathroom because he would climb up on the bathtub and stand there, play in the water and get wet.
Doesn't like tv - but does like Elmo - not to watch but just to see and say..."Elmo!"
He LOVES bubbles and goes to the sliding glass door often asking to go out to play with bubbles
The girls have taught him how to act like a dog. They will tell him he is a puppy and to get down and he immediately drops down on all fours and acts like a dog. It is pretty funny.
He loves flowers and loves to smell them. If we see flowers we always have to stop for him to take a big sniff.
He enjoys tools and fixing or building things.  If Cirdan needs to put something together or fix something- Jett is right there, anxious to help and use all of the tools.  He is also a great helper.  He gets excited to help bring in groceries, clean or just help out.  If you ask him to go get something he's pretty happy with himself when he knows what it is.  Jett speeds off and races back to bring what you asked.
He recently started to like the girls headphones with their ipods.  They're the full size headphones that cover your ears.  What's even better is the fact that the girls both have girly color and design headphones. 
Jetty loves to wrestle and play with Daddy.  Cirdan tickles him until Jett is laughing hysterically, they play the binky game which he digs.
He is pretty shy still.  He hears people say his name loud and clear and he just looks away or looks down, acting as if he didn't hear.is cool with Mom, Dad and Kaiya as far as taking care of him.  He won't let anyone else babysit -other than Val if Kaiya's there-.  Jett When he's comfortable, he has the sweetest and funniest demeanor.  He is super funny and has a great sense of humor.  He will even go comfort Ella know if she is crying sometimes. 
Lately he and Ella have become closer as Jett gets bigger.  They have become pretty good pals.  Ella recently has also taken to becoming more of a caretaker to him.  She wants to be able to help out.  She tries to get him to sleep or feed him, whatever she can do to help.  They have a good time together.
He says and can point to ears, hair, eyes, toes, nose, teeth, fingers, mouth, tummy


His vocab has grown a lot this past month. Words he says often...
Books
Bubbles
Ball
Water "agua"
Horse
Cow
Dog
Noodles - Noonal
Rice
Apple
Banana - as soon as we get into the grocery store and he sees a banana he starts yelling really loud..."nana! nana! nana!"
Binkie - inky, deety
Bug
Flowers
Outside - side
Kaiya - Yaiya
Ella
Ava
Papa
Diaper
Shoes
Leaf - he loves to pick one of the small leaves on the bush outside our house whenever he walks up to the door
Socks
snack
milk
lights
Elmo "melmo"

Celebrating Cirdan, Kaiya and My Dad's Birthdays. Kaiya Turns double digits!

Birthdays! When we got home I only had a couple days to prepare for Cirdan and Kaiya's birthday. Ella, Jett and I did some shopping and got everything we needed. The birthday people both woke up to balloons. Kaiya got a donut for her birthday breakfast. Before Kaiya went to school I let her open a couple of presents. One of the top things she wanted was dangle earrings. I have held off on letting her wear any so I told her that she could when she turned 10. Not crazy dangle ones...just the cute dangle earrings.

Putting on her new earrings

Kaiya went to school and Cirdan stayed home. His friend was over installing new closet organizers for the closets upstairs. We gave him a couple of gifts...which he is going to return. That boy is picky! Then the kids and I went to Starbucks to get Cirdan breakfast. We also went to pick up his ice cream cake and get him and David (his friend) some lunch at Subway.

When Kaiya got home she opened the rest of gifts from us. Her birthday fell on a Thursday which is her long day at dance (4:30-9:00) so she had to hurry.

Kaiya requested a fruit truffle from my mom. She just enough time for us to sing to her and to eat some.

The birthdays went in stages. Kaiya had her cake 1st. Then we had Greg and Staci over for an Applebees takeout dinner and some ice cream cake.

Lastly, my mom and dad stopped by around 9:00 pm so we could sing to Papa.

The birthday kids! (minus the guy in the back, ha ha)

It was a fun filled day of sweets and birthday celebrations! Happy Birthday!

Going Home

We headed home on Sunday morning. We didn't need to be back to Washington until Tuesday for Kaiya to be at school (MSP) and dance. So we took our time. We packed up the car and stopped off at Cirdan's aunt and uncles house to say a quick goodbye and see his cousins that we weren't able to see the week before.

Each time we were in our hotel the kids loved playing with the 2 phones. One was in the room right when you come in and the other phone was next to the bed. They spent a majority of the time on the phone with each other playing house.

Our hotel room was nice and had a kitchen.

All loaded up and ready for the long drive ahead! At this point I was really ready to throw Kaiya's glasses out the window. :)

Our quick stop to see the relatives.

The plan was to stay in Boise again. However, once we started driving we figured we should drive a little farther than Boise and make the drive on Monday shorter. We also wanted to stop in Imbler, Oregon which was on the other side of the Blue Mountains. Unfortunately we wanted to get as far as we could so we ended up in Pendleton for the night. Which was past Imbler. Next time!!! I really thought it would be fun to see all the Imbler stuff around town. The drive wasn't as bad as Cirdan thought it would be so I am hoping for more drives to Utah in the near future.

Utah - Temple Square

On Friday we met Cirdan's Grandma, Aunt and Uncle for lunch. It was great to see his Aunt and Uncle again and it was a nice lunch. Kinda crazy in the restaurant with 3 kids but everyone survived. The girls enjoyed meeting Grandpas brother.

We then headed to Salt Lake to walk around Temple Square. We started at the visitor center. The kids had fun at first then got a little bored. While Cirdan and Ella went to the bathroom I started talking to a couple of the sister missionaries. They were both from different countries. One from Austria and Tonga. They were really nice. They mentioned that across the street there was a building with some things for the kids to do. I had no idea where they were talking about and they were more than willing to walk over there and show us. I am glad we ran into them and got talking because we always just go to the visitor center and you can only do that so many times. I am glad to know there are other cool things around. Made me wonder how many other things we were missing! Ha ha

The building was the Church History Museum. I would have never thought about going in the building. Pretty cool stuff in there!

Downstairs was filled with pictures kids around the world had drawn. It was really interesting and neat to see the ages and countries the kids were from. A lot of the pictures were super good! Kaiya was amazed.

Here is one  up close that was amazing. A 10 year old from Taiwan drew it.

There was a little station where Ella and Kaiya could draw a picture and it would show up on a tv screen playing drawings the kids made.

We went up a couple of floors where there there was an area with a lot of kids activities. One was this boat they could play in. Jett liked to fish with Cirdan.

There was an area the kids could dreess up in Mexican dance clothes and there were a couple of tv's showing them how to do a Mexican dance.

Wood blocks of vegetables the kids could pretend to plant

I need to get some of these for our house. After I get rid of the other millions of toys the kids have...

Ella absolutely loved playing with these dolls. There was little outfits that you put on them. We had to pull her away from this to leave.

I need to get this picture blown up to put on her bedroom wall...

Outside the Conference Center. Jett loved watching the water.

State Capital

The plan was to go to University of Utah with Kaylee after she got out of her meeting. We waited but then found out she went to Orem to do some last minute wedding stuff. So, we went back to our hotel. Cirdan ended up taking the kids to the pool to swim.