Summer in a nut shell

I am never going to get this blog caught up, mostly because I lack the motivation to do so, but also because it would take quite a bit of time. So instead, here is a very quick recap of some of our summer highlights.

So first we have our annual trip to the Chukars game. Kinley always loves seeing "Charlie the Chukar the bird". Every year she insists that he sign her hand and then immediately begins complaining that she wants the marker off of her hand. We actually stayed for the entire game this year. At the end of the game they invite all of the little kids to come and run around the bases. Kinley was super excited about it and apparently her enthusiasm caused her to run faster than she is actually capable of doing and she biffed it rounding third (not a shock, she trips at least a dozen times a day).

For the 4th of July we managed to make it to the parade and then out to float the river. Kinley had an absolute blast. I on the other hand was rather prego and sat in the shade and ate some yummy treats all day. It was a tough job but somebody had to do it.


We also had a little neighborhood get together and had everybody bring the little fireworks they bought to make a rather impressive show.

We also took Kinley to ride some Go Karts. I was banking on it being a total disaster and the little high school girl/employee would spend 10 minutes helping Kinley get around the track once. Instead, Kinley surprised us all by being quite the little driver.
Well that should catch the major highlights. I really can't believe summer is over already, however, so far the fall season has been treating us rather well.

Lagoon

We went to Utah for a niece's baptism in August and decided to head to Lagoon while we were there. We had some friends that were going and we just invited ourselves along. They were kind enough to allow us to tag along. Kinley absolutely adores their kids, and they were able to ride the rides together, so it actually worked out very well.

I expected Kinley to be a gigantic baby (like she usually is) and refuse to ride any of the big rides. Basically, I thought I would be stuck watching her on that stupid car ride that goes around in a circle, and the kids don't even steer, and it's over in like 30 seconds. However, Kinley absolutely loved the roller coasters. The only times she acted like a baby was when she was too short for the biggest roller coasters.

We even took Haddie. Yes, we are those crazy parents that take 3 week old babies to amusement parks. Haddie found the whole thing boring and slept the entire time. I had a great time and managed to scream like a little girl on the Colossus. Here are the pictures that turned out.

Dino Drop - Kinley on the left

The Bat - Kinley's favorite ride

First day of school

To be perfectly honest, I cannot believe that I am writing a post about sending my baby girl to school. I started this blog just before Kinley turned 1. Where in the world did the last 4 years go. I am very proud to say that I didn't even shed a tear when I had to leave her in the classroom. Kinley was very excited for school but also a bit nervous. She was worried that the other kids would laugh at her and she wouldn't have any friends. Lucky for her most of her friends from her neighborhood are in afternoon kindergarten with her, and the majority are in her class. So far she is really enjoying school, although she can never remember what they did at school until Rich and I grill her for 20 minutes about it. The poor girl is more like me than I realized. She seems to have my same terrible handwriting and inability to color within the lines. Kinley says she just goes too fast, I tell her we're just not the type of people that live within the lines I guess.

Here are some pictures of her before her first day of school. We had a ginormous argument over her outfit. I picked out an outfit and she told me it was the ugliest thing she had ever seen. I said fine, go pick out your own stupid outfit. She picked out a plain pink shirt with plain pink shorts. I told her she sure took that stupid outfit comment literally. We finally settled on the first outfit I picked, which looks adorable if I do say so myself.

Top 5 Kinley quote

I just wanted to share the story behind my new favorite Kinley quote, and what is easily one of her top 5 moments in my opinion. My sister Richelle is hosting 2 foreign exchange students this year. She has a 16 year old boy from India and a 16 year old girl from Germany. They made it to Wyoming just in time to come to our house the weekend we blessed Haddie. In preparation for their arrival, I had a conversation with Kinley about how they would be a bit different than us and we didn't need to make a big deal about it. Such as, Alex will have dark skin (not a whole lot of people with dark skin in Idaho) and that Julia would have a very strong accent. I told her that if she couldn't understand them not to make them feel bad. Kinley said she would just let them know they talk weird. I told her that was definitely not appropriate. She then said, "if I'm talking to them and can't understand them I'll just go (in a super high pitched tone and spoken rather slowly) awk-ward." I laugh every time I think about it. What a special girl that Kinley is.

Look alike contest

Today was the first day of school, which meant it was just me and Haddie for the afternoon, which was very strange. I actually had time to download the pictures off of my camera. So for today let's play who does Haddie look like. I actually only need to put pictures of one other human being to figure it out. So, how much do you think Haddie looks like Baby Kinley?

Baby Kinley

Baby Haddie

Baby Haddie

Sweet little Haddie joined our family on July 16. I know, this is way late, but better late than never, right? I really can't believe that she is almost 4 weeks old already. She has been such a sweet baby. Kinley is absolutely loving having a baby sister and I think she gives her at least 500 kisses a day.

For those of you that would like to skip the labor details, feel free to just scroll down for the pictures. I woke up at 4 am to get a snack and when I got out of bed my water broke, well, it would be more accurate to say that it had a very small leak. Rich and I debated what to do until we finally went to the hospital at 11:30 am. I thought for sure they were going to send me home and tell me I had just peed my pants or something. Luckily, I passed the amniotic fluid test and they let me stay. The lovely nurse started my I.V. and started the pitocin around 1:00 pm. I thought for sure it would be a very fast process since I was only in labor with Kinley for 6 hours. Boy was I wrong. My labor progressed very slowly which gave me time to enjoy the Swamp People marathon that was on. If it wasn't for my epidural making me throw up every 30 minutes it really wouldn't have been so bad. Finally at 10:51 little Haddie joined the world and put me out of my misery. Now, on to the pictures of our adorable little girl.

Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

I woke up Tuesday at 2:00 a.m. with one of those "wish you were dead" kind of flu bugs. I vaguely remember Tuesday. All I really remember is Kinley asking for an occasional snack, popsicle, or for me to put something on the t.v. Luckily Rich was able to leave work a bit early and save the house before Kinley burned it down. He also was left to make dinner.

Later that night, when I felt less like dying, Kinley was having a bad dream. I got up to lay by her for a little bit and had this most excellent conversation after asking what she had for dinner. She responded by asking me why we never have "man cheese sandwiches or boy cheese sandwiches." I was not following so she added, "you know, we have girled cheese sandwiches so why don't we have man cheese sandwiches?" How classic is that? We apparently need to enunciate a bit better around this house.