McKenzie is Growing Up!

So today, one of our new neighbor kids came over and asked if the kids could play. As soon as they were done with cleaning up their toys, I said they could play. While they were getting their shoes Owen woke up Zoey and I discovered that he had peed in his pants. Not wanting to punish McKenzie, I decided to let her go outside and play with her friend all by herself. I am very paranoid, so I had all the windows and the door open so I could see and hear her. She followed all of my rules and had lots of fun!

Matt's Birthday

Yesterday was kind of a crazy day. I got to watch Richie and it was Matt's birthday. Matt has Thursdays off, so I thought that it would be pretty easy day. Well, Matt had a mandatory meeting at work. It lasted almost 2 hours! Richie was okay, but my kids were off the walls! I was so glad when Matt finally came home. Then I surprised him with a night out, alone, without kids.

First, we went to Cafe Ole for dinner and dessert. While we were there, we saw a couple that looked like our friends Aaron and Nancy. It was so weird! You hear about how everyone has a twin in the world, but we found the perfect twin couple!! Even their mannerisms were similar. We were too far away to get a good picture, plus the lighting was terrible, but here is the best that we could get.


Here is Aaron and Nancy. We don't have a profile shot of them and this picture is a few years old...but if you know them, you would agree!


Here are the look-a-likes.





After dinner, we were going to watch a movie, but we didn't see anything that would thought would be worth watching. So we decided to go to Costco and picked up some chicken and meat while we were in the neighborhood. Then we went to Target for some storage totes that they had on sale and then we picked up the kids. I know, it sounds so romantic! But we hardly EVER get out without kids, so this was really nice. I had a lot of fun! Happy Birthday Matt!

McKenzie and Owen's New Bikes

McKenzie got a bike from my Mom for Christmas, but it was a little too big when she got it. Now, McKenzie is big enough to ride it, so we had her try it out. Owen got McKenzie's old bike and he was so excited! He even got a new helmet to go with it!. We rode around the cul de sac a few times and then came in. I'm glad that the weather has been nice the past few days!


Zoey was sleeping while we were outside so she didn't come out with us. Plus it was starting to get cold. I found this really cute picture of her on the camera. I think Matt may have taken it.

St. Patty's Day

Matt worked on St. Patrick's day this year. I was bored and I wanted to do something with the kids that had to do with St Patrick's day. I'm not into the whole, "you have to wear green or you get pinched thing" But I thought that If I made some green pancakes that would be really fun for the kids.

McKenzie and Owen LOVED the idea and were so excited to eat green pancakes. I wanted to be really creative and make green shamrock pancakes, but I was hungry and I didn't want to go overboard. I think they turned out great!

Jason Came Home!

My Brother, Jason, came home from Rexburg to visit. He didn't tell anyone that he was coming, so we were all surprised to see him. We all hung out at my parent's house and played games and had pizza. It was a lot of fun and I was so glad to see him again. McKenzie took some pics while we were playing games. Most were of Zoey, but here are some other ones.


McKenzie was upset about something. I wanted pictures of everyone, but I was playing a game, so I gave the camera to McKenzie after this. This made her feel better.


Here's Jaime and Richie. I have no idea why she is wearing a birthday hat. She's really goofy.


Here's Zoey.


This is a picture of My Mom, Dad and Angela. It looks like McKenzie caught my Mom in the middle of a yawn!


Here's a picture of my nephew, Hunter. So cute! Although, He kind of looks like he doesn't want his picture taken.


Here is my Dad, Jason and Angela.


Here's Jaime and the silly birthday hat, Kristi and Jarom.


Here's Zoey. She's just hanging out while we play.


Here's Matt


Here's Tyler and Jaime. I guess McKenzie took a bunch of Jaime too!

McKenzie's New Clothes

McKenzie has "grown like a weed" since she was conceived. She was a week and a half early and was 8 lbs 5 oz 22 inches long. Since then, she has been either off the charts or in the 95 percentile in compared to the kids her age. My Mom always sends us Jaime's old clothes, which helps out A LOT. But because of McKenzie proportions, she cannot always wear Jaime's old clothes.

A lot of her clothes are either getting holes because they are hand me downs or they are just too small. So on Thursday, we got McKenzie a new pair of shorts and 3 new shirts. I wanted to be sure that they would fit, so we went to the dressing room. When she tried on her new clothes her eyes just beamed! She was so excited! Here's a couple of pictures of what we got.





After we picked out her clothes, she said, "now we have to get Owen some new clothes." Since Owen just got a bunch of new clothes for Christmas, we didn't get him anything new. I just thought she was really sweet for thinking about her brother.

My Owen

I love Owen So much! He is the sweetest little guy. I almost wish that I was pregnant with a boy so that he would have a brother. (Notice I said, "almost." I am not having any more babies for a long, long while. Unless we are blessed with one while on birth control.) Anyways, He's just so stinkin cute.



Today, McKenzie and Owen were supposed to clean the toy room. McKenzie was doing a lot of the work while Owen was playing. After a while, I told McKenzie to leave and Owen had to finish it by himself. I got lots of excuses from him, like, "I can't do it! It's too hard!" and my favorite, "I want to take a nap!" He finally finished, just in time for dinner.

Truely Magic

My faith in the Magic Eraser has been restored! I was able to "Fix" 2 additional items with the wonderful Magic Eraser.

First, McKenzie received this super cute piggy bank from my Grandma Hudson just after she was born. I absolutely LOVE it. Well, McKenzie thought it would be a great art project and colored on it with a black sharpie. I seriously thought that it was ruined at the time, but I couldn't part with it. Now a couple years later, I decided to try the magic eraser and voila! It's super cute once again!


Before


After


My next project was to clean the wall in the toy room. We had a dry erase board in here for the kids to color on. Of course that wasn't good enough and they ended up coloring on the walls with the dry erase marker. Ugh!!!! Today, I was finally able to remove the marker from the wall, Thanks to the Magic Eraser! I'm sorry I ever doubted you!


Before

After

Wall Art

I think that most of us with kids have experienced the coloring on the walls at one time or another. For me, it's been a few different times. The first time, I was able to easily remove the crayon with a magic eraser. Well, the 2nd Time, I wasn't so lucky. So I lost my faith in the magic eraser. Eventually, we moved, and I never had to remove the crayon off the walls. This last time, 2 of my 3 kids, participated in the coloring and by the time they were caught, they did much damage.

I first had them wipe down the walls with baby wipes. That worked for the purple crayon, but not the magenta or the yellow. Soon, I gave up and months later the crayon markings were still on the wall. Wanting to get it removed, I searched online. There was comments saying to use oil, so I got out the pledge. The pledge did not work. I then tried the Pam cooking spray. Nope, that didn't work either. I decided to move on to other comments. I tried heating the crayon marking with a blow dryer and then wiping it with soapy water. OOPS! That smeared the crayon all over! I panicked! Then I read to try the blow dryer with a magic eraser. I quickly got out the remaining 2 erasers and with the blow dryer, the crayon started coming off! Hurray! Even the smeared crayon came off! It took about 20 minutes to get the entire room free of the crayon marks!

My Kids

McKenzie and Owen Love playing with Zoey and they are really good to her, most of the time. I'm not sure what got them started, but they thought that it would be funny to put blocks on Zoey's head. Then Owen started whacking the blocks off Zoey's head. They all were cracking up so hard! It was really cute. Then I took pictures off all 3 of them together.



My Girls