Let me brag for a moment...

I don't know how tacky it is to brag about my kids, but I have to say that I am grateful for good kids. They have been quite good lately and it sure makes my job easier. And I have to say that I am grateful that my kids aren't picky eaters. It seems like some people are just born with that, and I am so glad that mine aren't. I made a seafood pasta the other night, and I was a bit nervous to see if the kids would eat it because there were mussels in it. But the girls ate it right up and after trying a mussel for the first time they asked if they could have more of them. (that's for all of the non-seafood eaters in my family.) Also we had split-pea soup last night and they all (including Jaxon) licked their bowls clean. Split pea soup gets a bad rep, but we really enjoyed it. It is a great after-easter meal because you can throw the big ham bone in and it gets a great flavor. I really enjoy cooking most of the time and I'm glad that I have a family willing to try the new things I cook up.
Also, on a side note, I fit into my pre-prego jeans today for the first time!! YAY! I might just actually get some of this weight off! Admittedly they are still a bit tight, but I refuse to buy new clothes. I started working out last week and hopefully will be somewhat back to my old shape soon.

Some kid funnies

I am going to copy the route of my sisters Amber and Katie and write some funny things my kids have been saying/doing lately. Every time Mckayla and Lyla pray they thank God for our new baby and lately they have been asking for the baby to be blessed so that she can either walk or talk. When I tried to explain that babies can't walk or talk for awhile and we like it that way, Lyla said that she was ready for the baby to walk and talk so she could be fun now.
Jaxon is mostly frustrating because he has discovered the art of pushing the dining chairs all over the house in order to reach things he wants to get to. Nothing is safe anymore now that he can climb up and get to whatever he sets his mind to. Last night he climbed on top of the counter and opened all of the bananas we had, so we had to make some emergency banana bread. (They were about to that point anyways.)

Easter Sunday

We had a great Easter Sunday last Sunday. My sister Katie was here with her 3 kids, so we had an Easter egg hunt with them and an enormous breakfast because Katie was leaving for home before we left for church. We did wait until after breakfast for the hunt despite the constant questions as to when we'd be getting easter eggs.
Church was really beautiful. There were special speakers and some great numbers by the choir. I think it takes awhile to learn to still be able to pay attention and feel the spirit even while dealing with rambunctious kids. But I'm glad that we could take a time out to focus on what the day is really for. It is wonderful to have a reminder of what the Savior has done for us and how we should be living our lives after his example. We were also taught what we can do to be closer to the Savior and to build a relationship with Him. I think that sometimes we get so caught up in the motions of going to church and doing all of our assignments that we stray away from building our personal testimonies. I just felt like it was a great day where we left feeling very spiritually fed as we were on our way home to be physically fed.
We had Easter dinner with a few of our friends and had a second Easter egg hunt that Jaxon got to join in on. We try to get him to take a nap before we go to church every Sunday so that we will have an easier time getting him to behave. Below are a few pictures of our day.

Here's the Easter bunny hiding the eggs:


Here's all of the girls anxiously awaiting the hunt. In front is my neice Lily and to the right is Abigail.
Here's Jaxon finding an egg.

Our friend Hanna helping Jaxon hunt.

What a stud!

Here's Abigail with all of her loot. She is such a cutie!

Here's Eve with her basket.

The girls in their Easter dresses.

Mckayla finding a golden egg (after Jake's help), there were only 2 of them and Jake told the girls about the golden eggs. They all then became obsessed with finding the golden eggs.

Here's Lyla with her golden egg.

First Swim of the Season

Though the Pachecos were anxious to swim while they were here and the kids did splash around and get wet with them, no one actually swam around because the water was still too cold. The water is still pretty cold, but the Thompsons were pretty adamant about wanting to swim. So Katie and I said the kids could put swimming suits on and get in. They actually did do a bit of swimming, but it still didn't last very long. It was a warm day, so they would lay on the hot concrete to warm up in between dips in the pool. Hopefully we will be doing more swimming soon, it is supposed to be getting pretty warm in the coming weeks.

Fun with the Pachecos

Jake's dad and family came down for their spring break the last week of March/first bit of April. It was their vacation so they wanted to do fun things, but they were understanding that we couldn't go to everything because I just didn't quite have the energy for it yet, so I appreciate that.
We went to Kartchner Caverns with them. I had never been to it, and it is pretty popular. Not just in Arizona, but everywhere, so we had always wanted to go. It is less than 3o minutes from our house. It was really neat, I couldn't believe the amount of money that had been put into it. Not a place for kids though. I had left Jaxon with a babysitter, and though the girls really enjoyed it and were interested in it, the guides were so anal that it wasn't as fun as it could be. Obviously, you aren't allowed to touch anything, and in most places you can't touch anything because there is a guardrail on both sides of the walkway, but the guides didn't even want the kids touching the guardrail. We had to keep telling kids to walk in the middle of the path and keep hands in pockets (even though there was nothing to touch), etc. But the caves were really neat. It is crazy that underneath very ugly, nonchalant-looking hills there could be such beautiful caves.
On April 1st the whole kindergarten was going on a trip to the Tucson zoo (too bad I didn't know about that earlier and we wouldn't have gone in March), so we decided to meet the girls up at the zoo and take them home with us. Our trip was much more uneventful this time despite a few breakdowns from the kids. We had a great time and effectively wore the kids out so that they were all asleep before we were out of the parking lot.
We also spent Monday exporing Bisbee, a fun historic town closeby. We were going to go down to Jake's work and watch him fly, but the wind didn't cooperate. We had fun walking around Bisbee and going to the museam though.
Our visit was a lot of fun and I am so glad that we are a tiny bit closer to family so that driving is possible and hopefully our kids can see their extended family more than once a year.

This picture was taken at Kartchner caverns. We could only take pictures in the visitors center because flashes from cameras can hurt the rocks in the caves. L2R: Jono (Jake's brother that is living with us), Jerry, Kenna then Kailey, Mckayla and Amelie (Jake's half-sister).

Jake and his dad. See the family resemblance?

We did let the kids play at the water playground at the end of our zoo visit, but we were prepared with a change of clothes this time.

Here's Mckayla posing as a peacock.

Lyla riding an elephant.

This is what Jaxon though of feeding the giraffe.

Mckayla, Lyla, and Amelie playing queens of the rock. Luckily no one was pushed off in this game.

Jerry, Jace and Jaxon riding the elephant. (say that 3 times fast)

This is Kailey in the cutest little sundress my mother in law sent. It is perfect because of the little sunhat. My mother in law always seems to find the cutest clothes.

This is Mckayla and Lyla playing at the visitor's center at Kartchner caverns. Those holes are showing the size of hole that they discovered the caverns through.

Here is Lyla in front of a fake formation at the visitor's center.

Some cute pictures of my boy

Jake always gives me a hard time because I will dressup the girls all pretty and do otheir hair and nails and stuff. But this is proof that he is as bad as I am. He is always getting Jaxon all spiffed up and looking cute. Jake will use his gell and pomade on Jaxon too. On Easter Sunday after church we were trying to get everything ready for Easter dinner when Jaxon went into our bathroom and got into Jake's pomade. He came out of the bathroom with globs of pomade on the top of his head. He had tried to comb it too, so there were several combs filled with the stuff as well. I think Jaxon may have learned his lesson because Jake had to scrub his head in the sink to try to get the stuff out, and Jaxon's hair is still pretty greasy. It is cute though that he is already learning how to be like his dad and trying to imitate him. We just need to hide Jake's razors.
Below is a picture of Jaxon in the bath from awhile ago. He figured out that the foam alphabet toys not only stick to the wall when their wet, but they stick to you too! Jake said he went in to check on him and found him like that. What a cutie.

Mckayla's Lost Tooth

So Mckayla finally lost her first tooth. She has been extremely jealous of Lyla's tooth-losing abilities (not to mention the money from the tooth-fairy that comes with that.) She has had a loose tooth on the bottom for awhile that was taking a very long time to come out, and last Saturday Mckayla came into our room with a very bloody mouth just elated that Lyla had helped her get her tooth out. With a bloody mouth like that we immediately inquired what Lyla's method for tooth removal was; as it looked like she could have gotten a punch to the face. But Mckayla said Lyla just twisted it out. Either way, she didn't seem upset at Lyla's kind gesture.

Lots of Visitors

It's funny that when we lived in Texas we didn't get many visitors, but our extra rooms have been almost constantly full since we moved to Arizona (even before we had furniture in them:) We really like having visitors and we are glad that we have gotten to see family much more often because we a bit closer than before. This past month has been a bit crazy though. A friend of ours was here the week of Kailey's birth, then we had to kick him to hotel (sorry Rich!) the next week because my mom was coming for the week, then another friend came to visit for a few days during his break from Iraq, then Jake's dad and family came to visit over their spring break for a week, and last week my sister came down with all of her kids for Easter to let her husband have quiet study time. Crazy! We have had fun though, and I do have a lot of catch-up blogging to do, but first I had to get my house back in order and catch my breath. We have a week off this week, but we do have a couple of friends coming by the end of the month. That'll be fun though. We are grateful that we have the space and ability to offer beds to visitors here it has been a lot of fun.

Kailey's Blessing Day

Last Sunday we blessed Kailey in church. It was nice that my father-in-law and family were there to be a part of that. It would be nice if more family could come, but we are all so spread out now and there are so many family events that getting everyone to everything is just not possible. Anyways, with much help from my mom I made Kailey's blessing gown, and I am very proud of myself. It had been a long time since I had sewn anything. But it turned out alright.

Here's some pics of Kailey modeling off her new gown.

This is Jake's dad, stepmom and half brother and sister who were here all last week over their spring break. (to be blogged about later).

Here is our family showing off our new baby. The sun was pretty bright that day.

Though I didn't get to write much down, I do remember some of the blessing Kailey was given. Something that stood out to me was that she was blessed with an inate ability to tell right from wrong and to know the path God had chosen for her. She was also blessed with a love of the scriptures and of the gospel. And she was blessed to know that no matter how far one strays from the path they can always always return and be forgiven by their Father in Heaven.

First Outing

Some call it being brave, but I know that I'm crazy. The week my mom was here to help out also happened to be spring break for the girls. I felt bad that we had stayed home and done virtually nothing all week due to me still recovering from having Kailey. On thursday we decided to go to the zoo in Tucson. It is a small zoo, so I thought we'd be okay. Plus, I thought it would be easy to keep Kailey away from other people since I could just have her in the stroller or a baby carrier the whole time. It took us awhile to get going because we hadn't put the baby seat together after washing it. And since we had her at home we hadn't ever put her in the car yet, so this is her first car ride:


Before going into the zoo we went to eat our picnic lunch out by the duck pond in the park since it was after 11:00 when we got there. We ate under a bunch of orange trees that smelled awesome, and then some stranger came up with a bag of bread that they were done with offering it to us to feed the ducks. We went to feed the ducks and they are obviously fed well, because they weren't really flocking to the side to us to feed. Anyways, Mckayla was trying a bit too hard to throw food to the ducks and fell in the nasty, stinky water!
She was soaked head to toe, and she stank because the water was pretty gross. So we decided to go grab her an outfit from a nearby store before going into the zoo. By the time we got into the zoo it was after 1:00. Here is a picture of the soaking wet Mckayla, notice the wet footprints walking towards me:

My mom had been following Jaxon, holding onto the back of his clothes to keep him from diving in. We thought the girls would be okay, but you know what they say about assuming.....

After finally making it into the zoo we had a great time. We just took our time and let the kids linger looking at the animals for as long as they wanted. We didn't see the whole zoo, but that was okay. Here's my mom with the kids:

This is a giraffe that kept trying to eat off the peacock's feathers.

They had a thing where we could pay to get some food to feed the giraffes. Look at that tongue! Yuck! Luckily they had a handwashing thing where they could clean off.

Jaxon is in the turtle shell too, but I couldn't get him to stick his head out.

There were a lot of birds that had free roam of the place, and that was the kids' favorite part. They loved just following the peacocks around.

At the end we let the kids play on a water playground they had on the zoo grounds, again getting them soaking wet. So, we had to strip them down in the car for the ride home, and we figured they could just cover up with a blanket or something for the ride home. We also decided to stop by a fabric store since they don't have any in Sierra Vista, and my mom had a heck of a time while I was in the store. We had gotten some drive-thru food and they completely screwed up our order, then their thing shut down and after 20 minutes in the drive-thru they gave us a bunch of food for free. Then Jaxon had a giant poop and we realized we were out of diapers so we had to go to the store again to get him a new diaper. What was supposed to be a short day trip ended up taking some interesting turns and we didn't get home until late into the evening. But it was a lot of fun, though I was completely worn out by the whole thing.

My 26th Birthday

I have always said that I have a very unlucky birthday. I was born on "the ides of march," which historically is an unlucky day. I had a good birthday though this year and I am finally writing about it. It was awesome that my mom got to come and be there for my birthday, she came in on Friday the 13th to meet her 13th grandchild for the first time (a little creepy?), so she was there on my birthday. Given the fact that I had given birth less than a week prior, I didn't do much, but it was nice to not do much.
Everyone else went to church for three hours and I stayed home and took a nap and took care of the baby. There's no better gift for a mother of 4 than peace and quiet. I got to spen most of the day just holding the baby and reading a book. I am boring, I know, but I liked it. Then Jake came home and made a really good dinner for me. My mom made cake and pie and we had some friends over to share it with us, and we opened presents. It was just what I needed.

This is Jaxon enjoying the pie.

Me with 4 of the loves in my life (the other one is behind the camera). Plus, I am holding my favorite birthday present, though she came a bit early.

Here's Jake making dinner for me. He made sheeshkabobs and they were really good. He had become quite the grillin' fool, and it's fine with me because it means that I am not the one who is cooking and the food is great.

Thank you Honey for an awesome birthday!!!!