Christmas catch up

Dallin and Clara had an adorable preschool concert right before the holidays.  They each sang two songs with their classes and here are my favorites!

Must Be Santa - Dallin


Christmas Lights - Clara



We had a great Christmas filled with 5 little excited babies and more than enough goodies.  Granee, Auntie Helen and Uncle Taylor came to celebrate with us.  We hope your holidays were as great as ours!

Seeing double?

I have been seeing Dallin's "second" twin as I have been taking pictures of Emerson.  The similarities are uncanny!  Here are a few of my favorites of both babes!

Who am I?

Same face on both!

Big boy!

Brotherly love!

Thanksgiving and birthday fun continued

Preparing stuffing with Daddy for our turkey day!

Cousin fun!  Clara, Benjamin, Dallin
Bennett, Emerson, Ava and Scarlett

Apparently waiting for dinner was exhausting for this little guy!

 Thanksgiving was great this year!  We had Ashley and Sam and their great kids over to eat with us.  Ashely baked 6 pies!  I am still eating leftovers.  Helen and Taylor and Granee also came to celebrate the holiday!  It was a relaxing day filled with family, food and a lot of little turkeys!

Hilarious picture of Bennett!  He was watching curious george while being a superhero!

Cute baby waiting for birthday cake!

We are 5!  Auntie Helen, Uncle Taylor and Granee were on hand to celebrate with another sugar rush!

5 Years Ago...

Dallin, "the superhero" and Clara, "the Princess," were born.  We had friend parties this year and I decided to have them both at the same time!  It was crazy and fun!  We had about 15 various superheros and princess along with my 5 children and about 15 adults for the party!  We ate and played and made crowns and necklaces and superhero masks and superhero cuffs and ran and played...

It was great fun and the kids seemed to enjoy it!  I don't know if this will be repeated yearly.  I was one tired mama!

Dallin's superhero room.  Mason made the telephone booth for the superheroes to come out of (think superman!)

The superhero spread!

The only picture I got of Dallin...he would not stay still...he was running and fighting bad guys along with his fellow superheroes!

Clara's princess room!  We had crowns and wands for all the princesses!

All of our princesses!  Boy was there a lot of girly girls at this party!  They were more than happy to pose for a princess picture!

Happy 5th Birthday Dallin and Clara!

Loving fall!

I love fall!  The colors are gorgeous and the temperature is perfect!  We are not going to have many more fall days here in SLC, so we took a family walk on Sunday in our Sunday clothes (much to Clara's chagrin!) The kids loved the leaves and we convinced them to take a couple of pictures along the way!  I have come to terms with the fact that I will NEVER have a perfect family photo for years to come!  There is always one or more children facing the wrong way or crying or acting silly!  This is our family and we love them!

We are alive!

I really have no excuse for why I haven't blogged since April other than we have been a bit busy with listing our house in Carlsbad, selling it, moving to Utah and trying to adjust to living in a 2 room condo in the city!  I will try harder to blog more frequently.
Here is our Halloween costumes this year!

 We were going to go with the Wizard of Oz theme, but everyone had their own opinion of what they wanted to wear (go figure!) so we only had Glinda the good witch (Clara), a bad purple witch (Ava), Cookie Monster (Bennett), Spider man (Dallin) and a dragon (Emerson).  They all loved their costumes and I was happy that they were excited!

 Emerson is now 9 months old and at his check up he weighed 18 pounds and was 29.5 inches long!  The Doctor called him long and skinny!  He is EVERYWHERE!  He has been crawling since about 5 months old and has been pulling himself up for over a month.  He loves his brothers and sisters and smiles and laughs all day long.  He is such an easy going baby and only gets mad when he is tired or hungry.  He is quite the character and keeps us smiling all day!

 Ava girl is "perfect"!  This is what her dad calls her.  She is all personality!  She is her own person and our best only child.  She plays baby dolls and princesses all day alone and with her "Sissy".  She loves to demand my attention as soon as I am trying to get the baby to sleep or feeding him.  She is quite the talker and keeps us in stitches with her dialogue all day.  She is 2 1/2 and tells us everyday that she is a "big girl!"  Living in a condo has proved interesting as Ava successfully pulled the fire alarm button which required 4 fireman, the HOA Nazi and a call to the alarm company to take care of!  It also shut down the elevators for an hour and caused quite the noise for about 10 minutes!  I thought Mason was going to lose it but he just told her calmly that we don't touch those buttons and went about his day! 

 Clara is our drama queen and damsel in distress!  She loves to wear dresses and be a princess and have her hair done in braids!  She is such a girly girl!  We love her constant singing and dancing and play acting she does all day.  She loves preschool and is in her own class without her brother this year.  She has really developed in her coloring skills and is writing her name quite well also.  She loves playing with her little sister and bossing her around (Ava doesn't approve of this!)  Clara is also in ballet and enjoys it! We love our Clara goose!

 Dallin is all boy and talks nonstop all day long.  He is our little man of the house and loves to do anything Daddy does.  He loves to write and has his name down along with a few other letters.  He loves his preschool class especially on show and tell days!  He is playing indoor soccer with the 5 and 6 year olds and has loved it.  Dallin is our map guy and tells us where we need to go wherever we are.  He also requested his own office in his room and now has quite the set up of a desk and pens and highlighters!  He tells me he is doing "work" when I find him at his desk!

Bennett boy  is such a character!  He loves keys, his daddy, his granee, the color blue, his cowboy boots and his "brother baby"!  He keeps us on our toes and is the reason we have locks at the top of all the doors!  He always has a smile on his face and laughs easily!  He has such a funny personality and conversational skills.  He loves to eat all day and wrestle his brother!  We love our Bennett boy!

I will try to update or back blog as I go along!  We are doing well and are getting adjusted to city living.  Mason starts school in the next week or so and we are excited for this time in our life that we have Daddy home at night!  

We are home in Carlsbad

The kids were so excited to be home in Carlsbad.  They constantly tell me how glad they are and have loved playing with long lost toys! It was like Christmas all over again but less expensive!  We have been slowly settling in and I am figuring out how to handle all my babes alone.  It has been crazy but okay.  I have learned that going to bed with a disaster for a house is okay and they it will be there when I wake up!  I have missed my live in laundry lady (Granee)!  I have been drowning in laundry since I got home with no end in sight!  Everything had to be washed from sheets to blankets to rugs!  Lots of laundry but I might find the end soon?! Emerson has adjusted to his life that is a bit neglected in nature pretty well.  He has to stay in his bouncer a lot for his own safety and poor baby rarely gets floor time but I don't think he minds too much.  He is such a mellow little guy!  Ava and Bennett are adjusting to sleeping in their beds and it has been a test for them and me.  More often than not I have 2 big babies in bed with me while I nurse the other one in the middle of the night which equals NO SLEEP!  But what is new!?  Overall, we are doing great and are happy to be home.  We were so grateful to have the wonderful help in Silver City for those many months and miss everyone terribly especially our Granee, Brookie and our Nett.

Sweet Emerson getting big and growing hair like crazy!  10 weeks already!