Soooo Excited!

My wonderful sister-in-law agreed to take pictures of my kiddos this past weekend. We only spent  30 minutes give or take a few, and it was free for me, and she got some very fun shots!! I'm posting the ones we printed on the side of our blog and I'll post the out take pictures here in the post.

McKinley has the best silly faces. Its hard to get her to smile normal.

Love this one!

Angry faces! Jamison is smiling too much in the background, but that is his angry face. I love Gavin's face here.....
"You take another picture, you will be sorry."

We call these next two "our homemade ventriloquist puppet". Its almost scary!

This little one is growing up too fast! Makes me sad.

Elvis lips

This picture would have been perfect.....McKinley.....sigh.

I'm Bad! Sophie did ask him to make this face. Pretty awesome.

My kids are pretty photogenic. McKinley is in her "my teeth are too big for my face" stage. And Matthew's side of the family have some large front teeth, which McKinley appears to have inherited. Needless to say, I think my children are beautiful.
McKinley is turning 8 in 6 days. She'll get baptized July 6th. Crazy!! I can't believe she's that old. Blows my mind how fast time has been going.
My garden is slowly coming up. Corn looks good. Garlic, onions, and carrots all look good. Need to replant my green beans and cucumbers. Potatoes are slowly coming up. Didn't bother with peas this year. Tomato plants are doing fantastic. I have 9 of them. 4 early girl, 3 better boy, and two orange cherry tomato. They are called sun sugar, so tasty!
We are hoping to buy a house this summer. We'll just have to come back to take  care of our garden here. Our landlords are pretty cool like that. We'll mow the lawn for them to pay for the water we'll use. I'll post pictures of the garden later.....and the house whenever that might happen.

Have you ever wondered about your anbrothers?

This was our dinner conversation tonight, trying to explain to the kids what "ancestors" are.....

McKinley: "Like great grandpa Oink is our ancestor?" (He's Grandpa Henry Bradford who just recently passed away.)

Me: "Yes, he's your ancestor."

Gavin pipes up: "You mean our anbrother?"

Oh my! That's hilarious! I hurried and grabbed some paper and a pen and wrote it down. Poor, sweet, Gavin didn't even realize why we thought it was so funny. Sweet innocent little guy! Guess he thought we were saying ansister. Kids are funny.

Since I'm here, I'll give my side of San Diego. I was completely lazy. Completely, completely lazy. I did try to go running the first night we were there. Got about a mile into my 3 mile run and my right calf cramped up. It still hurts. Did manage to exercise the next day with my Turbo Fire. Successfully rented a car and drove to the San Diego Temple by myself. That was a little nerve wracking. Then, because my name was on the papers, I drove the remaining days of our trip with Matthew serving as navigator. We did pretty good, I think.
Matthew failed to mention our trip to the Mormon Battalion place. It was pretty cool! They completely rebuilt the structure, leaving the original foundation, and created an interactive tour. It was interesting....never knew too much about them.

I have to say, chilling at the beach was probably the best part. It was a nice day. I, too, wish we could have tried surfing. It would have been fun. Otherwise, I think that San Diego is just too big for my taste. Everything is squished in, no grass, no yards. Where would your kids play? Just not for me. And the bathroom thing in Gaslamp.....I was a little surprised. Not even the Subway sandwich place had a bathroom! What? Just seems a little strange. Of course, there were a lot more homeless people on the streets. Our friends pointed out that maybe the businesses just didn't want those people cleaning up in their bathrooms. It makes sense, but still.....No bathrooms anywhere? Just struck me as odd. And slightly un hospitable.

Anyhoo... back to real life. Kids did good at Grandma Susie and Grandpa Bradford's house. They love hanging with the cousins and don't see grandma and grandpa often enough. So glad that my parents are willing to take on the challenge of 4 extra kids so we can have a break. Thanks, mom and dad! It is awfully nice to get away.

Night!

Homeward Bound

Here we sit in the San Diego airport waiting for our flight. I'm a little paranoid when it comes to flying and missing a flight. We were at the terminal 1 1/2 hours before our flight leaves. Erica keeps giving me the evil eye because I made her get out of bed so early to make it here. But we had to find the highway from our weird hotel, find the park and ride, drop of the rental car, and ride the shuttle to the airport, and get through security. You can just never be sure how long all of that will take. I'd rather be early than late. It's not like going to church where we are late every week.

I had a business conference that I came to. My flight and hotel was paid for so we just had to pay for Erica's flight so she came along. It was fun to have her along. Otherwise, sitting in your hotel room all night is not that exciting. We stayed an extra day and ran around to see a few things. We went to Coronado Island which was pretty cool. We hung out at the beach for a while and really enjoyed it. The sand washing up on the beach had a bunch of gold glittery stuff in it, like pyrite or something. Anyways, when the waves would come in, the water was all sandy and then as it went out, the water would turn gold from the pyrite. It was cool to watch and Erica really wanted to take a picture but we didn't bring our camera so all we had was my phone, which quite frankly is a phone, not a camera. We did our best. Pretend you can see all of the gold and tell Erica how cool it looks.

We were going to try to take a picture of our feet and the ocean with waves coming in, but we didn't want to sit in the wet sand and all I had was my phone camera which I was afraid of dropping, so it was like '6 strikes you're out'. Here's the result.

 

It kind of looks like Erica's foot is bigger than mine. Mine is just sooooo much further away. My foot is attached to the hairy leg on the right in case you were wondering.

We were going to try surfing, but the rental shop was out of boards and the shop that did lessons never returned our phone call. We were a little bummed. I've always wanted to try it. One day it will happen.

We walked around Gaslamp Quarters which was OK. It's mostly a bunch of restaurants and no bathrooms. Erica had to go so bad but everywhere we went didn't have bathrooms or public bathrooms. It was a little ridiculous. Ask Erica about it. Ha ha ha. A sushi restaurant finally let us use the bathroom, the bathroom doors had cool pictures on them. Again you can thank my awesome phone for the crappy picture (no flash).

We walked around Little Italy last night and had dinner which was tasty. They were having an art walk so they had a bunch of the streets closed down with booths everywhere. It was pretty cool. We went to Balboa Park and walked around the gardens. There was a rose garden, a desert garden, and a Japanese garden. They were pretty neat and most importantly, FREE! Erica liked this tree in the desert garden. It looked like a cactus transplanted on a tree trunk.

There is a whole bunch of museums but they are all $15-20 to go in. There was one free exhibit that we went into. It was a bonsai exhibit. We now officially like bonsai. When we have a house of some sort and a place to have some, we will find some bonsai trees. There were big ones, medium ones and tiny ones (3-4" tall). It was pretty cool. This was one of our favorites. It was growing over a rock.

Sophie, this smile's for you

This post is for you Sophie. We know what a cute funny little munchkin Reagan is around the house but she doesn't like to share smiles with everybody for some reason. Here are some smiles for you. She just finished eating so she has food all over her face but if  you can look past that...
 

 

 

Morgan, that last one is for you!

Another muddy child!

Reagan has decided to follow in the footsteps of her older brothers in their love of mud.

 Gavin loves mud

 Jamison loves mud

Reagan loves mud too!

Reagan has only been going outside for a month or so, but she has already discovered mud. For some reason she has to put it in her mouth. What a silly kid!

The kids had spring break last week so I took an afternoon off and we went for a hike. I let the kids choose which trail they wanted to go up (they had no idea what Gibson Jack or Slate Mountain was). Without knowing, they chose Slate Mountain. As we slogged up the switchbacks through the mud, water running down the trail, snow, and ice I could see the Gibson Jack trail on the south facing slope looking nice and dry. But we persevered and made it up over the top and down the other side. It was pretty good for a while and then started to get muddy again. The kids had a grand time and it felt good to get outside. It will be a few more weeks before the trails are cleared off. Let us know if you want to go for a hike, we'd be glad to take you! Enjoy a few pictures!

Here we go up the switchbacks. Notice Reagan in the backpack and Jamison under my arm.

I'm like a machine!

 

 Reagan loves to go for hikes. She's good in the backpack for a while.

 

Morgan and Sophie got the kids a little camelback. They always fight over who gets to wear it. McKinley won this time.  

 

Gavin's muddy shoes and legs. This photo was taken prematurely. They got a lot worse! 

 

Reagan got out and walked for a little ways where the trail was dry. 

 

Jamison loves his mama. 

 

Go Reagan Go!

 

Quick take a picture, they're not fighting. It was 60 degrees so they all wanted to wear shorts not expecting to be walking through the snow. None of them complained about being cold. 

 

Everybody slipped on the ice at least once. Erica turfed it just before I did right close to the van on the way back. 

 

 I would have taken another picture of muddy legs and shoes but these two beat us down the trail and jumped in the creek to wash off.

 

We had a grand time and can't wait for summer to be here to enjoy some more hikes.

Ketchup (not the food kind)

This post is to try and catch everyone up on what we've been up to. It's kind of a lot. It's kept us busy anyways. Ski season has been in full swing since the end of December so I've been gone every weekend and Erica and the kids have come most weekends. It's  a lot of fun but it makes it tough to get anything done around the house. I feel the need to apologize to anyone who has come to visit in the last couple months for our house. Erica has been looking forward to ski season being over so we can work on reclaiming our house. I've been dreading ski season being over because that means I will be under house arrest on Saturday's cleaning our house! Oh well. It needs to be done. Yesterday was the last day Kelly Canyon was open. We left Reagan and Jamison with a babysitter and took McKinley and Gavin up. It was a pretty quiet day at the ski hill. There were not a lot of people there. It was a nice sunny day to be able to enjoy. 'Til next year! "Sigh".

Because it was such a nice day at the ski hill, when McKinley was finished skiing, she decided to take her ski boots and socks off and run around with no shoes or socks on. Then her and Gavin started messing around running in and out of the ski school office and Gavin ended up shutting McKinley's foot in the door. The corner of the door hit the side of her foot and gave her a nasty gash. Luckily Uncle Morgan was there to play medic and keep the bleeding under control. See the picture below.

Kind of nasty. We promptly left the ski hill and headed to the Community Care for some stitches. It only took 6 stitches, so Jamison still has her beat.

Also since were are up in the neighborhood, we can't pass up stopping at Morgan's house to rock with the band. Garrett comes down and we make some noise. The Hillions can't pass up a good chance to play. We still have lot of fun playing together. In fact, keep your eye's peeled for our debut album. Morgan has written a fair amount of songs that we have worked out. We have 6 recorded and about 6 more to do. Morgan got some recording equipment for Christmas 2 years ago. He's spent a lot of time figuring out how to record with it. It's fun to hear ourselves. We played at a church party for Dad a few weeks ago. We had to tone things back but it is fun to play for an actual audience that is not captive (Sophie, Malcolm, Chewie, Erica and the kids) in the house.

Let's see, what else? Better talk about Reagan. She has had a busy spring already. She had her birthday the end of February and sprouted 4 teeth that week (it was a week of long nights!). Erica used her mad cake decorating skills to make a beauty of a cake for Reagan. She'll have to find the pictures. Our camera was out in the cold garage and when we brought it in the lens fogged up. Sophie took some on her camera. Reagan wasn't too keen on digging into it. I put some in her mouth and she gagged. It was kind of funny.

Gavin had one of those "What were you thinking?!!!" moments last week. He decided to cut his own hair with a pair of scissors. Most of you know the typical Gavin haircut. See below.

You know, he kind of looks like a hippy.

Well, after he gave himself a little trim, it took 20 minutes after laughing at him, for Erica to convince him to let her take his picture. He thought that everyone would laugh at him. Rightly so....

Did you notice the inverted mohawk down the middle of his head? Nice huh. Luckily he doesn't read this blog to know that everyone will be laughing at him. After another 20 minutes, Erica finally convinced him to let her cut it. I've never been a big fan of the shaved head look on kids. He kind of looks like a chemo patient.

It's only hair. It will grow back. That's what I keep telling myself. He wore a hat for the first day. Even at the dinner table. He's okay with it now. I just hope that he finds a new career besides a hair stylist.

I had to laugh the other day, the weather has warmed up here. For the week anyways. It is the first nice day that we've had since last year. The dirt pile behind our house was aflurry with children. They reminded me of ants.

Since the ski hill is closed, we are ready for spring and warm weather to be here.

Sorry for the long pauses between posts. We had a bit a of a break when our computer crashed three times in February. We finally gave up and bought a new one. We debated a laptop but decided that a desktop would be less likely to be dropped by fighting children.

That's all for now.

Another month gone by....

Wow. That month flew by. Technically it has been over a month since we last posted but for three weeks of that our computer was dead. I'm pretty sure that Jamison did something to it. It would try to start up and then go to a black screen that said 'Windows could not start normally'. After several attempts at reinstalling the operating system, we finally resurrected Old Betsy. She's been stable for the last few days so hopefully she'll keep it up. Keeping the kids off the computer would probably help.

Kids and technology. That reminds me of one of my coworkers who is older than me, about the same age as my mom. She just got an iphone and is feeling a little lost. I told her just to push buttons and see what happens. Adults are so worried about not knowing what button to push because they don't know what will happen so they just don't try it. Little kids love to explore and just push buttons to see what happens. If it didn't do what they wanted it to, they just try some other buttons. I think that is why kids are better with technology. It's kind of funny.

Life's been busy as usual. I've been working at the ski hill again teaching snowboard lessons. It makes for busy weeks, but I love being out on the snow. The kids get to take lessons which is fun for them. I love to watch them go. It's kind of fun to be able to ski with them and watch them zip around.

McKinley is so silly. She has a homework folder that her teacher sends home. There is also a comment sheet on the back that the teacher can make comments and the parents can respond. Today her teach wrote, "One concern with McKinley's glasses...she cannot keep them up on her nose. Anyway to tighten them? Just wondered."

Some of you may be thinking the same thing I was when Erica told me, McKinley does not wear glasses nor does she need them. We're still getting to the bottom of where the glasses came from exactly and why she's wearing them. What a silly goose.

If anyone needs to borrow some kids for a few days, we have some we'd be willing to loan out. Let us know!