Milestones

Well it's been a big month for T, eating her first solid and learning to sit up. She was 15 lbs 2 oz at her 6mth appointment. The doctor was a little worried that she has gone from 95th to 50th to 25th percentile and wants us to come back at 8 months for a weight check. I have always had very sturdy and solid babes, but when I had friend with little ones and doctors would say something, I always roll my eyes and tell them how obviously fine they are. Yet I start to think about it and get a little worried, now that it's me. But not really. She's such a good little girl. Happy and content and cute. And I love how tiny she looked in this highchair when we first put her in it.She can barely see over the tray...

I also discovered she does still like the swing sometimes. We were just forgetting to use it.

First big girl foods.

Look at this big girl sitting up by herself!

Reconnecting with old friends

Our next door neighbors from Mountain Home moved to Pennsylvania about a year ago. They kept saying they were going to come this way for a family vacation and wanted to visit and I just never believed they actually would make it. Well, this month was the month--They came last Saturday and stayed 3 nights with us, went to church with us on Sunday, and let me watch their wee one while they went to Williamsburg on Monday. I was so happy that all the kids seemed to get along so well. You never know what you are going to get with these Passey boys sometimes. Noah is not the most social and animated person, but he was so excited to see a childhood friend. They got along great and even planned a piano recital together which they invited our neighbors to and performed for us all on Monday night. Hmmm I need to get my friends' pictures from her, because she took a lot more...

There was lots of baby playing and fort building...

We met up with them again at Jamestown on Thursday to say goodbye and spend a couple of more hours with them.

These two were just little 2 year olds the last time they were together!

All the kiddos

Somebody outgrew Noah...

Ammon's Beach Party

I saw the sand pail birthday cake picture online and loved how fun (and EASYmostly) it looked. Ammon was all over it when I planted the seed and we decided to do a true beach birthday party. It's so nice to be at a place that the kids are going to have a blast no matter how disorganized and scatterbrained the party organizer may or may not be. I had all sorts of things planned that just didn't happen because #1: I am a scatterbrain, and #2: the kids were having too much fun and didn't even want the cupcakes until we forced them.

These cakes were SO yummy! I would like to say I did a healthy cake recipe like I have done in the past, but it was so much easier to just use a mix if I was going to be planning party stuff, too. It's fun how I start with thinking we will invite just two friends of choice, and then it blossoms. Mostly people would think it was not many but with 6 friends and all of their families, and then siblings, we had like 30 people. The weather was so nice to us!

Here is my 6 year old Birthday boy. What a fun and handsome kid.

School has begun

Noah--4th grade! Mr Babcock's class

Ammon--kindergarten--Mrs Williamson's class (yeah!--I LOVE her)

Kaden 2nd grade--Mrs True's class

Of course the kindergarteners need their special alert necklaces to make sure everyone will go out of their way to help them end up in the right places...

It was so strange putting 3 kids on the bus. It seems like we just moved here to VA and put Noah on the bus at this corner. But that was in the middle of his first grade year. Somehow time decided to go turbo on me at that moment and suddenly there are 3...I don't know quite what to think of that...

Small World

Our Stake always has a temple day on Labor Day--we actually hadn't intended on going this year with school starting the next day, and with Taryn still being little-ish, but we decided on Sunday night that we would make a day trip of it and go. Their was a meeting on the 7th floor that we decided I would go to, and then Travis would do a session or do initiatories. He ended up doing initiatories because he just missed the last session. It's funny to see the hand of the Lord in all the little things we do and decide--as he was finishing the initiatory he went to shake the hand of the gentlemen helping, and looked up into the face of his Mission President from the Dallas TX mission. President and Sister Hanks are serving in the Washington D.C. mission and we had no idea. We met them outside the temple when Sister Hanks was done with her session, just for a few minutes to visit. I love how small the world becomes, especially as a member of the church. It's fun being in the military, because that makes it become even smaller. Anyway, I see this as our special blessing for deciding to go to the temple when it seemed so much easier to stay home and clean and prepare things for the week. How fun!

Regrets

Oh how I wish I had so many more hours every day and were more organized and diligent. Noah has been spending the last hour reading some of the things I wrote in a journal for him when he was a toddler. He is laughing and LOVING it and there are so many things I never wrote down, but even worse is all the things I have not written down for every kids that has followed him. It's so sad. All these precious moments completely forgotten. I want to do better so they can all have these awesome stories and memories. I mean seriously, poor Micah, and everything that comes out of his mouth is hilarious and he is full of notable mischief, and he may grow up with us all forgetting how much trouble he caused. Sheesh.

On that note, Micah came down yesterday morning telling my that Kaden fell out the window. I didn't really even pay attention to him to be honest. I was kind of busy, but in the back of my mind, I thought that might at least be worth checking on. So an hour or so later, Kaden is down here with me and suddenly says, "Mom, can I tell you a secret?" and I said "of course, and you should"....Kaden: "I opened my window this morning and jumped out because we were locked in the bedroom, and I jumped into the bushes, but don't worry, it didn't hurt my feet--and I told Micah to stay away from the window".....uuuuuuh. Our second story is HIGH, and those bushes are not soft and fluffy bushes. AND besides the fact he never should have done that, and I was just a holler away (I guess Micah is the one who locked them in, too)...he did it right in front of MICAH--NOT GOOD! So I didn't want to come down really hard on him since he did tell me right away and I am so glad he felt he could, but I did explain that he should never do that and the problem especially that by doing that he showed Micah something that would be very dangerous for him.

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon....Noah came downstairs saying Micah had opened the window and pushed the screen out and almost fell out head first. AAAAH! We have lived here for over 2 1/2 years and never had to worry yet about windows. Then Kaden and I had another talk and he DID feel really bad. He just doesn't think sometimes. Sigh.

Our favorite playgroup

We had a playgroup at our friend's pool early in the month and it was such a great time for everyone that we decided to have it every week there in August. Unfortunately Hurricane Irene seems to have spoiled the last one that was supposed to be tomorrow, but it's been so great and so much fun. Taryn did get to get in the pool once, the rest of the times she took a blessed nap inside and we all had fun while she did her favorite thing...Here she is with our friend and neighbor Rebecca.

I wish I could figure out how to post videos on here more easily and faster, because it was a riot to watch all the boys jumping in together and coming up with different ideas of things to do and games to play.

That's my fearless boy. He actually started out like all my other kids, really not liking water on his face and afraid of it. We have worked so hard all summer (worked, as in gone swimming A LOT) to get him past it. Actually he was great the moment his 3 brother jumped in together and he wanted so badly to do whatever they do. But he really does need to just do it as often as possible to not go back to the fear thing.

Cartwheels

Look at that form...

More Micah