Splash Park!

We have a splash park about a mile from our house and have had some fun there.  Cade loves it and jumps right in and gets soaked immediately.  He will stand under the buckets and wait for them to dump and try to get the fountains to spray and then stand in the middle of them.  Cami is a little bit shyer.  She likes to play with the water splashing off the slide or touch a few of the smaller streams.  I usually end up getting sprayed a bit too, and it feels good to cool off!

Hiking, fishing and warm weather!

A couple of weeks ago, Kirk had a long weekend (which he has about every 3 weeks), meaning he had Thursday and Friday off.  We decided to take a family fishing day and go explore some lakes a couple of hours away.  The lakes had been freshly stocked, so we were hopeful.  We gave Cade the net and started fishing.  It took a little while, but finally I had one on and Cade and Kirk ran over with the net.  Cade stuck the net in the water and got the fish in it.  He thought it was great!  We caught a few more and Cade netted each one.  We did get rained on a bit and Cami didn't get any sleep until the drive home, so it was a little tricky, but all together it was a fun day as a family. 

The next day Kirk headed out with his new pontoon boat to fish another lake.  He called me about an hour after he left.  I knew immediately that something was wrong.  He was driving on the freeway and the wind caught the boat and blew it and the rack off of the top of the car.  Our rack is now ruined, one of the pontoons popped and the boat frame has several scratches on it.  Anyway, Kirk gathered up the pieces and came home, pretty depressed.  It was a gorgeous day so we decided to hike up Badger mountain.  We borrowed a second baby backpack and I carried Cami and Kirk carried Cade.  We had a little snack on the top and hiked down to play at the park.  This was my first time up Badger--even though I  love hiking and you can see it from our house.  We all enjoyed it and I'm sure we'll be doing it again.

Kirk and Cade hiked Badger the week before and it got pretty cold. 

from the top--beautiful day

Kirk's Birthday

Kirk's birthday was last week.  I think Cade and I were more excited than he was. He actually worked about 13 hours on his birthday, so we made sure he had a yummy breakfast and then celebrated the next day.  Kirk bought himself a new pontoon boat.  We got him an anchor and rope (from my parents), a pump, a net and a wheel to go with it.  We had a fun day complete with yummy food, balloons, streamer and of course, scotcheroos.

Cade wanted to make sure that Kirk had a birthday hat

Snow

Last weekend it snowed!  Apparently it doesn't do that much here in Richland.  We probably ended up with 8-10 inches by Sunday morning.  Our church was cancelled, even though it is really close, the city doesn't plow the neighborhoods and the roads were really slick.  Kirk was out of town.  When we found out church was cancelled, one of my friends invited us over for lunch so we wouldn't be home all day.  She lives about 2 minutes away and we almost didn't make it to her house.  I kept sliding backwards down the hill and ended up going the longer way.  Cade and I shoveled 3 times (during Cami's nap).  He had a lot of fun jumping in the snow and helping me shovel. 

Valentine's day with Cade

We've been celebrating Valentine's day all month!  My friend Amy does an activity with her kids each day of February leading up to Valentine's day and I tried to do that with Cade this year.  I didn't get too many pictures, but here is what we did--not in order:
1.  Set up hanging hearts, one for each person that we loved (until we ran out of hearts) Cade made sure that we had one for Frosty and Santa.
2.  Made valentine's for Cade's grandparents
3.  Finger painting
4.  Make red velvet sandwich cookies
5.  Play with heart shaped marshmallows
6.  Make rice krispie treats with leftover marshmallows
7.  Take treats to neighbors
8.  Take a picture of Cade and Cami to put with valentines and get it printed
9.  Decorate sugar cookies with friends
10.  put up window stickers
11.  Eat a yummy dinner (red jello, fajitas with red peppers, raspberry cheesecake) with fun decorations and open a valentine's present (I got Cade 2 books one called Mater and one called Lightning McQueen.)

We had fun and he knows that hearts mean love and that he loves Grandma and Grandpa!  He was very excited to get my parent's valentine in the mail and wanted to hang it up high where Cami couldn't get it. 

This is the picture we sent grandparents.  I thought it would be cute to get them sitting together and holding a heart or something.  Yeah right!  Cami had a headband on, here it is in her hands.  They love playing on the stairs and this picture turned out really cute.

 

enjoying the red jello

Pictures

I never put up pictures with Cade's last post.  Here are some random ones from the last few months

Building a road for his cars out of books

New golf clubs from Christmas

Play-Dough

playing in Cami's bed right after a nap

"Take Picture of me!"
"I see it!"

Cade loves to wear Kirk's shoes

Connor

Connor is Kirk's 23-year old brother and he has been here visiting us for the last 3 weeks.  He has down syndrome.  I have really enjoyed having him here.  He has enjoyed us too.  He has been a big help and gotten used to being with our kids too.  When he first got here, he didn't want to hold Cami or anything, now he will get her out of her car seat anytime we go somewhere and has even gotten her out of bed a few times. I was really surprised at how helpful he was.

• I was able to leave him with sleeping child/children while I did visiting teaching (yay!) and can take a shower while Cami is up. 
• Connor has helped unload all of our groceries, cut up things for dinner, and kept Cade laughing and happy. 
• Today we stayed home and cleaned the house.  He vacuumed for us, watched Cami while I cleaned the bathroom, cleaned the stove, dusted our shelves and a few others things and then folded the laundry!  Wow.  I should keep him around. 
•  He likes to use his iPad for research.  Usually he reads about fishing, but he gave me some parenting and potty training advice too. 
• He was able to go to the trampoline park with us and had a lot of fun.  He came to our ward party and studied Santa for a while, deciding if it was the real one or just a helper.  I'm not sure what he decided but after a while he came back with a treat bag because he sat on Santa's lap! 
• I had to mediate between him and Cade a few times when the couldn't agree to whose turn it was.  Sometimes I found myself explaining every decision I was making too. 
• He helped me make fudge and caramels, and I really couldn't have done it without him.  For the caramels he stood at the stove and stirred for about 50 min.  He kept telling me that he loved stirring. 

We are really glad that Connor came to stay for a while.  I think we may have to do it again sometime. 

Thanksgiving

We were lucky enough to have Kirks parents and brother come for Thanksgiving this year.  They drove up on Wednesday and left on Monday.  Kirk's brother Connor is still here and will be staying with us for a couple of weeks until we go back to Utah for Christmas. 

Thursday Kirk and his dad went fishing.  It was really foggy and cold here all day but they had a sunny day on the lake.  We had a yummy steak-mashed potatoes-broccoli-stuffing dinner.  I made a pumpkin cheesecake with some help from Connor and Tom.  It turned out really good and was a pretty simple dinner to make. 

Friday was really foggy and cold again.  We all did some shopping here and there and played at home.  We set up our Christmas tree and stuff.  Lisa also helped me make a frame for a playhouse out of pvc pipe.  She had leftover from a sprinkler system and it was fun to make.  Now for the sewing. . .

Our tree is on a table this year. . .

Saturday was less foggy and cold.  Kirk and Tom went shooting and then Kirk, Tom, Connor and I went golfing in the afternoon.  It was my second time ever on a course.  I am pretty terrible, but it was fun and nobody else was out there, so it didn't matter that half my balls were on another fairway or that I putted it 5 times!  My goal was to get less than double par and I actually did it on 7/9 holes.  It was fun. 

Sunday was church and more playing and relaxing.  Kirk's other brother spent the holiday with his in-laws in Idaho and came back to have dinner with us.  Monday they got up and left.  We had a lot of fun and I love having visitors here!  Lisa helps a lot with dishes and playing with kids.  Tom had a lot of fun playing with them too.  We'll be with them again in a few weeks!

Cami absolutely LOVES Skeeter.  He is very patient.

Pumpkin Patch

Kirk's mom drove back from Utah with me (I'll post about that later) and we spent a couple of days with her.  We went out to a little farm/pumpkin patch one morning.  Cade loved the tractor ride!  We got to pick out some pumpkins, climb on hay bales and see some animals too.  It was a gorgeous day and fun to get out. 

Our family--Cade was too distracted by the tractor to look at the camera

either she's on a hill or I need to straighten out my camera :)

showing off their muscles at the top