Taking a break and our Kitchen Couch

Finally Basketball season is over and I can stay home a night or two a week.  For a few more days anyway until the next thing starts up again. And I only had two playing. I am not looking forward to all four again in the spring. Finding balance is so hard when you have a large family. Priorities like family meals, family home evenings, and down time are easily lost if you just allow one activity each. So for now I am enjoying being home with my children. 

8th Grade Basketball team

I think this may have been the first time Kennon made a basket during a game and I caught in on camera. Pretty impressive I'd say that I snagged that while holding Calvin.

The jury is still out if we will ever have a great ball player in this family. With Kashann as their mother the odds are stacked against these wanna be athletes.

 Oh, Calvin!  How I love how you are growing and smiling back at us now.  (He's 11 weeks in these shots)
 I wanted to post 50 pics of just this chubby face in the sun because every single one is adorable.

 Especially this one. He is the love of my life right now. Sorry Brent!

 I settled on just these four after all. Kennon took them and has yet to edit them. She'll be mad that I posted them raw but I am not patient enough to wait or edit them myself. Most people know that about me.

 So happy until we had Marcus slide in next to him. Calvin is not a fan having a big brother yet. It is amazing how quickly Marcus closing in brings him to tears. He has never hurt him once but just gets too close, moves too fast and "Marcus why do you love to rub his head so much?" He really hates it.

 I get so tired of bed head and making Marcus tame it when we are hurrying out the door so I talked him into a buzz cut again. He loved it and said after looking in the mirror, "YAY, I look just like Calvin!"

And Dad. But you know how much this one hates taking family pictures so we left him out. 

We always said that someday we would have a couch in the kitchen. Brent wants a nice comfortable spot to hang out with his wife while she cooks and cleans up. :) 

We had the perfect spot in our new house for the supportive husband so we brought in our very first ever kitchen couch.  

I was happy to see him reading in the sun Sunday afternoon. Being a dentist, running a business, being high priest group leader, and a full time repair man around our house leaves so little time for kicking back with a good book. Thank goodness for Sundays. 

I am loving all the global warming this winter. I guess that's what it is. How else can you explain me going without a coat most days in January when I live in NH?


My life is so full. Here is what I am up to most days whenever I catch a break from housework. 


Trying to exercise at least 15 minutes a day. That was my new years resolution. It might sound like my aim was pretty low but let me tell you the 15 minutes is very hard to fit in. It's all so much work to exercise when you have a newborn, especially when it's not that warm outside for taking them along. 


Working an hour or so a day on the basement we are remodeling. The insurance came in and we of course decided that we wanted to save money by doing the work ourselves. Brent put up the drywall and I am plugging away each day on taping and mudding. 


Working on Marketing for the dental office. Somehow I ended up being hired as business manager and I have been doing my best to get fired for slacking. . .  but so far no one else has applied. So I am stuck.  


I found pinterest and now have zillions of home decorating and organizing ideas spinning through my head but don't hardly have the time to do anything about them. Just like exercise I keep telling myself that the day will come when these kind of things are all possible again.


Because I feel guilty about not running an hour a day, I compensate by trying one healthy recipe after the other. They are turning out so good though that I overeat and I'm pretty sure that all the fiber I am consuming isn't a good trade off for the extra calories that all this healthy baking is spurring.


Marcus and I spend lots of time together every day reading. He reads all the signs as we go down the road. He reads each item that I throw into the grocery cart. He reads stuff over my shoulder when I am on pinterest. It is so fun to have an 3 year old reader. 


But sadly, he can't write a single thing yet. He refuses to write his name. So I guess we still have plenty to work on before kindergarten.

Camille and Caroline

Caroline begged me to either join basketball this winter or take ice skating lessons but in efforts to control overscheduling this family I told her no. She stays busy skating in the backyard on a very small patch, but she is pretty sad that her Mom is holding her back. 

She also has seen way too many girls her age on stage singing, dancing and in pageants and feels like I am ruining her career keeping her home. She was telling me the other day  how much money she could make if we would just sign her up for a pageant. And she is so ready to go to Hollywood right now. Next year I plan on letting her play basketball and try out for the school play. Hopefully that will make up for missing out on Hollywood. 

 Camille did get to play basketball this year and luckily is starting young enough that she still has a decent shot in going pro. She likes it even more than soccer and never stops smiling out there.

 She always apologizes after stealing a ball.  

 Camille is a beginner but the as the tallest on her team she operates like she is MVP. 

Photos by Kennon

Kennon's birthday

Kennon is 14! 

Here are some things we all love about her.

She takes all of our pictures. She even lugs the tripod around the backyard to take pictures of herself or they just wouldn't happen. So we have weekly photo shoots around her and I never have to worry about uploading pictures because they are always uploaded and edited almost immediately. 

She also loves decorating and takes of pictures of her room whenever she cleans it . . . which she does at least on a weekly basis without being told. 

 She picked yellow for her accent color and her aunt Candice did the original decorating. It has been redecorated several times since then. It's not a lot of room to work with. It's probably the size of many of your walk in closets. But it's her space and she takes pride in her personal space.

                          
She also loves baking. Her favorite channel is the food network. It always inspires her to make our next meal. I don't know how she does it but her breads always turn out better than mine. I usually bomb out on almost every other batch but Kennon's are consistently good no matter what recipe she is trying out.

And she takes pictures of course as she bakes. Do you like my retro counter tops? Can't say that I do. 

Another thing I like about Kennon is how she isn't scared to try something new. Her friends talked her into trying out for the 8th grade basketball team this year. She hasn't played any basketball since she was on her cousin Katie's team in 2nd grade so she really didn't have a clue. But she actually made the team. Who cuts a 5'8 13 year old? The only problem is she isn't allowed to set up her tripod before games so we have yet to get any pictures of Kennon on the court. She is so happy she is playing and will for sure get the Most Improved award. 

We had a birthday breakfast Saturday morning and Kennon opened her family gifts.

I let her siblings choose a gift from my stash of presents. It worked great because then I had way less to wrap myself and didn't need to take anyone shopping.

Camille decorated for the SURPRISE party that we held Saturday night. ( I am all about dividing and conquering and luckily there are a few jobs around here that some of my kids think are fun - wrapping presents and decorating- that I think are quite a chore.)  I also don't like planning parties and Savannah planned this one all by herself and spread the word through facebook I guess. 

We had 10 girls stuffed in Kennon's room when she came back from a Home Depot date with her father. She went running up there screaming because she had just been told that Marcus dumped all of her makeup out on her floor. It worked great!

Marcus did all the entertaining once the party got started.  I was pretty impressed that Kennon let her brother and sisters join the party.

Kennon's friends were impressed with how we light up a cake in our house. 

I loved seeing she how many nice friends she has and now understand why she doesn't talk about moving anymore.

I am so happy and proud to have Kennon for my daughter. She only has to put up with us for 4 more years now and I am sure she is going to be happy to go out on her own. 

And only 2 more and she will be able to drive the buick around town. Brent is driving it extra easy to insure that it's still available for her sweet sixteen. These girls are all going to love Kennon when she takes them out on the town. 

Grandma meets Calvin

 My mom was finally able to come and meet her 24th grandchild. Doesn't this old Granny of 24 look awesome? We had the best time just hanging out. . . when the kids went to school everyday especially. We cooked good food together and she always cleaned up. It was like having my sister Candice back.  I love having a mother. Even if she is on the opposite corner of the country and we only hang out once a year.

 Marcus loves hanging out right at Calvin's poor head. Squeezing it! Not hard of course because he loves Calvin but he just gets so excited about his brother and Calvin can't take all that excitement and usually starts fussing as soon as Marcus closes in.

Speaking of Calvin's head can you believe it is only in the 10th%  for all 2 months old? He is 90% in height though. 

                              Calvin on January 25th. Two months old. 

              We had to wait so long to see a smile. Not until 7 weeks. 

Calvin is such a JOY! But Oh, has it been difficult juggling newborn and teenager schedules. I love both stages so much. Just not sure how to balance them at the same time. 

Kennon absolutely died when she looked over during her Basketball game and saw me nursing in the middle of the the 8th grade boys team. Then Savannah was equally horrified when I picked her up from school nursing in the drivers seat waiting in the long line of cars pulling up to the curb, and all her peers walking by.  It's so not fair to Calvin that he is supposed to starve to preserve these girls images. 


He is a snuggler and is so happy to be in our arms.  I am so thankful to have such a good easy baby this 6th time around. But the poor kid does need to eat and when he does I am going to feed him!