Annual Christmas Letter

Hello again, hello!  Hello!

It’s Christmastime, well, don’t ya know!

Both Becca and Brad are up to no good

They don’t always do the things that they should.

They wear mismatched clothes and leave out their toys,

They wrestle and fight and make lots of noise!

They mooned their grandma, rude sounds they can make,

Oh wait!  I forgot!  That was Levi and Jake.

Now Jake, he is six, and he goes to school.

Thinks Ninjas and Lego’s and Jedi are cool.

He sure likes to draw, best subject is art

And reads very well, man, this kid is smart!

And Levi likes puzzles, and Mater, and Mickey

He likes PB&J and isn’t real picky.

Goes to pre-school; just two days a week.

And in the back yard, he might take a leak.  (Shhh, don’t tell anyone!)

Our babe is Eva, ‘xcept she’s almost one.

She likes to chase brothers and thinks they are fun.

In pigtails she crawls and cruises around,

And inside the cupboards she often is found.

And Brad he is busy with fixing the feet

When he gets to run, he thinks it’s a treat.

And little girl hair, Bec’s learning to do

‘Bout Lego’s and Ninjas, she hasn’t a clue.

And Becca and Brad, a tired pair make,

It seems every night, a kid is awake!

But life is a joy, that much is sure true,

We wish you the best!  Merry Christmas to you!

Love,

Brad, Rebecca, Jacob, Levi, and Eva

JONES

6! Six!! Can you believe, s.i.x!!!

My oldest child is now six years old.  I can hardly believe he's old enough to have to use two hands to count his age. 

Jacob and some of his friends from the party.  Not all of them wanted to be in the 'group' shot!

We decided to throw a birthday party this year for Jacob and allow him to invite friends!  This is the first year we've done a "friend" party, normally it's just family.  Jacob kept changing his mind on what theme he wanted, so I just made up my mind that we'd do a Ninjago party and I convinced Jacob that it would be fun!  I got some ideas from Pintrest (it's the one and only thing I've done on that site).  Since Ninjago is a relatively new show on Cartoon Network, there isn't really anything for sale with Ninjago stuff on it at the big box stores, so I had to find other places to give me ideas.  Here's a look at the snack/cupcake table before the party.

Snack/cupcake table

Gift bags

Cupcakes I made.  I made some and had some made.

I also found a way to make paper bag pinatas.  It was really pretty quick and simple, and since the kids just bust them apart, it worked great!  I would highly recommend a paper bag pinata because they are super cheap too.

paper bag pinata

Levi got first 'whack' at the pinata

Jacob's turn!

We had an obstacle course set up for the kids, but when you get about six boys around the ages of 5-7 years old together, they mostly want to wrestle and run around like crazy people, so our games didn't really get played.  Oh well, live and learn.

blowing out the candle

Jacob was so excited for all of his gifts!  We went with a Lego theme this year for our family gifts.  I've put off the whole tiny Lego thing for years (about 2 years really), but I decided to give in this year and they have been a HUGE hit!  Jacob loves them.

 

Sunday (Oct. 28) was Jacob's actual birthday and we had his grandmas/grandpas over for supper, cupcakes, and presents.  Jacob almost peed his pants when he opened one of the gifts...he was so excited!

He jumped up and down and hollered over this one for quite a bit of time!

Jacob is a great kid.  He is having a great year so far in Kindergarten.  He has made lots of friends and really enjoys getting to go to school.  One of his favorite classes at school is art.  He loves to draw and I have lots of pictures of Ninjas, thanks to Ninjago :)

Jacob in his suit on his birthday ready for church!  What a handsome boy.

A few facts about Jacob:

•  Jacob is learning to read and is reading at about a Level 3 (which is what the goal is for the end of Kindergarten).
• Jacob LOVES Legos!
• Jacob loves his little sister and wants to play with her and protect her.
• Jacob loves his Dad and his little brother.
• Jacob loves music.  He loves to hear songs with an upbeat tempo.  He loves the song "Arise" that the youth learned in Church this year.
• Jacob weighs about 40 pounds and is 45 inches tall.  He'll be 4' before I know it!

I love Jacob and am so glad he's in our family!  Happy SIXTH birthday buddy!

Longer out than In

We've hit the all important milestone now.  Eva has now been living outside of me longer than she was living inside of me.  She is 9 MONTHS OLD!  How did that happen?

Eva has learned many new things in the last month.  Here are some new facts about Eva:

• She can wave bye-bye; hello; and good night!
• She can clap her hands.  She does this when I say "yay!"
• She can crawl all the way up the stairs by herself.  She doesn't now how to go back down them yet, so it's still pretty dangerous!
• She can shake her head "no" and will do this when she's finished eating whatever I am trying to feed her
• Eva still has no teeth.  
• We just barely moved Eva from a size one diaper to size two.  She never did leak out of the size one, I just felt like it was getting a little snug around her upper thighs.
• She is still not walking, but is becoming more confident and she will stand on her own easily.
• Lately she has been sleeping about 10-12 hours a night without waking up, which has been heavenly!

She is still on the VERY small side.  I took her Monday for her 9-month check up and the doctor was less than impressed.  She is 27 1/4 inches long (which is about the 50th percentile), but she only weighs 13 lb. 14.8 oz - which doesn't even get her onto the chart, so probably less than 2nd percentile.  He wants me to supplement her, but I don't really think she needs it because she is happy, developmentally she is right on track, and both her brothers were small when they were babies as well.  So, for now, I am just continuing on in the same way I was and hopefully by 3 years old she'll be on the charts (that's how long it took her brothers to get up to 'normal' on the standardized chart).

Top row:  9 months, 8 months; bottom row: 7 months, 6 months

Last month we went to a water park as a family and Eva had a pretty good time hanging out.

Just bouncing around!

Riding the frog with Daddy!

She loves to play with this tree at our house and has knocked it over several times and pulled several leaves off of it.  She can be a bit of a mess maker!

Her little eyelashes have grown quite a bit - lucky little girl!

She has started to make some funny smile faces and this is a good one I caught when my mom was visiting.

Love you Eva and can't wait to see what the next month holds for you!

Preschool

Levi started preschool in August!  He only goes two days a week, but it has been awesome!

All ready the first day of Preschool with his backpack and lunch box!

 

 

Levi putting away his lunch box.

Playing with one of the kids in his class.

Levi was ready to go the first day I dropped him off.  We had taken him the week before to Meet the Teachers and he was very drawn to this little playhouse.  So the day I dropped him off, he got right back down to business.  He has enjoyed it ever since.  He is such a good student too.  They have a behavior system where you start the day on green and then if you get in trouble at all, it changes to yellow, and if you go in time out, you're on red.  Not surprisingly, Levi comes home on green every day.  Love that about him!  He's always such a good child and generally does what he's supposed to.  He is my saving grace at times.  It's so fun to hear him when he gets done with school.  He tells me about his friends and sometimes about what he does at school.  I love it.  He's gone twice a week for 4 hours each time.  So, a couple of days a week, I get a little bit of alone time to get some stuff done since Eva generally takes a nap for some of the time Levi is gone.  Yay for preschool!

8 months...a little while ago

At the end of September, a little someone turned 8 months old.  I figure since it's the middle of October, I should write about it!

Eva learned quite a bit during her 8th month.  She learned to pull up on things and we found her like this much of the time:

Standing at the cabinets while Mom washes dished.

Luckily, she has also learned how to sit herself back down carefully.

She's not falling here, she's going down to the sitting position.

 She also found a few hiding places.  Here's one of her favorites.

Who needs a dog when you've got an Eva under the table?

She also likes to hide under the side tables in the living room.  I even caught her crawling behind the couch between the wall the other day.

She had a check up at about 7 1/2 months old and she weighed 13 lb. 7 oz.  So maybe she'll be at 14 lbs. by the time she reaches 9 months!

She also is learning to stand by herself.  She's done it for about 9 seconds at a time, before falling back onto her bottom.  I'm thinking maybe by 9-10 months she'll have taken her first steps.  We'll see though.

A couple of weeks before Eva turned 8 months, she fell out of her crib!  Crazy, eh?  She was pulling herself up already, but we hadn't gotten around to moving the mattress to the lower setting.  Well, she climbed up on her bumper and somehow got her whole self out onto the floor.  It did not make her happy!  The crib mattress was lowered almost immediately!

Eva is such a fun girl.  She loves to laugh, play with her brothers, and babble.  She does the cutest thing when she gets tired.  She takes her arm and puts it over her eyes, signaling she's ready to be put down for a nap or for nighttime.  I don't always wait for this signal, but I know when she does it, that she's ready to say goodnight for awhile!

8 month car seat picture

Close up in the car seat...I liked her blue eyes here :)

 Love you Eva!  Hopefully you'll start walking soon and chasing your brothers around the house ;)

Summer Still?

We've had such a good summer!  We really haven't wanted it to end.  My Dad turned sixty this month, so we celebrated by having everybody (all four of his daughters and their families & my mom) have a day at the park to play games and hang out as a family. 

 

The kids had fun on the slides at the park.

 

 

Jacob and Levi had a little horse race...not sure who won!

 

Jacob got his own can of pop...which I'm pretty sure he only drank half of!

 

 And all the Aunts and cousins got to see this little cutie!

We had so much fun with everyone and it was a great way to celebrate a great man!

Another fun thing we've been able to do is have Popsicle days.  I'm so glad they make slow-melt Popsicles, if only I wouldn't have bought the other kind once on accident.  This is what happens when my kids eat the regular ones:

 

Isn't that a scary face!  Mr. Blue man!  It was everywhere, but he sure had fun.

This, on the other hand, is a face I love to look at every day.  Isn't she cute!  Gotta love the pigtails :)

7 months

A certain little girl turned 7 months on Sunday!!  So of course, we had to take the car seat picture to see how big she has grown.

The month between six to seven months, Eva has learned a lot.  She was scooting all over the place and the day after she turned six months, she started crawling.  She has really mastered it now and is pretty quick to get where she wants to go.  She has also started pulling herself up on EVERYTHING!  If I sit down on the floor, she will immediately crawl over and put her hands on my legs to prop herself into a standing position.  She isn't too keen yet on moving her feet, so maybe she'll wait a little bit to be walking, but she spends a good portion of her day holding onto something and standing.

My sister gave her the cutest little tutu and it was sized six months, so we decided to try it on.  She is so cute!

And what does any little girl in a tutu with older brothers do?

This truck was mine when I was a little girl...so it's about 30 years old!

She finds a truck to play with, of course!  Levi isn't too happy with Eva when she tries to play with his toys, so she has to wait until he's napping to get to play with the things she really wants to.

This month Eva caught a yucky cold.  Poor little thing had such a hard time sleeping one night.  She fell asleep from about 8-9:30pm, then was up until about 11:30.  Went back to bed and was up again around 2:00.  Then she stayed awake until about 4:30 am, when she finally crashed until about 7:30 am.  It was a long night and neither Brad nor I got much sleep.  Luckily, she's on the tail end of it now and is back to sleeping about 11 hours at night!  I love that part of Eva :) 

This is the face she makes with her runny nose...I think it's pretty cute.

Still smiling though :)

Eva normally takes two naps a day, but they vary in length from 1-2 hours.  She goes to bed around 8:00 at night and wakes up at about 7:30 am.  She is still in size one diapers, but I am considering moving her up a size.  She hasn't leaked out of them, but they tend to get squishy quickly, so maybe next time I get diapers, we'll go ahead and move her up to size two.  She is such a cute little girl and loves her brothers.  She loves to talk to herself and squeal!

She also loves the dishwasher...hopefully she'll enjoy helping me unload it when she gets bigger.  Love you Eva girl!

Kindergarten!!

Jacob had his first day of kindergarten almost two weeks ago!  We started the morning off right with a pancake breakfast.

 

Then it was outside to shoot some pictures of Jacob before he started school. 

5 and so ready to start school!

This is one of Jacob's favorite poses :)

Make some silly faces!

Getting kissed in the driveway :)

I was able to take Jacob to school and drop him off.  Brad was kind enough to move his surgery start time (he does surgery on Wednesdays and that's the day school started) back so I could have a little time with Jacob and not feel quite so rushed in the morning!  So, Jacob and I drove to school and then I walked him to his classroom.  He told me he was a little nervous and I admitted I was too.  He asked me why?  And I told him I was a little nervous because we hadn't done something like this before. 

He walked right into his classroom, put up his backpack, found his desk and sat down to start coloring.  Luckily, he wanted another kiss before I left :) 

Backpack cubby spot - they let us decorate the back of the cubby with pictures from home!

Coloring a picture.

 Jacob had a great first day of school.  He told me his favorite part was...wait for it...yep! recess :)  He was able to find some of his friends from preschool to play with on the playground.  He is really enjoying school so far and is doing great!  I'm so glad he likes his teacher, has friends, and seems to be learning and enjoying going to school.  I am excited to see how much he learns this year and how much he will grow.  Love you Jake!