Catching Up... Post 5 Aaron's Month

June is always Aaron's month. His birthday, plus Father's Day = celebrate this cute guy.

The way Max looks at his dad kills me. Every. Time.

We kept the day pretty low-key after having a house full of visiting family. He worked, came home, we played games, and just spent time together. I made him a yummy dinner, and cake. Nothing crazy or extravagant. But very enjoyable and relaxing. He loved it. 

Father's day was just as great! We spoiled him with his favorite breakfast-in-bed. The boys rubbed his feet while he ate. He was on cloud nine. We gave him a few handmade gifts. And then my favorite gift of all... We gave him a growth chart ruler. I don't have a finished piece picture but I got pictures of the boys helping to sand and paint it. We made every gift this year and the gifts were my favorite! 

We went on the most horrific road trip. I'll spare you the details and I don't need to "write them down to remember them." 

Silver lining, because there always is one, we saw new places that we've never see before. We can now check Mississippi and Louisiana off of our list of states we've been! The drive, while awful, was BEAUTIFUL! We saw a million+ trees, fireflies, swam in a hotel pool, drove through thunderstorms and over swamps. Plus we just got to spend a couple days together as a family. Luckily our kids are rockstar travelers and they were angels the whole time! 

Summer, Darrel, Dessi, Serena, Charity, and Debbie came down to have dinner with us. Somehow, this is the only picture I took. Cute cousins!

And this was just random, but funny. I love this kid. 

Catching Up... Post 4 Some Stuff I Forgot In the Last Post

I forgot a few things that happened during May. 

MOTHER'S DAY! These kiddos spoiled me. We got to face-time with both of our moms. It was a good day. I made sure to take a picture with each kid individually. As much as I dislike photographs of myself, I'm trying to make an effort to do that more often. 

Tadd had his preschool graduation. Which is more of a performance less of a graduation. I'm really not sure why they called it graduation at all. It was fun to go watch them perform songs they've been working on. It was a huge improvement from his Christmas program. This time, he sang and did all the actions for all the songs. He grew so much this year and I'm so proud of him! He really worked hard to learn more and be less shy and it paid off!

Kade's class had a field trip at the end of the year. We went to the Austin Aquarium. I was lucky enough to get to join him! This is the first field trip I've gotten to go on, so I was really excited. 

It was so fun. I always like spending time with him for school functions. 

We got to have my parents and Brock here, for almost 10 days. We didn't get to do as much as we would have liked but we went to Big Top Candy Shop, and Hopdoddys. We played at the park, went to a splashpad, and just hung out. The kids LOVED having them here. Aaron and I did too! We hope they come back again!

Catching Up... Post 3 Kade's Month of Milestones

From May to June, Kade had a whole lot going on, starting with his 8th birthday! On his actual birthday, we celebrated small with our family and some cousins. 

A few days later, we had his birthday party with friends. He chose a "movie theater" party and we did our best to turn our home into a theater for 12 little boys.  Kade thought it was "epic". So I would call it a success. 

During the party, we tried giving Lottie some rice cereal for the first time. It was not well received. 

Max wanted me to take a picture of his sidewalk drawing. 

The last day of school! He was pretty excited about it this year. 2nd grade was rough. He was too bored. After I picked him up, we went and got Bahama bucks. It's our tradition to do that on the way home. We talked about the year, and the school year to come. It was a nice little one on one date. I love this kid. 

And now for the pièce de résistance! Kade made the decision to get baptized as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It was a decision that we let him make on his own, and I honestly didn't know if he would get baptized for a while. But he did. He and his friend Will Dunford got baptized on the same day. 

Baptism day started out as quite an adventure. When we got to the church, there was NO POWER! We started making phone calls to round up some lanterns so there would be enough light to witness the baptism. Luckily, the power came on right before everything was going to start. Kade was a little bummed. He was kind of excited to get baptized by lantern light. 

I'm not sure who the photographer was at this point. 

Kade is one lucky boy. Grandpa, Nana, Brock, Becca, and Kelsey all came from California for him. We also had most of our Texas-living family members there too!

We are so proud of him and his decision! After it was over, we asked him how he felt. With a huge smile on his face, he answered, "Happy." It melted my mama heart. I'm so grateful to have this boy for a son.