Happy Halloween!

This year Halloween was quite fun with a 1 year old basically experiencing it for the first time! I like having the kids dress up in a "theme", so when Kaylee decided she wanted to be an OSU pom squad member and that she wanted Kelsee to be an OSU cheerleader I began to think about what Braden could be. After trying a football player and Pistol Pete, we both agreed on a vet at the OSU vet clinic! With each costume "created" for under $12, we were ready for the big day! It all began at school for their class parties. Kelsee was a little cranky and of course class parties are always chaotic, but they were a success. I cannot believe this is Kaylee's last year to have class parties......sniff....sniff....:(
We began trick or treating around our town that evening after Dale got home. Kelsee was not sure at first and could not figure out what this stuff was everyone kept putting in her bucket, but after Daddy gave her a sucker to eat she quickly became VERY interested! She would walk up to the door and if the person had not answered by the time she arrived she would loudly knock on the door, she would hold out her hands (she quickly ditched the bucket!) or if they lowered their bowl she would dig right in! She was very cute!! And instead of thank yous she would blow kisses!! Kaylee and Braden, of course, had a blast and really enjoyed having Thad with them! They all came home with LOTS of candy....which I am not sure who is enjoying more, them or Dale!
Here are a few pics from the day!

Kaylee and a few of her friends from her class

Kelsee and her Pistol Pete! (Tanner Metcalf)

Braden's 3rd grade class

The 3 Stooges!! (Braden, the vet; Kyle, the warewolf; and Wyatt, Gene Simmons)

Our beautiful (and handsome) crew!!

The vet! Can't wait to see if he will actually end up being a vet!The lil cheerleader. For some reason when you get out the camera this is what she does right now!

Our OSU pom squad girl! Cannot believe how grown up she is getting...

And she's off!! She grabbed Braden's bag and headed over to the neighbors all on her own! She had no idea what she was doing, but the coincidence was cute!

Getting her first handful from our precious neighbor, Dorothy

Before she decided the bucket was slowing her down she would stop in the street and dig in to see what she got! It was too cute!

Well, another day for making memories has come and gone. It was a great day and we all had a wonderful time making memories!! Next year will be lots of fun watching Miss Kelsee figure it all out again and on a whole new level!

The YEAR has been FUN....

...Now look who turned ONE!!!!!

Wow, Kelsee Anne I can't believe you are already a year old!! You have been such a blessing to us. One that we could have NEVER imagined possible. You are definitely the best surprise we never knew we wanted!! You bring such a joy to this family....we just all adore you so much! To say you are spoiled would be a complete understatement!!! You are SO loved by so many people, both family and friends. I am sorry I have not been very good about blogging the past few months. You and your brother and sister have been keeping me VERY busy. You are by far the most active of all 3 kids at this age!

Some fun and interesting facts about you at a year old!

• You are walking EVERYWHERE!! Trying to even run now....which is SO funny!! Your little legs go faster than your body can handle!
• You weigh about 22lbs (you go to the Dr next week so we will know for sure then)
• You are talking so well....you say Mama, Da-Da, Bubba, Si-y or Kay-ee, Hi, Bye, Bite, Go, Yep, No, and mostly O-La (Lola....all animals are O-La!)
• You are into EVERYTHING!! We have had to "lock" up things for you that your brother and sister never even touched!
• You sign 'more' when you want more food
• You wave 'bye-bye' to anyone and everyone that goes by
• Much to Mommy's dismay you would rather not wear a bow! However, Mommy is not letting you win that battle!! ;)
• You are a very good eater! Your favorite right now is peas! We will see if that is still your favorite when you are 10! You are doing very well feeding yourself
  
• You are finally drinking milk....you are only nursing in the mornings now too
• You sleep pretty good....well you sleep great as long as you are right next to Mommy! You will sleep in your bed usually till about 5 and then you get in bed with Mommy and Daddy, then eat about 6.
• You absolutely adore your brother and sister. You want your sister any and all the time and you want your brother when you want to play. You do favor your sister over your brother, but your face lights up and you are SO happy when it is time to go pick them up from school.
  
• You are quite the social butterfly! When we go to a community event you are passed around from person to person and love every minute of it.
• This week you started "jumping"! It is so funny and you just laugh!!
• You clap when anyone says "Yea" and you dance (SO cute!! You hold your hands together and shake your shoulders) with any lil sound of music!
• You are still a thumb sucker! But only the right one.
• You love cell phones and remotes. You have already figured out how to turn on my iPhone and unlock it! I had to put a security code on it to keep you from doing crazy things on it!
• You are a very determined lil girl! When you want something or to go somewhere you get MAD when you are not able to!
• When I tell you you are pretty you "comb" your hair!

I cannot wait to watch you grow and change over this next year. You are becoming so much fun and are only going to get even funner! Kelsee Anne I love you and adore you so much! You are so spoiled and I am mostly to blame for that! But that is OK!! There is a saying "The Laughter of a Child is the Light of the Home" You have definitely LIT up our home!! We all love you so much Kelsee Anne and thank God daily for bringing you to us and look forward to helping you grow into a wonderful person of God.

Here are some special pics!!! Before you were born I purchased a bow (another one I know!) and your Doe-Doe came up with a great idea to use it as a "Grow With Me Bow." So we took your pic in the same bow periodically throughout your first year to show how much you have grown into your bow. Then I used that bow as the theme for your birthday party. Here are the famous pics!!

5 days old

3 months old

6 months old

9 months old

1 year old!

So Far Behind!

WOW!! I am SO far behind!! So much has happened over the past few months! We had a great but busy summer (hence the reason for the lack of posts!). Kelsee has grown SO much...can't believe she will be a year in less than a month! We had a great vacation to Gulf Shores, AL with a lot of my family and now the kids are back in school and we are getting ready to start a new set of sports..... I WILL be updating SOON! Check back for LOTS of new posts!!

Awards Assembly

The last day of school means awards assembly! I cannot believe my kids have completed 2nd and 4th grades!! They both had a great year and had the BEST teachers!

Braden (middle, stripe shirt) waiting along with some of his classmates while their teacher talks about what a great class they were!

Getting his awards from Mrs. Pierce. She is absolutely the best teacher! Both of the kids have had her for 2nd grade and I pray she is still there for Kelsee to have! Braden was awarded with a Reading Award, Superintendents Honor Roll all year and the class Citizenship Award!

Trying to get a sneak peak at his goodies!

Kaylee ready and waiting for her turn!

Mrs. Adair bragging on what a great student Kaylee is!! Ok, there has to be 2 BEST teachers because Mrs. Adair is also one of them!!! Kaylee got a Reading Award and Principals Honor Roll all year long! She had a a great year!!

Something was funny apparently!

Braden received the best boy in Music class for his class!! What a great honor!!
Both of the kids had a great year! We are very blessed to have such great kids who love to learn!! I cannot believe my kids are now 3rd and 5th graders!!!
Time for Summer to Begin!!!

Little Olympics

I am so far behind on blogging!! Summer is in full swing and you would think that would give me more time to keep up on things.....WRONG! That just means 3 times the work with 3 kids in the house all day now and also means baseball/softball almost every night! The kids had their end of the school year activities the first couple weeks of May. They began with Little Olympics. Both kids did very well and had a great time! Here are a few pics!

Kaylee (on the far right in the pink) running the 50 yard dash. She got 2nd!

Slater, Kaylee and Sydnie getting ready to run the 100 yard dash finals

Kaylee and Evan....2 man relay partners for the past 4 years!

Braden (in the orange) tugging against the biggest kid in the 2nd grade!

Braden got a lil wet on that one!

I can't believe this was Kaylee's last year to participate in Little Olympics. On to real track and field next year!

Easter 2011

Easter started off pretty quiet around our house...well as quiet as being woke up at 7am by a 7 month old can be! Kaylee and Braden left on Thur to spend the weekend with Nana, so it was just us 3 to get ready for church. Kelsee woke up with a yucky eye...it was all matted shut and gross!! Once we got it clean, it seemed to bother all of us more than it did her.
All dressed and ready for church on her first Easter! Nana, the kids, Aunt Joyce, Aunt Nancy and Uncle Eddie met us at our church. We were so glad to share our new church with them on Easter Sunday! We all came back to our house and were joined by Uncle Randy and Aunt Carol Ann for lunch and hunting eggs. We had a great time with Dale's family and really enjoyed having a family gathering at our own home! Hopefully we will have the room (SOON) to do many, many more!

The Easter bunny came to visit while we were gone to church! This is one of my favorite pics of all 3 of my kids together!!

Checking out the goodies! A lil scared with the top left pic! :) After egg hunting the kids went out to "not shoot eachother" with their new guns....that only lasted about 15 minutes before 2 wet kids had to come in and put the guns away!

Doing some hunting! It was so different this year for them to be hunting alone....this is the first year we have not spent with my family...

Kelsee was not sure what she was doing outside in the cold and why am I "helping" Daddy pick these things up! She did find a pretty purple one that became her BEST friend!
I loved getting to expose my kids once again to the true meaning of Easter, spend the day with family, watch the kids get excited about the simplest things, and finish off with a nice relaxing evening with the most important 4 people in the world to me!
Not spending the day with my family was hard, but had a great time with my in laws, kids and hubby!
Hope all of you had a wonderful Easter and isn't it wonderful when you think of the HUGE sacrifice that was done for us and we celebrate it by hunting eggs....never really understood that!

School Spring Program

The Spring program at school was all about Rock-N-Roll. Our new music teacher is doing a great job with the kids and I have really enjoyed watching them in 2 WONDERFUL programs this year! This was a big hit since we have not had one at all in the past few years. Kaylee's class dressed up like Elvis or 50's Rock N Roll and sang songs like Blue Suede Shoes, Braden's class was to dress like they are going on a date and he sang I Wanna Hold Your Hand. They all did great!!

All ready for the program! Don't we have an AWESOME Elvis! Thanks to Wyatt's infatuation with Elvis, we had access to a costume!

The 4th grade.....Kaylee did SO GOOD on her speaking part!!

2nd grade....Braden didn't act too excited to be there, but after said he had a good time.

And She's Off!

This past week has been very crazy at our house....we replaced the floor in our living, dining, kitchen and hall (well still finishing it up actually!).....and in the midst of all of this we have a motivator!!! Kelsee started taking crawling steps a couple of weeks ago and now she is motivating all over the house. One day she crawled back to Braden's room and then just sat back there and LAUGHED!! It was so cute! As cute as it is....she is quite the lil stinker too! :) She has managed to attempt to crawl into the return air vent (the cover was off due to the project), get herself stuck under the kitchen chair many times, get into the kitchen cabinet, get stuck behind the couch and almost escape out the front door! And all this was this week!! She has been so funny to watch trying to learn to crawl on these slick floors...except when she tries to pull up on something and face plants it into the hard floor...:( We are planning to get a large area rug so I am sure this will help her lots! Anyway, just had to get in a quick update of our HUGE milestone this week! Here are a few pics of her that I had to take off my phone cuz my camera battery was dead...Getting into that cabinet

Pouting cuz she is stuck under the chair!

Happy Birthday Kaylee and Kaitlyn!

Once again....I am LATE on this blog!! Becoming the story of my life!! :) Kaylee and her best friend, Kaitlyn, decided to do their birthday parties together this year. Having winter birthdays, they have not been able to have a swimming party, so we found out if you rent a room at one of the local hotels you can use the pool for a party....so pool party/hotel sleepover it was! The girls were able to invite quite a few kids to swim, but due to being in a hotel room were limited on the number that could spend the night. The girls had a great time planning the event and I think just as much fun at the party!

Swimming in February????? Don't mind if I do!! I think all of their friends had a great time and Macy and Kaitlyn even decorated the window! :)

Presents, Presents and more presents!

The birthday girls, Wyatt with his hot tub beard, and Kelsee had a lil too much fun!

Yummy cake time!! If you look close at the cake on the side you can tell it didn't fair too well making the trip to the hotel! We salvaged it and it still tasted GREAT so all was good!!

Slumber party isn't complete without snacks and Pop Rocks mixed with Coke!!

Enjoying making flower clips! And time for some relaxin for the birthday girls while Macy gives them a pedi!!
I have to say it was a pretty easy and fun party for all of us!!! Happy 10th Birthday Kaylee and Kaitlyn!!

"Snicker" the Goat

Well, we did something Dale and I both swore we would NEVER do!! Let our daughter become a GOAT SHOWMAN!!! Yep I said it!!! Kaylee has said since she was about 2 she was going to show a goat. It was always sort of a joke to us, but she never gave up!! Every time we would go to a cattle show she would drive us crazy until we would take her to see the goats! Dale fought it for a while, he even bought her a heifer and tried everything he could to get her to show it, but like most other times....she won! Last summer they found the prize goat! Unfortunately 3 days after we got him he died having his horns surgically removed. :( But that didn't stop her!! Oh no....we got another one! Kaylee quickly fell in love with "Snicker." We were very proud of her being very eager to work with him no matter what. We kept the goat at her friend, Hannah's house. This helped alot because the girls had a great time working together. Anyway, we made it to show season with Snicker and surprisingly she got in the ring and showed her little heart out! She showed Snicker at the County and the District shows in Enid and then we let her decide if she was ready to take him to the big show in OKC and she was more than ready! She did so good, I think both Dale and I were completely shocked!

Her first show! This was the County show in Enid. She did an amazing job showing him....he didn't do quite so well placing. He was last in his class...but she didn't care! (Needless to say Dale and I know NOTHING about getting a goat ready for a show, but we (mostly he) learned ALOT and hoping it pays off with the next one.) Yes, I said next one!

Northwest District Show in Enid. Here she placed 9th out of 15....better, but we are shooting for higher next time! Once again, we were VERY pleased with the way Kaylee showed Snicker and she was up and ready everytime it was time to do something with him.

A few pics from Oklahoma Youth Expo in OKC. Kaylee completely was in love with Snicker. She did amazing with him. Dale and her went a day before I brought Kelsee and Braden and he said she just jumped right in there and did everything with him and even led him around without Daddy going with her! If you know Kaylee you know that is a HUGE thing for her to do!! We were so proud of her we bought her a lil good job gift. She has been wanting a "blingy zebra" belt for quite a while so we surprised her with one right before she went in to show. Snicker had quite the personality. He was such a sweet goat. Perfect for her to learn on!! I just hope the next one is half as sweet as he was!

Our big girl in the ring at a BIG show! Kaylee did great!! I think Mommy and Daddy were much more nervous than she was! :) Snicker did not make the cut for his class, but she was still able to "show" him for quite a while, and that was plenty good enough for her!
After the show came the dreadful part (for Mommy and Daddy anyway!). We had to take Snicker to meet his new friends to go to his new home. Kaylee grabbed him up and was ready to head over. I don't think Dale and I could have ever imagined what happened next....she walked him over there, took him into the pen with LOTS of other goats and took his halter off all by herself. She stood outside and watched him "meet" his new friends for just a few minutes and then was ready to go get Dippin' Dots! I think Dale and I both were ready to cry at any moment, but held it in since she was so strong.
I am not sure words can express how proud we were of Kaylee for all she did with Snicker. We are sure going to miss that lil guy!!! Now to prepare for the next one!!

7 Months!

Kelsee Anne,
I can't believe I am so late on your 7 month blog! This just gives you an idea of how busy our lives are this time of year!! You are getting active, which is not only more fun, but also more work!! This month you are sitting up VERY good, playing with lots of your toys, moving toys from one hand to the other, feeding yourself cheerios, you LOVE phones and remotes, and you are starting to try to crawl. Kaylee and Braden want you to crawl so BAD....we will see what happens when you start crawling to their rooms! You are doing better on sleeping, still eating 3 meals a day and still nursing great! The weather is starting to get nice and you LOVE to be outside. Here are a some pix from your 6 month of life....

Crazy Hair Day!! I was being silly one day and did your hair in a mohawk after bath. Needless to say, your Daddy did not like it! I was amazed how much you reminded me of pictures of your Doe-Doe with your hair like that. (I never had enough for Mimi to put it up like that!) Also in these pics you are starting to get up on all 4's!!

This is one of your favorite toys. YOUR BABY! You just shake all over with excitement when I hand her to you. She has pigtails and you like to swing her around by her piggies!! :) You also like to hold a pigtail while you suck your thumb! Awwww....

You may not be crawling yet, but you are motivating around pretty good!! You were playing on the blanket and next thing I knew you were over stuck under your swing. HaHa!

YOU ARE OFFICIALLY 2011's CUTEST BABY!!! I entered you in the cutest baby contest for our local paper and YOU WON!!! We knew you were the cutest, but it was nice to actually win something for it! HaHa! You won a $100 Savings Bond.....so by the time you are showing these to your grandkids it might be worth $100!

A few more random pics from the month. You LOVE to listen to your Bubba read his stories for school, and sadly you are getting too big for your swing.....

I attempted to get some 6 month pics of you in your Grow With Me Bow. We were unable to take them last time we were with Doe-Doe so I was going to just to them and have Uncle Donnie pretty them up....I hope his editing skills are GOOD cuz my pic taking skills were not so much on this day!! You were quite the handful to keep still long enough for a pic! I did manage to get a few that hopefully he can do something with. I can't wait to see all the pics together at the end of your first year!!

Well Miss Kelsee you are growing way too fast! I know I have said this before, but we are having a blast with you! I am so glad the weather is getting nicer so you can explore that whole new world outside!! And look out world this next month cuz you are getting very brave with this motivating thing!!!
Mommy LOVES you VERY much!!!