Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Karla chooses to be baptized


It has been so exciting and so neat as Karla made the choice to be baptized and walk in her Savior's foot steps.  It's been neat to watch her gain a testimony.  And I insisted it was her testimony and not mine. And she has bloomed!!  So Mom and her went and picked out a white dress.  She knew which one she wanted.  I had her try on a few more just tobe sure, but she knew her mind.  And she looks beautiful. 
We were so blessed to have so many family who could make it.  Aunt Cyntha, Ben, Jamie, and Alleah came up from Las Vegas.  They did some house hunting while they were here.  We are so excited to have them move just the next town over this summer.  Grandma K and Aunt Helena made it from Idaho.  They started at 4 am and drove out the day of, but then they got to stay and celebrate Easter with us.  It worked out really well.  Granddad Mike and Granny Sandy came down from Spokane.  They spent Friday afternoon with us too.  It was a lot of fun.  Then from those who live here we had Grandma Julie, Uncle Garth, Aunt Susan, Grandpa Tingey, Grandma Tingey, Uncle Jonathan, Aunt Dot, and their current foster kids, Uncle John and his sweetheart, Grandma and Grandpa Cook.  It was great.  Bishop Sintay and a few friends from the ward and the Stokers from our old ward rounded out our group.  We felt very loved.
When we showed up to the church, it was a little nerve wracking to realize the guy who was suppose to unlock the church and fill the font was out of town.  We missed that one.  Everyone was very patient as we got a key.  We started the font filling and set up.  Usually it takes 3 hours to fill a font.  So we rearranged things a little.  We had the whole program.  We then baptized Karla.  The bishop coached us on how to baptize in very little water.  It really doesn't take much, but by the time we went to baptize her it was full.  It was cold, but it was full. And she was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by her daddy.  She was then confirmed and given the gift of the Holy Ghost.  We are so proud of her.  As she reads her scriptures and shares with us the scriptures that seem to speak right to her heart, I am amazed at her faith and grasp of the gospel.


Monday, April 15, 2013

Bits and peices

I love this picture of my sweet family.  We really do love each other!!  And we enjoy wrestling and cuddling.

 Here is my little bundle of joy shortly after we came home from the hospital.  My sweet angle!!
 8 days after Kolten was born, thankfully he was healthy enough, we went up to my dad's wedding with Aunt Dot and Aunt Cyntha.  He was shocked we came.  It has been the start of building a new realtionship with him.  So far, so good. And I like this wife a lot better than the last one too.  Is that awful to admit?


Part of the reason I wanted to go was because I wanted to my Aunt Sandy who was coming out.  She lives in CA and that trip is a hard one to make.  It was fun to get to visit with her.  We hung out with her until we HAD to leave.  We got back to Richland just a few minutes late for Todd to run do our paper route.  But we enjoyed the time together.

If you were looking for Kolten or Kylee this was where you'd find them.  Kylee couldn't stand to be away from our baby.  Kaylyn and Karla also enjoyed being close to the baby--but when I told them to leave him alone, they would.  Kylee quit asking and would just cuddle up with him. We all love our baby boy!!  But Kylee's not the only one cuddling up.  And Daddy and Mommy got really tired. 

 But occassionally we played hard enough that it wasn't just mom and dad that got tired.  Here is Kaylyn sitting at dinner.

And my big boy!!  I can't believe how much Kolten is growing.

Halloween 2012

 Before Halloween we had crazy hair day--here are the girls with their crazy hair.  The girls enjoy dieing their hair.  It was this color or a faded version until March!  And we bleached, died, bleach, and re-died their hair to get it back to it's natural blonde.  Kaylyn's didn't last very long. :)
 Kolten made such a cute pooh bear.  He is just rolly polly enough that he looks great!!  But he did not like his costume.  So you will see we let him be Monster Mike on actual Halloween.
 Here is Garth.  Mom made his costume after his favorite power ranger.  We then attended her ward party.  It was a lot of fun.  Trunk or treat.  Chilli feed.  And walk across the stage show off.  They even had a best costume contest.
 Here is my tigger and my butterflies or pixie for the party.  I have to laugh--here is Kylee crossing the stage.  And this is classic Kylee!!  She is our little movie star.
 We spent one afternoon with  my dad.  And here is the jack-o-lantern that the girls made!!  I love all the eyes.  I didn't take my camera up there.  But we made cookies.  We painted and carved pumpkins.  We enjoyed being together.
 I went as Thing 2 for actual Halloween.  But Thing 1, my sweetheart, decided to stay home and get some extra sleep.
 But he helped me get our Mike into the car.  Kolten seemed to like this costume a lot better.
 Kylee--our diva--could not wear the same costume twice in the same season.  What were we thinking?  So she went as little red riding hood.  We went with Aunt Dot and her foster kids to safe street.  We enjoyed the bouncy houses and the trick or treating.  We then ran over to my ward's trunk or treat.  It was fun to see everyone.  When we got home--there was a lot of trick or treaters.  So we went Trick or treating for 4 whole blocks.  The girls had a blast.  Kolten was such a trooper too.

Pumpkin patch

In October, it was so fun to watch this sweet boy smile.  He really does have a very sweet temperment.  And for the most part, he is a very happy boy.  I am one lucky momma.
He is also wearing his superman shirt because I was a Mann before I became a Nef.

 In October, Aunt Dot invited us to join her ward's homeschooling group to go to the pumpkin patch.  It was a lot of fun.  Here is the pumpkin that Kaylyn picked out.  She also got to ride in a cute little train pulled by a four wheeler.  And then we got to go to the petting zoo.
We also got a fresh made pumpkin doughnut.  Yummy.  There was a fun slide and a tree house.  We then picked out several pumpkins for making into jack-o-lanters and then later into canned pumpkin.  It was fun because I got to go with Dot's foster daughter--and my new best friend.  The babies came too.  Because it was cold they stayed bundled close to mom or grandma.  We even were able to all car pool out together in my new big car!!