"Watch"

Jaedyn's favorite thing to do after her nightly bath is to "watch". This consists of watching "Despicable Me" on Josh's phone...she absolutely LOVES that movie! She's totally mesmerized when it's playing and she won't pay attention to anyone or anything else!

Just look at how spoiled Jaedyn is...She gets a big bed to lay in and her own movie stand complete with attached speakers to watch her movie on...

She literally doesn't move at all when she's watching her movie. There's been a couple times when I've had to get close to her to make sure she's still alive, that's how still she is!

Jaedyn has started not only "watching" after bath time, but Josh has now started a bad habit with her at church. If you listen carefully in sacrament, you'll hear her ask to "watch" then too and he lets her!

Diet Coke + Mentos = Fun!

Every month for pack meeting Jaron's Cub Scout pack does some kind of an activity after the awards are all given out. This month's activity was probably the funnest one for the boys. They did experiments with Diet Coke and Mentos. The Cubmaster asked the boys if they knew what would happen when you combined these two things and the boys had no clue, but they got to mix them and find out first hand.

Each den got a chance to participate in this experiment and Jaron's den went first. Jaron helped attach a tube to the top of a 2 liter of Diet Coke...

Then he dropped in about seven Mentos inside the tube...

Then everyone backed away and Jaron's friend Ethan pulled the cord that dropped the Mentos into the Diet Coke, and the waiting began...

All of a sudden the Diet Coke burst out of the bottle like an erupting volcano...(as you can see in the background, Jaron thought it was AWESOME!!)

Each of the other dens got a turn making the Diet Coke explode and it never got old to any of the boys. Jaron, Keagan, and Ethan even tried to catch some of the Diet Coke in their hands (that's the three of them in the middle with their arms stretched out). I'm not sure if they actually caught any or not, but they sure had fun trying...

I think that the boys all want to try this at home now, but at our house it's a sin to waste a good Diet Coke (according to Josh). So, because of this, Josh decided to finish off what was left in the bottle...Mentos and all! Josh said it was actually pretty good (a little minty), I'll take his word for it...I'm not a fan of Diet Coke!

Meet Team "Lightning Storm"...

Last week primary soccer started up again for the fall season. Jaron decided not to play this year, but Jantzen wanted to, so Josh and I agreed to coach his team. After a lot of talking from the kids, we decided on a team name. There was a tie between "Lightning Bolts" and "Stormers", so we decided to combine them and call ourselves "Lightning Storm", the kids loved it! We have some really fun kids on our team this season...

(back row: Me, Ashley, Jansen N., Jason, Madison, Jantzen G., Josh; front row: John, Coda, Elijah, Dallin)

We started with some warm ups before our game started. We let each of the kids take a turn trying to make a goal against Josh. I love the height Jantzen got on his kicks.

While the kids were getting ready to play, Jaedyn started having some fun of her own. She was playing with our spray fan and it was cute because she was trying to lick the blades as it was spinning. Don't worry though, the blades are made out of foam.

Jaedyn ended up biting a chunk out of one of the blades. I guess I should feed her a little more before the games.

The game finally started and all the kids seemed to have fun playing. The fun didn't last very long for Jantzen. He came off the field saying he didn't want to play soccer anymore. After talking to him a little bit, he decided he'd keep playing and he kept up on the ball pretty good after that. (He's #31)

I love this picture of Jantzen, John, Elijah, and Ashley taking a break from playing. The looks on their faces is funny!

Jantzen went back in the game to play some more after a short break. I loved how I caught him and his teammates running in unison...

Jantzen ended up scoring a goal for his team and that made him like soccer a little bit more. I tried to get a picture of him giving his dad a "high five", but he was running too fast and I had Jaedyn trying to climb on me, so this is the best picture I got...

Our team ended up winning the game and the kids were all excited about that. They all did so good. Josh did a quick cheer with them and then they were off to be good sports and tell the other team good job.

I took this picture from our game last night. I thought it was fun how Josh was playing soccer with the team during halftime. I could tell by the kids' faces that they were loving it!

BTW, our team won their game again last night...they are starting the season off good!

Relaxin'

Last night I came upstairs to find this "fort" in the toy room complete with "guards"...

As I looked around some more, some familiar legs caught my eye...

Inside was Jaron and Jaedyn, just hanging out together watching a movie (poor Jantzen was in trouble and grounded to his room for the whole night). Jaedyn was loving hanging out with her "honey".

Later on when the fort was taken down, this is how Jaedyn got to watch TV, courtesy of her big brothers. They made her all comfortable on her "throne" and served her popcorn. What a lucky girl she is!

Being a kid is definitely the good life. I love the creativity my kids have!

Only $19.99

Jaedyn and I went to Target the other day and she found this fun little princess toy car that she just had to play with. It was cute because she was just sitting on it while admiring it. I had a mom come by and look at her, tell me how cute she is, and ask how much? I pointed to the price underneath her and said, "She's only $19.99, but I've already called dibs because she's one of a kind".

Maybe I'll have to tell Santa to get Jaedyn this toy for Christmas.

Another Rainy Day

Today was another day full of rain. After we dropped Jaron and Jantzen off at school Jaedyn got to have her own little rainy day fun, just not as much as her brothers did on Sunday. She didn't want to come inside because she was loving the rain puddles, so being the nice mom I am, I let her play for a little bit. She was wearing nice shoes, so her playing time didn't last very long.

(I love that she has some of her play kitchen utensils with her)

Jaedyn thought it was cool that she could see her reflection in the sidewalk...

Here's her imitation of a Jantzen smile (I love it!)...

I think she's cooking in the rain here...

Jaedyn's too cute for words!

September Hail Storm...

Yesterday was a crazy day for weather here. The morning started out nice. We enjoyed a lovely Sunday afternoon picnic with some friends after Stake Conference, but not too long after we got home from our picnic a lovely fall storm made an appearance...really fast! It started raining and the wind was blowing really hard, I thought our canopy was going to blow away! All of a sudden it started hailing while it was raining! That's not something that happens here very often and my boys were fascinated by it. I quickly grabbed my camera to document this rare occurrence while the boys got giddy like kids on Christmas morning.

Here is a view of our backyard during the start of the storm. I'm thinking I don't have to fill up the pool with more water this week thanks to the rain...

While I was taking pictures, some hail found it's way into our house. Jantzen quickly picked it up and yelled about how cold it was. The hail was about the size of a marble, it was crazy!

We all made our way to the front yard to see what it looked like in this freak storm and this is what we saw, hail all over the ground and a rather large swimming pool forming in the street making it's way up our driveway (I was praying that the hail wouldn't damage my Tahoe)...

We even had a little stream coming down from the side gate to our backyard...

...and a river forming in the storm channel on the side of our house...

The Rodeo was quickly being engulfed by water, the drain couldn't get rid of it fast enough. I think it was crazy how the sidewalk was covered with water.

I was a nice mom and I let Jaron and Jantzen go out and play in the rain and hail. Jaedyn was asleep, so we didn't bother her. She actually slept through the whole thing, that surprised me because it was a really loud storm.

The boys thought it would be fun to gather up some hail, but quickly realized how cold it is! I'm not sure what's up with Jantzen's face, but I do think it's kind of funny! Don't you love the fact that they're wearing flip flops?!?! I do!

After playing with the hail for a little bit, the boys decided to run around and check out all the water...

It seriously looks like they are standing on a river bank in this picture...

Then they were off to play in the water for a while...

Jantzen kept losing his flip flops in the water. I probably should have made them wear something other than flip flops, but I guess this way they wouldn't ruin any shoes.

The boys started getting brave and they would run in the water a little bit. One of the times that Jantzen was running he slipped and fell down, getting himself all wet on his back side...

As you can see in this picture, the boys had so much fun playing in the rain. This was the first time I've ever let them do that (not that it rains here very much) and it made them sooo happy.

I'm glad that I let Jaron and Jantzen have some Sunday afternoon fun in the rain. It brought back so many memories of when I was a little girl playing in the rain puddles, except I always wore my nice shoes and I ruined them. It's too bad that Jaedyn was asleep during the whole thing, maybe next time she'll get to play in it too.