tidbits

Just another example of May's talent of stealth.

 Hair may not be Chads best skill, but he looks super cute doing it!

 We enjoyed making the most of the snow!

My number one helper during the day.

Aimee, with the help of her dad, made me this great purse!

May taking care of her baby.

Porter loves having the missionaries over!

We got these works of art in the mail from grandma.  She spent a Sunday writing each of the kids a special letter and drawing them a picture.

I wish the photo showed it better, but I am so cool, that sometimes I even work out with good old Abe Lincoln!

Pratt rocks at rocket math!  Medlar View will have one crazy smart boy in the Kindergarten next year!

My two cute riders!  This is how they do family bike rides.

If I mailed all of the notes my kids write to family, I would go broke paying for stamps.  They sure are cute though!

This baby boy makes our whole family so darn happy!

Porter and his mini-me!

The music teacher at the school does some random stuff.  Luckily, Porter isn't big enough yet to care.

daddy/daughter, mother/son

May was so excited to get to be a part of the Daddy/daughter dance event this year.  Aimee wasn't thrilled to have to share, but such is life.  Chad even made sure he helped make it special by contributing to the pre-dance preparations.

The boys had looked forward to also continuing our tradition of going bowling, and we had a blast!  I'm pretty sure the people in the lanes around us were completely entertained!

pie face

Aimee bought this game with her birthday money.  It turned out to be a great family game!  We have since learned that Pie Face is best when paired with another game, and that getting a chance to be "pied" is a reward, not a punishment.

sick babies

In about February we got hit with a bout of the gombu.  

Sadly, the worst of it was taken by Little Ball.  It turned out that this illness made it hard for Canon to take a bottle.  Similar to Pratt, he had struggled to nurse and I had been pumping for months.  This was the bright spot in this sad illness.  He started to nurse!  Sadly, this also made him stop taking a binkie.  He was one sick little boy, and that was the least of my worries.  We later found out he had RSV.  We knew there was little they could have done for him, so we just made sure to keep him well hydrated and suffer through it. It broke my heart, but he was pretty sweet for being so sick.

building

During the winter months we managed to make it to several of the free kid building workshops at the various "man stores."  Chad also made sure he took some time out in the garage to build something a little more substantial, and make sure the boys knew how to do it right.

Here is the book shelf Chad made to make the upstairs a little more organized.

birthday and baptism

Seriously, if you are going to have an awesome birthday, turn 8 during the holidays!  Aimee's birthday is usually a continuation of the holiday season, but this year, it was the birthday that kept on giving.  On her actual birthday we did balloons and a couple of presents, but mostly we waited for he fun to start once all the family that was coming for her birthday was around.  

It was great to just have them there for the everyday things in our lives like meals and hanging out around the house.

Because we had just had Christmas, we had fun new things to play with.  Both grandpas spend a couple of hours putting together Lego set that said it was for ages 3+.  They only had a couple of pieces left over to injure their pride!

The main event was, of course, Aimee's baptism.  It was pretty special to have family travel 1700 miles to be with her on such an important day.  Grandma Alice played the piano, and the grandpas spoke.  Oh, and the little brothers said the prayers.  While we had a captive audience we also blessed our little Canon ball.  We then had cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate before calling it a day.  It was awesome!

Aimee also got to have a friend birthday party.  It was a little tricky finding a day to make it work, but we managed to pull off a Spa party that only cost me $12 dollars and a cake, thanks to the free supplies from the hospital.  Each girl left with flamingo toes, a bottle of nail polish, and smile (Aunt Saundra was instrumental in making it work).

Finally, about four months after her birthday we got around to taking her out.  She wanted Chinese, and it was a hit.  8 year olds are the best!

the brother toy

My mom has lots of pictures of me toting my littlest brother around.  My living Baby Alive.  It would seem that Canon is the Williams family Baby Alive.  And lucky for us, he doesn't mind a bit.

At least most of the time he doesn't mind.