Our baby is 1

OK sorry I know it has been awhile and I don't even have a really good excuse. But I couldn't let today go by without a little snippit. It is Kellen's first birthday, I can't believe how quickly the last year has gone, my little baby is a little boy (sniff sniff). We had a little party at the house and here are a few pics. I made him this shirt so we wouldn't forget whose birthday it was.
He loved all his presents. He went straight for the suckers from Britt and was really excited (as you can see) about the guns.

He knew exactly what to do with his Lightning McQueen car and was running it into everyone.
Kellen loves Baby Neptune from the Baby Einstein series so I made him a turtle cake. Of course we had his very own cake to destroy, I mean eat. :)

He was so careful at first only sticking his fingers in the frosting, after I shoved his hand in a little further he figured it out quickly. I don't think he stopped shoving it into his mouth until it was all gone. It was a lot of fun to watch. :)
Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate our baby's first year!! We are so lucky to have him in our lives and we love him so much!

Ride along

I had a really fun night tonight. Neil was able to take me along in his patrol car while he was working for a couple hours. We didn't give any tickets but we pulled a few people over, ran code (lights, sirens, and excessive speeds - great fun!), "doored up", and basically kept the citizens of Bingham County safe. :) It was a lot of fun for me and I hope to do it again sometime soon, mainly because I never made it to Chevron for a drink or ice cream and lets face it I couldn't fully experience the life of a patrol officer without stopping by Chevron at least once! Neil is great for sharing this with me, what can I say he is the best cop ever and I love him!

Best present ever

Today Kellen is 10 months old. I can't hardly believe he will be a year old so soon. He had a great present this morning our sow Big Mamma had her piglets today. I thought she was done at eleven this morning with six but she had number nine about an hour ago (9pm) so who knows how many more she will have. As soon as the count is finally I will post some pics of our new piggies. :) Kellen thinks it is really funny when they squeal. What better present than a bunch of squealing pigs! JK

Who needs toys!!

I'm not sure why I even buy toys?? Cardboard boxes, dishwashers, and chairs are so much more fun!

He is crawling!

We were at Becky's house for fireworks on the 4th of July, apparently all he needed to convince him to crawl was a little fire. I am in so much trouble! He is all over the place now I can't hardly keep up. I love him to death he is sooooo cute! Brody was filming he was excited but he does a great job and he is Kellen's favorite!

Denver 2008

We loved our vacation!

Well we made it back from Colorado alright. I know it was like over a week ago that we got back but hey, I'm blogging about it before I have all my bags unpacked (pathetic I know but it's the truth). We had so much fun! Thanks to Layne and ShaLa for letting us invade your house and turn you into tour guides, you guys are awesome. I only have the second half of our pictures from the trip that I am posting but I will add the rest as soon as I get them.

I'll give a quick list of all the great things we did: Johnstown BBQ days, Westward Whoa(Layne played a great drunk amish man), Kellen's first fireworks show, Aunt Billie and Uncle Harold's house, Denver Zoo, Cinzetti's restaurant, outlet mall, Denver Aquarium, Colorado Rockies game (Kellen got a game ball from Dinger the mascot, it never hurts to be cute).

On our way home we picked up a few strays :) Westly and Ethan (Layne and ShaLa's boys staying with grandma for summer break) and we stopped in Utah to spend the night and hang out the next day. We stayed at Wolf Creek resort (we had a GPS but we kept stopping at the wrong resorts, they all look alike, our third try was a charm) it was a really fun place. We went to Union Station (railroad, gun, and car museum all in one), Hill Aerospace Museum on Hill Air Force Base, and to the Prairie Schooner steak house (this is the coolest place you sit in your own covered wagon for dinner. All in all it was a ton of fun and Kellen, bless his heart, was a trooper in the car. I have such a great kid! :) I can't wait to do it again!!!!!

we must be crazy!!!!!

Well last night we left Blackfoot at about eleven o'clock at night for Colorado. This will be our first family vacation. My brother Layne and his family Shala, Westley and Ethan live in Johnstown Col. Debra and i both took turns driving and sleeping. We both worked all day on Friday . what were we thinking. Kellen was great and slept all night long. what a trooper he is for the crap his crazy parents put him through. well we will add pictures of our fun vacation later as time goes on. just wanted to let every one know we made it safe and sound.

In the middle of May my Sweet Adeline's chorus from IF went to our regional competition in Vancouver, WA. Toiny (my mother-in-law) was a trooper and drove with Kellen and I all the way there and watched him while I was running around acting crazy in make-up. :) Kellen was an angel on the ten hour drive (12 hours with stops) as was Toiny for putting up with the two of us alone all weekend. We were able to stay with Larry and Charlene and that was really cool to spend some time with them. Well things went really well at the competition. We only had 20 singers on stage and yet we took first place in the small chorus division (less than 30 singers) and second place overall in the entire region (small, mid, and large choruses)!!!!! That was AWESOME! We were really proud of our performance. I have a copy on DVD for all those who are dying to watch it and see me in make-up and sequins .
But wait that isn't all......because our points were so high we have been invited to perform at Internationals in 2009 and compete against the top five small choruses in the world! I thought that they were lying to me when they first told me and I said, "this isn't very nice if you just kidding and not serious!!" I am ecstatic about going to International it is such an honor. It will be held in Nashville, TN in October 2009. We have a lot of work to do before then but we are up for the challenge. I thought about posting a picture in regards to this event but I left my camera in the car the entire trip and didn't take a single picture, oops! I guess that if you want to see you will have to watch my DVD. :)

So I'm sitting in my chair admiring the Adams Family blog and Davey and Lexie's blog and I hear this annoying voice in my head saying, "I'd bet other people would like it if we updated our blog too". Man I hate it when those voices you hear are right, of course you have to understand that this voice was male and sounded suspiciously like Neil's voice...yeah. So I will attempt to quickly recap the month of May so I can go to bed which happens to be where that voice I was talking about disappeared to. :) For those who didn't know (going back to April for a sec) we sold our house. The renters we had were apparently good luck because they moved in on Saturday and Monday evening someone made a full price offer (the first and only offer we had on the house). Yes we felt horrible but I'm pretty sure we made up for it with all the stuff we gave them out of guilt. So that makes us official squatters in Mom and Dad's house until they kick us out! We have decided to take full advantage of our time here and we are playing farm. We have pigs, chickens, turkeys, dogs, soon cows, and maybe a lamb or two. :) Here is a pic of some of the little weiner pigs. They are named: link, patty, hocks, chops, bacon, and hammy.

Irrigation time

Ok so it has been a month since I posted anything. Sorry :) I don't have time right now either but I am posting one little picture. Neil was working so Kellen and I played in the water most of the day. It was a good time. I am spoiled with such a good baby!!

Mistake #1, yeah right

It pains me to say that I have an addition to my chronicles of bad parenting... It was such a nice day to watch Brody and Coby's soccer game. I was totally prepared, two blankets, a hat, and a jacket, there was no way Kellen was going to be cold. In all my preparation I failed to consider the sun and the fact that we live in Idaho. : ( You guessed it, I let my 6 month old get his first sunburn and when I do something, I do it well he even had blisters on his previously perfect cheeks. To make things worse the blisters broke (with help from his dagger-like fingernails another fault of mine) and occasionally bleed. Now every greeting from people we see is immediately followed with, "Oh my gosh, what happened?" To which I reply, "Yes I'm a bad mom, yes I know what sunscreen is , and no it won't happen again." I have pictures but I couldn't quite bring myself to posting them. My poor baby I'm sure will develop some sort of rash from the gallons of sunscreen I will apply next time we leave the house. He will be one tough bugger if he can make it through me! As a side note about the weather in Idaho, it is snowing as I write this and to be totally clear his cheeks are still perfect! He is perfect in every way it is his mother that is flawed. I might not be perfect but I do love him!!

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Best Buds

Kellen and Ty just kicking it together. They were having a great time laughing at each other that is until I brought out the book. Apparently it is a really cool book because they both wanted it. It was very entertaining watching them fight over it, Ty would get it and then Kellen would take it back. They went back and forth for awhile it was quite comical. Being cousins and only 5 weeks apart in age I'm sure this won't be the last thing they both want and fight over, as long as they make up after and remember that family is always your best friend we will be fine. At least there wasn't any crying or hitting. I told Kayla that if they wanted to fight over books that was fine but I really hope they don't fight over girls in the future. :) I'm sure we will have our hands full with these two adorable faces.

New Landlords

Neil and I have decided to take a new step and become landlords for the time being. Yikes I know. The big news in our lives this week has been finally emptying our old house and stacking it in any free corner of mom and dads house (just so we are all clear there weren't any corners open). I knew that huge shop would come in handy some day. :) We will be renting our house until we can find someone to buy it. It should be quite interesting to see how things go. Thanks so much to Becky for watching Kellen (and Miah) while I moved stuff and to Aric for his help loading and unloading the horse trailer too many times. We should have just had a yard sale. I'm posting some pictures of our house this winter with the snow. Any idea why it didn't sell this winter???? (Everyone here is feeling much better, thank goodness!!)

Disease Ridden

Well our house is not the place to be this week. All three of us have taken our turn being under the weather. Kellen wins for the longest bout. He had his six month check-up on Monday (17lbs 4oz, 27 inches he is growing like a champ!) and I thought he was only reacting to his shots but not so much after the fourth day and he still was feeling crappy. He has croup so he sounds awful and can make me feel awful when he looks at me with those tear filled eyes and asks, "Mom, why aren't you making me feel better faster?" This motherhood thing isn't for whimps!! Neil and I are trying to beat the dreaded sinus misery and take turns working and watching Kellen. Do we know how to have a fun time or what! The picture is of Kellen after bath time with his dog towel. He is too cute and loves the bath.

First timers

Well we wanted to join in on all the fun so here is our attempt at blogging. :) We have tons of cute pictures of Kellen that we need to post. Hopefully we will keep this updated so we can share all our family fun with everyone. Be gentle with us we are first timers with all this. More to come soon (the anticipation is killing you I'm sure).