My little Hoarder

As I was going through old pictures to post, I found this and I had to think for a minute to remember why I took it.  Then I remembered... 

My Logan is a very sweet boy.  He is very sentimental and makes emotional attachments to EVERYTHING!  He can not throw anything away!  His room is filled with all sorts of random treasures that he has collected and he remembers where they all came from and what they are from.  If we even get close to the DI, he goes into panic mode because he gets extremely afraid that I am going to make him give something away.  It is pretty bad.  Every paper he brings home, every drawing he makes, every toy - even if they are broken!  I remember when he was about 4 or 5, there was an incident when Darren threw away a water bottle in the recycling.  It was just before the truck came to pick it up.  It was just a regular plastic water bottle.  Not like a reusable one or anything.  Logan went into total meltdown mode and wanted to chase after the truck to get the bottle back.  It was crazy!  He is getting a little better, but not much...  Anytime I do throw something away that I don't want him to know about, he always seems to find it and dig it out of the garbage before it is gone.  Here are a few recent examples...

I cleaned out the toy room and threw away a few toys, including a plastic fireman's hat that was in the dressups.  It was completely shredded up and was just a cheap one the kids had gotten on a field trip to the fire station.  I threw all the stuff in the garbage in the bathroom.  A little bit later, Logan called me from the bathroom.  He was sitting on the toilet going to the bathroom and while he was sitting there, he was going through the garbage can and digging out everything and explaining why we couldn't throw it away.  Especially the fire hat!  He came out a few minutes later wearing the hat.  

The kids ate some pistachios one day and I was clearing off the table and threw away all the shell remains they had left sitting around.  Logan went into hysterics.  He asked why I would throw those away.  They were for his shell collection!  We had to talk about what kind of shells are appropriate for a shell collection - pistachios don't make the cut!  

Logan had some cheap flip flops I bought him for the summer.  They were the $2 kind and towards the end of the summer, they broke.  He asked me if I was going to fix them and I told him I didn't think they were fixable.  He was very upset and wanted to know why we wouldn't fix them to save for Bronson.  (This is just about the only way I can get him to get rid of things.  If he is going to save it for Bronson or give it to his cousin...)  I told him we could just get some new ones and then he asked, "Ok, well, do you have a picture of me wearing these?"  That seems to be his latest consolation.  As long as there is a picture of the item it is a little easier to let go.  I have NO idea where that could have come from...

And that brings us to THIS picture...

 

In July, we went to the park with a group of friends.  Logan collected all these sticks and when it was time to go home, he started to load them ALL into the car!  I told him he could take one.  He had a bit of a fit.  He was sure someone else would take them if he didn't take them and they wouldn't be there the next time we came to the park.  He picked the stick he wanted to keep and I set the rest outside the car in a pile.  When he saw the sticks like in a pile, he became more upset.  He started to spread them around.  He explained if they were in a pile like that, someone would just come along and take the whole pile and that it would be too easy for them.  He then made me take this picture! He also asked me if I would be sure and print the picture out. Funny kid! 

There seem to be several random pictures like this on my camera lately for this same reason.  

Like this one for one of his own special Lego creations.  I can't even describe the meltdown that happened over this because I didn't take a picture before the girls destroyed the original masterpiece. 

 

Or this random picture of Logan's Ninjago card collection.  

How I love my Logan and his love for life and everything!  Including junk!    

Recent Stuff

Since I am working on posting pictures from July, I thought I would just do a quick recap of some recent things.  Just things I don't want to forget before I get around to posting them in March, or whenever I actually get things current.  So, here are some things going on lately.

Bronson practically grew up overnight.  Really.  He had his first haircut a couple weeks ago. Then we left on our trip and he went swimming for the first time, started crawling, got his first tooth and learned to clap and wave.  And turned 7 months.  All within 4 days!  Crazy!  He was the BEST baby on the trip.  He just went along with whatever we were doing and never got too upset if he missed a nap or feeding.  He loved the lights and he really loved all the characters.  He always wanted to grab their faces!  He was great in the car, too.  He is the sweetest thing ever.  Now that we are home, he is crawling all over the place!  I am a little nervous that the tree and presents are in big trouble!  We'll see if they survive...  He has been super fussy since he has cut 2 teeth and is the biggest mama's boy lately, but I don't mind too much.  I know how quickly they grow up and he just might be my last baby so I'm trying to just enjoy it.

Avery is hilarious lately.  Seriously the funniest girl ever!  She makes me laugh all day long!  She is Mrs Personality and has so many funny things she says and facial expressions that crack me up.  I just wish I could remember them all.  She was my favorite age at Disneyland.  The only sad part was that she was about 2 inches too short for the big rides.  She would have loved them!  But, she loved pretty much everything.  She was a little nervous about the characters at first (she has a BIG fear of the Chick-fil-A cow and Big Blue...) but she did great with most of them.  Some of the bigger ones she needed Mom or Dad to meet.  She held out her autograph book and stood back as far as she could when she met Woody.  It was hilarious.  But everything was so magic and real to her.  I loved watching her there.  She was always dancing around and having such a great time!  She especially loved the Princesses and asked to meet "Princess A-wawa" (Aurora) every day.  So cute!  Since we have been home, she has been saying so many funny things.  I love this age.  She talks SO cute and her little voice melts my heart about 100 times a day.  Even when she is a stinker!

My little Rylee has been the biggest sweetheart lately!  Sometimes she is a difficult child to handle because she can be very particular about a lot of things, but lately she has been the best helper!  I love it!  She is always asking how she can help and entertains Bronson for me all the time.  She was so great on the trip.  We usually do a point system for the kids to earn their souvenirs and she had the most because she was an angel!  She rode just about everything and loved it all and even got to meet Merida from the movie Brave, which is her favorite Princess right now.  She loved her autograph book and she loved being the Daredevil to ride all the rides when Logan wouldn't.  She even rode Tower of Terror with daddy!  And she wanted to ride California Screamin' - the big roller coaster - but she wasn't tall enough.  She picked out a Merida Barbie doll at the end of the trip for her souvenir, but it was something I had actually already ordered and was supposed to be shipped to our hotel and it didn't make it there before we had to leave.  My sister was coming the next week, so I arranged for her to pick it up, but that meant that Rylee had to go home without it and she didn't even complain.  On the trip, we were talking about them missing school and that when they got back they could tell their friends about some of the things they did.  Rylee was so sweet and said that her friend Dessie had never been to Disneyland so she didn't want to talk about it at school because she might feel bad that she didn't get to go.  I just love her!

Logan has been a bit hard lately, and that is rare for me to say about Logan because he has always been a really easy child.  He just never seems to want to work, but he wants to do fun things all the time and he has gotten a little sassy, too, which has never been like him before.  I guess we are just entering the next phase of life with our kids and getting closer to teenager-hood...  He was a lot of fun on the trip most of the time.  We had a hard time getting  him to ride things.  I don't really understand why he still has a fear of some things since we have been there SO many times, but we didn't push it too much this time.  He was so excited about the things he loves though.  That is something I really love about Logan.  He is so passionate about things and when he loves something, you will know it!  Anytime we were in Tomorrowland, he was jumping up and down and was so excited and wanted to hurry to the next thing.  As long as we didn't mention the Matterhorn, he did pretty well...  There were a few other rides he didn't want to do either.  It made me a little crazy, but oh well!  I think he rode Space Mountain and Star Tours at least 5 times each!  He also loved Cars Land and a lot of things at California Adventure and was the only one who enjoyed our day at San Diego Wild Animal Park.  He was SO excited to see a cheetah run and to see a California Condor.  Even when we had to hike HUGE hills to see it.  The rest of us were exhausted, but Logan was running up the hills and jumping up and down!  He is always talking about some dream he had or "what if..." and all these scenarios about Legos or things at Disneyland.  His mind is always going a million miles an hour, and he usually is, too.  I just wish I could keep up!  Most of the time, his conversations are very in-depth about Ninjago or Hero Factory and I have NO idea what we are talking about!  Logan says some of the funniest things - I wish I could remember them!  He uses the funniest and most grown-up phrases and terminology.  The other day he had me laughing so hard because he was talking about some new lego thing and he kept saying the word, "Extra-tetestrials"  Haha!  Love him!

Can't wait for Christmas!  I have so much still to do but the kids are so excited!  I think it will be a fun year for them!  Just have SO much to get done! 

And just because I can't stand to do a post without a picture, here is one.  My cute kiddos on Thanksgiving.  I am so thankful for this funny bunch!  They make me happy!  And a little crazy.  But, mostly happy!  

April

Wow!  Catching up the blog is an exhausting task with a new baby!  I can't seem to get too much done with the amount of time I spend feeding my new little guy.  And snuggling.  To be honest, I never really want to put him down to get much else done.  He is so sweet and it seems like he has grown so much already.  I keep thinking if I just hold him all the time, maybe he won't grow up so fast....  And at night I usually fall alseep on the couch instead of accomplishing something.  I keep thinking I will get some surge of energy or something will change and I will have more time for things, but I don't see how that is going to happen soon.  I don't want to miss these memories though, so I will keep plugging along when I get the chance.  I ordered my very first blog book this week and I am so excited to see how it looks and turns out.  Maybe it will give me some more motivation to get things caught up! 


Anyway, here are a few leftover things from the month of April... 

April 1 - My belly just a short 25 days before I delivered at about 35 weeks!  Looking pretty ready to go! 

April 3 - Logan had to go to bed before the National Championship College game, but he got up early the next morning and got the newspaper and checked the sports page and then left these signs on the counter.  Way to go Kentucky!  I love my little sports nut!

 April 3 - The kids building Ry's new Friends Legos she got for her birthday.  They are super cute, but I think Logan got them so he could put them together for her.  She was nice to let him help her and they played Legos for quite awhile.  I love when they play nice together like this.  It was a good start to their Spring Break!  They have gotten all their minifigures together several times since and had a nice time playing legos.

I love Avery's face in this picture...  She is always making the funniest faces! 

April 7 -  Our Kids' bathroom got a much needed update!  We went to Target as part of our Spring Break fun and got some bedding for Avery since the girls were moving into their bunk beds and we also found this fun stuff for the kids' bathroom.  I am loving it!  Our old shower curtain we got for our wedding so it was nine years old and time for something new and more fun!

 April 8 - We had a great time over Spring Break with our trip down to Salt Lake.  The Easter bunny visited and the kid's looked fabulous in their new Easter stuff!  And Mommy turned 31 - Busy week! 

 April 12 - Logan all ready for his first soccer game of the year!  When it was time to sign up, he said he only wanted to play if it wouldn't rain at all his games, and of course, it was raining for game one!  Luckily, it didn't last too long and it was pretty warm by the time the game was over!  He decided to play since Daddy would coach and is having fun playing on a bigger field with positions and a goalie. 

 The girls watching Logan play - This one is happy....

This one is NOT!  Can you believe that sweet of a girl can make THIS face?  She was REALLY mad at me for not bringing snacks! 

I found a granola bar in the car and they were in a much better mood after that!  Still cold though!  Spring soccer always seems to be FREEZING!

April 14 - Sissies watching a cartoon together - LOVE this!

April 15 - A good Sunday activity is making pictures for Uncle Jeff!  The kids love it!  I should get better at mailing them...

April 15 - Avery eating our Sunday dessert!  What a mess!  She LOVES her chocolate!

April 15 - The belly keeps growing!  37 weeks - Full term now! 

April 15 - Avery was telling me some funny stories after church so I just grabbed the camera and videoed her and snapped some pics.  She is hilarious!  I love the way she talks so cute and her facial expressions!  She is a great story teller and I love to hear about her adventures at nursery.  She tells me who she played with, the snack, and what songs they sang.  She remembers a lot of details and puts a lot of emotion and animation into her stories.  

Love the pouty face! 

April 18 - Ry's pet caterpillars turned into butterflies!  The kids wanted to hold them.  The first time just daddy and Avery tried and it went pretty well. 

Then all the kids found out that Avery held them while they were at school and so they wanted to try.  We went upstairs to the craft room so they couldn't escape.  They weren't as interested in staying in one place and were much harder to hold.  They kept flying away and into the window.  I think they thought they were going to escape!  

The butterfly is hanging upside down off Rylee's finger. 

Logan was pretty nervous about it.... 

April 21 - I won a Houseparty contest, where you agree to host a party to try new products.  We won the new Kinect Disney Rush game.  I was really excited about that because it is a game I wanted anyway, so it saved us $50.  To win, you agree to host a party and have people over to try it.  Since we were so close to having the baby, we had a VERY low key party with our friends, the Bladens.  We had pizza and the boys tried out the game. Nothing too exciting, but they boys had a blast playing the game!  

While they were here for the party, the girls also decided it was time to let the butterflies go.  These aren't great pictures because I didn't really know it was happening until it was almost over but I needed some record of the event since these are some of the only pets my kids have had.  I might be a mean mom to not get them something more exciting, but I am not a real big pet person and I can't even get my kids potty trained! 

Bye, Bye Butterflies!

April 22 - There was a Whooping cough outbreak that affected a few people in our ward, and since the new baby was almost here, we decided to stay home to be safe on Sunday.  We had a great day being together.  We had our own primary and enjoyed some time just hanging out in the yard.  Avery put on this funny outfit and put her lawn chair in the driveway and told us she was watching a parade at Disneyland.  Love this girl!  She is so funny right now! 

Waving at the princesses in the imaginary Disneyland parade

Avery chowing down on an orange.  Everything she does seems to make me laugh!

Avery and Daddy just hanging out in the grass.  That Sunday was one of my favorite days with the family.  I love being together! 

April 25 - Grandma Pat came up to stay the night before the baby was born and took us to dinner at Winger's.  One last time out as a family of FIVE!!!  Things are going to be changing soon. We may never make it out of the house with four little ones....

 Avery and her faces....

April 26 - Of course, our biggest April news was the birth of our sweet Bronson!  What a great day for our family! 

April 29 - And on the 29th, we brought him home to all the craziness!  I hope he survives it!  He is one loved little baby and we are so glad he has blessed our family! 

Whew....  Now on to the month of May!!!