Kindergarten!

I can't even believe that we have ourselves a KINDERGARTNER! it's been a few months now, and Parker is, for the most part, loving kindergarten! he is doing great academically, and he is trying to learn the ropes when it comes to friends, and nice friends. He goes to school all day, every other day. I thought I was going to hate this schedule, but it surprisingly hasn't been as bad as I thought. Brooklynn and Jackson have no idea what to do when parker is at school, but they love the days he is home!

we love parker's teacher Mrs. Browning. She has been great! So far our first year of public school has been relatively smooth sailing. I'm sad it's going by so fast! 

Jackson's first birthday!

Poor Jackson.... being the 3rd child can be a bit of a bummer. Parker has so much of his life documented, and Jackson, not so much! I really am bummed I haven't been keeping up with this journal! hoping to get back into it! 

So we spent 4th of July this year over in Idaho Falls and Rexburg. My entire family was there, as well as Jared's entire family. We got to celebrate Jackson's 1st birthday with both side while we were there! 

Mother's Day Surprise

Mother's day weekend we were just planning on a quiet weekend at home. Friday evening i was in the kitchen making dinner when i heard a knock at my door. completely confused about who it could be. when i opened the door, there stood my sister stacey and her wonderful friend krista! to say i was surprised would be a complete understatement. i had NO idea they were coming... i guess jared did though, little stinker! i was so happy to see them.

my kids were equally as excited to see them also, and were beyond thrilled to have them jump on the trampoline, and play tag out in the back yard. after we put the kids to bed, we came up with a menu for the weekend and headed to the grocery store to stock up on all the good stuff. when we got back home we brought the groceries inside, and there i see sitting on my living room floor are kyle and carissa! what!?!?!?! what in the world was going on??!!? i am ALWAYS the one pulling off surprises and pranks, not the other way around. but kudos to all of them for pulling all these surprises off. 

we spent the rest of the weekend playing, playing, and playing. it was so much fun. we stayed up way to late eating candy and playing games and talking and laughing. man how i wish family lived closer! at least we are close enough to make random trips to one another. 

thanks for coming!!! please come back soon!!!!!

potty training round 2

let me start by saying having two kiddos in diapers is no fun. I was so tired of changing so many diapers during the day that i decided it was time to potty train brooklynn. my first experience of potty training with parker wasn't the most fun, (is it ever fun?) and i was pretty sure we would never leave the house again in fear of him having an accident. but this time around i entered potty training with a different perspective. a we will still be able to leave our house, if accidents happen they happen, and one day she will be able to run in there and do her thing all by herself perspective. 

so day one. it was awful. awful, awful, awful, awful. way worse than parker's first day of potty training. day 2 came with the same results. awful. during those first 2 days she only peed on the potty ONE time. day 3 came around and i decided to see how the morning went. if by lunch time we were still having ZERO progress i was bagging the whole thing and putting her back in diapers. parker had preschool that day so we ran him to school and came home and sat on the potty for seriously almost 2 hours. i didn't let her off until she finally peed. after she FINALLY went, I'm not sure what exactly clicked, but something did and we ended day 3 completely accident free! whaaaat??!?! it was awesome and weird. but the following days came with the same results, accident free (in BOTH categories!) and she told me every time she had to go! (parker never did this, i always had to remind him to go.)  

and just like that, she's potty trained. I never worried about taking her out in public cause she always tells me when she needs to go, and we have conquered the public restrooms, as long as I cover the automatic flusher sensor, and she plugs her ears before we flush, ha! we still put a diaper on her at night and she has woken up dry a handful of times, but not consistent enough to keep her in underwear. but eh, I'm not worried. 

Easter 2016

We found ourselves over in Eastern Idaho for Easter this year. Brian and Misty were blessing their new little guy that sunday, so we used it as a double excuse to head that way! we love traveling over there to see family!

 i am so happy our kids are great travelers!

 we gave kyle and carissa the game pie face for christmas, and we finally got to try playing it! 

 we did a few easter egg hunts. this one was done at the elementary school where kyle teaches. it was so fun to run around and play with all the balls in the gym. 

 jackson and joshua.... hoping these boys are good buddies the older they get!

 we did another egg hunt in grandma and grandpa rucks' backyard. 

 oh i just love these kids. i am so happy carissa is having a little girl to get some pink up in here!

 saturday night i got to go to the womens general conference session with my mom and sisters. oh how i wish so bad i lived close to them. 

 easter morning!

 handsome boys at church. 

 all the rucks' cousins after joshua's blessing 

happy easter from our two sweet boys and fiesty, SASSY little girl! 

Stacey's Homecoming!

Back at the beginning of March, my sister Stacey returned home from her mission in Virginia! Since jared and kyle couldn't take that much time off, Carissa and I decided to drive over to colorado together. We met in Utah, and the plan was to stay at GG's house, but carissa's boys had come down with a NASTY cough, and we decided it would be best to continue on and get a hotel room. After meeting up and getting dinner we went over to GG's house to switch carissa's stuff over into the minivan. holy cow that was a sight to behold, with our kids running around crazy while we tried to get her carseats and belongings into the car. At one point I found brooklynn and brant chugging my completely full dr. pepper.... oops. but no worries, we got everything in, and the kids buckled up and continued on another 2 hours to Little America. where we stayed the night in a creepy looking hotel.

(you can't see jackson, but he is behind brant!) 

The kids did great in the car, and were so happy to be riding together. we pulled into the hotel just before 9. the room we stayed in had one big room, and then another little bedroom, carissa took the little bedroom with her boys and i took the big room with my 3 kids. to say our night was awful was a bit of an understatement. i think it must have been 4:30am or 5 when i texted carissa asking her if she was awake. we decided since neither of us were sleeping, we might as well be driving. we were up and on the road by 6:30. we had some rain and snow mix for a little while but things cleared up soon after. the kids again did great in the car and it was nice to chat with carissa.

soon it was time to stop for some lunch. we were in wyoming, and stopped at a wendy's. here is where things got a little crazy. we had 5 kids with us..... a 5 year old, a 3 year old, two 2 year olds and a 7 month old, who needed to nurse. we decided to take everyone into the bathroom, then ordered some food. carissa sat inside with the 4 older kids while i nursed jackson in the car. that doesn't sound too awful now does it? HA, WRONG! have you ever tried to get 4 little kids lunch at the same time? OH EM GEE! it was complete mass chaos. i am sure we looked like some kind of freak show. after getting parker and brooklynn set up with lunch i went out to nurse jackson.

i texted carissa saying i was done and she tried to get lunch cleaned up and all 4 kids back out to the van. i cant even remembered what happened next, but for some reason kyler had a full fledged temper-tantrum. kicking-screaming-crying-bloody-murder-all-hell-brake-loose temper tantrum. i looked up to see carissa trying to get all 4 kids back to the car, dragging a kicking, screaming kyler behind her. did i mention the wind was blowing at LEAST 50 MPH. it was quite the site watching her try to pick him up and throw him into the car to try to buckle him up as he continued to scream and kick ans i scrambled to buckle everyone else in. finally everyone was back in their seats and i began to back the van up.... we parked at the end of the row next to the sidewalk and every time i tried to back up i kept running over the freaking curb! as if our lunch break wasn't comical enough, i couldn't even back us up out of the spot to hightail our very embarrassed heads out of there! we had a pretty good laugh about the whole thing later, but my goodness, it was traumatic. so PHEW, back on the road again, and the good news is kyler lived to see another day, LOL. we were SO happy when we finally made it to grandma's house, all alive and all in one piece. that will definitely be a trip i will never, ever forget. I can't wait for 10 years from now when we say, hey remember that time we decided to drive to colorado? good times.

stacey was scheduled to fly in tuesday late afternoon. we spent most the morning making signs to take with us to the airport.

i made sure to facetime jared when she came walking down the terminal! it was SO exciting, i think we all shed a few tears when we finally saw her again!

we spent the rest of the week playing, playing, playing. it was so fun and so exhausting.

phew, so glad i got all that recorded. it's about time i get back to writing about our life!