6 Months Already?!

Today Nash is officially 6 months old. He has hit his half year mark. I cannot believe he is this old already. Where has the time gone? I want him to stay my baby forever! He has gotten so big. I haven't updated the things that he has done for about 2 months. At 4 months he learned to sit up on his own, eat baby food, was very cuddly, and he would smile at just about anyone (but his dad). I stopped nursing him at 4 1/2 months. At 5 months he was sitting up really well without falling at all (thanks to the bumbo chair), he started warming up to his dad more (now he will smile at him any time and loves him), he loves his sisters, still very cuddly, and he learned to roll from his back to his side to his tummy. He also became very grabby. Now at 6 months he eats not only baby food but everything in sight (we no longer can have a meal without feeding him as well), still hasn't lost his love for cuddling, he is starting to roll around the room, he wakes up on his tummy playing, rolls to his tummy and gets onto his knees and rocks back and forth wanting to crawl (I think this is soon to come). He now holds his own bottle (yeah), and he got his first tooth this last Sunday. He is such a happy, calm little baby. His sisters cannot get enough of him and he loves it when they come around. I do not want him to grow up. In fact, I have had a hard time moving him to his own room. He is still in a bed next to my bed and I love to sit and stare at him while he is sleeping. I am not ready to give that up just yet because it just means my baby is growing up. I wish I could freeze my babies in time and enjoy them a little longer but I guess I just have to look forward to the many more fun little stages he is going to move into.

These are some random pictures of him in the last month.

Who wouldn't think he is a cutie?

We are so happy about him learning to finally do this on his own.

Grabby little Nash wanting to snag the camera from me.

He was so happy to be playing with this controller.

Regional Church Golf Tournament

Brett went golfing this last Saturday, playing in the regional church golf tournament. We had 2 different teams from our ward playing. He played with three of his friends from our ward. He plays a couple other sports regularly with them as well. Brett doesn't play golf very often (usually once a year in the annual tournament at work). He has decided that he enjoys it and thinks he needs to take it up as additional sport that he plays regularly (as if he needs another one). Oh wait, that is how he gets his exercise (that's what he claims anyway). They did pretty well, tying for first but losing the tiebreaker.

Brett, Brian Hawkins, Tim Naylor, and Matt Peterson

My Good Little Messy Eater

Nash is such a good little eater. He is my first child who eats anything and everything that I put in front of him . Even Adelie, who loves most things, doesn't eat as well as him. We always put him in this chair while we are eating and he wants to join in with us. He likes baby food or the regular food that we are eating. I have a baby food grinder that my mother-in-law gave to me when Whytli was a baby (she used it with all her kids) and I only used it a couple of times with Whytli and never any other kids. I pulled it out the other day and decided to grind up some of the food we were eating. He LOVED it! I get done feeding him a bottle of baby food and he is still begging for more. He is also so grabby and grabs everything in site and tries to eat it. The other day he knocked over his baby food that was sitting next to him while Brett was feeding him (but was being too slow) so he got impatient and grabbed the spoon himself and started to chow down on it. He knew exactly what to do with it. I decided to let him have a little treat after dinner and gave him his first Oreo cookie. He definitely enjoyed this and when he was finished he started screaming for more when he saw the girls eating theirs.

As you can see from all these pictures he makes a HUGE mess like all babies and we have to give him a bath every night after dinner.

He's a poser like his sisters.

Soccer

Adelie is playing soccer this year for her first time. She was thrilled to be the one playing this year. She gets the privilege to have her uncle Dustin as the coach and her dad as the assistant coach. Her two cousins Kynli and Adriana are on her team. It is fun to watch these little kindergartners play and not really ever make hardly any goals but just kick the ball around. They are all so cute out they playing. She enjoys it so much.

Kynli & Adelie before their game. Adriana was not there yet so we were not able to get a picture with her.

Learning to do Cartwheels

Adelie is learning how to do cartwheels in dance and was told to practice them at home so they can get better. So she came home from dance and told me that we needed to call her aunt Lacey to come help her with the cartwheels. Lacey taught Whytli how to do cartwheels for dance so Adelie decided she was the one for the job. We called Lacey and she came over to help. Lacey made Adelie this little chart that has boxes of 10, 20, 30, & 40 cartwheels each that she has to cross off when she does that many cartwheels. On the chart it reminds Adelie that she needs to keep her arms straight, legs straight, legs in the air, & a strong body. She told her that if she practiced every day she would get them perfect and when she crossed off all the boxes she would get a treat from her. Lacey hired Whytli to help Adelie practice, so she will also get a treat for helping out. What a great aunt.

First Day of Dance

We have started up dance again for the year. This time all the girls are in dance. It is Mallory's first year and she is very excited. I switched to a different dance studio this year and think that I am going to really like it there. This will be their first year taking dance without their cousins but I think it will be good for them to learn to make new friends in dance. It is also a lot closer to home so that makes it nice. The girls really enjoy dance every year and never complain about going. In fact, they complain if they miss dance. Adelie and Mallory are doing tap as well as the other stuff we have usually had so it will be new for us this year. When we bought the shoes for them, Adelie and Mallory were so excited for the tap shoes. Mallory loved them so much she wanted to carry them around with her all day.

Hallie Swenson and Mallory are in the same class. Mallory was really happy to have a friend in her class with her.

I love to watch little 3 year olds trying to dance. They have the shortest attention span but they are so dang cute.

Adelie always is happy to go with the flow and didn't complain one bit that she did not have her 2 best friend cousins in her class this year. When she got there she discovered that she had a friend that was in her dance class and also her kindergarten class.

Whytli is in her first year of a competition team for dance. It is a pre-competition team, which means it is for girls who have never been on a team and it prepares them for a real one that has more competitions. This year she will only be in a couple. This is one of the outfits they have to wear to practice in. She LOVES dance so much and is good to come home and practice everything she has learned. She is getting really good at the splits which is something they have to practice every night. She got her legs all the way down the other night and was really proud of herself.

She is also quite the poser.

Mallory's First Day of Preschool

Today was Mallory's first day of preschool. She is going to my mom's preschool down the street. We weren't going to send her this year because she still has 3 more years before she goes into Kindergarten (plus Brett had several other reason why he didn't want her to go) but, my mom asked me to help her out on the 2 days that she teaches preschool. When we woke up this morning I told her that she was going to go to preschool. She was very excited. I told her that I was going to stay with her and she said, "No!" I replied, "Yes, I will stay with you and help Grandma." She said again, "No, Mom doesn't stay." She told me no several times until she gave up and then proceeded to say, "So you are my mom and my teacher?" I told her yes and she was then OK with me staying. She just wanted to be independent and not have her mom stay with her. She even called me teacher a couple of times. I found that to be quite funny. It was fun to help my mom with the cute little kids in preschool. Three and four-year-olds are such a fun age.

This is her class. She gets to be in it with 3 of her cousins and 2 friends and she will make many more friends I am sure. There are 15 little kids total in her class (7 girls and 8 boys). They are saying the pledge of allegiance here.

State Fair

We went to the State Fair today with some of my family. Brett wasn't there with us because he went to a football game with a friend so unfortunately (luckily he thought) for him he had to miss out on the adventure. It was our first time to the State Fair. I was really looking forward to going and, for some reason, had high expectations. Boy was I disappointed. It wasn't all that cool. The kids enjoyed themselves and I wasn't miserable but it wasn't at all what I expected. It was mostly just a lot of commercial booths and your regular everyday farm animals. There wasn't anything that cool to see. Brett warned me that it would be lame and wondered why I would want to go but I insisted on going. I really hate it that he is always right. Oh well, it was fun to hang out with my family anyway. Afterwards we went to Texas Roadhouse and ate dinner to celebrate my mom's and Rich's birthdays.

The girls are checking out a really big bull.

Some of Angela's family joined us at Texas Roadhouse. It was a lot of fun.

Monday Memories - Witches Night Out (Oct. 2006)

Two years ago Lacey wanted to go with my girls to "Witches Night Out," at Gardener's Village in Salt Lake. They have this for 2 weekend nights in October where everyone dresses up as witches and go shopping, have contests, dancing, hot chocolate, food, etc. So my mother-in-law and I decided we wanted to go as well. We all got dressed up as witches and went. Everyone there goes all out and dresses up as witches. I was surprised at how many people were there, there were TONS of witches. We saw some pretty scary witches there. We had a lot of fun and need to go back again.

Lacey is a lot of fun and crazy! You are always sure to have a fun time when you are with her. My kids love her so much.

Monday Memories - Christmas 2007

So The Captain (aka Janean) is making me make this Monday Memories post because we apparently struck a deal in which I agreed to those terms, so looks like we'll all have to pay the price for her questionable decision. It was supposed to be done this morning but apparently I underestimated just how difficult this blogging thing is with all of the photo work (selection, editing, and associated captions) then coming up with witty and/or cute (mostly cute) written content with the required level of excessive! exclamation! point! use!!! At any rate, I present to you The Probably Mostly Incomplete Account of the Rogers Christmas 2007....


Coke Christmas Party with Santa

Every year Grandma Coke has a Christmas Party at her house and invites Santa Claus. One year Santa may have been a tad on the white trash side and it's also quite possible he was inebriated during his visit. Whatever his social class and intoxication level may have been, he surely made some fairly off-color comments that were fortunately not understood by the children present but not terribly appreciated by the adults. Luckily Santa's been a little more presentable the past few years, showing up with a nice, little old Mrs. Claus a few times then with some elves wearing joker hats this year (guess they were out of elf hats). The kids were prepped beforehand with explicit instructions not to ask Santa for their own laptops because their father would talk to Santa afterwards and tell him to forget about the laptop requests. We already had a couple of laptops kicking around at home and didn't need Santa forking out a bunch of elf time for some more.

And yes, I know I spelled it Grandma Coke - that's what she's known as internally at our house. Well, that's what I call her at least. Sometimes it catches on for short periods of time with the kids too, but usually they just like to argue about it and tell me that's not the right name, which is the main reason that I do it in the first place. Either way it's mission accomplished.

Adelie with her trademark grin while Whytli focuses intently on decorating her cookie (note the tongue sticking out - that's the sign that she's truly focused on the task at hand).

Waiting for Santa to arrive!

Mallory and Santa!

Whytli and Santa!

Adelie and Santa!

Whytli, Cousin Kynli, and Adelie!

Singing songs with Santa (sorry, no more exclamation points from here on out - I know there's not a maximum allowed limitation but I hit the minimum required level at least so I'm done).

Christmas Eve/Day

On Christmas Eve the girls got to open one present which is their traditional set of new pajamas. Then on Christmas Day they got the crap below, in addition to some items not pictured, the most important being a bowl chair thing with accompanying fold-up desk for each of them, to be stationed in their new play room. Brett got some tools (e.g., the drill), probably some new underwear and socks too. Janean got something but I have no recollection of what it was. Might have been new dishes, unless that was the year before.

Great...just what we needed...more Polly Pockets. Have you ever tried to dress/undress one of those things? They're nearly impossible for an adult to manage, let alone a kid.

Whytli desperately wanted the Blendy Pens she'd seen on TV.

A new pink MP3 player like Whytli's for Adelie.

A new drill for the reluctant handyman.

More girl movies for the girls.

Grandma LeeAnn's House on Christmas Day

We went to Grandma LeeAnn's house to open presents and eat a late breakfast. That's all I remember.

The Sweetie got a new pink purse, with which she was tickled pink.

Uncle Beaker gave the girls their names made out of wood. I thought they were pretty sweet and proposed we nail them up above each of their beds in their new room, but Janean quickly shot down that idea, pretty much ruining everyone's Christmas (especially Beaker's since he was so proud of them and had worked so hard, only to be slapped in the face).

And that was Christmas 2007.