Two Wheelin'

So one fine day last week I decided it was time to teach Cait to ride a two wheeler. We had lent our littlest bike to Chris and Lauren last year in exchange for their next size up bike. So we switched back and between general Conference sessions we ran out the front and tossed Caiter onto the bike. She pretty much rocked it!! She couldn't stop smiling and laughing and kept saying 'this is sooo fun'. So that's it - she's 3 1/2 and riding her two wheeler!! What a smart little girls!

I feel like I can claim that my method of learning to bike is the best. I start my kids out on a tricycle until they can pedal that properly. Once they're pedaling like pros I switch them over the a balance bike (around 2 1/2 years old). Then they ride that until I feel like they are getting some good cruising in...and then we break out the legit two wheeler. Since they have experience pedaling and balancing it's such an easy transition! Yay for never buying training wheels!!

It's my Birthday and I'll 'Mom' if I want to!

Everyone kept asking me what I had planned for my Birthday this year...and strangely enough there was nothing planned. It's been an incredible busy fall and ALL I wanted was to not clean up after dinner! That's it. On the actual day of my Birthday the girls had drama club and swimming all afternoon/evening. So I was busy running back and forth between the pool and the school. Then I came home for dinner and thank goodness Ben was taking us out to eat. JUST what I wanted and needed! So my answer to everyone when they asked what I did for my Birthday... Mom stuff. Just Mom stuff. And I'm so happy that I GET to do mom stuff. These 4 girls keep me busy, but I would never want it any differently. I was spoiled still...in fact I feel so grateful to have so many great friends who dropped off treats for me. SO thoughtful!! It makes me feel like I need to step up my Birthday game. And after dinner we came home for presents...and Ben bought me a fancy new blender. I guess he'd been doing his research and had looked seriously at the Vitamix and Blendtec and ultimately decided to buy the relatively unheard of (in North america at least) Omniblend. According to his research it performs equally as well as the other two (if not better) and is significantly cheaper! YAY! I have pretty much been making pina colada's all day every day since I opened the box!

My girls

I really wanted some pictures of my girls together...something nice to remember this stage with. I have lots of little iphone snaps but I wanted something more put together. But once again....baby blues...postpartum hormones...emotions of all sorts all over the place. So the only way to get this done was to wing it on a day when the girls were happy, Nora was cooperating and I was not crying. And the perfect day came up thank goodness last month. So I dug through their closets, found some outfits that would work and we quickly ran down to the river to take some pictures. Oh man...I'm so in love with these girls. Can they honestly get any more perfect???

First Day of School

And here we are...back in School! The girls had lots of fun on their first day. Paige is in Grade 1 this year...which is always a hard transition for me. Suddenly I don't feel like their main source of parenting/child rearing...now they spend more time per day with their teacher than they do with me!! Ahh....but it always works out. And Paige sure loves her teacher and is soooooo thankful to be in her best friend Ava's class again! Lucky girl! Hailey's in grade three!! What?? How is she that old? Seriously! She's such a smart confident little girl that I have no worries about her. She got seperated form her best friend Ava (yep they both have Ava's) this year....but was super excited to see her longtime friend Eden in her class again for the first time since preschool! She has a really fun energetic teacher and I know will excel with him as a teacher! Anyway, I look forward to what this year will bring. I hope Paige can learn to love reading and start to get better and faster at it. I hope Hailey can just continue the path she's on and continue to love learning!

Montana

Nate and Tan invited us to spend a few days with them at their cabin this summer. Their place is inside a beautiful golf resort...and just minutes away from Koocanusa lake. So needless to say we had a ton of fun. We spent a few days at the Beach on the seadoo's and and a few at the gorgeous pool. The kids played games with their cousins all day long and honestly had so much fun. They get along SO well! It was just such a fun easy holiday!

The Dunes

We hit up the dunes again this year. It was sort of a last minute thing. Honestly we just weren't sure if it was the right thing for our family to do. But some of our good friends were going and convinced us to come too. I also remember how healing it was to go there last year after our miscarriage. So maybe it was just what our family needed. In the end it turned out the be a great trip. There were lot's of changes for our family this year. One...we didn't have a machine to ride other than Ben's quad. Which was ok. Even if we did have a machine, Nora was still too young to go in one. So we made do with little individual rides on the quad or we borrowed Bryce's Razr for 2 person rides. Still it was different not being able to get us all out there together. We also couldn't all go caving either because...Nora. Just too little. Which was find by me actually. For how much I LOVED the ice caves last year, I was so tired with a new baby this year that I was fine just sitting back and relaxing. And I did get to do a LOT of that. The kids had a blast! Hailey went out on lots of rides. Paige wouldn't get on a machine other than her trusty pink quad that she rode around camp. Cait got a new helmet and loved testing it out. There were lots of other kids in our group and it was fun for them to always have someone to play with. We spent lots of time at the 'lake' with out huge homemade water slide...and even did some wake boarding around the edges (pulled by a side by side). One of the days there were honestly 20 HUGE sand Rails sitting at the top of the our water slide while their drivers were having fun on the slide. My goal this trip was to bum a ride on a sandrail...and I got lucky this time. Some poor guy gave me, Ezra and Josie a ride around. It was awesome. Like soooo different from driving anything else on the sand. It felt safer and scarier. Just so cool.

Anyway, It was just such a nice trip. I'm glad we went. It was just what our family needed. Something fun...and a little taste of our old quadding life. I feel like it was a good way to get Ben 'back on the horse'...without really getting out riding like he normally does. Sort of a transition back to normal. Which honestly will never be 'normal' again, but we're at least moving in the right direction.