Preschool Graduate

Graduate Dill

Dillan graduated from preschool on May 21st. He is so excited to start kindergarten in the fall and ride the bus. I think he’s mostly excited about the bus. He is such a smart little guy! If I would make more time with him I think I could have him reading before he starts kindergarten. He loves books and can even pick out some simple words. Heck, he’s almost teaching himself! He really loved his preschool teacher, Mrs. Clark, and it was an added bonus that he got to go to preschool with his cousin Keifer. It was so funny that they could spend all day together at the babysitters and then still be excited to get to go to school with each other. Those two get along so well!

Cousin Keifer & Dillan at their graduation.

Back to the blogging!

Well,  I have been out of the blogging world for quite awhile now!  2 and 1/2 months to be exact.  Sometimes it just seems like there are things in your life which completely consume you for a time and you’re so intensely focused you can’t think about anything else.  I’ve kinda been there for awhile now.  Hopefully starting broaden my horizons again a little bit.  Anyway… time for an update on a few things the family has had going on and pictures. 

This was Sydnie’s cake that my mom made.  It turned out really cute with the fondant.  Cute, but the fondant is really almost to sweet to eat.  Mom has really been into the cake decorating and making all her grandkid’s birthday cakes.

Sydnie had a fun party with a few friends.  They had a fun time.  What crazy sweet girls! 

Sydnie is 12!  Starting Young Women now!  That just can’t be possible can it?

 

  

 

Hayley had a big dance competition in Idaho Falls in March.  They did really well and got a big trophy for their dance studio.  I loved their cute costumes.  Their score qualified them to go to competition in Lagoon this summer which they are all really excited about.

 

 

 

This isn’t that great of a picture of Syd’s DARE graduation but you can tell at least that she was able to get her diploma from her dad. 

 

 

 

 

This was Hayley’s birthday cake from her 10th birthday last week.  Cake courtesy of Grandma Kathy of course.  This time with frosting ’cause Hayley did not want to eat fondant as she informed her grandmother.  She got to go bowling with a few friends and mom which was fun.  They had pizza and cake and Hayley got a bowling pin which her friends helped decorate. 

 

 

More cute crazy friends.  I’m glad my kids have such good friends!

Ice Skating

 

 

 

 

 

 

We took the family ice skating for Family Home Evening on Monday.  Man, I shoulda wore some long underwear or something!  I was frozen by the time I left!  Got a few pictures to share.  Dillan actually finally got the hang of it by the time we were done.  Now everyone is asking when they get to go again!  Dave was the picture taker since he’s not really fond on being on slick ice with just little blades underneath you.  Besides the ice was pretty rough, not the smooth glossy ice you see at ice skating shows and competitions.  And really, I do know how to ice skate even though it looks like I am about to fall down in these pictures!

Weekend and Other Happenings

Friday was my Grandma Kirkham’s memorial service.  This was done in addition to the graveside service we already had on the 25th of November (I think it was).  I got the privilege of writing up a brief life history of Grandma for the service.  I was so happy to do it even though it made me miss her a lot.  I have a lot of regret that I didn’t do this before.  I have thought for a long time that I needed to go out and talk with Grandma and Grandpa about their lives and any stories or memories they could share.  I really wish I’d done that with Grandma.  I should listen better to those promptings!

It was also great to have Kim and Wendee come from Wyoming in spite of the sad circumstances.  Wendee stayed at our house and I really enjoyed getting to talk with her!  I haven’t seen her for what seems like forever.  Her girls, Bailee and Taylor (don’t know if I’m spelling their names right) are so cute and my girls loved having them here to play with.  It was great to have so much of the cousins and family here at my house Friday night.  We had tons of pizza (a reminder to me that my mom always tends to think we need more food than we do), and we sat and visited and the kids played.  Again – where the heck was my camera!  I’ve really got to get in the mode of having it out and around more often. 

Here are my girls with Wendee’s girls – all still in their PJs.  Dillan also got to spend most of the day Saturday with Kim’s son Nicholas.  He and Dillan are about the same age and play really well together.  But of course I didn’t get a picture of them.  All that stuff going on all weekend and I took two pictures just before Wendee left!  What cute kids they all are!

My mom and the girls and I went to see the Nutcracker at the Idaho Falls Colonial Theater on Saturday night.  Hayley, my dancer girl, loved it!  She just kept looking at me and saying “that was amazing Mom!”  It was pretty cool and amazing when the professional dancers came on.  The production was a mixture of a local ballet school with some guest dancers from Utah Regional Ballet.  It was, however, definitely the consensus that we didn’t really like the “men in tights”.  We all enjoyed it, but Sydnie and I kinda missed having some singing or talking instead of dancing only.

Broken Bones

We can’t seem to go more than a year the past 3 or so years without any broken bones at our house.  And they’ve mostly been just dumb things!  3 1/2 years ago Hayley broke her arm jumping from the couch onto a stool she fell on when it turned over.  About 2 months after that Sydnie fell off some monkey bars and broke her arm.  2 1/2 years ago I tripped on the stairs in the balcony at the swimming pool at BYUI and slammed my hand into the railing and broke it.  Then last spring I fell while I was working on building the new house and broke my foot.  So this year was the kids’ turn again.  Hayley was doing cartwheels in her ROOM and hit her foot on the desk and didn’t break her foot, but chipped a little piece of bone off of it.  Then three weeks ago Sydnie fell (she’s so embarrassed but I’m telling anyway) off the back of the couch because she was dressed up in her old cheerleader costume and was twirling around on the top back of the couch.  My visiting teacher was here as a witness that she wasn’t a victim of child abuse!  I think the community care people are starting to look at me funny!  Everyone keeps asking me if my kids drink enough milk.  I think 4 gallons a week is plenty.  I just need some sort of klutz proof medicine!

Digital Scrapping

I have always wanted to try digital scrapbooking.  I got a nice new Canon Pixma printer on Saturday (early birthday present) and decided to play.  It makes really good photo prints, but I wonder how expensive.  I mean buying the photo paper ended up being 20 cents for per 4X6 not to mention the cost of the ink.  So unless I really need a photo for something I think I’ll stick with Snapfish and Shutterfly.  Anyway… I have had Photoshop Elements for awhile, but not really done anything with it.  I found a cool website with digital papers and elements and downloaded one of their free sample kits at www.shabbyprincess.com.  Way cute!  To make a long story short this is what I came up with.  I should have typed in the journal box but I’ll have to add that by hand this time. 

I am looking forward to playing some more.  I don’t know that I’d ever go total digital ’cause it’s kinda flat and I feel like I need some dimension and texture.  I may do pages that are a little of both. 

I am taking a free on-line class this week called Stories In Hand by Jessica Sprague at www.jessicasprague.com.  I’ll probably post some of the stuff we do.  We are creating an 6X6 album as part of the project.  If you’re interested you can join the class until Monday at midnight.

Don’t ya just love free stuff!

More Halloween

I take way too many pictures at Halloween!  My collection of Halloween pictures is huge and I’ve probably scrapbooked pictures of Halloween more than anything else!  Here are some pictures of the kids in their costumes and having fun carving pumpkins.  We also did Halloween “gingerbread” houses this year too.

Stoddard Family Halloween Feast

Several years ago Dave’s mom (and I think with some help from sister Lecia) started a tradition of the Halloween feast.  It was a huge hit and something we all looked forward to each year.  Vicky and I decided that even though Mom wasn’t with us anymore we were going to carry on the tradition.  We had it at my house this year and had lots of fun food.  That’s one of the big things is to have scary or gross food on the table.  Like – mummy dogs, monster meat burgers, bat eyes (olives), frog eggs (grapes), swamp weeds (salad) with goblin goo (ranch dressing with green food coloring)… anyway you get the picture.  Some years Grandma did an activity or craft and some years we carved pumpkins.  This year the kids just played and enjoyed the nice weather outside.  Then they dressed up for pictures and we visited Great Grandma and Grandpa Stoddard.  This was another part of the tradition to visit some of the great grandparents before Halloween so we all didn’t have so many places to go on Halloween.

Braces

Hayley went in to the orthodontist on Monday morning on got braces on her top front 4 teeth.  She had to have them because there isn’t enough room for the rest of her permanent teeth to come in, so we gotta move ’em closer together.  I think she expected for it to be an awful experience, but decided it wasn’t as terrible as she imagined.  The orthodontist also said somewhere down the road if her teeth still don’t have enough room to come in he may have to make some more by pulling some teeth!  Who woulda thought the kid had a small mouth?  So we hope she’ll grow into the big mouth we all thought she was ’cause it doesn’t sound fun to pull those teeth!

Dillan’s Star Wars Birthday

Dillan loves Star Wars like crazy!  He is always wanting to watch the movies, play lightsabers, and is always humming all the theme music – so funny!  For his 5th Birthday we decided to make it a Star Wars theme.  He had a Star Wars “hot lava” cake (he called it) which he picked out from some ideas on the internet.  All his presents from Mom and Dad were Star Wars toys.  He got some figures and a really cool Galactic Heroes Millenium Falcon which he has played with non-stop since he got it.  He got a lot of fun stuff and it seemed more like Christmas he was so spoiled!  Mom and Dad just can’t believe he’s 5!

(And yeah… I cut Anakin’s head off in the picture and ObiWan is sinking into the chocolate cake… like Hayley said when I didn’t have the right food coloring, and frosting and was stressing about it… it doesn’t have to be perfect mom.  I wish I could remember that more often!)