Keric's 2 Year Check Up

Tuesday was Keric's 2 year check up with Dr. Baar, and he passed with flying colors! :)

Height/Length : 34.5in - 54%
Weight: 26.88lbs - 36%
Head Circumference : 19.7in - 83%


We are still standing by the big head = lots of brains theory! He's still kind of a little guy, but he is doing all the things a 2 year old should be doing, and even a few things that 2 years olds still don't do, like saying phrases and putting words together! Yea Bubby! No more "Baby Resource" jokes for you! ;)

He did have to get two shots, which he was FAR from happy about! I think he screamed for a good 10 mins, but the good news is that he won't be getting anymore shots until Kindergarten and he doesn't need anymore mandatory check-ups until he's three! If this year goes by as fast as last year did, he'll be in that Dr.'s office again like next week! :)

This is also a scrapbook layout I did with one of the pictures Daddy took before Bubby had his shots.



Poor little dude.

Keric's 2nd Birthday

I still can't believe that my "baby" is two years old!

This year Keric's birthday fell on a Monday, so we decided to have his birthday party on Sunday to make it easier for people to be here. My original plan was for Keric to have a Handy Manny birthday party since he loves Manny so much, but finding Handy Manny birthday decorations is next to impossible so we instead opted for a "Ba Bob" aka Sponge Bob party. Keric doesn't love Ba Bob like he loves Manny, but some days when I can't take one more episode of Manny, he will watch an episode or two of Sponge Bob. He knows who he is, and is always quick to point him out whenever we are in a store or someplace that has Sponge Bob.




I was bound and determined to make Keric's cake this year, but the more I thought about it the more I felt bad for Keric. How fair is it that Cameron and Reagan get these professional Cake Boss/Ace of Cakes looking cakes and Keric's cake looks like crap! So I told Chris that I wanted to help with the cake, but basically all I did was make the cake, Chocolate cake with cream cheese filling, and Chris did all the rest. Oh well...at least I can say I did a part of it, even if it was only about 1/8 of the work!






We had everyone come over for dinner and cake and ice-cream. Since Keric's favorite meal is McDonald's Happy Meals so we couldn't really have his "favorite" for dinner, so we did BBQ'd chicken, baked potatoes, salad, and rolls.

After dinner we had the kids go outside where we had a Sponge Bob Pinata for the kids to whack. Poor Bubby didn't quite know what to do with it, but they all seemed to have fun with it.










After each kid got about 5 turns we decided it was time for Daddy and Uncle Jon to break it, so they played baseball with it, and finally got the dumb thing to break! haha!




We came in and opened presents and had cake and ice-cream. Handy Manny was well represented in the present department, along with some much needed clothes and other fun toys. He was very spoiled to say the least!





On his actual birthday we did a few little things for him too. Chris has this tradition that he does with the kids that he calls "The Holy Mess". He fills their bedrooms with balloons the night before their birthday so that they wake up to a huge mess of balloons. This isn't exactly my favorite tradition but the kids love it, so I go along with it...most of the time. Blowing up 120+ balloons to throw all over the floor just really isn't quite fun to me yet. I am more thinking about all the popped balloons I am going to have to clean up!



When Keric woke up he was a little scared of all the balloons in his room, but when I got him out of his bed and played with the balloons for a little while, he got really excited and started jumping in them and throwing them in the air. It was cute.

He got a left over piece of birthday cake after lunch, and then he took a little nap before we went to pick up Cam and Reag from school.

After we picked up Cam and Reag we drove up to Thanksgiving Point to the Dinosaur Museum. I had never been there before. When we got out of the car Keric saw the HUGE dinosaur on the front of the building and started jumping around in the parking lot and making "Roar" sounds. It was kind of funny.

The museum was actually really cool, and for the most part pretty kid friendly. It didn't have the stuffy museum feel to it and no one looked at us in disgust for walking in with three kids! :)




I didn't feel overly anxious that they were going to break something or touch something that they shouldn't be touching. They even had a couple places especially for kids. One place was filled with sand and water that they could play with Dinosaurs in and then they also had a little pretend dig site that they could go in and find dinosaur bones. Despite all of the running up and down the ramps in the museum, Keric was actually really good.























After the Museum we drove on into Provo and went to Los Hermano's for dinner. I LOVE that place and we hadn't been there in forever. In fact I think we decided the last time we were there was when we drove to Provo so I could look for brides maid dresses for our wedding! Hopefully it wont be that long before we go again. :)

We told the waiter that it was Keric's birthday, and he brought him a bowl of fried ice-cream, which he LOVED, but they didn't sing to him or anything. He said he was afraid it would scare Keric, which is probably true, so we just all told him Happy Birthday and let him dig into his ice-cream.




We got home kind of late, and of course all the kids were beat.





No one argued about having to get their jammies on and go to bed.

It was a little hard for me to see my "baby" turn two. No longer will I say he is X-months old...now it is just a number year old. He doesn't have any more "well baby" check ups and "baby" look is totally gone. He is no longer my "baby" (just ask him if he's a baby...) he is my big/little boy.

But he sure is a SWEET big/little boy and oh how I love him! :)




I love you Bubby! I hope you had a very happy 2nd birthday!

Mother's Day

I am so behind in my blog posting! I have been wanting to post about Mother's day for a week now, and have just never gotten it done! So before it gets skipped over with all of Keric's birthday festivities, I better get it done!

Chris always goes all out on Holidays and usually I end up feeling totally not worthy of all the attention by the time the day is over, Mother's Day was no exception!

He got up early and made me breakfast. He made Crepes with apple's, cherries, and a chocolate crepe with just whip cream in it. Then he also did chocolate milk and Dr. Pepper. :) Yes the Dr. Pepper is unusually small. It's like the size of one of those little V8 can's that you used to see. It's 7.5 oz. That was another one of my Mother's day presents. An 8 pack of tiny Dr. Peppers. Chris called them emergency Dr. Peppers, because they are small enough to fit in my purse! :) I may or may not have put one in my purse.....



While I slept, he and the kids were downstairs helping with breakfast and making me cards.

They were all so cute when they came in my room. Chris led the pack with breakfast, and then each kid followed behind him holding a shoe box. I am so sad I didn't get a picture of it! It was one of those times I really wished I had a couple more kids, then I would have had a couple more pairs of shoes! ;)

After I opened all my shoe boxes and cards and ate my yummy breakfast, we all hurried around and got ready for church. Church was nice, all the men took over all of the women's callings for the day so everyone got to go to Relief Society. It had been awhile since I had gone, and it was kind of nice, but I sort of missed Young Women I have to admit. I guess they are more on my maturity level or something? :)

We came home from church and all took naps! (YEA! My favorite part of Sunday) and then we went to Matt and Denise's house for dinner.

It took me most of the night to get to talk to my OWN Mom, but I finally got to talk to her around 9:00 p.m. I guess that's what happens when you have 7 kids, if you aren't right on top of the calling, you end up being the last one to finally get through!

It was a very nice day and I am thankful for such a great family and for such a great day! Now I just have to figure out what the heck to do for Father's Day!! :)

2 Year Old Pictures

I am still having a really hard time believing/accepting that my "baby" is turning two in just a couple of very short weeks! I am very obviously the only one having a hard time with this since my "baby" himself points out other kids his own age, younger and sometimes even OLDER than he is as "baby" but when I call him my baby he says "no". I suppose he is right. Some days I swear he is just too dang smart for his own good!

I try to get his pictures taken about every 6 months or so, and I especially like having them done around his birthday, so as the big day got closer and closer I was trying to decide where to get his pictures done. The last few times I have gone to Sears and have been less than happy with what I have gotten for the prices I have paid. They usually only spend about 15 mins with us, and then come out and show me about 5 decent pictures which end up being extremely over priced! So this year I decided against Sears!

We had such great success with our Christmas pictures that I decided to bug my friend Christel again and see if she would be willing to snap a few pictures of Keric for me. She says she's not a photographer and that she just does it for fun, but I beg to differ. The pictures she has done for us have been amazing! Lots better than the Sears "photographers" have done! :)

Luckily she agreed to take some pictures of Keric for me. Despite that fact that he was totally naughty the whole time she was really patient with him, and really good to work with him! We went to three different places to get pictures, and she even brought him some balloons and candy for bribes. :) He LOVED the balloons, but sadly he let them go after about 4 pictures. She even brought him a balloon afterwards since he had let them go.

Yet again I was totally shocked at how many GOOD pictures she got of him. You would think by looking at them that he was a perfect little angel doing everything she asked him to do, but trust me, he was far from that! I would have been happy with one or two good pictures honestly!

So here is Bubby's first photo shoot. If it looks like he has something in his mouth it's because he does! A bag of Skittles can go a LONG way when you are trying to get a little boy to sit down and STAY! :)
















Thank you again Christel! You are amazing!! I can't wait for out next photo shoot with you! :)

Good Intentions

What's the saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions?" Well I guess I know which road I am headed down, because I seem to have a LOT of good intentions!

This one was just the latest.



About a month or so ago I bought this dumb little $5 duck at Wal-Mart to put on the faucet of the bathtub in the kids bathroom. Keric had started playing with the faucet and pulling the little knob up and turning the shower on, so I thought I had found a cheap way to "fix" my problem, plus I thought it was kinda cute.

When Cameron and Reagan were here and would shower, they would turn the duck upside down so they could get to the little knob thing. I originally thought that the little fireman's hat was there so that you could lift it up and pull the knob, but it wasn't. So they would shower, and then when Keric would take his bath, I would turn the duck back around.

About the time that I had my surgery Chris noticed some water damage in our ceiling. It was in a weird place though. It was above the stairs and almost in the living room. Not a real logical place. Chris thought it was a leak in the roof, but I was up on the roof with him when he replaced it, and I knew there was no way there was a place where that thing could leak, unless it was a spot that I did. By the end of the day however the water in the ceiling had seemed to dry up and it didn't look like it was a problem anymore.

I didn't think too much about it again until a couple weeks later when Reagan came downstairs for breakfast and said that the ceiling had water coming out of it. Sure enough, there was water in the same place, except this time the water really was dripping out. So we cleaned it up and Chris called a plumber.

I watched the leak all day long and it seemed to have dried up again. It only leaked in the morning, and we had been having lots of snow/rain that day, so I knew it couldn't be the roof.

Chris called me from work to tell me that the plumber would be coming later in the afternoon, and that he would be coming home early to meet with him. He asked me if I thought there was any way that the leak could be related to the duck. I thought he was crazy. How in the world could that leak have anything to do with the duck?!? He told me his theory and said the only common thing he could find between when the leaks happened and when they didn't was the duck. I was sure the plumber would have a better explanation than that!

So that afternoon the plumber came over and Chris mentioned his duck theory to him. Sure enough the plumber tells Chris that he is probably right and that what we needed to do was get rid of the duck, and wait a couple weeks and see if the leak stopped. After the plumber left I told Chris that the guy was nuts! I told him he would have never come up with that theory on his own, and he just told us that it was the duck because he didn't want to do any investigating! I was pretty ticked off that we had even bothered calling him. Thankfully he didn't charge us!

Well...if you know my husband you know two things. 1. He fully believes that if someone else is able to do something, he himself can do some research and learn how to do it also. Thus the reason he did the roof himself, is doing the basement himself, and does any and all other household repairs himself. The fact that he called a plumber about shocked me to death! 2. He is all about FACTS! He isn't going to believe something unless it can and is proven to him. So waiting two weeks to see if the leak dried up was not a good enough answer for him. He wanted to know what the cause was.

So that's what he did. He started taking the fixtures off the bathtub and looking for water behind them. No water. Then he decided to get out the big guns...the saws. I tried not to freak out too badly, but I wanted to cry when I saw him cut a hole in the wall, and then he cut two and then there were three! Granted they are very nicely cut holes, but they are HOLES!




He did some checking and feeling around inside the walls and found out that the sheet rock was pretty much soaked thus meaning the leak was definitely coming from the bathroom, and not the roof. Of course he still didn't have the answer he was looking for, because now that he knew where it was coming from he still needed to know how it had/was happening.

He did a whole bunch of experimenting with filling the bathtub, and draining this and doing that, but nothing seemed to be producing any sort of a "leak".

He put the duck back on the faucet and tested a few more things, and then took it off and tested some more things. He turned it upside down, like the kids do in the morning, and still...we could not see or understand where there was enough water coming out of the duck to cause this much water damage.

So he had about given up and decided maybe the waiting two weeks and seeing what happened was not such a bad idea.

Just about that time Chris headed downstairs. I was in the bathroom and the duck was still turned over, the water still running. That's when he realized that his theory was right! He saw tons of water coming down the inside of the walls through the holes he had just cut!

I hurried and turned the water off and then we both just kinda sat there totally dumb founded! What in the world had happened!?!

Well...I guess what was happening was the duck being turned over was forcing water back through the faucet and it had no where to go except for down the walls and into the ceiling!

That STUPID duck has now cost me way more than $5! So needless to say the duck is gone, never to return and we haven't had any more leaks since then!