A little bit cat obsessed

This week has been pretty much all things CAT.

Nigel is fitting in just wonderfully - we think he's a GREAT kitty! The kids wear him out every day, and I think he LOVES IT!

Reagan calls him "my cat" or "Nige". It's not uncommon for her to scream his name when he's not in sight.




Jordan races home from school to scoop him up for an afternoon nap in his lap.



The dog is adjusting.

Jordan's Last Soccer Game

Still so behind and trying to play catch up....


Jordan had his last soccer game of the season. I can't even begin to tell you how much he likes soccer... and it's SUCH a good outlet for all of his ENERGY!!!


The team:
Silly boys:
"The End" (thanks for that, Jordan....)

Nigel is HOME!

We were able to pick up Nigel last night! His mama and sister are living at my parents house, so we stayed over there for a bit to "play". We got home late, so it was off to bed for the kids... and Nigel!

We're keeping his food and litter box down in the laundry room. Since he's unfamiliar with everything here, we decided to move his bed down there too - so everything was right there for him.

Brian had a little "night light" for him and everything... we tucked him in, said good night and we were off to bed.

He was unhappy for about 2 minutes... (man, this cat can MEOW!!!) But he settled right down and didn't make a peep the entire rest of the night!




When I checked on him this morning, he was laying in his little bed, and totally excited to see me. He has the loudest purrr ever.

He's spent the morning exploring his new home, and the kids are totally IN LOVE with him. He's been GREAT! He likes lots of attention, and with the 4 kids, it's easy to get enough of it. (Aren't his markings just so pretty??? er... HANDSOME?)



Welcome home little Nigel!

Madison's Dance Performance

Madison has waited WEEKS to have her final dance performance. She asked daily how much longer she had to wait. Well, FINALLY, we had our dance revue on Friday May 16th. She was so excited ALL DAY LONG!!!



She had two dance numbers, plus the finale. I need to get photos of her in her other costume - I only have her in her "duck dance" one. (Which, by the way, Stacie made the duck costumes and won first place in the costume competition! Way to go Stacie!!!!)

Madison and her cousin, Lauryn:



(I had to put the videos in my smilebox account... for some reason, blogger wouldn't let me upload them... so there is a bit of a delay since you have to open them this way, but still worth it in my opinion... *winks*)

Dancing Duck:

The Circus is for me:

I think we have a name!

Our kitten (who will be home in just a week or so... YIPPEE!!!) has a name!

We narrowed it down to THREE:



Figaro
Oliver
and Nigel


He just doesn't look like a Figaro to me...

Oliver was last on Brian's favorites, but first on mine...

But the more I look at his sweet little face, the more he looks like a NIGEL to me. (I have to admit... I was sad that Brian didn't like Oliver that much, but I now think Nigel is the purrrr-fect choice! *winks* )




Madison is already dancing around the house saying "I can't wait until Little Nigel comes home!"

Speaking of the name... Do you like it better spelled the traditional way? (Nigel) Or the *different* way? (Nygel)

Current Photos

You've seen their baby pictures a few posts down...

Here they are NOW! (As in, these pictures were taken today!)


Taylor, 9 years old
Jordan, 6 years old
Madison, 4 years old
Reagan, 19 months old

Another finished baby quilt

I'm so excited for these "neighbors" to have their sweet little boy! (They've waited so long!)

Here's the card (thanks for the use of the Cricut Stacie!!!)




And the quilt:

Cat names

We are (hopefully) getting a Bengal Kitten in the next 4-6 weeks.

It's a boy...
He's the runt...
And we have no name ideas as of yet.

Suggestions?

Here's a picture my sister took of him at the breeders home... (I want my kitty HERE!)

My, how they change...

Taylor at 3 Months:



Jordan at 4 months

Madison at 3 months




Reagan at 2 months


Why did they all grow up so quickly?

Chicken Coop

We (and when I say "we", I mean Brian...) have been working on our chicken coop today!

No photos of the actual coop (since the camera is STILL MIA...) but since I haven't posted pics of our chickens yet, here they are when they were babies!





They are SO much bigger now... I can't wait to either find our stupid camera or get a new one to post photos of them!

Hooray for chicken coop progress though! Another couple of evenings and it should be DONE! :)

My Madi

Madison just turned 4 the end of February, but she's already talking about being FIVE.

"I'll help clean the house when I'm 5, not when I'm 4. It really is a 5 year olds job."

"My legs are hurting because my body just can't WAIT to be FIVE!!!"

"Do 5 year olds get to go to dance AND karate AND soccer AND girl scouts?"

"4 year olds try new things, but 5 year olds eat more vegetables."

Still can't find the camera

I'm worried that maybe the camera was thrown away.... Reagan doesn't throw a lot of things in the garbage, but it DOES happen on occasion. I can't seem to find the camera anywhere!!!

Since I don't like to blog without photos, it's gotten boring around here.

However! I found some old photos from my Mom's memory card -

Here are Grandma and Reagan feeding the chickens!

Taylor Turns NINE

Okay, so this is way late... but I was hoping to find my camera to take a great picture of my NINE YEAR OLD!!! (Still can't find it!)

Taylor didn't have a party this year. Instead, Brian was able to do a "side job" and earn enough money to buy the kid a Wii.

He was so excited! He wasn't expecting it though, and was a big shocked that he actually got it!

Taylor asked us to take him out to dinner... just him, Mom and Dad. He didn't want to choose where, he just wanted to go somewhere with "atmosphere" and someplace that he could order off the "adult menu". (No kids meals!)

We decided to take him to Tepanyaki. H LOVED watching them make our food right there on the table.

I snatched my mom's camera when we dropped off the other kids, but her battery died! I only was able to snap a few photos.





I can't believe I have a NINE YEAR OLD!!!

He is SUCH an amazing kid... Honest. I couldn't be prouder of him! He is so helpful, so cheerful, and just delightful to be around. He is a fantastic student and loves to learn.

We're SO LUCKY to have him!

Bear for the evening

Each of the kindergarten students get to take home a stuffed "bear" for one night. Then, they are supposed to write what the did with the bear and take it back the next day.

The kids are able to share with the class what "exciting" thing the bear got to do with them.

Brian called "grandpa" and they took Jordan and the bear on the backhoe.



(Pictures bad due to the fact that I can't find the camera anywhere... Brian had to take them with his phone... ugh!)

Jordan had me write this for what he did with the bear:

"I took the bear on the tractor with grandpa. It almost tipped over! It was SUPER FUN!"

Then we sent him with the photos to show the class.

Jordan took great care of the bear all day yesterday. He really didn't let it leave his side. He ate dinner with it, watched tv with it... just took great care. Brian said that as they were driving home from the backhoe Jordan said "Mrs. Lyons said if I take really good care of the bear something special will happen!"

I'm excited to find out when he gets home exactly what that is!!! ;)

The shortest distance between two points...

It's a wonder that the boys make it to the bus on time.

This was their path today, and who knows what it was up the street...

Pick up and throw the Frisbee off the ground, kick the hula-hoop, run toward the slide, pass by the bike left out...

THEN we're on our way to the bus stop!


(Not thrilled that is snowed yet again, but LOVED the little footprints in the snow that show the shortest distance between two points MAY be a straight line... but it's not near as fun as running all over the place.)

"Get Well" poster

We live in an awesome neighborhood. Sometimes I just don't fit in because I'm not NEAR as thoughtful as the the people I live by.

Jordan's friend brought this over yesterday. I thought it was so sweet!


"Jordan - We heard you were doing *twix* and *rolo*-ed off the slide! Sorry we're such *airheads* and didn't get you this sooner. We need you back on the bus cuz we're the *3 musketeers* at our stop! When you are back it will be *PayDay* for us! Hugs and *kisses* - Sam

He's doing much better, and was back on the bus today.

What nice people I'm surrounded by - I'm so lucky!!!

Transitions

Reagan is making a great transition from "baby" to "2 year old".

Yes, I know she won't be 2 until October, but the last couple of weeks have been filled with temper tantrums and brat attacks.

Yesterday she was MAD and tired. She was hitting and scratching me and so I put her in "baby time out". (Basically I just didn't want to hold her while she was having an attitude.)

She was SCREAMING. (No passing out though!) And it was FUNNY. I caught the tail end of it on video. She's so tired she has to take a break to yawn in the middle.

It would have been nice to get the whole thing to see ALL the drama, but the end of the brat attack is great as well.





She fell asleep about 2 minutes afterward.

In other exciting Reagan news, she stayed with a neighbor of mine while I took Taylor and Jordan to the Dr. on Friday. It was her choice to stay even. I asked her if she wanted to go to the Dr. Her Reply was "NOOOOOO!!!" So I said "you can stay here with Lucy and Madison". She was hesitant, but it was a better option then the dr's! Apparently she did great too! (Church nursery is another story... maybe I need to ask her if she wants to go to the Dr on Sunday's)

Concussion!

Poor Jordan!

He took a nice spill off a slide onto concrete at our place yesterday. Ended up with a concussion!

This is an hour after the accident:




He slept for several hours before he woke up. He was pretty disoriented.

It was at about 8:00 that he started throwing up, and we were out the door to the hospital.

After talking to a nurse, we ended up bringing him home and watching him all night. We would wake him up every two hours to ask him questions, and make sure his condition wasn't worse.

This is what he looked like this afternoon, after another dr. visit:



He's doing a lot better, but he's confused about what day it is.

His head is hurting and he's dizzy, but I can't give him any pain meds that might "mask" the symptoms of the concussion.

Poor little thing!!!

Not much to blog about....

So we'll do a quick update:

Reagan has double ear infections AGAIN... she seems to get ear infections every time she's teething. Thankfully, most of her teeth are in! We shouldn't have to deal with this much longer!

Madison went on her first ever field trip and I think riding on the bus was the best part! I didn't even think about taking the camera with me though, so no photo documentation. She got to take a lunch and everything. She had a BLAST.

Jordan had a field trip today to the Children's Museum. He wishes he could live there.

Taylor is still busy with scouts, piano, and being a Mr. smarty pants at school. He also loves taking "adult food" for lunch to make his classmates jealous. They say things like "awww man! All I got was a pb&j sandwich!!!" as he sits there eating "leftovers" from dinner the night before. I need to find a good Bento box for next year... then we can get REALLY creative with lunches... ;)

I'm just "normal" mom...

Brian's just "normal" dad this week...

And just to clarify... we did NOT go to Arby's for our anniversary. I wanted to take Brian to Park City for the day, but he had too much homework. :( We DID have a great time "around town"... we went shopping at Tai Pan Trading and then over to Gardner Village... Then we ate dinner there at Archibalds. It was nice to just "hang out" together. :)

Back soon when Reagan isn't so time consuming! :)