My Birthday Gifts

The first of April I turned 36. WHAAAAT?!?!

(sounds a lot older than 35)

Although Camden didn't TECHNICALLY do this for my bday I consider this a gift to me. He learned how to change diapers! 😆

He started babysitting for a family that had a boy in a nighttime diaper. Camden assured them he knew how to put one on. The kid ended up with it on backwards. So here I am teaching him.

We started with an UN-moving baby and then moved on up. I decided not to overwhelm him with the twin-challenge. ;)

A birthday gift to me would be all of us sitting quietly, watching Conference and taking notes on those inspired words.

Yea, THAT didn't last long. This was more like it.

Because every precious moment with these two is a gift, here's one of those no-personal-space kind of pictures of the girls in the bath.

A gift (and a challenge) is a household of girls who want to be like me. They watch everything I do and that's scary sometimes and I know I don't always do this job justice. But it's sweet when I hear Aleeya talk about wanting to be a mom when she grows up.

This was TECHNICALLY not for my birthday but we got the BEST THING EVER my birthday week. 

Meet the Sasquatch. 

The newest member of the family. #iminLOVE

On my actual birthday Brooks was working and the day was PACKED with games and practices. It was the first time I had six kids that needed to be at 5 different places at the same time.

Happy flipping birthday to me huh.

BUT I bought myself a papaya to muster through it all. MMMM-mmm

Being the taxi driver isn't the tricky part, it's taking Kelly, Everly, Wynn and Iley with me and keeping an eye on them that's tricky. Thankfully I have friendly babies that crawl to strangers to be held.

And I can bribe Aleeya and Iris to keep tabs on Everly/Kellyn for me.....because keeping track of Everly is a job in and of itself!

Three of my friends (Candi, Autumn and Jenn) had a birthday brunch for me as well. Probably the best french toast I've ever had. It literally was a FEAST. 

Oh, and Emerson gave me a container of Tic-Tacs because he said my breath stinks. Nice.

Can we just go back to the Sasquatch for a minute though...... I love LOVE driving that thing. It's SO smooth and gets a LOT better gas mileage than the Yeti did. It's quieter, turns better, has an AC that works and now thanks to Royce it is one window short!

The knucklehead saw the height on the Sasquatch (it's so tall......I mean, I can't even go through any drive-thrus because of the height. haha) and wondered if he could throw the baseball from one side of it to the other.

And in case you are wondering, he can't.

Brooks and I told Royce that he probably will owe us for YEARS for that window in jest. Then Brooks said he had to vaccuum up all the broken glass. Royce cocked his head to the side and with his mischevious grin asked, "Can you pay me a dollar if I vaccuum up all the glass?" #facepalm

And no, he didn't get paid!

Award to the Winners!

St. Patrick's Day Award:

Since the boys were all gone on St. Patrick's Day we had our Annual Jellybean Race a week later.

The first heat was Royce and Iris

Iris won

Aleeya vs. Emerson

(quite the pose Emerson..... apparently it helped because he won)

Everly and Kellyn moved the jellybean all of 4 inches before they realized it wasn't worth the effort and ate them.

Camden and Bronson

Surprisingly, Bronson won.

Now the winners battled it out. Iris with the head start and hands down STILL was no competition for Emerson's skills

(Note the box on the right with clothes hanging out. That's as good as it gets folks. THOSE are the boys' Sunday clothes. They come out of the laundry room and sit in that box until Sunday morning because I hate hunting down their clothes. And yes, this rec-room area IS infact Bronson's bedroom. No privacy for that kid!)

Camden's goal in life is to photo-bomb my pics. I have to say he nailed it this time..... the start of the finals....Emerson vs. Bronson

AND THE WINNER IS EMERSON!!!!!!

The prize? He picked to go eat at Golden Corral. No surprise there.

These next two outings get the awards for the Best Girl-time of the Month.

1)Beauty and the Beast with friends

As much as they liked the movie I think Iris still liked the escalators more.

Aaaaaaaaaaand 

2) General Women's Conference with Aleeya. 

Dinner at Subway first 

We got DRENCHED running into Subway and later to the church!

Here we are at the church before it starts.

Adventure Award:

Goes to Miss Iley May...... who is a climber, and would rather climb on top of her sister's high chair to eat HER food. 

Character Award:

as always, goes to Kellyn

Cuteness award:

kind of a given, right?

Sneakology Award:

This is the ACTUAL certificate Brooks presented to Bronson at the dinner table

He was awarded this for walking a few miles to a phone store with Camden, buying a phone and effectively hiding it from Brooks and I for a month w/o us catching him. Impressive.