Malia's 9!

And just like that she's 9!  It seems like this summer's events have been mainly birthday celebrations. We have eaten a lot of cake, sang a lot of "Happy Birthday to you's" and wrapped lots of presents. We love these little spirits that have helped shaped our family.  They each bring something unique to our crazy group and I love each and everything they bring, even if it's hard to deal with sometimes.  This little girl's love for everyone is awesome.  She loves to be with people and trying to get her to leave her friends can be somewhat of a challenge but I love that she wants to be with others all of the time.

Right before her birthday she had been bugging me to get her hair cut and McKenzie has been wanting to practice on people so we said why not.  If it's really bad, she'll have a very short cut (which is what she wanted in the first place)  Kenz did great, a couple of non-noticeable things but overall she did awesome.  Malia loved it as well which was most important.

 She requested a two layer blue and yellow cake.  So that's what she got.

 Love this girl.  She's always there to brighten your day!

Golden Birthday! Masie's 4 on the 4th!

Our little cheeser turned 4 this year.  Her little personality is sure starting to shine through that cute little smile.  Having her birthday on a major holiday has always brought for interesting celebrations but they have always been fun.  She really wanted to have a balloon fight so I bought that amazing quick filling balloons and had at it in the back yard.  She was in heaven.  Of course we had pancakes, opened presents and then got ready for the day.

 Some friends invited us over for a Bbque and a little celebration.

 We hung out and played games and chatted and then headed down to a nearby baseball field to watch the fireworks.  It was a perfect view without the mess of the crowds.

 Happy birthday to this spunky firecracker of a 4 year old.  Our family wouldn't be the same without you!

Last Day of School 2016-We have another Graduate!

Yes it's true!  One more has graduated from elementary school!  Micah is officially a Middle Schooler, not sure how that happened.  He is really excited to be done with elementary school and onto bigger and better things.  He is such a hard worker and loves to learn. 

 Mrs. Bentson was a great transition teacher for Micah.  Moving after school started is always hard on everyone, but we were fortunate to have some awesome teachers help with the transition and she was one of them.

Malia loved Mr. Eckoff.  He was great and really knew how to keep her on task.  She is our little social butterfly that gets easily distracted by her friends.  He always seemed to be able to reign her back in. Thanks for a great 4th grade year!

 Micah will miss Parkview, at least we still have Malia there for a couple more years.  It has been great!

I couldn't forget these two.  They are always by my side relishing in their siblings accomplishments!

Unfortunately I didn't take last day pics of the older girls, but they didn't mind, lol.

Concerts, Concerts Everywhere!!!

I guess when you have 6 kids, 4 of which are in school, you are bound to have the opportunity to attend many school functions.  This year we've had our fair share of concerts to see and this post is dedicated to that.  I have posted pictures in the past but this post will mostly be video of each of their concerts from winter to spring. I only chose one video from each concert otherwise we'd be here for hours watching.  So without further adieu ... my children!

Here is Micah in his last Band concert with an awesome Bongo solo.

The 5th graders have an annual wax museum where they dress up like a famous person and act like they are in a museum.  People walk by and the kids give a brief biography of their famous person.  Since Micah did Wilbur Wright in Indy last year, his teacher allowed him to use him again (Not sure why) but that's who he wanted.  He had to revamp a little from his last project but he did a great job.

Right after the "museum" they had a short program for the families.

Malia and Micah joined a choir this year and had a lot of fun.  This was their one and only concert.

The 3rd graders did a talent show this year and and Malia was dying to do something.  At first she had some friends that were going to do a dance routine but that fell apart so a couple of days before she decided she wanted to jump rope.  Here is the routine she came up with.

McKenzie's Final concert did not disappoint.  The theme for a lot of the schools was Star Wars since it was such a popular movie that came out, we had a couple of kids play some Star Wars music in their concerts, one of them being McKenzie

They even showed clips from the movies which captivated little Kaders.  He really is a Star Wars nut...like his dad!

Morgan the other lucky kid that was able to play a little Star Wars theme along with some other movie themes.

I love watching my kids grow musically.  It fun to see their progression.

McKay is 2!!!

 I feel like a broken record (I probably am) but this growing up stuff has gotta stop.  Maybe it's because he is our last and I have been really trying to enjoy these baby moments but I really cannot believe that lil Kaders is 2!   Recently he has discovered that movies can be fun to watch and those movies have consisted of Big Hero 6, Home, Inside Out, Star Star, and Minion's (or Nana's as he says).  He loves those little yellow guys, so I decided to make him a Stuart birthday cake.  It turned out pretty cute.

 My little mop head.  There is no controlling that hair.

 He was pretty fascinated by this "Nana" cake.

 He waited so patiently to dig in.

 That mop had to go a couple of days later.  It was driving me nuts.

 This little guy is always keeping us on our toes.  He loves chilling with the IPad, playing with cars or Star Wars, or driving his sister crazy. He's still not talking a lot but he is smart cookie.  You can see wheels in his head turning trying to figure things out.  Love this little stinker of mine.

Easter 2016

Living in Minnesota you have to hope for the best but expect the worst as far as weather.  I mean when Easter happens to fall in March in let's say, Arizona or Texas, you expect warm weather.  In Utah and Indy, it was hit or miss...it can be really pleasant but you'll never be in shorts and T-shirts.  Here in Minnesota you are fully prepared for snow and cold temps.  This year, being our first here, were pleasantly surprised when the snow was melted and although it was still chilly and cloudy, it wasn't freezing.  

We did the traditional egg coloring. The kids always have fun coloring eggs, and even though we like hard-boiled eggs and have some use for them, there are only so many we can go through before they go bad.  

 See, no snow.  She is wearing her coat and boots, but that was so she didn't get completely gross.

 We tried to take some pics after church, but Masie was not in the mood.

 So this is what we got.

just keepin it real

Lots of Randomness

It's about time for another post of random pics from my phone.  Every time I try to figure out what to post next, I find a slew of pictures I don't know what to do with.  So they are going in here.  I may or may not explain each picture so bear with my crazy thought process.  

We went to Morgan's parent teacher conference and they had a book fair going on at the same time (smart school, get parents to buy stuff while they are there).  Anyway, we found this poster and thought of Uncle James and his fetish for cats.  We almost bought it for him and mailed it to him.  We had a good laugh.

 Malia is at it again.  She woke up one night right after Randy left for business trip crying.  She came up to my bed and I being too tired to figure out what was wrong made her snuggle with me till she fell asleep.  In the morning she was complaining her arm hurt like it did when she broke it in Orem and after a lot of prying of information we figured out she must have fallen out of her bed in the middle of her night and probably landed on her arm like she did on the teeter totter.  So after I got the kids off to school, I took her in and they couldn't find a break but said she may have re injured her previous break from falling out of bed.  So she was splinted and slinged again.  Since it wasn't "broken" they ended up giving her a brace to wear for a couple of weeks.  I give up with this girl!

Another awesome elder.  Elder Knaphus or "Napkin"  He was pretty cool!

 Out here in MN they have a program run by a church called "Feed my Starving Children."  This group makes meal packs for 3rd world countries and through their missionary work provide meals for starving people.  These packs have lots of nutrition and lots of calories to help these underdeveloped areas.  We were able to go help pack some of these meals.  It's a pretty neat experience.  They tell/show stories of some of the children they have helped.

Saw him doing this on the way to drop off kids at school while the song "Hello" was on the radio. It was perfect timing.

New Beginnings for the Young Women.

Remember those ginormous sweats?  We finally found a home for them.  The elders took them off our hands and gave them to someone in our area who could use them.  But we had to take one more picture of them.

After dinner/breakfast one night, Micah's syrup looked like and egg had hatched.

We went with some friends to their gun club and with 5 couples, we had 500 rounds to shoot.  So we had some fun with these shotguns. I had to document this cuz I traded Randy's earphones for mine cuz I thought he needed to wear pink.

We were told we had a pretty mild winter.  We had plenty of bitterly cold temperatures but not an excess of snow this year.  We had enough snow, but it wasn't out of control.

We visited an art museum during spring break.

and also the zoo.

What boy doesn't need a newsies hat?

We had our fair share of the sickies this year, mostly in ear infections, but there was one time Masie thought she was going to barf or "bark" she thinks so she slept with her head in a bucket.  I'm pretty sure had she puked, it would have come right back in her face.

More concerts

We've been to a lot of them lately, you can tell by how excited Kaders is.