What a stud...

Sorry, I can't look at this picture without thinking my husband is a stud. And thinking that I had probably just woken him up right before this. What a good dad! This is Coops first day of Kindergarten! I think he is excited but all of his smiles have a tint of nervousness to them.

Paxton with his new friends. Sharing some chips on our front porch. Gotta love that all of his friends are girls!

My sister and I decided to run in a 10K Mud Run last month! It was crazy, cold, Freezing, GROSS, exhausting, GROSS, and Freezing and I can't wait to do it again next year!!! I wore goggles because of my eye worries and decided that if they had little washers on the outside of them then it would have been perfect. After the first 3 minutes I couldn't see a thing! I might have to Paten that idea.

And lastly I was looking through some photos of this last year and found our cruise photos from April. Nick took us on a cruise to the Caribbean for our 8 year anniversary and we had the time of our lives. I find that I am usually blogging about my kids and usually leave out Nick and I. So here are some fun memories we had in April. Nicks parents came and celebrated their 40 year anniversary and we loved having them there.

A little zip lining. Craig didn't want to take off his hat so they put the hard hat right on top! :)







We were able to swim with the dolphins and it was amazing. We were able to ride on them and play with them for quite awhile!

And it was EXTREMELY nice to have some quiet dinners without kids for 7 nights. I LOVE my kiddos more than anything but to have some alone time with your spouse is EXTREMELY important I think! Other things we experienced on our cruise were; under the stars movies, late night games, lobsters and more food that I care to mention that I ate, about 75 eclairs consumed by the 4 of us in those 7 days, some amazing snorkeling, Sight seeing, and lots and lots of RELAXING! Thanks Nick for one amazing trip and sorry it only took 6 months to do this! LOVE YOU!

Please never let Yesterday come again...

Yesterdays Events...

• Woke up to no hot water. Had a plumber at my house all day replacing a water heater!


• Decided to clean out my laundry room. Something mysteriously dripped on me so I looked up and water was dripping from my ceiling. The upstairs 'yucky' toilet had overflowed and was coming through the ceiling.


• Spent my morning cleaning floors and putting buckets out in my laundry room to catch the 'yucky' water.


• Could still hear the water dripping an hour later so went upstairs to check on the toilet and realized that the toilet full of 'yucky' water had overflowed AGAIN and was EVERYWHERE. Now the water had gotten in the Sheetrock and I had to slice open my Sheetrock and let all the 'yucky' water out.


• CLEANED SOME MORE!


• Got out of the house because I was tired of cleaning and decided to paint my front door and trim. Worked on that for a couple of hours until it was time to leave for back to school night. Left paint out and asked Nick to finish it for me while I was gone. (My fault) Came home at 8:15 to kids in swimsuits running around outside, paint on my porch and on my brick.


• Went inside to see a full thing of Costco's lemonade dumped on my floor (someone was trying to have a lemonade stand).


• Cooper ran in with a water balloon only to have it pop in the lemonade powder.


• Cloroxed floors and toilets until 12:30 only to get ready for bed and realize that my 3 year old had snuck out of bed, gotten into my coconut oil and dumped out a new bottle on my FAVORITE shirt on my Hope Chest.

Now that was one **** of a day!!!

Bare with me during my 6 month recap...

I was cleaning out some of my pictures and realized that some of my sweet children had been forgotten! I can't let these memories fade!

Paxton had his first swim lessons and did really good. The first day he cried and Erin put him on the side in 'Time out'. When I asked him what was wrong after the lesson he wasn't upset that he had to put his face in the water he was just so upset that Erin would put him in time out in front of all his friends. I loved it!

This is Pax on the morning of his 3rd birthday! Happily all of my children did celebrate their birthdays on their birthday this year. Sadly that has not always been the case! :)

Pax wanted a Pirate party at the park. Easy Peasy for mom! We went to a park and had a lot of fun playing and eating cupcakes.

After the park we came home and opened family presents. He loves is Coop!!

Cooper decided he wanted to play T-Ball this year so he was on the Boston Red Sox! It was fun to see him get so excited and although Coop is kind of a lounger he loved T-ball.

For Samantha's birthday she wanted a SPA PARTY! So we turned the Siddoway residence into Oooh LaLa Spa! We had about 10 little girls doing nails, hair, make-up and getting pedi's.

Ahhhh.... Some of the amazing memories that I missed because of my blogging laziness. Feels good to have them written down. Question... When did I used to find the time to print off all my pictures, go to a scrapbook store and buy cute matching supplies, get everything out and spend 3+ hours putting together a two page spread for a birthday?? WHEN?

Things I am missing about Laveen right now...

FRIENDS FRIENDS FRIENDS!!

YUMMY PIZZA and TRIPS TO TUCSON!!!











GREAT BABYSITTERS!!!











































GREAT SWIM TEACHERS!!!










LIVING SO CLOSE TO DISNEYLAND!!









Other things I am missing...


Girls Night Out, Good School Teachers, Amazing Neighbors, Game Nights W/Friends!!








Missing you today Arizona!

I Can't Believe He's 5...

I can't believe that my little Cooper is 5. That just seems way too old to me. He is such a good little man and has such a sweet heart!

Some of my favorite things about Cooper are...

• His love for preschool and learning! He asks me if he can do homework all throughout the day!





• Although he loves to learn he also LOVES to lounge. He would sit and watch movies and play video games for 3 days straight if I would let him.





• He is such a snuggler. He always loves to be hugging you or sitting with/on you!





• His love for Star Wars/Heman/Transformers/Buzz Lightyear... the list goes on and on. He loves Super Heroes.






• I love that he loves to talk. He will sit and talk to anyone that will listen about anything. (Sometimes it is truth and sometimes not:) He loves to tell stories! And anytime you ask him something and he goes off on some story I always have to ask if that is the truth or a funny story. He then breaks into laughter and yells "funny story"!

I love this kid so much and am so grateful he is in our family!

Jedi's in Training!

We actually celebrated Coopers birthday on his REAL birthday this year for the first time! It is two days after Christmas and I am always exhausted by the 27Th so we usually celebrate it on the 28Th or 29Th. I always figured that he had no clue so why not. Then my children started getting smarter and growing up and learning how to read calendars. So the 27Th it was this year! He decided on a Star Wars birthday party this year and Nick and I started planning it the night before around 9pm! I am not sure how much sleep (if any) we got that night but I do know it was worth it. He was one happy kid.

When the boys (not sure why it has to be a all boys party, the only girl allowed was Sam and it was because she bribed him) arrived they got their Jedi names (their names spelled backwards) and the training began. They all had a light saber and had to practice using them. They couldn't let the balloons touch the ground, they had to pop bubbles outside. We even let them practice using the force and they went outside to see if their force was strong enough to open the garage. Amazingly enough it opened! :)

We had to save Princess Leah and we were attacked by a asteroid shower and had to find all the missing asteroids. And after they had completed all their training Darth Vader (Nick dressed up) came down to fight them. Around 1am I decided I wanted to make a pinata of the Death Star and let the kids use their sabers to beat it and get candy. So we made the pinata and when I went to get it at 8 the next morning it was still soaking wet. So when Nick came down dressed up he had a whole bunch of candy in his cloak and every time the kids whacked him he would throw some candy out. He was our own moving pinata. It was hilarious!

We made R2D2 for the cake. It was fun to venture out and try something different but it did take a lot of work and when it was time to cut the cake I had a hard time doing it. I made Nick cut it in the back! :)

He loved it and that's all the mattered! Happy Birthday Coop!!!

Christmas Day Details!!!

Christmas was really wonderful this year! We were able to spend a lot of time together leading up to Christmas and Christmas Eve was just a great night!! We spent the afternoon at our friends house having a little Christmas Eve linner! It was fun to spend some time with friends and letting the kids play basketball outside! (Love AZ weather) We got home around 5:30 so we had plenty of time to break out all the Christmas Eve traditions. We frosted cookies,

and it is a good thing that Santa LOVES this little boys germs because I think he licked everyone he decorated!!




















After that we all went to the tree for some family pics and to find the tradition jammies to unwrap. This year they got to unwrap two presents. Jammies and slippers! (thanks auntie Brooke for the slipper!)






As soon as the jammies went on the kids started to get a little excited to say the least! None of them could stop jumping and dancing and smiling! It is so much fun for them to be so excited!

I got one picture of Sam squeezing their guts out before the craziness began!!


We then went outside to sprinkle the reindeer food around our yard. I found a cute little story and a bottle of mixture at Michaels this year and the kids had fun sprinkling it around all over.

The next morning the kids slept in until 8 which was wonderful because as usuall Nick and I stayed up until 2 or 3. I LOVE IT!! Pax actually had to be woken up and Sam had no problem doing that!! Of course Nick made them wait FOREVER!! He always does and I start to get a little anxious as well! I think he just loves tormenting us! I thought our kids were going to explode with excitement!

Making their way down the stairs. We used to go youngest to oldest but this year we decided that they could all go at the same time! Sam was happy!

The kids were as happy as ever and they didn't even find their main gift, their scooters, until about 30 minutes later! They were just amazed that they got PEZ candy and M&M's in their stockings. I think both were gone before and presents were opened!

Sam, Coop and Pax waiting patiently while dad opened a gift! I think it was killing them!

We spent the rest of the day in our jammies, playing our new games on the tramp, watching movies, and eating yummy treats from friends! Pax spent the rest of the day doing this....

Our good friend Debra got the kids these straws and Pax played with them for hours! You get to build your own straws and I do have to say that they are pretty cool! :)

We loved Christmas but missed all our friends and family in Utah/Cali too! Thank you for your cards and phone calls!! We LOVE you all!!!