June

June was a BUSY month for us, but was full of fun!  I'll put everything from June except Kassidy's baby blessing weekend on here, and then make that the next post, so stay tuned for the joy that was having family together for such a special day.

Our June started out with a great baby blessing too, just not for our baby.  We headed to Spokane so Steve could bless my sister Jennifer's son, Enzo on June 8th.  It was great to have most of the family together at church.  Those are always such special, tender moments for me to see my family all at church together.  It's also always a special moment to feel the way Steve being a worthy Priesthood holder has blessed my entire family.

Later that day, Jennifer wanted to celebrate Wyatt's 3rd birthday, which had been the week before.  We all went to Chuck E. Cheese for a fun birthday party.  Jen had tokens for everyone, so Ellie had fun playing lots of games with Daddy while I took Mckayla on EVERY ride they had.  MG couldn't get enough of all the little rides.  See what I mean?

 The kids all loved having pizza, soda, and cake - of course.

 And our girls were even ok with Chucky, which surprised the heck out of me based on how Ellie has a love/hate relationship with mascots.

 One of my favorite moments was watching everyone get an "I.D." from this picture machine - especially Steve and my Dad who had to get a little lower than they may have liked to be in frame.

 Here are a couple of pictures of the cousins from that trip.

This picture cracks me up.  It shows just how crazy my kids - and 6 kids 3 and under - are when you're trying to get a picture of them.

As you can tell in these pictures, Ellie suddenly looks pretty different.  That's because on June 3rd we took her to "Monkey Doos" and chopped her hair.  After our brief love affair with "fancy hair" she suddenly decided she didn't want me to do anything at all to it, and a 3 year old who doesn't want their hair done and has long curly hair can only mean what Grandma Sun would call a "ragamuffin".  However, she looked darn cute with her short hair, so it all works out.  Here Ellie was calming Kassidy down.  These two already love each other so much.

 Around this same time we started potty training Mckayla.  She was showing a lot of interest, and we figured summer was the time to start working on it, with both of us home.  She took to it much quicker than we thought she would, which was a nice surprise for us.

Not to be left out of the excitement, at the beginning of the month Miss Kassidy decided she would start cooing and smiling too, which was so fun!

 We also realized that she was losing her hair, but only the dark hair.  Also, her eyebrows were coming in strawberry blond, and as this picture shows, we were starting to see hints that we may have a red head on our hands!

Of course we did lots of other fun things too throughout the month.  We went to the park and the girls threw rocks.  Kassidy excelled at it.

We saw lots of fun birds at the river this day.

 Cracks me up the giant rocks Mckayla will throw.

 We went on river walks as a family.  Kassidy once again slept through most of these.

We even went to a family expo one day, where Ellie refused to get into any of the safety vehicles or tractors, and instead the girls mostly just enjoyed their new Home Depot aprons, playing games for candy, and giant cheap sunglasses from the grab bags.

We also unexpectedly hit a splash pad one day.  Even though we didn't have swim suits we told the girls to go for it where the weather was hot and they were watching other kids get wet.  Mckayla (of course) dove right in and was soaked in a just a minute or two.  Ellie was freaked out about it until she had watched Mckayla and Daddy play for several minutes and then got jealous, which made her get brave.  She had a blast too in the end.  It's funny watching these two, our daredevil MG and our overly cautious Ellie...  Entertaining to say the least.

On the 12th we also took the front off of Mckayla's crib and put the safety railing up instead.  We figured now that Daddy was home for the summer (BIG YAY!) we would start getting her ready for the toddler bed.  She did so well, and loved Ellie's big girl bed so much, we decided it was time to move up fairly quickly.  On June 27th Mckayla came down to her room to sleep in our amazing toddler bed my friend built for Ellie at the same age.  She loves her big girl bed and the freedom it gives her, even if I no longer get to sleep in as she wakes up and comes right upstairs to get me.

Steve and the girls also got to watch a lot of NBA basketball in June as Daddy's team, the San Antonio Spurs, ended up winning the NBA championship.  There were a lot of excited people in our house that day. (Totally a picture from a different day that I just liked of K.)

 And other than that, our month was busy.  I know, seems like a lot happened already, right?  And it did!  However, adding on to all this, I also worked in June.  To help pay some of Kassidy's medical bills (making babies is expensive!), and to help out at work, I taught the first session of group swim lessons starting June 16th and ending the beginning of July.  It was pretty fun for me, after I got over the anxiety of being just weeks away from having given birth and now wearing a swim suit in public.  Didn't think that one through....  However, if we had known how rough it would be having such a young, nursing baby with Daddy all morning on his own with the 3 girls, we may have decided it was just too soon.  Poor Daddy had a rough go where Kassidy didn't appreciate using a bottle much at all.  He spent a lot of time wearing the bjorn baby carrier to keep her asleep and happy until I could get home to feed her.  However, we survived.  I did try to blow my face up half-way through lessons as I realized I was getting sick and then started hurting as I taught diving and deep water swimming.  You're really not supposed to be going under several feet of water when you have a sinus infection...  But, with the help of a quick-care doctor we got that cleared up, I finished lessons, and we looked forward with anticipation to an even fuller July, and the first time in years where neither Steve or I was going to work!  It was going to be a fun summer!