Kassidy's Birthday

One tradition in our family is that on their birthday, our kids get to go choose a place to get some ice cream (or often frozen yogurt).  Well, Kassidy's birthday was on Sunday when we don't shop, so we decided to go out Saturday to get her birthday treat.  Then we had a rather dramatic dinner where I fought for a solid half hour to get Kassidy to eat one bite of meatball - literally - and when I had decided we weren't going, Kassidy finally took a bite.  Welcome to life with Kassidy...  By now it was getting late, so we just headed to one of our closest ice cream shops.  

The girls each chose a flavored sherbet, watermelon and lime.

 Gavin decided to celebrate being 8 months old by trying butterscotch milkshake with Daddy and LOVED it after a hesitant first bite.

 Kassidy loved her watermelon ice cream.

 The big girls being goofy to show us their colored tongues.

Then today Kassidy picked her dress out for church and I got her ready to go.  She looked so cute I grabbed a few pictures of our birthday girl.  Actually, I took a lot of pictures of a very wiggly Kassidy...

After church Kassidy's nursery leaders gave her a gift, and they hit it out of the park with a stuffed stegosaurus.  She is definitely our dinosaur girl.  We also gave her a new outfit as a small gift where she will get her gifts from us at her birthday party.  Again, she got a "dinosaur skeletons!" shirt as she is so in love with all things dino right now.

 After dinner we just did a small treat, so she had candles in chocolate pudding.  It was fun to think back to when she hated all chocolate as a baby.  She was so excited to sing happy birthday to herself.

A couple fun Kassidy quotes as of late.  When I took Gavin's helmet off for a break this evening she brought the helmet to me and told me "He wants to be an astronaut." This is the way she has looked at his helmet the whole time, and especially at first it helped us to not feel so bad about his helmet that he was being an astronaut.  Today she also found a piece of paper I was practicing watercolors on for her birthday gift and she saw the bleeding colors and promptly announced, "Uh-oh... The rainbow is broken!"  That girl sure does come up with fun ways to look at things.

Kassidy is often so challenging for us.  That remains true.  She is so fun when she is fun, but is much less mature and yet more independent than her sisters were at the same age.  We have lots of fits but lots of laughs and snuggles too.  I love watching her excitedly bounce over and over when she is so happy about the smallest things in life.  We sure do love our little ginger!  Happy 3rd birthday to our Kassidy-Coo!

Mckayla's Run-In with the Law

This last Monday Mckayla's preschool went on a field trip.  I haven't gone with her on any field trips because I have our Wild One (aka Kassidy) and a baby to keep track of and feel like more of a distraction than a help.  However, Grandma and Grandpa offered to take the kids so I could focus on MG.  So, I drove Mckayla and a couple other girls to our local Courthouse to talk to a deputy from the Sheriff's department.

The kids first got to talk to the woman who runs dispatch.

 Then they got to take a look at a jail cell.  Mckayla said she thought the room looked pretty comfortable - probably because she didn't have to share it with Kassidy...

 Mckayla was the only one who was willing to climb into the driver seat.  There's a metaphor there somewhere...

 Then her and some of her classmates checked out the back seat, and we hope that's the only experience she ever has in the back of a law enforcement vehicle.

 Mckayla is not shy, so she enjoyed talking to the deputy.

I love that Mckayla's preschool class did this.  It's so important for children to see law enforcement officers as helpers who they can go to in time of need and not be afraid of.  The officer was really kind to the kids and they had a lot of fun during their brief visit.

My favorite moment came during our short drive back to preschool.  Mckayla was asking lots of questions and I was trying to field them.  Suddenly Mckayla went quiet and then I heard her whisper to one of her classmates, "My mom is really smart."  Where I am often doubted until Dad reinforces what I have said, it was a great thing to hear she thinks I know what I'm talking about.

Easter 2017

Alright, so this blog was originally meant to keep family that lived far from us up to date on all the fun things the kids were doing.  Well, we still have half our family far from us, so although this blog is literally years behind, I am going to try and get back at it.  My problem in the past was trying to catch up.  I realized that getting back to blogging is more important than trying to catch everything up from the last year and a half or so, so I am starting today and trying to keep it current instead.  With that being said, here are the fun things we did for Easter.

We started with an egg hunt on Saturday.  The big girls had been at a birthday party, and Kassidy had refused to nap, as had a teething Gavin, so if you wonder why everyone looks tired... They were.  We tried to split up the big girls and Kassidy to make sure Kassidy got her share of more readily apparent eggs.  Instead, Kassidy was - well, Kassidy.  She threw a fit and refused to get any eggs in her section because she wanted to go be with the big girls.  She wouldn't even pick up this egg right in front of her, or the others she ran to and then ran away from frustrated...

Mckayla found eggs on the porch.  We were at Grandma and Grandpa's since they like - have a yard.

 Kassidy was much happier when we gave up and let her go to the big girls' section and just dropped some of her eggs there.

 Ellie finding some of the more hidden eggs.

 Kassidy was finally content to go find eggs in her section when it wasn't a requirement.  I love that girl...

 Mckayla excited that she found one of the four "mismatched eggs" which had a little bit of change in them.  That girl is so excited about money right now.

 Grandma had gotten each of the girls "winder-rounders" and they enjoyed playing with those for a while once they had collected all the eggs.

 Ellie with her "winder-rounder."

 You can't tell in these pictures, but the wind was blowing and those things were spinning FAST.

  It was such a beautiful spring day!  Even if the wind was a bit chilly.

During this time the guys were content to hang out on the porch.  I love this picture of three generations of Bennett men.  

 Daddy and his boy.

 Gavin meeting Kingston.

 Our happy little guy.

That pretty well took care of Saturday's fun for us.  

Sunday we had a pretty busy day where we had a TERRIBLE night with MG being overly tired from the birthday party and waking up crying till she was hyperventilating and scared she couldn't breathe.  And, I was teaching Relief Society...  But, we did manage to get a few quick pictrures of the kids all dressed up in their Easter best before church.

Because things were so frantic in the morning we didn't end up doing baskets until after church.  As a result they were a bit rushed so we could get to dinner at Aunt Sheri's in time, but the girls still had fun and Gavin got some treats and a couple small things too.  Here the girls were excitedly watching Daddy bring out their baskets.

 The big girls got fishing poles as they are so excited to go fishing this summer.  They also got some small toys and treats.  I forgot to get pictures of their baskets ahead of time this year...

 Mckayla was excited about her striped socks and about getting some new shirts that aren't hand-me-downs.

 Kassidy must have shouted "I got my own panda!" for a solid 5 minutes.  It was glorious...

 Ellie clearly didn't read the box to realize it was a puzzle before she opened it and was pretty excited.

 And here's Gavin showing off his new Broncos tie and rattle.

 The big girls were excited to take a picture with their new stuffed animals.

 This year was a little strange with unknown territory for us as we have never done anything with the Easter Bunny before and the big girls suddenly had a great deal of interest in what the Easter Bunny brought.  It did lead us to a good laugh though when I was explaining to Ellie that we do our egg hunt on Saturday to have more time to focus on the real meaning of Easter on Sunday - the Resurrection of Jesus Christ - and that actually helps take some pressure off the Easter Bunny.  At which she responded, "Yeah, they do egg hunts on Sunday in Canada probably."  Goofy girl.

Also, one of my many accidental traditions that I love - here are the kids' baskets that their Easter gifts come in each year.  We added Gavin's basket this year, and I love that they are all hand-decorated with ribbon, but all different too.

 So, that was our Easter.  We hope you all had a great day and got to reflect on the joy that we can have from the miracle of the Resurrection of the Savior.  We are so grateful to know that He lives!