Dakota turns 6 years old!!!

Today is Koda's 6th birthday!!! I can't believe how fast time flies, how big he is, and how much older it seems I am when HE has a birthday (as opposed to when I have a birthday)!! Regardless, his party was yesterday. The big thing last year apparently was to invite the whole class (which we didn't do last year), so I promised him that he could do it this year. Thankfully, his school all has very small class sizes (the max is 18), and there's 14 kids total in his class. Add that to his 4 cousins here in Anchorage, and it's over 20 kids (including Brayden!). Needless to say, there was absolutely NO way that we would be fitting (or wanting) all those people in our place, so we had it at the Alaska Club (a fitness center, for those of you who aren't in AK), and had a pool party. He wanted a Batman theme, so I made a cake with a fondant Batman logo on it (my first homemade fondant creation):

Blowing out his candles

Having a bit of fun in the rockwall room before cake and ice cream!

Time for presents! It was funny...I didn't mention legos to any of the parents, but somehow over half of the gifts turned out to be lego sets, which is great since he REALLY has been into building things with legos. I'm talking playing legos at least a good 30-45 minutes every single day!

Brayden's not much of a water baby, but he does enjoy it as long as he can cling on to someone!

Some Auntie Lizzie lovin!

Dad and Brady.....he's in LOVE with the slide. Once he's down and the water is out of his face, he usually looks at George and does the sign for "more". We're trying to teach him "again" instead, but we know what he means!

Koda on his way down!

Tristan literally HATES the water! It doesn't help that he has virtually no meat on his little bones, and the water is fairly chilly sometimes, but even when it's warmer, he's not too much of a fan. Regardless, Heather forced him to ride down the slide with her, going so far as to pry his little hands from his death grip on the bar at the top of the slide! Too funny!

Koda's birthday party was a great success, and everyone had a blast! We were all wiped out afterwards, and Brady ended up taking a 4 hour nap! Dakota made out like a bandit, with lots of Legos, books, and a couple Wii games and accessories. From most of the family, though, he mainly got $$$ to use for our Disneyworld trip! He's been saving the past few months, and with his birthday money, he now has a little over $100 of his own money to spend on vacation. We leave in 10 days, and we all can't wait!!!

Campbell Creek

Only about 2 miles away from our place is Campbell Creek Park, which is such a great place when it's hot enough outside to enjoy (which isn't very often!). Koda was gone for a little over 2 months this summer in Kodiak, so he missed most of the Anchorage summer (which wasn't much anyways!). However, once he got home a couple weeks before school started, we waited for a really nice sunny day, and went for some fun! The part of the creek where the park is situated is really shallow, so even though the water is FREEZING, the kids can wade fairly well and have a blast!

Back to School

Dakota's 1st day of 1st grade was Wednesday, and he was so excited that literally, for the entire week leading up to the first day, that's ALL he could talk about! He was/is so excited to be in 1st grade! I can only hope that the excitement doesn't diminish much over the next few years.

completing his "whiteboard" task-a question each morning is on the whiteboard that each of them has to draw or write their response to!

Doing his very first assignment of 1st grade!

I, for one, am conflicted about back-to-school. On one hand, I feel like we didn't have a summer because Koda was gone all but 1 month of it, and in terms of weather, Anchorage DIDN'T really have a summer! We broke the "Consecutive Days of Rain" record this year (July and August), with 32 strait days!!! But, today is the 3rd day of nice weather in a row, so we're celebrating by taking the kids to Campbell Creek Park for a dinner picnic and to play in the creek and playground!

Morphing into a picky eater

Since Brayden had his first birthday, he has morphed into a little monster. He was such a great little baby, and suddenly, he's kinda moody, he's became a HORRIBLY picky eater, somewhat of a biter (only to me, apparently), plus, it doesn't help that we think he's been cutting his 4th tooth on the bottom for the last month or so. He refuses ANY and ALL veggies, with the exception of frozen corn kernels (a BIG thank you to my cousin, Lori for that suggestion) and french fries (if you can even call them veggies....I don't!). But, he will quite literally eat any kind of fruit, and he is in love with sweets. He loves dairy, except cheese. Cheese HAS to be melted (as in a grilled cheese sandwich), otherwise, he'll spit it out. So basically, my kid lives on fruit, cottage cheese, yogurt, goldfish, frozen corn, and these amazingly good (George and I even eat them!) organic animal crackers from Costco. And, of course, anything sweet that he can finagle out of George or I or that Koda sneaks him. Here's the proof:

"signing" for more!

after stuffing about 1/3 of a banana in that cute little mouth!

He loves his cookies!

and will *sometimes* share if he's in the mood. Usually, though, he just teases you!

my very favorite facial expression!

The *absolute* custest thing!

A couple days ago, I get Brayden up for the morning, take his jammies off, and get him out of his enormously almost-over soaked diaper. I had noticed a few times that it looked like his little hips were kinda dry and might be getting a bit chafed where the diaper hits them, so I grabbed some lotion and rubbed some into his hips and tummy. Mind you, this child is a MOVER. He sits still for NOTHING, including (and probably worst of all) diaper changes. But he was just looking up at me and smiling when I was rubbing lotion on him. We've been trying to get him to do a few little signs (sign language) lately, and the only one he has down pretty good is "more" (always for food). So I get done rubbing his hips and tummy, and I begin to screw the cap on the lotion, when he looks at me, puts his hands up, and starts doing the "more" sign! He didn't stop until I rubbed his legs and arms down with lotion too! Spoiled, pampered little guy...it's a good thing he's cute!

2 Year Anniversary!

Today is George and I's 2 year wedding anniversary!! 2 years later, *almost* 2 more kids later, and lots of laughs, lots of memories, and lots of big plans! I couldn't be happier that I was lucky enough to find my best friend, my other half, the love of my life!! Happy Anniversary, honey, and here's to many, many more!

On our honeymoon!

Baby Bottle Dilemma

Brayden has been down to just one bottle a day, always early in the morning. If he gets up before sometime around 7am-ish, I generally head downstairs and get a bottle of milk for him, and after almost chugging it, he falls back asleep until 8:30-9am. It really is heaven. And as much as I've thought it'd be so nice to just get rid of the bottles all together (at least for a FEW months before this new one arrives!), I figured it would be so much easier to do it once school starts back up for Koda. For one, we HAVE to get up by 7am or so anyways, so I could just get Brayden and he could have normal food and wouldn't go back down to sleep. BUT....now that George is working nights the past week, he's been uber-bored, and has surfed the internet somewhere around 7-10 hours a night. For me, this equals many tidbits of information from him (it's about the only time he stays somewhat current on the news!), as well as "baby advice". Now that he's watched a clip from Good Morning America, he's convinced that we need to cut Brayden's bottle off! It's not that I don't agree with him....it's just that it's easier said than done, and really...what's another 3 weeks until school starts?! SO...I let George "feed" him the very first morning. By "let him" feed Brayden, I mean shake him somewhere around 3 or 4 times and have an almost full on conversation with him about "GET UP AND FEED BRAYDEN!" But, he finally did. He got Brayden's sippy cup/straw cup full of milk, went up to his room, and as soon as Brady saw the cup-and it wasn't a bottle-he screamed and threw himself back into his crib! Talk about attitude. He completely refused the cup! So, George took him downstairs and had an early breakfast of yogurt and banana before putting him back to sleep. It *seemed* to work ok (from what George said). So this morning, I get Brayden, bring him downstairs, and give him his sippy full of milk, and he starts screaming! He wanted nothing to do with it. He wouldn't even eat yogurt. After about 5 minutes of fighting him, he would reluctantly take bites of yogurt, but only if I let him hold the spoon. He certainly does have a well developed attitude! We shall see how this no-bottle thing goes....especially since I've already packed up every bottle and put them in storage!