First day of Kindergarten

Here are pics from today, his first day of Kindergarten!





Here is a picture of Dalten and the kids on Daltens first day of preschool. They arent that great but i wanted to show how small they were. The first pic shows that Dalten comes to the lock on the door. I had not realized how much he has grown this year until i looked at these pictures. Its funny how that happens.

wordless wed. (kinda since it's my second post hehe)

All pictures taken by the talented Kristen over at Boy N Berries...http://kristens-pics.blogspot.com/

Updates

Wow! i can't believe I have not been on here since February! I missed writing about a few things along the way so i will write some very short updates on the months i missed.

March- Dalten turned 5 years old in March. He had his first sleepover for his birthday. He had his cousins here along with his friend Tristin. Surprisingly everything went really smoothly and the kids all a good time.

April- Kayden turned 3 in April. She had her party at a gymnastics center but just in the play zone. I think the kids, along with a few adults, had loads of fun. =)

May- May was finishing up the school year for both Dalten and I. I ended with A's but Dalten had some summer homework. We were told he really needed to build his confidence and work on doing more things for himself. He tends to say i dont know how alot! I really feel he has improved and look forward to seeing how he does in Kindergarten.

June- June was our first full month out of school and though i know we had plans every weekend I cannot for the life of me remember what we did at the moment. lol This has been a super busy summer for us!

July-One of my favorite holidays of the year ( i say one because really what holiday isnt great when you get together with friends and family). Every year we go to our friend Cory's house. This was year number 8 and it is so fun to see how families have grown. We started this tradition pre-kids for most of us and now grown into quite a bunch of families. lol We play volleyball and horseshoes, we had a moon bounce for the kids and a mister, sparklers, music, fireworks, great foode and great company! This month was also my littlest mans 2nd birthday. I can not believe how fast he is growing! He is even trying to potty train already. in fact it is momma who is not wanting to mess with it yet. but he goes all the time on the toilet so maybe he will be an early trainer. i can hope anyway. =)

August- We just got back from our first big family vacation. We have taken some sort of vacation every summer but this was our big trip! (or maybe i think that b ecause it has cost the most lol) We spent a week in California. We did 3 days at Disneyland, one day at the beach and 3 days at my aunts house swimming. We also did 2 24 hour car drives straight through. Needless to say it was an extremely fun exhausting trip! This month also starts the first day of a new school year. Dalten starts Kindergarten tomorrow. I am so excited for him but a little sad for all of us. I can't believe he will be gone ALL day long. He is going to learn so much this year and become so much more independant. But he will always be my first baby. I look foward to seeing all he learns and though he is nervous and does not want to start school i really hope he starts to love learning and being creative. He starts music this year, which i am VERY excited about!

Thats pretty much it for the updates. Kayden is now in underware full time and rarely has accidents but still does on occasion. Mainly when we are somewhere else, you know the one time you really dont want them too lol.


Thats about it, hopefully i will update this thing more. i am not that interesting but sometimes its nice to vent things out or share happy memories. =) Lots of things coming up, Darrens birthday, halloween, thanksgiving, my birthday and christmas. Lots of fun!!

My 5 year Anniversary in Eureka Springs

Darren and I just celebrated our five year anniversary in Eureka Springs. We have been on camping trips and river floats together but this was our first true vacation. Not to mention my first trip away from all three kids. We had so much fun just being together and relaxing. It has been so long since it has just been the two of us and i had forgotten how nice it is. Not that my kiddos werent constantly on my mind. =) We did some shopping and exploring Thursday and Friday and just a little bit Saturday morning and then spent the rest of the day in the cabin. Eureka Springs has some very wonderful sights. Not everything was open as it was the off season but enough was open for us to enjoy it. i think there was only one or two things i would have liked to have seen that were closed. The streets are very small there and i was a nervous wreck without much traffic, i dont know that i could go during the open season when they say it is extremely busy. So i think we made the right choice for us in going during winter time. =) I am also very glad it is not child friendly. Part of the reason i had a hard time deciding on what trip to take was that i wanted the kids to go to every place i thought of so i wanted to save those for family trips. =) i could not even imagine have my kids with me in those time rowed stores. lol Anyway great trip, great company and Darren and i both cannot wait till our next trip as husband and wife and not mommy and daddy.........speaking of kids, my mom said Dalten did very well, which i knew he wouldn't mind us being gone since he is older, Kayden got very sick the day after we left (thankfully my mom didnt tell me how bad she really was or i would have wanted to come home) and kept wanting to call me. So i talked to her a lot so she could tell me "I sick mom, I throw up" oh it just broke my heart poor little thing. She is just now starting to feel better. She has not thrown up since lunch so i am hoping it is finally passing. Daven looked for me every day. He was who i was most concerned and sad about leaving. When we got to my moms to pick them up he litterally screamed at the top of his lungs, ran and jumped into my arms and started laughing histerically while kicking his feet. I mean it was like i was his christmas, birthday, and easter present all rolled up into one. It was the best feeling a mom could ever get and i wish so much i had had this on tape. He laughed for over 20 minutes hugging on me. It was great! here are a couple pics of our trip. The frist one is Darren and I on top of a 100 foot lookout deck (the stairs were so steep and it was so called my lungs were killing me by the time i made it up lol) and the next one is of our cabin.

sad today

I am feeling very sad today. Darren is on his way to a funeral this morning. One a person should just never have to go to. His best buddy from childhood is having to say goodbye to his youngest son today. I feel very guilty for not being able to be with my husband as I know how hard this is on him. I also wish i could show my support for Nick and Cassie. I am not strong enough to attend a babies funeral. This is just a little to close to home for me. It is my worst fear imagined and it is hard for me to even contemplate. No one should ever have to put their child in the ground. Cassie and i were pregnant together for all three of my pregnancies and while Nick and Darren were both supposed to get fixed Nick was not quick enough. They had their fourth baby and first son together, after three girls, in October. Logan died of SIDS last Wed. This just breaks my heart over and over again. I am aching so bad for them but i have no idea how to show them I care. I can't even think about it without crying let alone see them. I have put all the responsabilty on Darren, which is so not fair of me. But nobody in mourning wants to see another person losing it. Darren is holding up pretty good but i have a feeling he won't be after today. He is racked with guilt over the fact he had not even met Logan yet. Sometimes life gets busy and its hard to make time to see the people you love. This reminds us of why we shouldn't wait. Anyway I am sorry to bring others down by writing this but i needed to get it off my chest. Please keep the Yoakum family in your prayers as they try to handle this loss. Not just the parents but the three little sisters as well. They are 1,2 and 4 like my kiddos. I can't imagine how they are dealing with this.

thinking thinking thinking

I seem to be in constant thought these days. I am either thinking about food, kids, cars, money, or marriage. We will start with my thoughts on food. I love food! I miss food! lol that pretty much sums it up. haha I am still doing well on my diet. I backtracked just a little during the holidays but i am back at it and smaller then i have been since,hmm goodness, probably since before i turned 21. So that is very good news. I am pretty sure I will have to buy a whole new wardrobe for summer time. =)

The kids are always on my mind and i am pretty sure every parent out there feels like that. I constantly worry about whether i am doing the very best i can with them. I hope i play with them enough, spend enough time individually with them, feed them healthy enough food, help their imaginations soar, teach them to love the arts of all kinds (music, theatre, drawing, etc.), teach them to love themselves and others. I fear i lack in a lot of the areas i always felt i would be good at. I know i dont hit all of these points each day but i sure hope i am doing something right. My poor little Kayden is constantly testing me and does not seem to be afraid of anything. I wonder if I have done something to make her this rebelious or if there is a reason i cannot win this power struggle she is constantly bringing to me. i really hope it is just a stage and she will grow out of it and i really hope we make it through this stage sain. lol

We are down to one car in our family and that one car is going to die any day so needless to say it is another stress i am constantly thinking about. My poor little van is constantly shutting off on us and has just recently starting doing it while going 40 miles an hour down the road. Plus the heater has gone out in the front of the van so i stay freezing the whole time. We are looking for Darren a truck but a 4 door truck so if mine breaks down we can share it again as well. Not having a lot of luck there. It wouldn't be as stressful if him or I had fabulous credit where we could get a low interest loan but we dont so finding something nice in a price range we can afford even with a very high interest rate is proving difficult. No fun at all. Not to mention me not working makes it very scary to get a car payment and increase our insurance bill right now, which brings us to money.....

I love staying home but on the downside of that one income means going without a lot of things. Which is fine but when things like needing a new vehicle comes up it can be a lot scarrier then if we had two incomes coming in. I have been thinking alot about ways to make extra money for us. I am really thinking of selling some homemade items through etsy or the flea market or something. I am not sure though i get really freaked out starting anything new and like all new things it would be risky. I could set it up and no one like anything i make and then be out all the materials. Plus i am so not business savvey. So these are still rolling around in my mind but i am seriously tempted. I would like to make little dresses, bloomers, infant shoes, clutch purses, ties ( i really want darren and the boys to wear matching ties for our next pics hehe wonder if i could get him to)vests, lamp cord covers, hair bows, and tons of other things. anyway we shall see on that one. obviously you will all know if i choose to do it. =)

Last but not least marriage. I leave 5 weeks from Thursday for my five year anniversary honeymoon. lol I am so excited. It will be the longest i have ever been away from the kids but i know they will be in good hands with my mom and papoo and my aunt Kathy is coming down friday to help for the weekend as well. I am looking foward to 4 days of doing absolutely nothing but being together in quiet harmony. haha I think i will finish the last three Karen Kingsbury books since i only read the first one in the series before school kept me to busy to continue. The last 5 years have gone by really quickly. I guess when you have 3 kids during that time it helps speed things up. I am very blessed to have Darren in my life. He is a very great guy and we have done a lot of growing up together. He has changed so much since i first met him but in very good ways. I feel guilty sometimes because there are moments when i think about the guy i always dreamed about and the type of person i wanted to grow old with. I sometimes wish i had done things differently. I know that sounds aweful and there is really no way to put that without sounding bad but those are my thoughts sometimes so i am putting them out there. I hope i am not the only person who has ever felt this way. Now let me clarify what i mean by that. I LOVE Darren and i am VERY HAPPY we are married. He is the one I chose and i will remain with him until the day one of us dies or he leaves me, which hopefully that will never happen. I just always imagined myself with a Godly man, whom i met at church. And i think that is a huge difference between us. Not that i am leading by example and going to church like i should and i curse myself every Sunday knowing i am not teaching my kids what i want them to learn. I want them to be a part of church. But i totally 100% believe in God and all that he has done and is going to do for us. Darren does not feel this way. I think our lives would be a lot different if God was leading us. All of the church going couples i know seem so happy all the time and really seem like partners. Sometimes i just dont quite feel that. I also chalk this up to my very wild imagination. I have always lived in somewhat of a "dream" world. i did not come from a home with two parents and my dad was a verbally and physically abusive man to my mom while they were married so when i am with him i sometimes get appoligies for things like when he kicked my mom in the stomach while she was pregnant with me. I think it is because of this i made up how families should be and always expected my life to be like that. Well life is not perfect and obviously in my fantasies life was perfect so i think i still sometimes get fantasy confused with reality. That is why i am trying to work very hard at loving Darren for who he is and not who i think he should be. I am trying to look at all of our positives together (which is the majority btw) and not dwell on negatives (cause i tend to do that sometimes as though i like being miserable). I am looking at these past five wonderfully stressful(kids lol) years as a trial run to our next 20. Each year our lives have gotten better and i do look foward to seeing that trend continue for a long long time. BTW Darren would kill me if he knew i wrote this but the other night he told me i was his timex (ahh love) hehe sometimes he tries so hard to be romantic. =)

Thanks for listening to my ramblings
Kristy

2010 tradition

So I thought of a new tradition to start this year and thought i would share in case anyone else liked the idea and wanted to do it too. I wish i had started it before Dalten came along. I am cutting out the numbers 2010 and since there are 5 of us an exlamation point too and taking a picture January 1st with us holding them. At the end of the year I am going to make a photo albulm of my favorite pics from the year with that one being the cover. I am sad I have not done this sooner. I thought it would be a cute way to document the kids growth along with a reason to make a photo albulm every year. =) Anyway that is what I will be doing from now on so thought i would share. =) Hey Jess, since I know you will read this at some point maybe we can start doing it at midnight on our future New Years parties. That could be one of the crafts the kids do----decorate the numbers for us. =)We may all be in our PJ's but i think that would be super cute. =)

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I have been so bogged down with getting all my gifts done I feel like i have had no time to do anything. Now that the holiday is over and my house is halfway cleaned up i figured i would take some time for me. I even started a new book today. Man I havent read a book since school started last August. Man how i have missed reading. Hope everyone has a wonderful New Years and for those who drink please be smart and safe. I will be spending New Years at my mother in laws. It is our last adult party. After this year we will have family New Years eves and i find myself looking much more foward to that!! My kids are the last grandkids of the family and the very youngest so now that they are almost at the age that they can understand what new years means it will be exciting to let them stay up and ring it in with us. Daven probably wont be ready yet but Dalten for sure and possibly Kayden. Anyway thats a whole year away but like i said i am looking very forward to that! Any chance my kids get to spend and make traditions with their cousins is great for me. My favorite childhood memories are from times spent with my cousins. I want my kids to be as close to their cousins as i am to mine. okay so i will stop rambling. lol Happy Holidays!