family pictures!

Believe it or not, I did whittle these down a little. But here are our 2014 family pictures! I'm so glad they are finally done! My friends Lindsay and Crystal (who have their own photography business) took them for us. They were so sweet, and they did a great job. I'm very pleased. I do wish Kate and Gray would have been a little more smiley, but I still think they turned out well.

Happy Birthday Jude!

Today, my baby is 1. I usually look forward to this milestone, but I feel a bit sad about it this time. I'm not ready for my wee one to grow up.

Here are some things about Jude at one year of age:

He can walk, and pretty well might I add, but he still prefers to speed crawl around the house.
He says, Dada, Mama, and Bye with regularity.
He is trying to say Papa.
He says Mmmmmm when he eats.
He loves to wave hi and bye.
He gives great high fives.
He has the biggest, goofiest front teeth I've ever seen on a baby.
His hair is blonde.
His eyes are definitely brown.
He is tall and skinny.
He is too tall for 12 month clothes and too skinny for 18 month clothes.
He can go up and down the stairs.
He loves to play peek-a-boo still, especially when he covers his own face.
He grooves to music by bouncing up and down and twitching his shoulders.
He babbles constantly.
He loves putting toys in/out of containers.
He has 4 teeth and is cutting 4 more.
He gets jealous when one of the other kids is on my lap and tries to shove them off.
He is getting better at sleeping, but he is still the worst sleeper I've had, which is saying something, because the others were pretty terrible too.
He claps when he's happy.
He can sign More and All Done, but he usually just does all done.
He still nurses, but he can only do it without any distractions.
He is one happy kid. I get comments on how happy/smiley he is all the time.
He loves to feed himself, and one of his favorite foods is green beans. (Surprise, surprise.)
He gets into mischief constantly. I have to be very careful about turning my back on him.
He loves to try and give kisses, although at this point they are more of just open-mouthed face bonks.
He loves everyone, especially his family. And his uncles. And his aunts. And his grandparents. And his cousins. And his pirates. And his cats. And his doggies. And his computer. And his meatballs. And his macaroni. And his cheese. And his self. (Colin and Gray gave me that list.)

the rest of august

I would say sorry for all the first day of school pictures, but I'm not sorry. I like all of these pictures. Colin is cute.

Nate is the only person I know who eats soup with a fork and knife.

Jude eats soup with his fingers. Colin just said, "Write, 'He is so cute.'"

My sister is the best sister. She gave me this book as an early birthday present. It makes my nerd heart sing. In iambic pentameter. I love everything about it.

Be prepared for picture overload from our garden. Here are our pumpkins at the end of August.

We even had two new green ones growing.

The harvest. This made like 25 quarts of beans. It took me 2 days to can them all since I can only process 5 quarts at a time.

Nate was being a turd while I was trying to take a picture of the fresh raspberry cream pie I made for dessert.

I had to take like 6 pictures to get one without his hand in it.

Kate trying on her new ballet outfit and doing a ballet move.

A photo series that I will call The Process of Getting a More-Or-Less Decent Picture of Kate's First Day of Ballet.

Mom school! I decided not to send the kids to a "real" preschool this year. The cost had gone up and I wasn't willing to pay it. And I thought it would be good for all of us to be together and to learn together and to go on more adventures together. So we try to do a little mom school every day. Once a week a neighbor and I will do something big and fun with our older girls (Kate and her friend Hazel). For my turn I took the kids to BYU's paleontology museum. (Yesterday, 9/4, Kate went with Hazel's family to the Clark Planetarium in SLC!) But it was closed for some reason. So we went to the Bean Museum instead. My friend Laura tagged along, too. Probably because her husband was still out of town and she was lonely. I hope she forgives me for posting this picture where she looks a little drunk.

I asked the kids to make warthog faces.

Laura feeding each of the kids to the hippo.

Another Mom School adventure. We went on a nature walk to learn about the Earth for letter E day.

Gray is really channeling my brothers in this picture. He looks a lot like a young Grant here.

Jude climbed the cushions. Hilarity ensued.

The neverending green bean saga. I'll have to count how many quarts I did this season once it's all over.

Also, peach pie! From our very own peach trees! They are still young trees, so we don't get many peaches, but it was nice to have enough to eat and make a treat with this year! Hopefully they won't die like our apple trees did.

And I think that's it for August. Stay tuned, September is next!