Happy 1st Birthday Brianna!!

Our sweet baby girl had her very first birthday last week! I can't believe it's already been a year since this little lady joined our clan...she's such a sweetheart and we love having her around! Brianna is such a mellow baby, most people have never even heard her cry! (Don't worry...we can tell you, she's good at it!) Her big brother and sister love her to distraction, and are often in trouble for manhandling her too much and not giving her any space. Their excessive attention must have been a big part of the reason Brianna didn't feel the need to move on her own for a long time. :-) She learned to scoot on our slick floors around 10 months, and her scoot has slowly progressed to a funny frog-like crawl/hop. It's absolutely hilarious to watch, but she's pretty proud of herself and can really cover a lot of distance in a short amount of time with her little frog-hop.

Just in the last two weeks before her birthday, she finally got her first tooth, on the top (so weird!). She's got about half a dozen more teeth trying to come through, so she's taken to having her tongue out all the time as she's feeling the changes in her mouth. Also in the last couple of weeks, she's started to finally stand with help and pull herself up on the furniture. Before that she didn't want anything to do with it. If we tried to stand her up on the floor, she'd lift her little legs up into a sitting position until we set her down on her bum. :-)

Brianna will eat anything we give her, which is really nice for us! She loves the attentions of her big brother and sister and is often found giving them big hugs and wide-mouthed smooches anywhere she can reach them. She loves to play "paddy-cake" and always skips ahead to the roll-it part, where she rubs her hands together back and forth for the roll it motion, and makes noises with her tongue to imitate the word "roll". She loves to wave "hi" to people, and often will wave for several minutes from her perch in the grocery cart as we pass people. She likes to blow kisses but often ends up chewing on her little hand rather than "blowing" the kiss away. :-) She has recently learned how to throw a temper tantrum, and OH MAN can she do it well! She has the highest-pitched scream I've ever heard, and she throws her whole body into it...it's actually kinda cute. When she was a little baby she used to scream out of happiness, and now she's learned to attach it to her temper.

At her nine-month check-up, she had recently been through a really long bout of being sick, and she'd had no appetite at all. Because of this she hadn't gained hardly any weight from 6 months, so the doctor put her on a high-calorie diet with her formula. Luckily it worked beautifully, because at her 1-year check-up last week she weighed in at 19 pounds 7.5 ounces, almost 4 pounds higher than at her last weigh-in.

We have discovered that Brianna LOVES being outside in any way. She loves sitting on the grass while her brother and sister play, she loves going for a walk in the stroller, and she LOVES going on hikes with us in the backpack, usually carried by her daddy. She has become a major daddy's girl, so she loves hanging with him on our hikes.

Our little sweetheart has the most beautiful, big brown eyes! Well, they're the most beautiful since her big sister was a baby. :-) I love our little brown-eyed girls!

Brianna wasn't quite sure what to think of presents this year, but it was fun to let her try. Kylee wrapped her presents again...she's getting pretty good at it. :-)

Brianna loves her cake! But she loves it so much that she doesn't mess around...she's a fairly clean eater! I'll post some of her cake-smash pics later this week.

We're so glad our little sweetheart joined our family last year! She is an absolute joy to have and we couldn't imagine our little family without her! Happy birthday Brianna Shea!

Happy Birthday Aedan!

Our little man turned four last week, and he's showing how big he is every day! He tells Brett every day that he's taking care of the girls while Brett's at work. :-) After he's been in trouble with his dad, he always says, "Dad, are we buddies now?" or "We're buddies, huh Dad?" You can't help but forgive him for anything after that. :-)

He still loves Star Wars, though he doesn't get to watch it much since Mom is T-I-R-E-D of it. :-) He now enjoys watching Harry Potter (the early years before it gets too scary) though I think that came about cause he knew I'd always say yes if he wanted to watch it. He loves Spiderman, McQueen, and Spongebob. He also loves to help his dad in any way, especially if it involves tools.

Aedan has memorized all thirteen of the Articles of Faith, and will be passing off the 13th this Sunday at church. We promised him and Kylee that we'd have a pizza party at Leo's Place when they finished all 13, and they've done it! He loves to go to church and loves being a Sunbeam. He's learning a lot of the songs really well, and loves to sing them at home. He has also started singing some of our favorite songs from the Celtic Woman dvd we put in when we're cleaning. It's common to hear him start belting out "Sail away, sail away, sail away" (from Celtic Woman, but also part of the Shrek 4 soundtrak). He has also recently started singing "The Sky and the Dawn and the Sun," another of the songs from Celtic Woman, and it's awesome to hear him. Makes me smile every time.

Aedan's birthday was on a Sunday, and we decided to stick close to home to celebrate that day. He got to open presents from his sisters and his mom, and see the big project his dad's  been working on for him.

Kylee wrapped the presents all by herself. :-)

The big reveal:

Brett made Aedan a real workbench, just his size. Brett has been getting really into woodworking with handtools, which requires a serious bench. Aedan loves to play in Brett's woodshop, so he built Aedan his own bench, complete with a tail vise.

Moving on, the present from his sisters...

Real Tools!

And Mom's gift...definitely the dud. Should have made him open it first. :-)

Cars!

He had his dad open the tool set and immediately got to work. The workbench includes a planing stop, which is basically a block of wood fitted into a square hole in the bench. The idea is that you can tap the block down so it is just lower than the piece of lumber you are working on, so it holds it but doesn't get in the way. Aedan  just likes to whack it all the way up and all the way down. :)

The day after Aedan's birthday we had a party at the house for his friends. This is the first "friends" birthday party Aedan has had. He's so dang social and makes friends with everyone, I just couldn't help doing it for him. It was also nice to spend a couple days spoiling him and letting him be the center of attention. Kylee gets a lot of attention from dance and school programs, so this helped give him the spotlight for awhile.

We had a "How to Train Your Dragon" party, and invited the boys to come for some dragon training. They each got to decorate their own "shields", receive a Viking axe, and have shield practice.

Aedan's cousin, Sayer

 

My friend Kandy and Mr. Trevor...So glad they came, even though I hardly said two words to her I was so busy!

Even Spencer got into the games.

And Ben!

And Dewey, the oldest of the cousin "triplets" :-)

Drake!

Shield Practice: Me throwing bean bags at them so they could practice with the shields. Kinda funny, until they started throwing them back. :\

 

Opening presents was insane-o with all the helpers. :-) I'm still not sure who gave him what.

Amy brought Dewey and Sayer, and stayed to help. It's a good thing too, cause she saved my bacon!

 

All in all, it was a fun party. We had a family party with the McD side this last Sunday, so Aedan got lots more presents from all his aunts and cousins (and uncles ;). We didn't do a party with my family for him because the cousins were all at the friends party, but Grandma Kathy came and took him to dinner and shopping for a "project". Now he's got a wooden toolbox for his tools that he built with Dad's help. 

I'm so glad we have this little man in our family! It sure is nice to have another "man" around the house, and he definitely does take care of the girls. ;-) Happy Birthday Aedan!

Kylee's Kindergarten Graduation, and Stuff

Well, it's official. Kylee has graduated successfully from kindergarten and summer has officially begun! For some reason, Kylee was super excited for summer, even though she loves school and was sad to be out of Mrs. Millett's class. Weird girl. :-)

Brianna, hanging out with Grandma while we waited for the graduates.

 

The lady with the mike is Kylee's teacher, Mrs. Millett. We really loved her this year and were so glad there were no problems!

I had my camera all set and we were in the second row, so I took a quick photo of each of Kylee's friends as well. It was a simple little ceremony, each kid came up for a certificate and to shake their teacher's hand. Kinda funny. This is Kiera, one of Ky's friends from church.

Another neighbor and friend from church, Andrea.

Kylee's newest and "bestest" friend, Dajia. These two were super close because they were in the same class. All of Ky's friends from church were in the other class.

And there's my girl! She picked out her clothes this day...thought she'd be super special in her pettiskirt. ;-) Lucky it was clean!

 

Later that day while Kylee and Aedan had their quiet time, Brianna and I sat out in the sunshine to warm up from the chilly morning. She was making some seriously funny faces. This is her rolling her tongue.

 

A Short Story That Went Long...

Almost 5 years ago, we moved from Nampa to Idaho Falls (with a brief stint in Blackfoot between) and bought a teeny-tiny little house for a really great price. The house was super small, less than 600 sq ft, with only 2 bedrooms. But, since we only had Kylee at the time, that wasn't a big deal. Plus, we were planning to enclose the carport and turn it into a master bedroom/bathroom plus a dining area and laundry area. A quick and easy project, since the foundation was already there, as well as the roof. Then, after a quick 2 years of living in the house, we would turn around and sell it to harvest the equity of our hard labor.

After we bought the house, we called the building department to look into getting a building permit for the project. This is when the floor fell out from under our grand plans: we were informed that the only way we could convert the carport was if we created a driveway from the front of the house around to the back and poured a concrete pad for parking cars in the back, since the requirement was to have at least 1 parking spot that must be 10 ft from all sides of the property. The driveway in front of the house was too close to the street, and the area to the side of the carport was too close to the side of the property. Ick.

Not only was our quick and easy addition no longer possible, but we also found out about this time that we were going to be adding Mr. Aedan to the family (quite unexpected) and our cute little house was soon to be way too small. So an addition it must be.

We went back to the drawing board and finally came up with plans for our house. Unfortunately, the cost was such that we would have to either find lending or work on it very slowly over time. We chose the latter, hoping to avoid debt and do the work as cheap as possible.

Wow. We were smart. :0) We had some crazy experiences. Some we have vowed to never repeat, and some that taught us well enough that we think we can do it again. We had TONS of help from both our families and some of our greatest friends here in the ward, such as when Dad and Jake spent a day helping Brett pour the footings, the day we roped Bishop Eborn and Dan into helping us pour the foundation walls, or the day the whole McDermott clan came to help frame the place. Wow. Don't think they knew what they were getting themselves into...and I'm pretty sure they'll never get into that again!

It was a long, hard haul, but we finally finished our addition...more or less. We moved into the bedrooms early in 2009, and have slowly been finishing odds and ends ever since, including a deck (made out of the redwood from the deck that's been on my parents' house for years...they chose to tear it down for their own addition just in time!), and siding the old part of the house to match the new (with some help from Chance and Colton).

 

The new siding was so nice, it covered up this nasty old white stucco that was crumbling all over.

We also replaced the chain link fence on the side of the addition with wood and a gate, added a large storage shed in the backyard that Brett scored at work for free, and added several raised garden beds.

Then in January of 2010 we managed to pull together the money to redo the kitchen...the atrocious, tiny kitchen. It turned out SO nice! The pic below doesn't show it very well, but the worst part of the old kitchen was the cabinet that came out into the already narrow entry to the kitchen. And it wasn't just the lower cabinet, but the top, so it really blocked a lot of the view between rooms.

 

So many blessings came when we were finishing the house, like when Brandon came to visit and saw our dismal attempts at Sheetrock and mud, then asked a friend/ward member to help us out. They saved us!

  

 

 Kylee was super excited when the carpet finally went in.

My photography has been slow, but there are some times when it really seems to help us out. This spring we were blessed to have enough extra "unclaimed" income come in to be able to FINALLY buy couches. We had a nice black couch that we bought when we were first married. But when we moved back from Nampa and into Mom & Dad's basement for a few weeks, it wouldn't fit into the basement and we were out of room in storage. So we had to give it away, and Mom and Dad gave us their old couches from the basement. That is what we've been using ever since, and they were SO bad!

 See? Ick.

 Goodbye to the green and peach monsters!

 Aaahhh...much better.

Finally, almost 5 years (instead of 2) we have come to the point where we can put the house on the market. We chose to wait until I finished school, because our house was literally bombed the entire last year of my schooling, and there is NO WAY we could have kept the place clean for showing at that point.

So, our Memorial Day weekend was filled with laundry, cleaning, scrubbing, mowing, weeding, planting, and more cleaning. Oh, and paperwork. But we did it! Too bad it's going to be FOREVER before it sells, but at least this is a step in the right direction!

**I have to say, I KNOW I took more photos of the whole process, but I'll be darned if I can find them! Anyone who knows me knows I took a zillion photos, so the computer must have eaten them. :-)