Audrey turns 5!

A very happy girl with her birthday girl 

My baby girl just turned 5 years old. She is growing up so fast. She's not a baby at all. We were fortunate enough to celebrate her birthday in Utah with her. She was so excited to have everyone over there with her. She chose a jungle type cake. It was super duper easy. She was so thrilled with it. She loves animals so it was very fitting. She loves to pretend that she is an animal. Her favorite thing about coming to Utah is playing with the chickens, cat and dog.

A very typical face for this girl 

A little bit of decorating for her birthday

 Her dinner of chose was homemade pizza. I'm not really sure that she ate much of it because she was having so much fun with cousins. It kind of surprised me that she chose that for her meal. I thought it would be something with bbq beans. And she also chose cotton candy ice cream. It so tasted just like it too. I thought it was nasty but the kids at it all gone.

A sober little girl. Not sure why she isn't smiling. 

 Audrey is loving school. She is slowly learning what she needs to. She'd much rather play and be a girl than sit down and work on letters and numbers. And ya know what? I'm ok with that. She only gets one chance to be a kid. There are years and years ahead of her to learn. She will eventually get the alphabet down, she will learn to read one day. But for now, she wants to play with dolls and make believe with friends and that's exactly what she should be doing at this age. I feel that their is too much pressure on kids now days.

All the family helping celebrate her birthday

 Audrey is definitely the baby of the family. She gets away with more than she should. It's kind of ridiculous, I know. I try and get after her more but she just puts the charm on. She is mommy's little buddy. She loves to be with mom. She has spent many hours playing and entertaining herself while I've spent countless hours doing other peoples hair. She is so used to me doing someones hair. Maybe that's why she doesn't like having her own hair combed out. She loves sleeping next to mommy. And, for the most part, I don't actually mind snuggling with her at night. Maybe in Alaska we can break that habit because in the apartment we are sharing a bed right now.

Family enjoying some cake and ice cream.

I love that Audrey likes to be girly. She really does love wearing dresses a lot. She loves all thing princesses and dolls. However, she can get down and dirty outside when she wants to. I love that every single morning her hair has a bad case of bed head. She would not be Audrey if she didn't have the crazy, frizzy curly hair. I love that she isn't afraid to be herself. She is a very unique girl. We are so glad that we have little Miss Audrey in our family!

It sold!!

We were very blessed to have our home sell rather quickly. It didn't feel quick at the time but really it was. We put it on the market on Jan 1 or 2 (I don't recall) and by beginning to mid Feb we had an offer that we accepted. It was so much work to keep the house spotless and in showing condition every single day mind you with 4 children and a husband out of town all week. He had to do some training in Oklahoma for his new job in Alaska. So, he left Jan 6 and had a 5 week course. Luckily he was able to come home on the weekends but that left me flying solo all week. We closed on our home March 10th. 

MOVING IN

This was taken the first week that we moved into the house. 

 Look at how young and skinny Danny and I are?! I kind of miss being blond.  And look at those cute little guys. They were so young and blonde. Colton was 6 weeks old when we moved into this house in Gladstone, MO. I think Nate was 4 1/2 and Josh was 2. Yikes so young! And I thought these were the hard days. Ha these were the easy times, why can't we realize that then. I did enjoy those days with the kids being so young. But it's also a really good stage that we are currently in too.

MOVING OUT

This was taken the last days we were at the house. 

This is currently the stage of life we are in as we move out. I've gone much darker on the hair and Danny has added a full beard. I can't even remember the last time I saw him clean shaven, it's been years. Nathan is now 11, Josh was weeks from being 9, Colton is a few months from 7 and Audrey was days from turning 5. We didn't even have that little girl when we moved in.

By the time we leave Missouri we will have lived here for 7 years. Longest place that we have lived anywhere. We made many changes to the home. We changed the landscaping, added siding and our awesome red door that we loved. We loved this home. It wasn't perfect. But it was perfect for our family at the time. I loved having a salon downstairs, I enjoyed all my time doing hair and chatting with so many people. We loved our huge yard for the kids to run around in, and the sand box was a love/hate relationship. Kids loved it, friends loved it but not so fun when they enter the house covered in sand, yuck. Oh and I will not miss mowing that lawn with the humidity and the long mowing season MO has.

We have loved our time in Missouri. I can't even stand the thought of saying good bye to all the friends that I've made here. I tear up every time I think of saying bye. Our ward is fantastic. Since Danny has been gone, they have stepped up and helped me in so many ways that I can't even begin to name. Maybe one day I can mention all that they have done for me. But the services that they have given me and my family has been abundant.  I couldn't have made it thru without all their help. Our new ward in Alaska has a lot to live up to. Moving to a new ward can be kind of scary because each ward has such different dynamics, so I am kind of nervous about it. Wish me luck!

Pinewood Derby 2015

Josh waiting for his car to be released. 

 Yay! Pinewood Derby time again. Josh was the only official racer from our family this year. We opened the races to anyone after it was done. Josh did win 2nd place. He did really well. It was such a neck to neck race between him and the winner. He was thrilled. Besides Danny doing the cutting out he did most of it on his own. And he chose none other than camouflage to paint it.

He won this race

All the kids like to be up front and center

His face tells it all, he was having fun

Audrey can give some awesome faces too. 

By the time open races began the kids wanted to be up even closer

Audrey with her very girly car. She loved that she got one too. 

Colton wanted green and one lego sticker. He went simple

Nate wanted a super cool real race car look

Mr Josh with his ribbons and award. He was so happy he got second

         

Nathan's 5th grade activities

SUPER SAGE

Nathan is part of the SAGE program at school. It's students in academically  gifted education. He's been there since kindergarten. We were really hesitant when his teacher presented the idea to us. We held off for s short time. But after talking to the SAGE teacher we felt that we could give it a try. One day a week he is bussed to another school and attends class with other students in the program. It is a class that requires a lot of self learning and research projects. It has been great for him. It's always been his favorite day of the week. 

This year in SAGE his teacher had them participate in the First Lego league competition. They had to create and program Lego's to accomplish certain tasks. They had to also do a skit and presentation and posters. Alot of work went into this competition. And she only had these kids one day a week to accomplish the task. So from Sept to Jan this was their focus. Their first competition they scored well enough to advance. They went to Union Station in downtown Kansas City for the final competition. They did well but did not place. They went up against teams that meet much more frequently and not to mention they had kids that were much older then them, high school kids, that they competed against. I know they were bummed they didn't win but what they did accomplish at their age was fantastic. It kind of seemed unfair to have elementary kids competing with middle school and high school kids.

In front of his displays. 

His team was called Super Sage and they all had matching shirts.

His whole team waiting to begin the programming table.

supporting the guys doing the actual programming

Waiting for results. 

DARE GRADUATION

Not a whole lot needs to be explained for this event. Nate participated in the dare program and this was his graduation. Didn't get many pictures. It was a very short and sweet program. So these are just a few of the pictures that I got. 

Best smile that I'm gonna get from Nate. And I believe that the dare program began in 1983

Arianna, Gage, Nate, Alexis, Brittany being goofy

Ashton and Nate

Before Listing the house

 So, I am going to post some before pictures of our home before we listed it. And let me just say that I should be way to embarrassed to even post these of my home and I am little embarrassed but not enough to not share them. Now, that being said, they are way dirty and cluttered. We just had so much going on at the time, we honestly had not had the chance to pick up and organize anything. We REALLY, REALLY, REALLY DID NOT  live like this. These pictures are showcasing something that is totally out of the normal. I couldn't have chosen a worse day to take pictures of the whole house. But I had hurry and get them taken because Danny was getting ready to take things off the walls and sale stuff. The point is, this is what our house looked like, if you can look past all the clutter. Seriously, I can't believe how bad we let it get!!

These are pretty much all the before shots:

The front door leading straight into the dining room. Loved our red door!

Dining room is open to our kitchen with a breakfast bar. You can get a brief glimpse of what our cupboards looked like after the rustoluem cabinet transformation kit.

BEFORE

AFTER

Not the best lighting of our family room. But we loved our large family room

The main bath had just been updated and redecorated. I added a bath picture of each of the kids. The turquoise is Audrey and the yellow one is Colton

Our colorful accessories. The orange one is Nate and Josh is in the green.

This was Dan's trophy wall. There was a rifle above the picture but it had already come down

The "toy" room or rather the cluttered room.

This was once the salon, but now Josh and Colton's room. They had lots of space, it was bigger than the master bedroom

Dan and I's bedroom. He had just recently painted the room 6 months ago from a dark brown to this bright turquoise color. I liked the color. 

Our bright colorful master bath. 

Nate, Nate, Nate! He's kind of a hoarder. His room was a really neat room when it was clean and organized. 

Audrey had just gotten new pain. We did a gray glitter way and the other 3 walls in a light lilac color. It was very girly.

 
Now, that I've shared some really embarrassing, cluttery pictures of my house I can share a few pictures of some after shots. I didn't end up getting very many of them because the realtor took them. But here are a few. We think it cleans up really nicely!


AFTER

Fresh, neutral paint. I loved the dark beam in my kitchen. 

Nate's room we turned into a small media room

A Very basic bathroom

Our view of the backyard from the deck. 

Looking at the back of the house. 

The front of the house

We have loved this house for the 7 years that we had it. It was perfect for our growing family. It was really hard having to neutralize everything and erase all our personal touches to it. It just made it a house and not a home. I wish I had some more after pictures to show you but I just didn't get many taken. It really did clean up well. And that being said, sometimes you have to make a bigger mess before you can get a mess cleaned up. Does that make sense? 

Branson Vacay!!

 The last weekend of the year, we took a much needed vacation to Branson, MO. We bought another vacation package with Grand Country Inn. We stayed a couple of nights and it included passes to their indoor water park, tokens to the arcade, miniature golfing passes, vouchers to see to family shows and 2 free pizzas. We didn't do the shows this visit because we wanted to spend more time swimming and relaxing. If you haven't been to Branson, I suggest going and this place is pretty cool if you are going with a family.

Josh is hanging around to get splashed by the big bucket of water.

This is the most that I can get this boy to smile. 

Audrey is enjoying the warm water with Daddy. She just shivers in the cold water because she has no fat on those bones. 

He barely can fill out that tube in length but he manages to get himself comfortable

Colton really is in this picture, he just kind of blends in by the pole

He was hard to get a picture of because he never would hold still long enough for me. 

Just relaxin and chillin

Hanging outside of our room.

Indoor miniature golfing.

All 4 of my crazy monkeys

Josh is prepping to hit the ball.

Colton is up next. And look, Danny is smiling.

Audrey had a lot of fun, and looked cute too

Nate is old enough now to get the hang of golf but not sure why he is golfing left handed. 

Along with wanting to get away, we also had arranged to have our entire top floor painted. We really had custom colors in each of our rooms and needed to tone it down to something neutral. We felt if much easier to leave and let them get the work done without us being underfoot. It was so weird to come home to a house with walls all the same color-kind of boring to us.