Ummmmm? Random stuff

I am not creative enough to come up with a better Title and also not as faithful with blogging as I wish I would be and can hardly find the time to do it. So instead I have been jotting down the things the kids have been doing over the past week. That way I can preserve the memories and I dont have to make a ton of seperate blog posts. I ask the kids every once in a while what their favorite things are and here were their responses from last night.


Kenidi
Fav food- Breakfast food, like cheerieos or corn pops
Fav toy- Britynn ( I love that one)
Fav color- Purple
Fav cartoon- peep wide world
Best friend- Kaden





Kaden
Fav food- I couldn't get him to be serious about this one so his response was "the bed"?
Fav toy- play vacuum
Fav color- red
Fav cartoon- Super why
Best friend- Kenidi





I love that they both said their best friend was each other! There is nothing more pleasant to a parents ears than to hear them say they would rather play with their own brother or sister. I remember when I was a kid growing up we would always ask my dad what he wanted for Christmas and his reply would always be " To have my children get a long!" I never quite understood why he always wanted that so much. Not until recently that is. I would have to say that over the past five months I have really started to appreciate why he desired such a gift as that... the kids have really been quite easy playing together but like I said these past five months or so have really been a turning point. They have been more at heads probably because of the fact that I am now distracted with Britynn since she requires a lot of attention. Also I hadn't been doing FHE as faithfully as I should which always makes a big difference with how my kids behave.



I have been teaching Kaden how to say his whole name and every now and then I will quiz him to see if he can properly say it. So the other day I asked him what his full name was and he told me his name was Kaden Animal Steimle!!! LoL!! I asked him again if he knew what his full name was and he still said his middle name was animal? At first I thought that maybe he just can't pernounce Adam, but when I ask him to just say Adam he has no problem. Later that same day he came up to me with these big pouty eyes and said that he had an owie and that he needed me to make it better, So I asked what he wanted me to do...... He said that he wanted me to put Jello on it! You gotta love the innocence of a child :)



Several weeks ago Kenidi was saying the blessing on the dinner and in her prayer she kept saying a ton of funny things, I can't remember all of what she said because I forgot to write it all down at the time. But the one thing that still stands out in my mind is that she specifically asked that we will start to have more money in our bank account. I later asked her about that and why she thought that was so important and she said that she has been noticing me talking about the bills and how we cant make ends meet. She is so observant, I didn't even think she was listening.

Kenidi is at the age where she will rein act what she sees on TV, I have been tracking the kids progress through the parent tracker on pbsparents.org the site has detailed info on your child's development and so I always watch to see if my kids are doing the stuff they talk about and rein acting the things they see on TV is one of those things. She loves to watch this show called "Peep wide world" the show is about birds. This one particular episode she was watching was all about one of the birds learning how to fly, I was going about my business cleaning the apartment and doing the laundry, when I was in the bedroom I kept hearing a loud thud. The noise continued about 6 more times and after the last thud I heard Kenidi let out a big Growling sound- as if she were frustrated. I went into the family room and found her standing on the couch with two books in her hands, she jumped from the couch and flapped the books as fast as she possibly could and then looked at me and said " Mom, I just cant fly! Why cant I fly mom? " I told her that I sometimes wish I could fly too :)

The Family T.E.A.M

I have been reading this book called- The Potentially Sane Mother's Guide To Raising Young Children. It is such an awsome book, and I would suggest that every family has a copy! I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately, being a full time mom to not 1 not 2 but 3 kids. This book has been collecting dust over for the past few years, but a few days ago I decided to bust it out in desperation of finding some sort of hope and hope is exactly what I found!! The author of this book is Tamara A. Fackrell she is a mother of five and has page after page of activites and parenting ideas to help you feel confident and in control. I started to read and then thought to myself why on earth it had taken me so long to finally give it a chance? In the book Tamara explained how she introduced the "Family Team" idea.

We have been major slackers with FHE lately, Kenidi has been constantly asking me when we are going to have family home evening and my reply usually goes something like this...." I know we need to do that, things have just been really busy lately and I haven't fully prepared a lesson yet, we will do it soon I promise." Then of course the feeling of GUILT comes!! I can't stand to have that nagging feeling like I know I should have done something but didn't make it priority enough.

Today I finally made it priority, Yay! Since it is very difficult for us to get our whole family together with Adam living on base and all, we decided to go on base and have FHE. We introduced the family TEAM to our kids and they absolutley loved it :) We talked about a team and what a team does. The sport we introduced was soccor. We explained that we as a family are just like a team, becasue each one of us has to work together for the same cause and when just one person doesn't do their part the whole family suffers. We asked the kids several question like what they thought would happen if one of the team players were to start playing for the other team. Kenidi was super excited and answered every question perfectly. Kaden was excited too, but I think he was more thrilled that we were going to play soccor. I know it will be a little more work to instill the idea into our two year old sons head, but I know eventually he will catch onto the concept.

T= Teamwork
E= Everyone in the family doing it
A= Appreciation
M=Making family a Priority

Fourth of July weekend

Our fourth of July weekend was quite eventful!! We were able to have daddy for a FOUR DAY weekend! We anxiously waited in the car for him to be released. After we picked him up we drove to the Virginia Beach Aquarium. It was a lot of fun! They had Different kinds of Crabs and a Sting Ray tank, we saw some pretty huge sea turtles and best of all was the Sharks!! The sting ray tank was pretty cool...Kenidi was not all that thrilled about touching them but Kaden, Adam, and I were all over the idea, the only thing I didn't like was smelling like a fish after having my hand in the water. The Aquarium had two buildings that were connected by a nature trail which was very wooded, it was a beautiful walk to the other side. We had so much fun that we ended up staying till they closed.

On Saturday we decided to go to the Yorktown beach, it is only 13 miles from where we live so we wanted to check it out. I kinda like it better than Virginia beach. It is much less crowded and way closer. The kids had a lot of fun digging a big pit with daddy. Britynn even got her feet in the water. Poor Kaden was so tired, he had skipped his nap almost everyday that week. He looked so sleepy in the pictures of him at the beach, the sun was so bright that he could hardly keep his eyes open.

Sunday we invited a nice couple from our ward over for dinner. We didn't go to a firework show because they don't allow fireworks in Newport News so instead we made our own firework show. We didn't go all out though, I specifically told Adam that we could only spend 15$ on fireworks. Poor Adam he loves fireworks and I know he would have spent way more if it wasn't for me, I knew that we just couldn't justify spending a lot of money though. I was so bummed that none of the pictures turned out. We don't have a camera (since Kaden broke it) so we used our camcorder but the camera on the camcorder doesn't have a flash, so all of the pics are blurred. It takes great pics during the day though. We had so much fun with daddy that weekend and were sad to take him back on Monday.

Britynn spent most of the time at the beach sleeping in
the stroller. This is the picture I took of just after she woke up.

Little sleepy eyes

Britynn's little feet prints

We had to make our own fun since there weren't any waves

Daddy cooking Sunday dinner with the kids

Kaden is gonna turn into a pyro just like his daddy

Virginia Beach

Britynn was only one week old when we took her to Virginia Beach. We had so much fun while we were there. It was hard to convince Adam to go since he hates the sand and the mess it brings into the car, but I finally got him to go. It was such a beautiful day the weather was perfect and breezy.

Baby Britynn

Nevermind these pictures, I really dont like
pictures just after giving birth.

Poor Adam had to sleep on the chair he didn't
have a pillow so instead he used his ACU uniform.


Kenidi was sick when we first brought Britynn home, so it was over a week before we let Kenidi hold her new baby sister. Kenidi was so excited when it was finally okay told hold her.

Grandma giving Britynn her second bath

Two weeks old

Pictures

These pics have absolutley no order since now days I hardly have anytime to blog. I figure the most important thing is that I get the pictures on here.


Fort Eustis has a U.S. Army transportation
Museum, we decide to take the kids to see the fun stuff,
kaden was very excited about his new choo choo train.

We took the kids to the James River

9 months prego and a ton of stretch marks.
Gotta love kaden in the background.

The kids were cold, I dont know why but

Kaden looks taller than Kenidi in this pic

Since I wasnt able to toss the kids in the

air they were finally able to get caught up

Grandma Wanlass and Andrea's mother

holding sweet little Maycee

Theresa Montgomery and her son Ryland

Kaden chowing down and making a lovely mess

Andrea worked so hard to make

everything beautiful! I love the colors she picked :)

Kenidi & Emma

I love this pictures! Kaden looks like

he has harry legs. I still dont know

how he got a hold of those markers.