Britynn is Four Months

Britynn has been really changing over these past few months. She started rolling onto her belly on the 26th of september and right around that same time she stated discovering her little toes. She is constantly pulling her hands together and putting objects into her mouth. She is such a loveable little girl, so peacful and full of smiles. She has recently started to giggle and loves to play Pat a Cake. Aside from being the cutest Baby in the world and always being such a delight to be around, she also has the most beautiful singing voice!! She wakes me up every single morning to her singing :) Which reminds me of another exciting new thing she has been doing and that is SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT!! I am so excited about this I have been trying to get her to go for longer spans and she is now finally going from about eight pm to 6-7 am ahhhh! What a sigh of relief:)

NAS Oceana Naval Airshow

Adam took Kenidi and Kaden To the airshow on Spetember 18th. As a kid he and his family loved to go to the arishows. Adam desires to pass that same tradition on to his kids, he was reminising the night before the show about his childhood memories and the excitement of seeing the Blue Angles. I went to Williamsburg with my Dad that day and We had Sister Thorn Babysit Britynn for the day. I really wanted to go to the Airshow but I figured that with Williamsburg being so close to us I would go there instead and have some Daddy daughter time myself. I unfortunatley dont have any of the pictures from Williamsburg since my Dad took all the pictures, but We will be going back to Williamsburg again before we leave and I will get some then.

The conference packet this year had a bunch of fun activites, like finger puppets of the prophets and this fun little Liahona. Kenidi and I both had a blast making it. I wish I were creative enough to put something like this together whoever it is that combines these activity packets must be very creative.





It is fun to pretend like it is the real Liahona that Lehi and their family used, I explained to Kenidi that it only works the same as it did for Nephi and that is you have to be faithful in order for it to work properly. She keeps calling it her basket though ;)

I was consumed in cleaning the kids closet and organizing all of their art supplies. Once I was all done I turned around to find a little sleeping beauty!

The kids were so excited when I announced that we would be painting our rocks!! I asked them a couple of weeks ago to start collecting their favorite rocks, they were so excited and didn't waste anytime with accomplishing this task. One of my most favorite books is titled "Way To Be" by Gordon B. Hinkley. He has listed 9 different ways to help you be happy and live a productive life The kids picked their favorite ways to be and then painted the rocks. Kenidi's rocks were Be Smart and Be Humble, both are things that she is very much striving to be every day. Kaden painted his rock red and chose his favorite way to be which was Be Grateful. I painted my rock white and chose my favorite way to be which was Be Clean. Adam later joined in and picked the Be Positive way to be. We were actually going to have family home evening based off of each of these ways to be and with each new lesson we would paint a rock, as you can see that didn't quite work out so well. We will have to do some catching up:) We still have 4 more ways to be left. I love my family and every single moment I have as a mother to nurture my childern and raise them with love and learning. Family nights are by far our most favorite day of the week.

Little Britynn was so sweet and helped
by pulling the table cloth all while singing
to herself. She has always got a grin on her face!

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