One Year Old!

     Wow!  Nate has been one for almost 5 months now and I'm finally blogging about his birthday.  Better late than never!
     Nathan got to open his presents first thing in the morning.  It was cute to see the girls get so excited about their little brother's birthday.  They all wanted to find something to wrap for him.

      He seemed to know he was supposed to remove the wrapping paper.  But I'm not sure he realized there was a fun gift inside.  He was taking his time.  Pulling off one tiny piece at a time and handing it to one of his sisters.  They thought it was hilarious and he seemed to think it was a pretty fun game too.

     Whenever I would use the laptop, Nate would come over and try to push the keyboard.  So even though he's a little young to play the games, we decided to get him his own laptop.  He started pounding like crazy as soon as he opened it!

      It took us awhile to get interested in opening any other presents once he had the laptop.

      The girls were starting to get tired of waiting and kept trying to interest him in his other gifts.

     He finally complied.

It was so fun to make a little boy cake.

Nate managed to get a swipe of frosting before Daren lit the candle.

He thought it was pretty tasty!

So messy he went straight into the tub!

All cleaned up and reading a birthday card from Grandma!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY BOY!  WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

P.S.  This was my 200th blog post!!

Daren's 40th

     Yep, that's right.  Daren is 40 years old.  It seems unbelievable.  I remember my parents when they were in their 30's and thinking that was old. :) Now my husband and the father of my children is 40 and I'm not far behind.  Devin and Daren's mom were still visiting so they got to join in the celebrating too.  I thought it was really neat that Daren had some family here for this special birthday.  As I mentioned before, we spent the day visiting Fossil Falls and then the Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery.  We came home and quickly started making his special birthday dinner-stuffed bell peppers.  My dad and Grandma Poetschlag joined us (my mom is still in Idaho with Amy and Tim helping with their new little baby Cecilia).  After dinner Grandma Bobbi and the girls did a puppet show for Daren that they had planned the day before.  It was about a mom and dad who were having a baby boy and they wondered what he would be interested in- cars, trucks, train, airplanes, etc.  Then the little boy was Daren and they used every animal puppet we owned (which is A LOT) to demonstrate what Daren was interested in.  The girls were laughing like crazy and it was pretty adorable.

Daren's Artwork and More

Oct. 13, 2011
Mackenzie snuggling with the bear in the dr. office waiting room. (I just love this picture!)

Oct. 13, 2011
Nate, Mackenzie, and Kelsey in the dr. office waiting room.

Oct. 27, 2011
Samantha Rodriguez, Grace Cannon, Haylee Hardy, Katie Cannon, and Natalee Hardy all dressed up to go to their Halloween-themed Activity Days.

Oct. 31, 2011
Kelsey and her BFF, Torstun Grover, trunk-or-treating in the church parking lot.

Nov. 12, 2011
My mom, Grandma P., and I all went to Lancaster for some shopping.  I saw this at Winco and thought it was so funny that they put "No Sampling" on their dog biscuits.  I can understand on the candy.  But the dog biscuits? :)

Nov. 20, 2011
At Kelsey's request, Daren drew a picture of her.  She was picking her nose while he drew the picture so he thought it would be a great idea to incorporate that into the drawing.  Kelsey was not happy about it.  It cheered her up when I told her it was good enough art for me to put it in the blog book and Daren started protesting.

Someone Got Her Ears Pierced Today!

SOMEONE NAMED KELSEY ROSE HARDY!

     I wasn't quite sure if she would go through with it, but she didn't even flinch.  She didn't cry either, but she did have quite the frown until they gave her a sucker after it was done.  Kelsey has been asking me to get her ears pierced whenever we pass by the jewelry section at Wal-Mart.  I always say no because I can see they only have 1 person staffing jewelry at the time and I don't dare let her get pierced one ear at a time.  She'd never let them do the second ear!  But this time, we were there, they had two people working, so I asked her, "Do you still want to get your ears pierced?"  What a silly question!  She picked out adorable purple butterfly earrings that came with a matching necklace.  It was also cute that the purple ones were actually the birthstone for February, Kelsey's birth month! (It was amethyst.)  So, all 4 girls have their ears pierced and I am really glad our piercing days are over (well, I hope and pray they are!).  I think little butterfly earrings are adorable but I can't help but cringe a bit during the piercing.  Just in time for family pictures tomorrow!

Summer Camps

     This summer Natalee decided to try something new-Volleyball Camp.  She had a lot of fun and it has really sparked an interest in volleyball for her.  Haylee decided to do soccer camp.  That was a first for our family as well.  I don't know if they do this every summer, but this year they had a group of soccer coaches from the U.K. come teach the camp. They all play on a U.K. soccer team that played a game here in Ridgecrest the same week.  Unfortunately we weren't able to go to their game and watch.  But Haylee had so much fun and really liked the coach of her group.  Unfortunately we forgot to sign her up for fall soccer, but I'm sure we'll remember to do spring soccer next year.

Haylee and Coach Sam

Summer Piano Recital

Piano Recital June 20, 2011

     One thing I really love is teaching these 4 beautiful girls piano lessons.  They are all doing so well and it is so neat to see their talents growing.  I am so grateful to my friend Ronelle Cannon for helping me out so that piano lessons can happen!  Ronelle watches Mackenzie, Kelsey, and Nathan for me so that I can teach without (too much) interruption.  I only have 4 students (my girls, Natalee and Haylee; and Ronelle's girls, Katie and Grace) so our recitals are pretty short.  But I think it's important for the girls to get to show off what they've accomplished and it gives them a little bit of experience performing in "public."  They were being so silly after the recital (doing all sorts of silly bows and curtsies) that I was sure we weren't going to get any great pictures.  But this one turned out adorable!

Silly pictures:

Haylee's Menu

     Earlier this month, Haylee decided to make a menu for future dinners.  I can't remember what I had made for dinner the night before, I just remember that she wanted to know why I always cooked things she hated.  Inspired by my dinner, Haylee created this menu.  I found out about it when Mackenzie started sobbing to me that she wanted a burrito but Haylee said she couldn't have one because it wasn't on the menu and she knew for a fact that Haylee purposely left burritos off just to bother her.  A few hours later, I found the "menu" laying around.  Since I found it very amusing, I thought I would like to remember it forever.  So here it is:

Menu's

Kid's Meals
1. Fishsick's
2. Chickenugget's
3. Fishstick's and chickennuggets
4. rammon noodles
5. macarone
6. girl cheese sandwiches
7. sandwich
8. kasadia
9. smoothies

Extra meals for grown ups
1. Ham
2. bacon
3. Soup
4. Sallad
5. dressing's
6. corn
7. green been's
8. peas
9. sandwich
10. fishsicks
11. Smoothies

Very Good

I'm a little bummed that we don't get to have our sallad and dressing's on the same night.  And I should probably tell Haylee that I don't actually love green been's and peas.  But it was great practice and since I'm horrible at meal-planning and it's one of my worst chores, I will be thrilled when Haylee is old enough to take over this task for the family. :)