Happy Birthday to my sweet Sheepie

It is truly unbelievable to me that my second oldest is already six years old. It seems like only yesterday we were in the hospital pacing the hallways waiting for this little man to make his debut into the world. Now here he is already six years old and heading off to first grade in autumn.

I have to say that there are so many things about my sweet Sheepie that I love. He is infection in his quirky laughter and sense of humour. He is also the one of the most empathetic, caring, and loving boys I've ever met.

He loves cooking, and is REALLY good at it for his age. He wants to be a professional chef/world famous fashion designer/movie maker/paleontologist/writer/stay at home daddy when he grows up. And it is not at all surprising to me to see that he has one of the biggest imaginations of any kid I know. There are so many times I think he's just staring into space or zone out but then he will tell me about some amazing, elaborate story he was playing out in his head.

I love that he loves his blanket and tiger more than anything else in the world, and believes that they are truly alive and real. Magic is as real to him as the fact the sun rises and he firmly believes that one day he will go to Hogwarts School of Wizardry, and become a Hufflepuff like Cedric Diggory.

We couldn't be happier to have him be a part of our family and I look forward to watching him continue to grow up being the goofy, lovable kid that he is.



At the hospital


best picture of him ever!


One year


18 months


Two Years






Three Years


Four Years


Five Years


Six Years

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHEEPIE!

Sheepie turns six year old!

The day we left for the summer, Sheepie turned six (more on that in the next post) and he really wanted to have a birthday party with his friends before we left for the entire summer. This year's theme for his party was Space. However it was a space water party. Totally makes sense, doesn't it?!



This is the awesome 'kid carwash' Mr. C made for the boys to play with at the party. My friend Katie has one that she lent to me for the schools end of the year party that I was in charge of, and I thought it would be the best thing ever. So Mr. C went the morning of Sheepie's party and bought the supplies and popped one out. It was amazingly fun.

Sheepie really wanted a space themed brithday cake this year so I told him I'd come up the design and he'd have to wait until his party to see what it would be.

Every time I make one of the kids cakes, I seriously think I've reached my limits of craziness, but then they ask for something else, and I decide, 'why not!?' and I end up making something crazier than the last years cake.

Let's try this again...

I have to admit that this post is going to be a bit half hearted. I spent about an hour making up a post about the kids last days of school and such only to have IE decide that it wanted to eat my post and when I went to look it up in my drafts on blogger, it was blank. Blarg, is all I have to say.

So I'm sorry but I'm mostly just going to put up a bunch of pictures and let them do the explaining. Sorry!

In June the kids, like pretty much every other kid in the country, were finishing up school. This included end of the year programs, last day of school parties, and saying good bye to friends.

Boy loved his first year of preschool, and all summer has been asking when he gets to go back to school. Sheepie has grown so much over the year thanks to his amazing kindergarten teacher. There is not enough good I could say about Melinda Winograd and it will be a bit odd not having a kid in her class this year. Frog Prince is a big kid now, and I'm not sure how I feel about it, lol! He is still my sweet and sensitive son, but gone are all traces of little boy hood. He is all about rock music, legos, video games, and everything else that is 'cool'. This year in school has been so good for him, and thanks to Lisa Tyrrell, he flourished and found the right path for himself at school.



Boy at his last day of preschool celebration. They sang all their songs they'd learned in the year for the parents.


FP's class got to write their own fables and act them out. They did, 'The Cheetah and the Snail,' which was basically the tortoise and the hare. His friends Noah and Eleanor were the story teller and snail. She had this cute little sleeping bag shell on her back.


Sheepie and Mrs. Winograd at the kinder's end of the year presentation. She predicted in her crystal ball that Sheepie would grow up to be a famous costumer/set designer for movies. He was very excited about this, and ran back to me and said, "mom her magic ball must really work, because that is exactly right!"


Sheepie and Melinda Winograd. I love this woman and the magic she creates in her classroom.


Frog Prince and his outstandingly awesome teacher Lisa Tyrrell. I am so excited that our family will get to have her again as Sheepie's teacher.

And then just like that, school was done!

Here are a few other cute pictures from June.

It must have been a fun nap time b/c when I put them to bed there were sheets on the bedding and they had clothes on. At least the diapers stayed on. I love that they enjoy being together.


And this little noodle head was all comfy and helping himself to my lap top when I got out of the shower one morning. I could not stop laughing at how natural and comfortable he looked.

And then before heading out to Utah, we decided to hit up the zoo one last time for the summer because the dinosaurs had come back and would have been gone by the time we came back.



There you have it. Not much by way of details, but at least you get a 'picture' of what we were up to.

Surprise Road Trips are always fun...

By May, things were starting to get a bit dicey at our house, what with Mr. C having been gone for as long as he had. The kids missed him, I missed him, and I was ready for a bit of an adventure; and I mean a real adventure! So when you're pregnant and single parenting four kids, what do you do?

Me? I cram them all in a car, and take off on my own on a surprise road trip to see Daddy in Salt Lake City.

We have had a tradition of talking over the web cam every night before the kids go to bed, and then again in the mornings, so that we could all read scriptures together before school. My goal was to leave (the kids amazing teachers told me to take them out of school early rather than wait until the end of the day!) tell a small fib about why we couldn't talk that night, and then arrive on his door step right about the time he'd be calling us to read scriptures the next morning. It totally worked!


This is us starting off on our adventure. Everyone was besides themselves at the idea of surprising Benjamin!

These next photos are what I like to call the progression of Kate the Great as she drives nonstop for 14 plus hours by herself. :)

all smiles
still smiling
somewhere over 200 miles in... not smiling so much anymore.
I will not fall asleep.... I will not fall asleep...
freezing my head off b/c the boys were all complaining they couldn't sleep since the car was too hot. ppft!
Thankfully we arrived shortly after that.

Along the way we encountered some really fun things, like:

Snow in late May!

When we got there, I called Benjamin (it was about 7 am) and told him that before we read scriptures he needed to go check his front door because his father's day present had just been delivered and if he left it outside it'd get ruined. The boys all stood quietly and had to stuff their fingers in their mouths to stifle the giggles. When Benjamin opened the door they all leapt out and shouted surprise!

Once Daddy was over the shock we took some time to rest and then spent the next four or so days enjoying being together and seeing the sights of Salt Lake.



Travel Froggie took us on a tour of Temple Square and the State Capitol.



We hiked around Antelope Island






And went to visit Kenacott Copper Mines (which is the largest open face mine in the world and one of two man made things you can see from space).



Sadly, all too soon it was time to head back home, since there was still school. We said our good byes and ventured back to Oregon. I was worried when around 4 am or so as we were passing through Brigham City, UT, Sheepie threw up ALL over the place in his sleep. Thankfully, it must have just been car sickness b/c it didn't happen again and the rest of the trip was smooth sailing, and fun sight seeing.


Sheepie wanted to stop and get a picture we every LDS temple we passed.

We stopped in Twin Falls and all the boys took turns standing over the huge valley on this cool over hanging view point they have. If you know how FP feels about being high up, this picture is amazing!




We stopped at the Boise Temple too.

Amenddeous my faithful traveling buddy never left his guard on my mirror.

Our last real stop on the way back was at Multnomah Falls, in Oregon and then, 18 hours later (remember we were sight seeing) we were home.




Little did we know that the real surprise would happen later that week when as I was getting the kids out of the car Mr. C popped up behind me and grabbed me (scaring the living day lights out of me) and was back in Oregon for the weekend. He too had been planning a surprise to come home to take the three oldest to our wards annual Father and Son camp out. My Father in law had agreed to take the boys, all along knowing that Benjamin would be coming home. He and my MIL picked him up and kept the whole thing from us. It was a 'cherry on top' for sure.

May....be my brain will remember May!

I honestly can't remember much of what happened in May. I think a combination of pregnancy brain and single parent syndrome suck it all out of my brain. I had to look on our picasa account to even remember the things I will post about. If I weren't so lazy I'd go back on Facebook to May and look at some of my old status updates. But I am lazy.

Note to Facebook, you really should, in all of your nine billion changes you do, make a way to search and archive status updates. Just sayin'.

Anyways... In May:

I got to take another fun field trip with FP's class. This time it was all the way up to Portland to see a play about Pirates. FP had a great time, but was not a huge fan of how the seating in the theatre was. It was a theatre in the round, and so he had to sit on the swivel chair and lean over a railing on in the balcony to see. He's very afraid of being up high. It wasn't too bothering, although I will admit, there was more than one time I was certain my darling friend Stephanie's daughter Laeythm was going to fall right over the edge from how she was laying over the railing, lol.




This is just some random picture dated in May. We were obviously down town for some reason, but I love how long and shaggy Sheepie's hair is in it. Plus the fact he climbed up with Hobbes. Love that tiger!

Here is another great random picture. Can you find the sleeping Boy?



One day Boy had to stay home sick from school, he got to help plant the garden. Here is the bed he planted. I am sure it looks great now, but not being home to see it, I will have to guess. He was so proud of all his seeds and starts he put in.

While the daddio was gone, I made an extra effort to take the kids on as many adventures as I could, so as to make time pass faster. One day after days and days and days of horrid weather, I decided to let the kids skiv off school and we all headed off to the beach.


If you've never been to the Oregon Coast, you must stop in Newport. Right by the Oregon Coast Aquarium is the science center and it's lovely. It's free (although they do appreciate donations) and it's got amazing exhibits that my kids love.

After that we hit the beach and found the neatest sand dunes to play in for hours (after hitting up Moe's of course)



The other big event of May was that Sheepie finally earned his Yellow belt in Karate. He's been waiting for this to happen for a long time, and we are all very proud of him. He can't wait to get back to Corvallis at the end of the summer and start back up as an official yellow belt.


Is it just me or does he still look too little to have grown up so quickly!!!