1st grade spelling bee...

Kendyl competed in her first spelling bee. She was so excited and worked hard to learn all the words.

She was nervous, but did really well. All the kids were really good spellers.

We are so proud of her for working hard and getting all the way to the 7th round! It got harder when they were asking the kids to spell words that were not on the list.


And now she spells words all the time and looks for good "spelling bee words" when she is reading.

Good job Kendyl!!!

Oh boy...or girl!

We are having a baby!! It was a little surprise, but a very welcome one! We tried for several years and did infertility treatments before we finally welcomed Kendyl. So each new addition has felt like a huge blessing to us after the years of not being able to get pregnant.

It looks like the baby is looking right at us in this picture. :)

Everything looks good and the baby was moving all around.

Kendyl was soooooo excited when she heard I had an ultrasound. She started planning right away where everyone was going to have to sleep, so the new baby will have a room.

Brityn's reaction was, "Oh, I hope it's a girl!" She's excited as well and can't wait for the new baby. At least with a new year's eve birthday, there will be fireworks! And that extra tax deduction! ;-)

Busy boy...

Ryder has been exploring a lot lately, mostly things that have buttons.

His favorite thing is to push the power button on the front of the computer...really convenient when I am trying to post on the blog! :)

His other favorite spot is pushing the button on the tv on and off, on and off. Then he moves to the satellite receiver to turn it on and off, on and off. The one that is amusing is the dvd player that has a radio on it--if he pushes the right buttons he sometimes gets a blaring static noise that he doesn't like.

He's been really good in the kitchen by playing in only the cupboards with the plastic dishes in it.

And when you can't see him, you can find him scrambling up the stairs trying to get as far as he can before someone catches him!

New laundry helper...

So we came home from Arizona, and of course, had loads of laundry to do. Usually Ryder likes to do the opposite of what I am doing...like pulling out clothes I've just put in, or trying to put the clean clothes back in the dryer.



I think he finally caught on, because here he is taking out the clean clothes from the dryer for me and putting them in the basket!


Once we unloaded the dryer, I handed him the wet clothes to put in the dryer and he was laughing and cheering for himself everytime he put something in the dryer. It was so funny! :)

Now I have myself a new laundry helper, woohoo!!

Memorial Day weekend...

We headed down to Arizona for our oldest nephew's wedding. It is so wierd to think that our kids have cousins old enough to get married! It was a fun weekend and not too long of a drive.

The happy couple.

Grandma and Grandpa Hardy dancing at the reception.

Brityn dancing with her cousin Ethan, so cute!

All of us at the reception.

We took the kids swimming at the hotel and Brityn had a fit about getting in the pool and then proceeded to ignore us the rest of the time. Poor Grandma, thanks for holding her!

Ryder was a little nervous at first, but then had a great time splashing around. Kendyl was swimming like a pro and having fun with her cousins.

Just some of the Hardy cousins, fun times!

It was fun seeing family we don't get to see very often and our kids are already looking forward to the family reunion in August so they can play with their cousins again. We also had a chance to visit with some very good friends, but I forgot to take pictures. Thanks for dinner, Kristin and Jim, and for letting us win some games this time! :)

Warning: do not send chocolates in summer...

We got a surprise package in the mail which, unfortunately, sat in our mailbox all day. When we opened it up we found these chocolates, quite warm and squishy.


We put them in the fridge, hoping they would be salvageable. It basically turned out to be a big block of chocolate, but it still tasted good!

Ryder's first haircut...

Ryder's hair is not that long, but it was looking kind of crazy with a few long ones in the back and around his ears, so we decided to give him his first trim.



He was more interested in what we were doing to his head then anything we had to distract him, so he was a constant moving target!



But in the end, he cleaned up well, and even with all that moving around, the hair cut looked great!

Replaced...

Steve's cell phone died this month (first the computer, now the phone...what's going on?) so he got a new replacement. He has already gone through two phones so I told him to go ahead and splurge--call it an early Father's Day present. So he did...and then spent all weekend playing with it, adding apps, and since it has internet, he was figuring out how to check email, get on FB, and search maps and directions and all kinds of neat stuff.

It really is a cool phone and it came in handy this past weekend when we were out of town, with directions and searching for restaurants and checking email and playing games in the car...


It's just hard to be ignored for a phone.

Mother's Day...

This month has been crazy busy, and our computer came down with a nasty virus and worm, so I'm way behind with the blog (I'll be playing catch-up). I did have a lovely Mother's Day complete with homemade cards and gifts from the kids, Steve did all the cooking and I was able to relax and enjoy the day! I have a wonderful family. Love you guys!