6 Year Old Brad!

Today my favorite little boy in the world turned six years old.  He already had a great party on Saturday, so today we celebrated with pancakes shaped like a 6 and cupcakes for his school class.  He is such a fun boy and is crazy smart.  He just baffles me with the things he comes up with sometimes.  I did a little interview with him tonight and here are some things you should know about Brad:

Favorite Color – Orange (and yellow and blue)

Favorite Food – Pizza

Favorite Animal – Wolf

Best Friends – Micah, Gid and Corbin

Favorite thing to do – Pretend to be an animal and “Go Wild!”

Favorite thing at school – Reading & writing and helping the other kids (his teacher, Ms. DeJoelie, confirms that he helps the other kids a lot)

What he wants to be when he grows up – a Zoologist and a Helicopter pilot

His favorite singer – Shakira (blame me for that one)

Brad is 46 inches tall and weighs 47 lbs.  He recently lost his two front bottom teeth (the first one came out at school which made him the coolest kid for the day).  He loves school and is doing very well.  It’s no surprise that all the girls adore him.  One girl’s mom told me she talks about him “ALL the time” at home.  It must be the eyelashes.

I LOVE YOU BRAD!

A bunch of the pictures of his “Mad Science” birthday party are posted here.

Brad’s First Day of Kindergarten

Hard to believe that I have a child old enough to go to Elementary School…but today was Brad’s first day of Kindergarten.  He is at Newman Elementary and his teacher’s name is Ms. DeJolie and her assistant is Ms. Toni.  They both seem like they’re going to be great.  He was very excited to start school, and in his usual form was pretty nonchalant about the whole thing.  He walked right in and sat down with a smile on his face.  The thing he was most excited for was, of course, lunch.  He was also happy that they got to play on the “Big Kids” playground since when he was in Pre-K they had to play on the little one.  He had a great day and was so excited to go back he could barely sleep tonight.  I am so excited for him to learn to read and to progress at his other skills.  I think it’s going to be a great year for him.  Here are some pictures!

While Brad was all smiles, Lucy was pretty devastated.  She’s going to miss her big brother and just can’t wait until she can go to school herself.

Lucy is Three!

On May 21 Lucy Mae turned 3 years old.  It sounds cliché but I can’t believe how fast it has gone.  It seems like she should still be just a baby, but she’s a feisty little girl with all the attitude and personality I should have expected from a Tibbs girl.

Lucy is such a fun and energetic girl.  She sings all the time, making up songs as she plays.  Her favorite composition is a song she made up to say sorry where she gets a very serious look on her face and sings very quietly, “I’m sorry I was mean” three or four times.  It’s very hard not to laugh.  She loves to color and to paint.  I hardly have room to display all her artwork.  She has a soft baby doll she calls “Baby Lu” that she loves and takes all over the place.  Her favorite color is red and she likes to point out things that are her favorite color as well as everyone else’s in the family.  She adores her big brother and wants to do everything with him.  Every morning she asks if Brad has school and is so disappointed if she hears that he does and they’ll be apart for 3 hours that day.  Most of the time Brad is very patient with her but when they fight she holds her own.  She’s also very smart and can spell her name, count to 10 (more sometimes) in English and Spanish and knows many of her letters.

Her aunt Jo-Elle and cousin Hailey gave her a darling tutu and t-shirt for her birthday and Lucy wanted her picture taken so we went to the park for a little photo shoot, and here she is at 3 years old.

March and April 2011

March and April really flew by this year.  Joe was out of town for work for a week in March.  Having him gone really makes me appreciate him and all that he does to help with the kids.  I would not be a very good single mom. 

Brad played another little season of indoor soccer…and it went pretty much like it has before.  He is a pretty decent goalie, but he hasn’t quite figured out the offense thing yet.  He is REALLY good at telling everyone else what to do.  I wonder if they have a place for kids to be assistant coaches?

At the recommendation of his Pre-K teacher we had him tested for the Extended Learning Program (ELP) in our school district.  When we got the results back I was really unsure of what to think.  He scored far above average on their math and reading test and in non-verbal problem solving he was in the 94th percentile (no surprise there).  However he didn’t get into the program and it’s probably based on the fact that in verbal problem solving he was in the 30th percentile.  It’s hard not to get caught up in what that means, but since I really have no idea what the test consisted of I can’t analyze it too much.  Chances are he just wasn’t interested in whatever it was they asked him to do.  Anyway, he’ll be going to kindergarten in the fall at Newman Elementary which is where he’s gone to Pre-K.  It’s not our closest school, but I really like it there and think he will thrive.

In March I got a very exciting new toy – my Trek Lexa SL:

After riding my hybrid bike around last year and renting a road bike for the Heber Valley ride in September I decided that I really love biking enough to invest in a road bike.  Joe helped me pick out this one and I simply adore it.  It’s so fast!!   The first weekend in April Joe and I went down to St. George for a little get away and rode ALL over.  We rode up the bike trail in Snow Canyon which was a blast even though it has some crazy steep hills.  I’m not very good at hills – imagine me trying to let go of all my inhibitions and hurl myself down a hill and breakneck speeds where if you hit a rock you just might die – not really my thing.  I did get going about 37 mph down one and was pretty proud of myself.  It was a fabulous weekend (although apparently I didn’t take pictures).

We had a very festive Easter season this year.  The kids were invited to 3 Easter Egg hunts!  We’re still eating Easter candy.

Our friends, Shannon and Mac Bludworth, held a massive Easter hunt at their house.  Their yard was literally COVERED in candy, eggs and toys.  The kids had an incredible time and it was so generous of the Bludworths.  They are some of those really good people that you just love to be around.  Here’s some pics:

The yard before the kids got to it:

 

They also got to have an Easter Egg hunt at Mike & Stephanie’s house at a Pitts family party.  Bree gave each kid their own color of eggs to find which was fun and challenging for them.  Mike had Easter Egg games for the grown-ups too including a relay race where you had to hold an egg on a spoon in your mouth, a game where you had to toss a raw egg back and forth with your spouse and an especially entertaining one where spouses placed an egg between their belly buttons and had to try to roll it up to their necks without using their hands.  Since Joe is 1o inches taller than  I am our belly buttons and necks are not really in the same place.  It was pretty funny.

On Easter we got together with the Larson family at Tenille’s house and had a fun lunch and egg hunt there too. Pictures:

Dad and Tenille:

Nick & Lacy & Jayden

Lucy found one!

Ross

Brad hard at work.

Chelise with a full bucket.

Jack (and Carly).

And Mom and Janet…I think Janet is smoking a pencil.

A friend from the ward, Samantha Behl, needed to do some pictures for a photography class at school so she asked if she could take some of my kids.  We went to a local park and she got some great shots – here are some of my favorites:

And one with me:

The only other exciting thing that happened in April was that we lost Lucy at a Utah Blaze (indoor football) game.  We were there with the Hughes and Joe and Steve had taken the kids out to play on a small playground they have there.  The next thing I knew Joe was bringing Brad back in and saying “I’ve lost Lucy.”  I really thought he was kidding at first…but he wasn’t.  She had taken off and was nowhere to be found.  We reported her to security who (not so) reassuringly told me “Don’t worry, we haven’t really lost one yet.” and within 1o minutes they had found her inside the arena watching the dancers.  Brad actually spotted the security man bringing her down the stairs and he and Laura were the first ones to her.  I didn’t actually break down until they found her and then my emotions got the best of me.  It was really scary not to know where she is and to have all kinds of bad things running through the back of my mind.  Luckily all was well and we’ve had lots of talks since then about staying where you’re supposed to be.

February 2011–California and the Happiest Place on Earth

In February Joe and the kids and I took Joe’s parents and went to California for five days. I have to admit that I was slightly skeptical about the whole Disneyland trip. I was 18 the first time I went to Disneyland and I wasn’t sure that the Disney magic of childhood would live up to all I had heard. Turns out it totally did. We had an amazing time. And I think the kids liked it too.

I took a million pictures, unfortunately a lot of them are saved on our currently malfunctioning hard drive so you get the ones I already had posted on facebook.

The first day that we got there we rented a van at the airport and drove to Huntington Beach. It was Lucy’s first time seeing the ocean and Brad’s first time that he could remember. It was too cold to go into the water but we had fun walking the pier, finding shells and watching some crazy surfers. We also saw a seagull with only 1 food…I should have taken a picture of that.

We spent 3 days going to Disneyland and California Adventure. We stayed at the Desert Palms which was about a 10 minute walk from the parks which was perfect for afternoon naps. It did rain on us a little bit which I guess is the hazard of going in February, however since we never waited in line for more than 20 minutes for any ride I will totally take a little rain.

Kathy and I took Lucy to have lunch with the Princesses at Ariel’s Grotto. It was totally worth the money because the princesses came to our table and talked with and hugged Lucy and she was absolutely in 7th Heaven.

Obligatory teacup shot:

Lucy tells everyone “I was a CRAZY driver!”

And some randomness:

One of the really nice things about taking Joe’s parents with us was that Joe and I got to have some time alone. One of the nights we went to California Adventure alone and rode the “Tower of Terror”. It was a GREAT ride! We both loved it.

It was such a fun trip and I’m so glad we did it. I can see why people go back again and again.