THE PEARCE FAMILY: April 2011

boys will be boys

Jaxon is constantly climbing up the basketball hoop this particular day he convinced his friend to be so smart as well. I told them to hold on while I took a pic then to get down and never climb up there again. Am I sending mixed messages?? they just looked so cute up there

Our cute Daddy

Kennedy loves to sleep in the crook of her dads arm and she fits soo good I had to take a pic.

kennedy

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Kennedy 7 weeks old

Kennedy 7 weeks old and attempts at catching her smile it is hard to be the photographer and the one trying to get the smile out of her so they are what they are.

I didn't get any BIG smiles but sweet pleasant faces are good too.

My how the time goes by. Kennedy is now over 7 weeks old and her mom is still wearing her maternity jeans, sad sad day:) She is getting so big and has just started to smile at you when you talk to her. She has been a bit of a challenge though. The first week and a half or so I thought we had an Angel Child slept for at least 4 hours at a time at night and was so quiet. Then I started to function like a mom of 4 kids again and she became the typical baby 0-frantic in about 2 seconds and sleeping if we are lucky 3 hours at a time and the worst of it is she won't settle back down for about an hour then another hour and a half later we are back up going through the same process. I am not one that functions well without sleep ask my kids the poor things. I am just glad that kids tend to be extra forgiving. Hopefully they won't remember this sleep deprived monster they call a mother.

Last Friday we got a baby sitter and went out (taking the baby of course) and she fell asleep on the way home in her car seat so I just left her there. 6 hours later she woke up and wanted to eat 6 HOURS. Needless to say she has been sleeping in her car seat ever since and we have now had 3 days of between 4-5 hours of sleep and then she goes right back to sleep for another 3 or so HAPPY DAY!! I am not sure the car seat is the best place but if she is happier we are HAPPIER. She has what we think must be acid reflex and although I propped up her mattress and give her medicine. I think it just wasn't enough sitting up like the car seat does seems to help a TON! So there you go our first few weeks with the sweety all I have to say it there is a reason the lord sends them so cute, small and lovable..... so you will KEEP THEM!!!

introducing the DC Sox

Yep the way 8 year old are about everything right!

#7 plays outfield, 1st base, and pitcher

good practice swing

Jaxon is on a competition baseball team called the DC Sox. This is our first experience with comp baseball and I have to say I am not sure that I am up for it. It is so much work and we add too it a city baseball team, a soccer team, comp basketball, school, and piano lessons. I know this is insane but I am married to Grin so we will see. There first tournament was in St. George and they did pretty good winning 2 of the 4 games they played. Lots of the teams came from places like Vegas so they been playing actual games for months now. We start our regular season at the end of April it should be fun I just hope we can keep up on it all.

We did try to make a bit of a vacation out of our St. George adventure. Grandma and Grandpa Hone came down and spent a couple days with us we stayed at a hotel the first couple nights but then Grin has a Friend that has a house down there so the Grandparents came down and we stayed there the next couple of nights. The kids got to swim and we did some hiking in snow canyon the weather had its good moments but it was pretty breezy so I spent most of the time in the car with the baby but it was a fun little vacation anyway. I am afraid however that this is the start of a new trend that we have to vacation according to where the sports tournaments are.

first family pic with our Kennedy

Half way through the year Grin changed Jobs. He still works for Ken Garff but is now the Used car manager at the Ken Garff Nissan dealership in Riverdale. He is loving the change and has started going to Auction to buy used cars. He is really enjoying this new aspect of the job and has had the opportunity to travel to Pennsylvania a few times to an exclusive Nissan Auction. He is now the 1st counselor in the Elders Corm and loves spending time playing with the kids and teaching them sports and watching as much sports as he can football, Basketball, Baseball, Golf, Hockey, Tennis, Poker, Soccer, (did I miss any) pingpong? if it is on Espn it is worth watching am I right?

As for me. It is pretty much same old same old. Clean house house the house by 10 am the next morning it is dirty again. I have Jaxon in joy school with the neighborhood kids and will be the teacher next month. We "remodeled" the storage room it started out putting some shelves in then I decided that we should put floor in, then we put in a water softener and a new water heater. My quick small project ended up a huge major project and cost way to much money but in the end my glasses come out of the dish washer clean for the first time and I am a little more organized which makes me happy. I got a new calling a few weeks ago and am now the primary chorister yikes never complain about your calling because it could always be worse. Teaching relief society was torture but at least it was only once a month now it is every week. The kids are a true joy though.

Jaxon started the 4th grade this fall and is doing amazing . He is crazy smart and can read at a 6-8th grade reading level. I gave him my old alarm clock after Grinner won me an Ihome and wakes himself up every morning. He gets up, gets dressed, makes his bed, unloads the dishwasher, reads and sometimes gets his piano done. This of course doesn't always happen smoothly but he does pretty good. We went to his SEP conference however and learned that he doesn't turn in his work that he does. He read probably 4 books that quarter at home and he had turned 1 in and it was the one I had read to him. My little brother was like that and almost didn't graduate because of it, what a nightmare we are working hard to rectify that situation as quickly as possible. He is playing on a competetion basketball team (The Davis Starts) and a comp baseball team (The Sox) and has practice or games almost everynight year round but he loves it and is always happy to go and willing to get his other jobs done to do it most of the time it makes for great leverage. He is getting so tall and before I turn around he will be taller than me. I bought size 10 pants for him for school last spring and we got them out for school and they are too short so he has been flooding around for months new pants "Merry Christmas Jaxon". It is so fun to watch him grow and develop into who he is going to be.

Gavin is now 6 years old! He is in Kindergarten and having a September birthday the oldest in his class. He is not "in love" with school but I don't have to convince him to go everyday either. He has discovered video games and I have had to spend a lot of my time monitoring how much time he has spent playing them. He still has middle child syndrome and you would think that I being a middle child myself would do better at making sure that doesn't happen but he still seems to be the kids that doesn't get his homework done and isn't reading as well as he should at no fault to his own but because mom seems to be running around after everything else. His sweet little personality I am afraid is reflecting this and he spends his life looking at the world with "the glass half EMPTY" I actually put a glass in front of him and asked him "Gavin, when you look at this glass what do you see, is it half full or half empty." his response, "half empty". I am praying that it is a 6 year old phase some of his friends moms say the same thing that the girls will cry in a drop of a hat etc. Gavin doesn't cry that quick but he lashes out yelling not nice things at us like "I hate you's" and "your the worste mom in the world" or this is the worst day ever" "stupid idiot" well you get the idea. I don't want this to be negative but want to write how he actually is so that someday we can read back and laugh at this funny faze our sweet Gavin went through right? On the switch side (it is kind of like living with Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde) he is the cutest big brother to Kennedi and to Ella most days to. But he will spend hours playing with Kennedi from the day she was born giving her kisses, and talking to her in baby talk. Now that she is 10 months he pushes her around the house on her push toy and sits around playing with her for hours kissing and loving her. He is truly the best baby sitter and my heart just leaps out of my chest when ever I watch him. He is going to be the best sweatest dad. My sisters little girl has been his favorite for ever now and I kept wondering if we would be as cute with his own sister as he has been with her but he is just as sweet and loving. How so much love and tenderness and hate and rage can come out of the same child in a matter of hours is beyond me but I am learning quickly that he just "feels" more than the rest of us and we will all adjust accordingly and search for ways for him to utilize that gift.

Ella is now 4 years old!! I was so excited when we found out that Ella was going to join our family I really needed a little more estrogen in this house full of boys and boy did we get it. There is no "tom boy" in our little Ella she is Girly Girl to the core. We have a trunk full of dress-ups in her room (however rarely are they "in the trunk") and a Mirror above it were she spends hours admiring herself and "possing" in front of it. Then she keeps asking things like. "Do I look beautiful in this mommy" or "am I more beautiful in this mommy", or "do I look cute or no?" of course the answer is alway "Yes Ella you look beauiful in everything". but she just keeps asking. We are constantly in a state of imaginary play, princesses and mommies, dances, and tea parties. She loves to dress up in moms shoes and wear princess dresses. She is constantly wanting a friend to play with and they will play house and pretend all day. I LOVE IT!!! it is such a great balance from the "lets wrestle, fight, shoot each other etc." we just eat her up. She is in preschool and loves it. she can write her name so well and knows every letter and its sound ( and has known them for over a year) and recognizes them all the time when we read. She loves to pier over my shoulder when Gavin and I read and she hurries and repeats the words after him like she is reading right along and truthfully she does about as good as he does. That's a girl for you right!

Kennedi Rose Pearce came into our family on February 11th 2011. She became the 3rd Hone Grandchild to be born on that day (strange). She has grown so fast and becoming such a fun and integral part of our little family. She has such a sweet demeanor and is always smiling at people. She is really quite the flirt and we spend most of our outings with people standing around talking about how cute she is and telling everyone around them things like. "Have you seen this baby", "come look at this baby", "She is the cutest thing, you have to see this baby", "look at those big blue eyes" While she just smiles and smiles like she is telling them "I know I am cute and you should all notice". It is really quite fun for me and Grin because we reallyh get a say in how they look or act right! She is crawling all over and getting into every thing she is a typical 10m old baby and we wouldn't trade her for the world.