THE PEARCE FAMILY: June 2011

Gateway!

Second day of Salt Lake we went to the Gateway to play in the fountain. It is always amazing to me how many moms are there with there kids in there suits, towels, and sunscreen ready to play in the middle of a strip mall but man, do they have fun!

??????

waiting on the spouts seem like a good idea!!

The anticipation is a good part of the fun!

A trip to the Library!

My sister Mindy had her oldest child in a class at the U so she got us to go touring salt lake while they waited for him to get out of class each day. We went to of the 3 days she did and wish we would of went the 3rd day they toured the conference center and said it was awesome so we now have to go do that. Anyway the first day we went the City Library. I have never been there and it was so so much fun. The kids like the elevator best as you can see there faces in the picture below we rode it as many times as we dared and laughed so hard and there laughter and excitement about it. The kids section has all sorts of cubbies to read in and TONS of books. Then outside they had a fountain that we could only assume was ok to play in and we let the kids get wet which they loved. Then we went to the top and saw the gardens which by the way need some TLC. But it was fun to look over the city and be that high the kids had a blast!

My sisters baby he is so cute and smiley!

reading in the "glacier" room

How cute is that!

Proof that Kennedi was there she did NOT get wet!

The kids kept running from the water to the steps to make hand prints

Up on top!

" Drying off so moms will let us back in the car!"

Bootcamp Birthday!

So on the 7th of June our Jaxon Turned 9 my how the time flies! I have made it a point to only do birthday parties every other year in an attempt to keep my sanity because I can't help but get a little carried away. This year was Jaxon's year and one of my favorites (I think that I always say that after a party??) anyway it started out that I thought it would be fun to go paint balling but after thinking about it and checking prices YIKES! I decided the kids were a little bit young and WAY to expensive. So it started to evolve and my sister suggested marshmallow guns and we just took off. We sent "official" letters of Induction that said something like you are hereby ordered for induction into the us army the dads have taken over the playground and your top secret mission is to TAKE IT BACK. We had them report to boot camp....

At boot camp they received there "uniform" and dog tags and we did a little bit of "Boot camp" which pretty much meant I yelled a lot and they did push ups if they didn't say sir yes sir and didn't have there toes on the line, we did a few exercises and army crawled a little then we sent them to the "Mess tent" for cake and Ice cream....

Oh and of course we took there "ID" photo" which I will print and take to there houses with a thank you (no I have not done that yet yikes) anyway so cute against the flag and the camo (p.s. the shirts we tie died ourselves and they turned out so fun) I love parties with costumes it makes for such cute pictures. Anyway the cake was an army tank and decorated camo the funnest part was that the cake itself was camo as well so so fun (an Idea that I cannot take credit for, thank goodness for the Internet) After we sang happy birthday and ate cake and Ice cream we opened present. Then the kids built there guns.....

An idea that my sister thought of afterwards (just in case your interested) was to have them have races to "assemble the guns" we didn't have time to do that anyway they just had a couple of minutes to put some tape on them to decorate. I then gave them there ammo and rations ( I made a bag to put the marshmallows in and a section for some trail mix and beef jerky. We then "Marched to battle" so so fun. There is a hollow several blocks from our home. I think Grin thought I was nuts but I marched them all the way and we sang left right left and the ants go marching. They sang and marched the whole way. The kids dads were waiting in the hollow ready for attack......

We thought they might play a few games of 'Steel the Flag" or something but the dads attacked right away and it just turned into a running and hiding and shooting match. They played for a good 45 minutes and had a BLAST!! I think even the dads had a good time. I was just so grateful so many of them were willing to go along with my craziness. We had all the boys dads there except one! It was a huge hit and Jaxon was ecstatic about it and I loved it because I didn't really have to plan games and I got to yell a lot and make kids do push ups! (p.s. by the way most of them couldn't do a real push up to save there lives so so FUNNY!)

Ok so I had to add a big picture of the cake because you can't really see the camo inside from the small pics and I think it is so fun!

GOOD TIMES!!

Kennedy Rose becomes Kennedi Rose

Ok so just in case you will wonder why I suddenly am spelling her name different ( you probably wouldn't have noticed) but just in case. After much thought and the fact that I can't get it out of my head I have decided to change the spelling of Kennedi's name. I haven't done the legal paperwork yet but for all other accounts she is now Kennedi with an I why? I can't really say except that I like it better and it has been bugging me for weeks now and I wanted her to half to spell her name for everyone like I have done my whole life????? I blame my parents
Malinda
Kristie
Deborah
Need I say more

kennedi 12 weeks old

I can' believe that she is growing so fast this is posting a month late and I will soon post her 4 month pictures time goes by too fast and I CAN'T KEEP UP!!!

kennedi grabs hold!

blurry but still cute

Kennedi at about 3 months old decided she could get a hold of the toys on her bouncy she even once in a while pulled them hard enough to get them to make noise then she would really light up like she had really done something. I love these small steps that are no big deal yet such a BIG deal!!

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.