Just the boys...

We had chocolate cake today. That will explain all of the messy mouths. But is there anything cuter than this look? I keep getting the feeling that my baby isn't a baby anymore. He is talking like crazy and his personality is developing so fast. He does something new every day! In fact, He climbed out of his crib today for the first time. He did it so effortlessly, it looked like he'd been doing that for months! What ever shall I do? I'm not ready to train him to stay in a regular bed! Uggggg!


A little bit of a forced smile on Eric, but you get the picture. He's an awesome kid and he's growing up so fast.


Typical Eli, I'm not really sure what else to say here. We were all really tired by the end of the day today!

Just a little dazed and confused, either that or trying to hypnotize Eli. Yeah, that could be it.

This was a happy scream, really it was! No one can say our kids aren't enthusiastic!

Grandpa Stark with Eli. In fact, Eli has taken to calling him Grandpa Stark all day every day! They've been doing some intense grandpa/grandson bonding.

Kendall loving life!

This is how much I love my husband! He tells me not quite a year ago that he wants to take this trip to Peru with his nursing program. I think it's a cool "idea" and act very supportive. Fastforward to now. He is there. He is loving it. He is helping people and using his Spanish skills, eating good and different and interesting food, etc. The only down side is that I couldn't go with him! Someday I tell you! We will go do stuff like this together! He sent a couple of pics, apparently he has taken hundreds already.

I guess this is a BABY Anaconda! I didn't realize this about my hubby, that he would be so comfortable holding a snake! :O)


Pushing a bus that broke down. Why does this story not surprise me?


I'm super glad he's having this adventure and such wonderful experiences. He said he found the church building not far from where he's staying. He went to all 3 hours there today and had a wonderful spiritual experience. I can't wait to hear more about it!
I love you Kendall!

In the last week with the Batsons...

Nikki was here for a long weekend so she could go to Kenzie's (Liz's oldest) baptism. We managed to get one night of just girls, yay! It was super exciting: dinner, talking, driving, talking, bra shopping at Khol's, more driving and sitting and talking. Funny how that can be exactly what 3 moms need! I didn't get home til 2am and I still felt revived and refreshed the next day! And, yes, we did buy matching bags! Well, it was a good sale and we all really liked it? What can we say?

Just a couple of shots from Eric's latest soccer game. We had to go to Lakeside, which is like 15 miles away! It's this tiny town and it's super pretty out there. The other team tried, but Eric's team won 5-0 and Eric scored his first goal of the season! Go Eric!

On Tuesday, the Shupps invited us and 2 other families over for a Cinco de Mayo party, pinata included! There were 16 kids between the 4 families and they all had a blast. Eli loved the pinata and went completely nuts when it broke. I've never seen him so crazy about colecting candy...oh wait, that's normal for him!

Noah got his stab at the pinata too, not that he did much damage.

Well, we finally did it. We trimmed Noah's hair! He's nearly 21 months old and he had his first hair cut! It was getting really out of control, but I was so worried about losing his curls. It turns out that even trimmed more than an inch, he still has plenty of curl left, yay! I'm not the best at cutting kids' hair, but I think it turned out okay. He just looks so different to me.

Eli surprised me a bit by really loving this corn on the cob! I'm not sure he got it all but he ate all around and kept saying he loved it and that it was really really really good! Whew! One more healthful thing he'll eat! Yay!

Noah, ready for prayer!

Too adorable for words!

Here are a few random photos of the boys from the last few weeks.


Mommy and Eli. He's the adorable one. I have to relish and savor these moments. He doesn't like to stay still much.


One of his happy places is the bath. He would hang out in there all day if I let him!


A rare moment: All 3 boys sitting together eating. There was no fighting, yelling, pushing or anything. Just sitting and eating and smiling. Wow!

Yeah, it's still really difficult to get one photo with all of them looking and smiling and not eating at the same time!

I love this kid! His smile is so contageous and just like his daddy's! Good thing I finally finshed his ducky towel. Sometimes it's the only way to get him out of the tub!

Happy Birthday Ana!

Briett, Ana, Sharon
Happy birthday to you, my dear friend! I am so grateful to have you in my life and I think you're just an amazing woman! I can't wait to spoil and adore your baby girl in a few months!

I'll start with this one...

We are blessed with a couple of very early risers! Eli thinks it's perfectly fine to wake up at 5am. It doesn't matter that there's no light outside or anything. He's off and running before anyone else. He's so kind to burst into our room to tell us to get up. If only I was quick enough to catch him so he wouldn't return to his room to flip on the light and start jumping in Noah's crib!

A few weeks ago Eli changed his M.O. Instead of barging into our room, he decided to explore the kitchen. Of course this isn't exactly a new idea either. I've been pulling him off the counters for months. The difference about this particular morning was that my lock on the fridge had broken a day or so before. Let me rephrase...Eli had broken the fridge lock. Well, he just wouldn't be himself if he didn't try to disarm, distroy, or take apart anything and everything he comes in contact with. So the fridge was lock-less for a couple of days. Big deal. What could happen?

I was sleeping and hoping during my sleep that this would be a day that Eli would finally sleep until at least 6:30 or 7am. Something prompted Kendall to get up and see what Eli was up to. I heard no yelling or scolding or anything. He just walked back to our room and said, "Honey, you have to come and look at this." Have you ever been so upset that you just couldn't say anything at all? No words would come, from either of us. This is what we saw:

Sometime around 5:30am, my wonderful 3 year old decided to "paint" in his room. He very quietly went to the UNLOCKED fridge and helped himself to beautiful paints: chocolate brown, carmel tan and mustard yellow (aka. hershey's syrup, carmel syrup, and honey mustard dressing). He decided it would be great fun to open these delicious paints and decorate his room, starting with the carpet. The crib, including the bedding, were not to be ignored!

Well, he knew he was in trouble, you can kind of see that in this last picture. We didn't know what to to...try to soak the stuff out? We're not equipped to deal with this! Within the hour we called a friend in our ward who has his own carpet cleaning business. We knew someone in the family would be up (they have a seminary student), and we lucked out that he was availble that morning. He came to our apartment and kind of shook his head like we had. He worked on it and, in my opinion, worked a near miracle! Sadly, he informed me that mustard is not just something that stains, it is a dye! Well, there is no evidence of the chocolate or carmel, but there is a slight yellow tint in the middle of the carpet. It's not bright, but it is noticible. I'm pretty sure we've lost our deposit on this apartment, but at least it's not really aweful looking.

I did buy a new fridge lock. Eli figured it out in about 20 minutes! Lucky for me, I think he figured it out accidently and seems to be unable to get in the fridge now. Whew! We might be incident free for a few days!

Been a while...

Yes, I do know how long it's been since I've posted. Winters are aweful for me and I'm working on pulling myself back together. Trust me, I've got some doozies to share!