Well besides the pics I recently posted of McKenzie I haven't posted in almost six months so I thought I would try to post some of the goods times we have had the past few months. Here it goes.....
Summer Beach Trips:
My kids love the beach and we were lucky enough to be able to go camping twice this year at the beach. We went to Encinitas in June and Malibu in July. Steve's Brother and his family came for the night in Malibu and my brother also came for a night. They are both great brothers and we love hanging out with them. We had good times playing on the beach, roasting marshmallows, saving the children from waves that tried to sweep them away (even though they were way up on the beach), watching the deer and coyotes run through our campsite every night and just hanging out telling stories. I think food always tastes better when you are camping too. We made some awesome Enchiladas in the dutch oven. Yum yum.

We were at Huntington for the day and the kids did not want to leave.


Breakfast while camping in Malibu.


Silly cousins pic. If you look Emmitt's silly face is just closing his eyes.


Eliza makes her self laugh


My brother Ben and his daughter Gwen. She loves spending time with him.


It has been a long day for this tired boy

Sand issues

Just hangin' out

Cousin Sydney burying Eliza

Jaron is awesome. I love this little dude!!!!!!


Exploring the rocks and cave!


Bright eyes!

Kenz!

McKenzie is almost 8 Months old so I'm way behind but I had to post these two cute pictures really quick. I think the one with her two teeth showing is so fun and she looks so sweet in the other. We love her being a part of our family. She is so good and so sweet. It doesn't hurt that she practically lunges into my arms every time she sees me.

Two Months!!!!

I can't believe Mckenzie is already two months old! She is so much fun and still a good baby. Yeah!!! My life however is crazy. I never seem to have enough hours in the day and now have to make a special effort to get quality time in with my kiddos. I refuse to let them grow up while I'm "busy", busy making dinner, feeding the baby, doing laundry, grocery shopping, and on and on and on. You know the drill. There only going to be young once and I want them to enjoy it. Well just a snippet of what is on my mind and some cute pics.

The "peaces" of our lives!

The past month since we have had the baby has gone quicker than when I had the other babies. It may be because there are four now or because even though I didn't go to crowded public places we always had to be somewhere or doing something (mainly painting, dry walling, bathroom stuff. Thanks Steve for all the hard work. I can't wait to have our bathroom finished). Here is what our lives this first month with the new little one looked like:

Jaron started tee ball I think the week after Mckenzie was born and it takes a huge part of three of our days per week but he's doing really well and having lots of fun so it's worth it. Not that I had a choice in the matter . Steve's been dreaming of Jaron playing ball since we found out it was a boy . I was surprised I got away with not signing him up as long as I did.

Lots of this: No not sleep, laundry!

When we bring home a new baby I try to get a pic of them all laying side by side to see the size difference. This picture reminds me of that cell phone commercial where the bar signals pop up everywhere.

Isn't she gorgeous? I'm sure I 'm not biased at all.

Steve tries to sneak in naps where he can. You would think he was the one up at night with the babies.

Eliza has been a girly girl as usual. Playing with dolls and prancing around in dresses. She loves twirling around in this one I made her.

Mckenzie has those very full Funk cheeks my babies get other than that she has a very different look than our other kiddos.

We've eaten very simple meals. I'm no chef to start with but have simplified meals even more the past month with lots of pasta. Jaron enjoys the spaghetti as you can tell. He loves making funny faces.

Lots of bonding!

General conference weekend. I actually had the older two entertained with some activities that I printed off the lds.org website. I wasn't sure how long it would last but they sat for the majority of Saturday and Sunday morning sessions. The others were, well, not as quiet.

Mckenzie celebrated one month with our crazy family. With the three others I was glad we made it to this milestone without too much drama.

This pretty much sums up our Easter. It was really low key. Enjoyed conference, went down the hill and had dinner with my fam.

And Emmitt well he continues to be our wild man. Always making us laugh and at times making us want to cry.

Yes I know they are in their pajamas a lot, have messy hair and dirty faces. No they don't always look like that but we have had a very relaxed attitude towards getting with it in the morning partly because Mckenzie thinks she needs to be fed 12 times while I'm making breakfast. She is the queen of snacking.

Peace out

My Little Mckenzie Moo-moo!

We are so excited to announce the arrival of our sweet little girl!

Mckenzie Joelle
Born March 2nd @ 11:53 am
7 lbs. 4 oz. (our smallest of the bunch)
20 1/4 inches long


This is a picture of her yesterday at a week old.



She is so cute and so far a very easy baby which is great since Emmitt is a little wild man.
(I had to stop in the middle of the above sentence to look at Jaron's painting. As I went to get Jaron another color Jaron yells, "Emmitt no. Mommy he just licked the paint. No Emmitt, poison." Sure enough Emmitt has green around his mouth and on his tongue. Case in point. It's nice to have an easy baby. Hopefully I wont jinx it.)

January 22- Our Snow Adventure

So we moved to a little town in Cali at the base of the mountain just a little ways tucked inside on your way to Big Bear. It is not known for getting a heavy load of snow each year. I'm not sure to be honest what there annual average is but I know it is a lot less than we received this year judging by what my neighbors have told me. One neighbor who grew up here and is quite a bit older than us told us it's the worst snow storm up here in the past 20 years. Lucky us! Thursday night it started snowing. Friday Steve had to call in to work because he couldn't get the car out of the drive way, we were snowed in until late Friday and could only get out after a local up here with his own tractor plowed the feet of snow off the roads, oh and did I mention that our electricity went out until Wednesday/Thursday when Edison finally got it restored. Lots of poles were down on the highway up to our house and a line on our street was also down right in front of our neighbors house. You don't realize how much you depend on electricity until you don't have it for a few hours (or days, depending on how buff you are or if you have a generator). We would come up with solutions for a problem dealing with our electricity only to figure out half way through our explanition to the other that we would have to have guess what? Electricity. Our phone line went out on Saturday. Well Friday we escaped as soon as we could to go get supplies. We made a fun night of it although it was a long night. S'mores, camping in the living room, flash lights, candles, popcorn and sleeping bags were all part of the big adventure. Saturday night we stayed at my parents who live in normal society about 10 minutes down the hill. I wanted electricity to be able to get ready for church on Sunday. When we came back on Sunday to our place and the kids were all so cold they were all pretty much crying we decided my parent's place was a way better option than trying to brave the storm with these three little ones. Oh ya and when we came back on Sunday our pipe from underground that attaches to the house had frozen since we didn't leave any running water. Thankfully our neighbor filled us in on where it might be frozen and we were able to take care of it right away before we burst our pipes. Thanks neighbor and Thanks Mom and Dad for saving our hineys and our sanity.

This is our picnic table after Thursday night and Friday morning had its way with it.

This is our road after it had been plowed. You can see a very thick layer of ice.

This is one of our cars Friday morning. By the weekends end we could see even less of it

This is an old oak tree in our front yard Saturday night. It just looked amazing. I LOVE how the snow is sticking to the sides of it.

This is a bad picture of it but right off of our road is the main street where you drive under these two trees that seem to meet in the middle. They looked so beautiful that night. I wish I could have gotten a better picture of it.

See I told you we have a baby named Emmitt. He seems to always be sleeping lately when we take pictures or too young to be doing what his brother and sister are. (New Goal : More pics of Emmitt who brings me so many smiles.)

Believe it or not the s'mores did not get all over our house or our kiddo's.

Unfortunately one too many made it into my mouth.

The only light in these pictures is coming from the flash and the flashlights the kids are carrying around. It was about 9:30 on Friday night. It was hard to take pictures because you couldn't see what you were shooting until it was taken.

Steve was such a trooper for letting me have my way and stay in a freezing cold house with no electricity.

This experience was hopefully once in a life time and was quite the initiation in to living up here. It took poor southern cali a few days to figure out this mess. At the bottom of the highway they had a CHP officer keeping everyone but the residents of the mountain out due to the condition of the roads being so icy even after they were "cleared". We did however have a great time spending time with just our little ones in this unique situation with no modern distractions.