Nica's 1st Birthday

Nicalee is just an angel sent from Heaven!! She has the sweetest personality and is so content and happy. Madalyn adores her and Carver thinks "she is the cutest thing". And finally, Clint and I have figured a few things out as parents and she definitely gets the benefits of that. We LOVE her so much. I can't believe it has already been a year. They really do grow up so fast.

Her big day started with a trip to the dentist for Carver, Dance lessons for Maddie, a massive grocery shopping trip, lunch at McDonalds, cleaning up the house/decorating the house with streamers, balloons, cake, making cupcakes etc.... sounds like a lot of fun doesn't it... ok, then we went to the school bouncehouse carnival, in the rain, and ate pizza and sodas and played until it got too cold. After that we had our birthday party for Nica. She loved opening her gifts with all the cousins helping her and eating her cake. At first, she didn't know what to think about getting messy, then she thoroughly enjoyed herself and the bath that came after. We really had a fun day and now I have to change carseats...

Horses

Sam

Carver

Madalyn

Maddie, Sam, Carver, Kate

Grandpa and grandma Holman

It is always fun to take a little drive into the country and show the kids how different and fun life is in different places. OK, so the drive would not have been very fun for the kids were it not for the dvd player and a few munchies. But I didn't hear the dreaded, "Are we there yet?" or "When are we going to be there?" until the last 15 minutes of the drive, which made for a lovely drive for mom. It was pouring rain on the way down and I figured we would not be able to have our fun on the farm... but alas, the weather changed and we were able to take the kids for a little horse ride. And Grandpa Holman was the favorite of all the kids because he welcomed everyone with a great big box of the most delicious donuts. Who can resist that? Not me. And definitely not my kids.

So we decided that since the horses have not been ridden since last year, we should probably lead them and just walk around the block first (when I say we, I really mean grandpa), which ended up being a good decision. Well, I was having a great time leading Carver's horse and watching Madalyn, Kate, Sam and Justine on the horses and I tried to get a picture... well, I dropped my camera and my phone and tried to pick them up and forgot (I don't know how I really forgot, but safety went out the window) that I was leading a horse and the horse stepped on my baby toe... It hurt, but I could still walk on it and no big deal. Then, we decided to trade horses and riders and I was going to ride with Sam. So I got on and then I started feeling woosy and started to sweat and then I thought I was going to faint. I got off the horse and thought I had better sit down and then I realized that I needed to lay down. I did so and decided to check out the damage on my toe. It looked terrible. In just 5 minutes or so the nail was already black and my foot was quite swollen. What a stupid thing. I was totally fine a few minutes later and was so mad at myself because I really wanted to go for a ride. I'll just have to go again later this Summer. But, the kids had a blast.

feeding lambs

Carver, Kate, Madalyn and Sam took a day trip to Moroni and learned about horses and lambs.

Grandpa was nice enough to bring 2 of these cute lambs home and let the kids help take care of them and feed them. They were sooooo excited.

Grandpa showed the grandkids how to feed lambs with bottles

First Piano Recital

Here comes soccer

Madalyn just loves to play soccer. She is the team motivator-- she will hold your hand if you are scared, she will give you encouragement if you want to "take a rest", she will offer you refreshment if she has a capri sun, and she will yell like crazy if you make a goal or if she is running really fast to block the ball. Her favorite position is goalie. They don't officially have a goalie in her age bracket, but she runs and defends anyway. She is really FUN to watch and cheer.