Bradley Getting Spoiled By His Family

Bradley's big day started out as usual with the streamers, balloons, and his big sign.  He chose "planet pancakes" for breakfast, and I took the liberty of deciding to do green and blue ones (like our planet).  He was slightly disappointed that I hadn't made a SUN, which I then had to explain that the Sun is not a planet, and I was slightly disappointed by how the earth ones turned out.  Did this ruin his day?  Of course not!  Bradley was such a sweetheart on his birthday!  Could have been all the prepping I did, to not get too greedy, or have so many expectations that you couldn't possibly be happy with anything less.  Either way, he was a joy.  Birthday mornings are always tricky, I can never win the battle to put school first and skip opening a present to get to school on time.  So I let him open a present even though we were almost late.  It was extra hectic that morning because Reflections were due as well.  But he loved his giant crayon bank from Noah!  And we were only a little late getting to school :), not even past the tardy bell!  So all was well.

Bradley had requested donuts for his treat for his class, so I made my way to the school at the end of the day and passed out his "not glazed donuts".  (whenever I talk about the things I do for my kids' birthdays I feel like people must think I have the most spoiled, bratty kids, because of how everything is their choice and I pretty much do whatever they ask, but really, my kids just deserve it!!  They work so hard, and do so much for our big family, and if there is a day that I have a perfect excuse to spoil them and give them the things they want, then I'll take it!  It really is their day.  And in our family, you need your OWN DAY!  So anyway, just wanted to rationalize for a minute ;) )

Bradley's teacher seemed to have spoiled him pretty good all day, and his classmates made birthday cards for him as well, so that was really fun.

He came home and stared at his presents til I let him open one more ;). 

Then Dad came home and took him to the store for a few things I needed and bought him his own bag of gummi worms!

I think this was Erika's tantrum about the worms.... not sure, but it's still funny.

Sarah and her boys came by to give Brad his present since they were going to be busy during the party.  He got Glow In the Dark Chalk, which he has already made good use of!  It was sweet of them to be so thoughtful of him and his birthday!

Then it was time for the Family Party!  I had wanted to do the fun Super Hero cake for his friend party, so I decided a yummy cake was in order for his family party.  Unfortunately my yummy idea didn't work out so good.  It was supposed to be a version of a pie I made a few weeks ago for RS.  It was brownie on the bottom, cheesecake on top of that, then strawberries drizzled with chocolate on top of that.  Unfortunately the brownie was hard and chewy.  Oh well.  Nate insists that it tasted fine, but I am still wishing I'd at least had the brains to pass out real forks rather than the plastic ones that I don't know how anyone ate with!!  BUMMER!!!

Anyway, we had a HUGE turn out at the party!  Aunt Becky, Uncle Darren, Aunt Jen, Aunt Meg and Uncle Chris and their family, Grandpa Hatch and Pam, Grandma Hatch and Simon, Uncle Steve, and then Aunt Sarah and her boys came back over after their ward party.  We had LOTS of fun!  I was so grateful for all the support for Brad and I know he felt so loved!  Next time I will be more prepared!!!

He was good and spoiled, present-wise. 

It was really cute when he opened Erika's present, he told her thank you, and she told him "yep!"  Adorable.  I like how sweet he is to her, and I think she notices it too.

Kelly's was fun to watch him open.  She had put her present in a box, wrapped it, then put that in a box, wrapped that, and then put that one inside one last box and of course wrapped it!  He was pleasantly surprised and I think we all got a kick out of watching his AND Kelly's faces while Bradley opened them.  They are so fun with each other!  I know I say this everytime, but I love how my kids get into each others' birthdays!

It was a fun evening.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRADLEY!!!

Happy Birthday, Bradley!!

 My big boy Bradley is getting so old!  It blows my mind that he is 7!!  But he is!  And we're happy we have him in our family!  Here's a little look back:

My cute Bradley just minutes after he was born.  I know I've said this before (probably lots of times) but this is one of my most FAVORITE pictures.  Mainly because I can still remember the feeling I had at that moment.  That delivery was a tough one!  I was in SO much pain through the whole c-section... a problem with the epideural I suppose.... but that moment when I got to look at his sweet little face, and feel his presence right there by my face instead of down by my belly, it was a special moment.  I remember feeling Bradley's presence pretty strongly several times throughout the pregnancy, and this was when I realized that it really was his presence!  I loved it.  I loved my baby Bradley and of course still do!! 

This was the picture we used for his little birthday invitations (back in the days when I made invitations!), he was so handsome!  This was before his first haircut so we had to plaster his hair to get it to stay down!  He was still crawling then, and I remember following him around grandpa's living room and porch to get the right picture with the #1.  Fun stuff.

Here he is, 2 years old, this was just before his 2nd birthday actually.  But it was just so cute and I remember him asking me to "take a picture of him being a helper".  He was throwing away some of baby Lukey's diapers, coming down the stairs in our duplex in Ak.  What a cutie!

Here he is a couple days after his 3rd birthday, he had received a surprise birthday package in the mail from Grandma Hatch with this special little spiderman inside!  He was so happy!  And it was really fun to him that he got a present AFTER his birthday. 

I really didn't take enough pictures of his 4th birthday.  This was him patiently waiting for me to take a picture... still cute!  Even when he's not smiling :)

I LOVE this picture!  I'm sure I've used it before.  It's one of my all-time favorites of Bradley.  I don't know if it's because it hit me how old he was when I first saw it or what, but he's just so handsome in it too.  At his 5th birthday party when we had to come back to the house to have the cake and ice cream because the park got too cold!

And his 6th birthday!  What a stud!

I loved this one!!  It's Super Brad in action!  I still can't believe he's 7!!!

Random Pictures

Over the course of the last 2 weeks I have uploaded these pictures a million times now and they keep getting deleted or someone closes out of my account before I can add them.... so now I'm just throwing them on here real quick so that I can get on with the rest of the millions of pictures I have failed to post. 

Because Erika and Noah

 were doing this:

 they couldn't sleep and ended up doing this:

 instead of sleeping!!! 

 Actually, it's a lot of fun for Nate and I to get this one on one time with just the two littles so much lately.  They sure have become good friends. It's funny to have these two little personalities together.  Noah's so gentle and sweet for a boy, Erika's a little rough and rowdy for a girl (though she has a new found love for Barbies, which I think is just ADORABLE!!!), so they seem to be meeting in the middle a lot!  Noah will play house for a while, it's so cute to hear them call each other "Dad" and "Mom" while carrying around babies.  And Erika will play cars and dinosaurs with Noah.  She knows all the names of the boy toys!  I don't think he's gotten her to play superheroes with him yet, but I think that might be crossing the line for him :)  He doesn't even let me play anymore :*(

 Squeezing her cheeks :).  It's so funny that she lets him do that and then laughs in the process.  She really is a fun little sister for a bunch of boys!  And Noah's kind enough to humor her while she's tackling him :)  Funny kids.

They really do love each other.  I hope they stay friends for at least a little while.  But at least I know that even if they spend most of their childhood fighting, they can still come out in the end as friends.  They remind me of my big brother and me.  Hopefully Erika will look up to Noah as much as I look up to Brent.

The other day I looked out the back door and saw Erika sitting there, on the top of the ramp, in her pink throne, watching the boys play.  It seriously looked like the Queen overseeing her kingdom at work.  She turned around for the picture :)  It was funny though.  Made me realize how much my little boys take care of her.  They are the ones who cater to her every whim.  "But Erika wanted to!" is their usual excuse for things.  She sure is their Princess!  I'm glad she'll never be at a disadvantage with 3 loving big brothers to stand up for her and make her more than happy and comfortable.

These last ones are when the Taylors were here.  Funny enough I only got pictures of them!  None of my own.  Though we were missing 4 of ours during the day that they were here.  Kind of a bummer for the big kids (theirs and mine!  They were devastated when they came home and found that they'd already gone home!  New rule: if I babysit older kids while they're off track, you have to leave them here long enough for my kids to play with them! :) )

Erika had such a hard time sharing while they were here.  Even as I'm posting this, she sees Sam with her baby bottle and she's getting all stressed out about it.... gonna have to work on that! 

Future Memories

- Our pears finally ripened on Monday!!  We decided dehydrating them would be fun.  I found my Mom's dehydrator, highjacked it a while ago, and we went to work.  It was so easy!!  For some reason I thought it would be a lot of work, or messy or something.  Guess that's just canning.  I'll have to do that someday.  We had a lot of fun working in the kitchen together, Nate and I, as we prepared the pears and the dinner for that night with Steve.  The kids were SO disappointed when I told them Steve might not be coming, but when he walked through the kitchen door there were cheers of excitement for him!  What an entrance that was.  I love those kinds of welcomes.  He even joined us for Family Night.  Erika's lesson, we played Duck, Duck, Goose.  It was fun to watch Noah run :).  And to see how long it takes everyone to decide who the Goose is going to be.  Erika had fun too, and actually did a round all by herself.  The big kids were so good at taking turns and picking people who hadn't had a lot.  Nate had the most turns by far!!  Mr. Popular!  :).  9-26-11

- Tuesday, when I was helping in Brad's class he wouldn't tell me the name of the cutest girl in his class.  I wish I had a better memory!!  He's so cute in there when I'm there.  I love watching him in his element.  9-27-11

- I took Lukey on our date finally!  He wanted to go to McDonald's for ice cream.  Since it was lunch time though, and he was "STOHVING!" he decided to get a happy meal instead.  But we had a lot of time together.  My favorite part was whenever I would look down at him (with adoring eyes, I'm sure) he would yell, "STOP LOOKING AT ME!" in his goofy, embarrassed voice.  So funny.  It's hard not to look at the only person sitting across from you!!  Try it, I'm serious!  We had fun though :)  He's a sweetheart.  He played on the playground all by himself and didn't seem to have any less fun than when he's got a bunch of friends or family members there.  That's Luke! 9-27-11

- The repair guy came by and fixed some of the things in our house that the homeowner seemed to feel were important... (wouldn't have been my first choice, but who cares what I want I guess... right?)  But I"m happy to report we have new, non-cracked, light fixtures (still flourescent lighting with all it's ugliness, but new nonetheless!) in our Family room!!  It's SO MUCH BRIGHTER!!  I really like it.  He fixed the water heater pipe as well, they think that might make the water not appear so rusted when it comes out at first, but I'll be surprised if it changes anything.  Hopefully I'm wrong (and just really negative apparently).  He is hopefully going to fix the screen door (he's still working on it), and the bathroom tiles which have fallen off.... gees, sounds like we live in a real piece :)... HA!  Just kidding.  It works.  And they're starting to fix things, so that's good.  I hope they paint the kitchen soon. 9-27-11

- Thursday we had "the Bakke's" over for BBQ.  Good times.  It's funny to watch Erika and Sophie pay no attention to each other.  I wonder when they'll start to be friends.  I kinda think that Erika is just so used to boys.....  9-29-11

- On Friday, Nate got off work early so that we could hurry down to PG and help Heidi move and then get back to Rocket Park for Alvin's birthday party.  Such an insane day.  We left Nate's work, went out to Murray to have a chat with the landlord, came back to pick up the big kids from school, then dithced all of our kids to head on down to the point of the mountain to meet up with Heidi's new roommate who had her key.  We scrambled around construction sites looking for her friend for too long, then finally headed down to Heidi's old place.  Grabbed a few pieces of furniture (it didn't all fit as well as I had imagined of course), then got completely lost looking for her new apartment.  I don't know what happened or why it was so hard to find, but then after plugging the address into Nate's GPS and having it take us almost to American Fork (would have if we'd kept following it), an hour and a half later, thanks to traffic, we were at her new place, and not a moment too soon, her roommate had had to climb in a window since we had HER key.  How annoying is it to me that we drove all over to find her and her work, only to have her beat us there!!!!!?  VERY!  By then Heidi was off work though, so she was able to help us with the next two loads.  It took us about 2 hours longer than we had planned to help her move.  We were WAY late for the party, and the kids had completely lost it at home!  We were getting phone calls from Charity about every 10 minutes with a new problem.  It was so sad!  I had not intended on leaving them there for so long without any adults.  Needless to say, we got to the party late.  Missed out on watching Alvin open his presents, which I heard was really fun.  The kids were bummed, and Nate and I were exhausted.  It was nice to be able to help Heidi, and I wouldn't change that part.  I'm glad we have a car that is at least USEFUL for helping her move.  If nothing else :).  I just wish we could make plans and not have traffic, or directions get in our way.  Oh well.  Better luck next time I guess.  We did run into the Oaks at the park and got to talk with them for a while, that was nice.  Miss them.

- Conference was AWESOME!  Elder Anderson's talk was my favorite (if you hadn't already guessed).  I loved it!  I just love conference.  And I love that we have a DVR and will be able to watch them, on the tv (not at the computer like usual), whenever we want!  I had to keep reminding myself that even though I couldn't hear every word right then, I would be able to watch it later.  The kids did alright.  I would say this wasn't their best conference, but it was difficult with Nate working during Saturday's sessions.  We played Conference Bingo the first session, then for the second I told the kids they just had to watch until the sustainings were over (since I was tired of shshing), then they do whatever they wanted, and surprisingly they all stayed in the room, basically listening (they seemed quieter during that session than th efirst for some reason), coloring, drawing, Noah and Erika were in and out of the toy room, playing with toys, but they really mostly stayed and watched, and that made me happy :).  That they would make that choice!  I like to give them options and see what they choose.  They usually make the right choice!  Then I get to reward them, and then they learn!  It's a fun way to teach them.  Guess it would be different if they chose the wrong.....   But anyway.  We went up to Nate's parents' house for the Priesthood Session, Nate always goes with his Dad and brothers.  Unfortunately I forgot my camera this year.  It was fun to play at the park with the cousins and to visit with Nate's sisters.
- The Sunday sessions went pretty well too.  We did the Conference Bingo, but it seemed quieter that day, maybe because Nate was there.  Then for the second session, Nate and Charity headed down to SL to see if they could get in the Conference Center.  They didn't quite make it in.  Kelly, the boys, Erika and I had a nice time, I think everyone was tired, so there was a little more noise, but like I said, I knew I was going to be able to watch the talks again, so it was okay.  They did really well though, for the 4th session.  And once again, they all stayed in the room and listened.  Kinda cool to me.  I just love conference!  10-1-11 and 10-2-11