Taylor turns 4

Our little Taylor Babe turned 4 a couple weeks ago. It is hard to believe she is 4 already. I took her for her well checkup this past week. She is still the petite little thing. She weighs 30 lbs (now she moved up to the 25% which we are super excited about) She is also in the 25% for height at 39 inches. She is also finally getting an almost full head of hair. She is definitely all girl, she loves to play with barbies and babies. Taylor also loves to play pretend anything whether it be house, school,doctor, church or dress up in princess clothes.

This year Taylor was lucky enough to have 2 parties. On the Saturday before her birthday we celebrated with Preston's side of the family. This party was for Taylor's 4th and her cousin James 1st birthday. I unfortunately can't find the pictures from that party.
On her actual Birthday we had my side of the family over for a party and dinner. At Taylor's party she had a few requests. She wanted a pinata, she picked out this #4 and we were able to put in our leftover halloween and Christmas candy along with some fresh tootsie rolls (one of Taylor's favorites). I don't remember who actually broke the pinata but all the kids had fun.

Taylor also wanted to play pin the tail on the donkey, so we improvised a little. We actually played place Cinderella in the castle. My older Nephews were gracious enough to join in on the fun. We spun them A LOT so they had a much harder time reaching the target.Taylor with her presents.

Sporting the tutu that I made for her. (Yes you read correctly I really did make it for her) I think it turned out cute.

Posing with her Princess cake. (courtesy of Safeway, I don't make fancy cakes)

Also Taylor started Preschool on January 5th. Here she is saying peace out before leaving for her first day. She goes on Tuesday and Thursdays for 2 1/2 hours each day. She enjoys it but she still thinks she is gone a really long time and she misses me. She is adjusting.

New Year's Eve and our Last day of Break

So how do you celebrate New Year's Eve? Well with Preston being in the Bishopric and me in the Young Women presidency we celebrate with the youth. The Bishop opened his home so that the Bishopric could provide a safe party for the youth in our ward. Since both Preston and I needed to be there we took our kids with us (outfitted in their pajamas). The majority of the night was spent snacking and playing rock band.

We finally convinced Preston to sing a song. He picked a Beastie Boys song. Not the greatest song to sing with the youth looking on since it contained some swear words. Preston just conveniently skipped over those words.

Nathan also got his turn. He sang a Nickelback song "What I've done" from the Transformer soundtrack. He was loving the attention from the teenagers and just hanging out with all of them.

Taylor loved playing with Bishops 10 year old daughter and her friend. Natalie slept most of the time. The evening actually turned out way better with our kids with us then I expected.


On Monday January 4th (the last day of Christmas break) I took the kids to a nearby park. Nathan told me he wanted to have a fun filled day before going back to school. This park was really neat it was our first time there and the kids keep asking when we will go back.


Nathan and Taylor hamming it up on the fire truck.

Natalie looking cute while playing in the sand.

All 3 kiddos playing in the sand. It had a digging area where you can try to uncover a skeleton.

Taylor doing some climbing.

Kids enjoying some oranges from Grandma and Grandpa's backyard.

There were tons of sidewalks and areas for the kids to ride their bikes around.

Finally a Christmas recap.

Christmas Eve we went to my parents house and ate a wonderful traditional meal with Ham and the works. We then hung out. The kids always receive a gift the night before. Nathan was ECSTATIC to open a present.

They received pajamas. Nathan has a gorilla on his shirt and the girls are matching with bunnies on them that say snuggle bunnies. They are really soft.

My mom has a cool snowman collection. Most of them light up or play songs. The grandkids love them.

This was Natalie's favorite snowman. She even figured out how to turn it on and off and would dance to the music.

Christmas morning. We told Nathan that he was not to wake us up until after 6 am. He patiently waited, but quickly informed us that he woke up at 5:09 and it was really hard to wait. Preston heard Nathan and Taylor in the family room a little after 6. We had to wake Natalie up. I took this picture while Preston was getting Natalie. Taylor really had to go to the bathroom and Nathan was too excited to wait another moment to open presents.
Here are some random pictures of the kids opening presents.

I think this was Taylor's favorite gift. It is a princess MP3 player from Santa. She tells everyone that she got an Aw-Pod (Ipod) :-)

Natalie loving on her new doll that she received from her Nana.

At 9:00 that morning my parents and Sister came over to our house for brunch. Then we all hung out.

Taylor sleeping later that morning.

That evening we went and played at my parents house so that I could work on the traditional Christmas puzzle. Nathan took some time to play on his new pogo stick. As you can see he only got half dressed that day. Those are still his pajama pants because they were sooo comfortable for him and he really wanted to wear his new shirt too. I think he has worn that shirt 5 times since Christmas day.

Miscellaneous catch up

The day after Christmas Preston's side of the family has a mini race called the Butler Bolt. His uncle breaks it up into age groups and then all participants receive a prize. Nathan got 2nd out of 4 for the 7 year old group. They are getting ready to line up here. Taylor really wanted to race but no other 3 or 4 year olds wanted to so she didn't get to. So I guess you could say she got 1st place. I also ran with the adults and I got 7th out of 8 adults for our 2 mile run. I think every other runner has done marathons or participate in 5k runs regularly. I am definitely a greeny when it comes to participating in races. I am going to give myself a pat on the back for even doing it. I also had a major cold that day and my lungs were burning when I was done.

The Tuesday before Christmas we shut the shop down early and had our Company Christmas party at a bowling alley. We fed the guys pizza and they got to bowl for 2 hours. Then we had a drawing where everyone won a gift card of their choice to different places. Here is Preston, Steve (our dispatcher) Johnny works in the lockshop and Russ one of the on road Techs.The lone 2 women of the 9 employees. Danielle helps me with the books. She comes in 2 mornings a week and does the work at the shop that needs done like filing, invoicing etc. It makes it a lot easier for me, this way I can work from home and limit how often I drag the kids into the shop.

The kids came to the party with us.

Taylor and Nathan actually bowled for the first part and then they got tired of it and played arcades for a while.