Whose Kid is This?

I’ve got to do some bragging about Kaylee for a bit.

Kaylee is 4 1/2 years old. She’ll be 5 on November 14.

This is her “journal.”

She’ll spend a few hours each day writing and drawing in it. It’s quite adorable.

Today she wrote this (don’t worry… I asked her permission to share it with you. It is her journal after all ):

In case you can’t tell what that says, here it is (it goes from the left page to right for three lines then just down the right page. Then it switches back to the left page):

TTODAY I EM FFRITTIN BBI A SPIDDR SO I EM RITEG (stay on right page and go down) BEECUS THAT IS NNOT SCAREE (go back to left page) AND THAT SPIDR IS BLACK AND YELO

Translation:

T-today I am f-frightened b-by a spi-d-der so I am writing because that is n-not scary. And that spider is black and yellow.

(She purposefully put double letters on some words to make it sound like she was stuttering since she was “f-frightened.”)

How adorable is that?! She’s self-taught, too. She just started writing on her own. I don’t practice with her or anything. For someone who hasn’t done any schooling (not even preschool), that’s impressive to Joel and I!

The only things I helped her with was when she asked me if ‘scary’ had a ‘c’ or ‘k’ in it, except she asked it like this: “does ‘scary’ have a ‘c’ like in ‘cat’ or a ‘k’ like in ‘kite’?” And whether ‘black’ had a “c, k, or both?”

Yeah. She’s a smart one. And she still has a full year before kindergarten. I have the feeling she’s going to get bored.

Ok, I’m done bragging now.

Quick Update from Past 4 Months

Edited to add: all of the pictures were formatted nicely before I hit publish. I don't know what happened after that. It'll be too hard to fix, so please forgive the awful picture layout.

Life has been so busy, so I’ve completely neglected blogging and since life is only going to get busier (#3 is due Sept. 26… it’s a girl, btw. I don’t think I ever announced that) I figured I’d do a real quick update of some highlights from the past few months. This is going to be long, so don’t feel bad if you don’t look at it. Except immediate family. I expect you to look at it all .
In May we drove to Minnesota to visit my sister, Kim, and her family. It was a ton of driving, but it went really smoothly! On the way there we visited Mt. Rushmore. On the way back we visited my cousin, Heidi, and her adorable new baby in North Dakota. It was all so fun and really deserves multiple posts of its own, but this’ll have to do.

The morning after we got back from Minnesota (where I’d love to live, btw!) the kids started two weeks of swimming lessons. They loved it!

Kaylee had her Joy School graduation.
Then Kim and Dave came to Utah to visit, so we did a lot of partying with family.
Which included a Wilkey Family Reunion (camping at Payson Lakes). Joel wasn’t able to take off work, so I took the kids up. Even with cleaning Logan up every 20 minutes or so, he still looked like this the majority of the time:

We had cousins Connor and Cambree stay with us for a few days.

We (well, Joel and the kids) dressed up in Spider-man outfits to get some free food from Carl’s Jr.
 
We had the 4th of July party at the Burgener’s.

And then another one with the Hilton’s.

And the Hilton 4th party meant Joel’s sister, Jenn, and her family were visiting!
Since we like free food, we again dressed up for some. This time as cows for free meals at Chic-fil-A. I even participated this time.

We did a fireworks show on the 24th. I have to add, I HATE the newly legal fireworks!!!  Of the 3 different times I’ve watched them there has been one that has malfunctioned and shot into the crowd. SCARY! The kids liked them, but thought they were a bit loud.
Joel took me and the kids to our first ever drive-in! We saw Ice Age 4 and Brave. Both mediocre movies, but we had a blast, nonetheless. Seriously. I loved it (for some reason I didn’t think I would).
We went with friends to visit the Brigham City Temple and have a little family home evening up there. Our stake wants each family to have a picture in front of the temple and to do a bunch of other things in preparation for the dedication.

We celebrated Logan’s 3rd birthday with a big superhero party. He’s obsessed (even more so since the party). That took a ton of my time to plan, but I loved doing it.

On Logan’s actual birthday he chose to go to Chic-fil-A for dinner and then bowling/arcading (because we went bowling for Kaylee’s bday). He also got a fun rollercoaster that he’s enjoying.
I’ve also been working on projects, running a produce co-op every other week, and trying to get the nursery ready for our sweet girl. Joel’s been working hard on the yard (man it’s been hot outside!), with work (he got a promotion and is an editor!) and with young men/scouts. The kids have been playing hard and relaxing a lot.

Wow. And life is just going to get busier here in a few weeks with both kids doing Joy School and a new baby coming. Phew! I’m tired just thinking about it.