Auggie's 3rd birthday

This super handsome guy turned 3 on March 9! He is a such a fun little guy, I love his smile and his spunk!  He loves life and learning and is one of the smartest 3 year olds I know.  Everyday he surprises us with his knowledge and vocabulary.

 One of his favorite things to do is write letters and numbers with chalk and he has regularly written the entire alphabet both upper and lower case across the fence.  He has written numbers past 30 and can count to 100 by 10s and 1s with a bit of help to stay on track.  He also has gotten  quite proficient at the computer and can navigate websites and activities on his own.  

He was very excited about his Team Umi Zoomi cake for his special day!

This is the first year he hasn't cried when we lit the candle.  He tried to blow it out but didn't have enough force, so dad helped him.  He was also excited that he got birthday balloons.

His favorite birthday gift was this garbage truck toy from Grammie. 

We love him so much, he is such a joy to our family. 

All about Auggie:

Sayings:  "Hey it's me, Auggie!"  "Wait a minute"  "We made it" or "We did it", "I have idea!"

Favorite shows:  Team Umi Zoomi,  Blippi, Ryan's World

Favorite foods:  bananas, milk, chicken nuggets, french fries, pancakes/waffles/french toast

Favorite activities:  jumping on the trampoline, playing in the sand box, painting, drawing with chalk, playing with trucks/cars, legos/blocks, games on the computer like ABC Mouse and Nick Jr

Favorite books:  Bedtime for Batman, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Hungry Caterpillar

Favorite songs:  Twinkle Twinkle, ABC Song, Wheels on the Bus, nursery rhymes, Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam

Audrey's 6th birthday

 

Happy 6th birthday to Miss Audrey!  We had a fun day celebrating her special day with breakfast in bed, a trip to the Dollar Store to pick out some balloons and take out dinner from Sonic.  She wanted to get a cake from a bakery instead of mom baking one, so she designed this cake from Walmart.

Audrey has been doing great with her distance learning kindergarten, but she really wants to be able to go to her classroom.  She has always been very social and outgoing, so she really yearns for that connection with her teacher and the other kids.  Audrey was excited this year to start Girl Scouts.  Her and Amilia are registered as independent members, so the three of us do activities once a week at home toward various badges.  Audrey loves art and writing her own story books.    She is very easy to please and is grateful for all the simple things in life.  She's still our family clown and continues to come up with some doozies!  Some of her memorable quotes from 2020 are:

"Mom, I want to hear that song about the man who walked 500 miles."

Talking to her Nana Chatterton "Nana, there's a virus going around.  We're trying not to get it."

Eating a Lindor Truffle "These are really good.  Famous chefs made them."

Someone asked her what she wanted to be when she was a grown up "I just want to marry somebody."

"I don't like boys! Except I just love dad!"

Audrey's teacher complimenting her that she is so smart "No, I'm not smart, my mom just reads to me and teaches me words."

We just love our sweet, silly girl!  Here are her answers to the annual questions:

Audrey's Questions age 6:

Favorite color: pink, purple, maroon

Favorite food: ice cream, pasta, eggs 

TV show: Ryan's World

Toy: big Hatchimal

Activities:  play games, ride bike, hide and seek

What do you want to be when you grow up? a chef

Who is your best friend? Abby

Favorite song: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

Favorite animal: Cheetah and jaguar

Candy: lollipop

Game: Disney Color Brain

Dream vacation: Disneyland

Merry Christmas 2020!

 

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year! Here's what we've been up to:

The year started with our move to Imperial, CA for Ryan’s new position as the field manager for the Bureau of Land Management El Centro Field Office. 

 

*Austin turned 13 and is in 7^th grade. He is involved with our church youth activities and a community fitness program for kids.

 

*Amilia is 8 and in 2^nd grade, she was very excited to be baptized in our pool! She did ballet last spring and is a Brownie Girl Scout.

 

*Audrey turns 6 soon and started kindergarten. She did ballet as well and is a Daisy Girl Scout.

 

*August is 2 and loves learning and chasing after his siblings.  We enjoyed a fun trip to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park to celebrate his birthday before California shut down.

  

*In June, we bought a house.  We love our neighborhood and the kids’ schools.  Hopefully we can settle down for a while!

Picking fruits from our grapefruit tree

2020 picture with Santa

Merry Christmas!

A teenager in the house!

 

Austin turned 13 on Friday! I still can't believe that is possible.  We had a fun day for him that started with breakfast in bed and a door decorated by the girls.  

We had a small celebration at home.  He wanted Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner and requested my homemade vanilla sheet cake.  

Austin got some new Switch games and money to buy more Switch games!

As you can tell, Austin loves video games, mostly Nintendo Switch, but he also plays Roblux and Minecraft.  He has taken some coding and video game design courses and is interested in engineering for his future career.  Austin is excelling in all his classes and is very involved in our church youth program.  He is the president of the group of boys in his age category.  Austin also attends a fitness program for kids on the weekends.  It's hard work, but he enjoys going and challenging himself.  Austin is an awesome big brother, the younger kids love to play with him.  He has been a big help to us as he has been babysitting for the the past two years.  

Austin is one of the nicest kids out there.  He is always up for an adventure and willing to try new things.  He doesn't let adversity or negativity get to him.  We are so proud of the young man he has become!

Amilia's 8th bday and baptism

 It was such a great week celebrating Amilia's 8th birthday and her baptism with family!

Amilia was so excited to see all the birthday cards that friends and family sent her.  She ended up getting 27 cards from 8 different states!  Thank you all so much!

We had a little family party with a mermaid theme.  The frosting sheet from Etsy with mermaid sprinkles was a big hit!

Amilia's baptism was held in our backyard and she was baptized by dad in our pool. 

It was so nice to have family come to visit and also participate on Zoom for her special day!

Update on the new house

It's been a busy month getting settled in our new home!  The first 2 weeks was spent getting the bedrooms painted, fixing a wall, carpets cleaned, and putting in a fence around the pool.  We were able to move in the last weekend of June.  We were grateful for the help from the church missionaries who are trying to stay busy here in the Imperial Valley.  They helped us clean the new house, move our furniture, and clean the rental.  Since we left our rental before the lease term was up we assisted our landlord in finding new renters which didn't take long.

Here is our new home in Imperial, CA!

 The pool fence turned out so nice!  Ryan's dad came down to help him with this. It was quite the project, but now we have more peace of mind for the kids' safety and can now utilize the rest of the yard.

 The girls love their pink room!

 Auggie's room is a soft yellow.  We had a spare TV that used to be in the loft of our rental house, so we decided it should go in his room because he's still young enough to allow other people to hang out in his room and he would'nt be able to hack into it to watch it in the middle of the night.

Austin chose blue for his walls.  We put our old king bed in his room so that it can be used for guests as well and then he can sleep in Auggie's room.  

We did a light mint green accent with a soft whitish color in the master bedroom.

 The two bathrooms upstairs need to be painted and we are in the process of rebuilding the shower in the master bath.

This is the front room downstairs.  We really like the dual toned walls with the chair rail molding, but we plan on repainting with lighter colors.

 I love the open kitchen with the island and pantry and side cabinet area that is over to the left.  I was able to downsize a lot of our furniture with all the built in storage in the house.  We plan to paint the kitchen with a lighter color and add backsplash tiling.

Ryan was able to paint the accent walls in the family room so we could mount the TV.  The rest of the family room will be painted the same lighter color as the kitchen and then we will put up curtains on the kitchen window and back sliding glass doors.

The hall leading to the garage entrance is off of the family room.  There is a storage closet with deep shelves and laundry room off to the left and the half bath is to the right.

The kitchen/family room area has been such a great space for the kids to play, watch shows, and use the computer so I can keep an eye on them while I work in the kitchen and do laundry. 

These are the baby birds that hatched a few weeks ago.  We have 3 citrus trees in the backyard (we think they are all oranges) and there are several nests in them.  Our covered patio also has wiring to prevent nesting, but of course, a very small bird found her way in and has a nest in there as well.      

We are so grateful to be in this home and excited to continue all the projects to make it ours!

Auggie turns 2!

Today is August's birthday!  These past two years have gone by way too fast, but they have been wonderful.  Our little Auggie is such a loving, smart boy.  He is so curious about the world and learns something after watching or hearing it just one time.  He is picking up new words every day and loves books and singing.  Last week at church while the sacrament was being passed around, he started belting out "Old McDonald had a Farm".  He also loves singing the ABC song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Wheels on the Bus, and Book of Mormon Stories with the actions.  He can count to ten and knows some of the letters and colors already.  He also tries to play "rock, paper, scissors" and tell knock knock jokes.   Every night he gives everyone goodnight kisses!  When he's tired or needs comfort, he sucks his thumb with one hand and pulls on his hair with the other hand.  We are so grateful to have him in our family.

We took a trip to the San Diego Safari Park to celebrate his birthday over the weekend.  Nana and Papa Chatterton were able to join us.

We had cake after getting home from SD.  Auggie wasn't so sure about the candles and didn't want to try to blow them out, so when dad did it for him, he started crying.

Some of his favorite things:

Foods:  milk, chicken nuggets, french fries, Nutrigrain bars, Goldfish and Ritz crackers
Toys/Activities:  Vtech alphabet apple, Duplo legos, water table, Dragon Snacks game
TV show:  Mother Goose Club
Book:  Mother Goose Club Nursery Rhymes board book