Happy Birthday Keagan! 11 years old!

Some random pictures of Keagan this past year that show his personality!

Getting his haircut into a Mohawk, which he likes to do every summer. He is so funny about it though, he wants it done, but then he is a little too embarrassed to wear it up.

Here he is embarrassed/shy


Cool!

skating at the ward activity, he loves his ward family!

More of his ward family, he really looks up to the "boys"

in our ward. He can hardly wait until he is 12 to be with them.

Giving me the dirty look.

He can be quite good at it!

Fixing things. He is quite the helper!

In the parade for the Lacey Fun Fair.

Pinewood derby

He has loved cub scouts.

Doing a skit for cub scouts, this part suited him so well!

He loves teasing Ray that he is old and goes around imitating what he thinks an old person does. He was excited about this part, making his old man beard and practicing with his cane.

He says he hates dance...

BUT once hes there he has a good time And

you see him doing steps all around the house.

This year I payed him to keep going..

He loves his family, he pretends to not like Melissa picking on him..

BUT

he secretly LOVES it!!!!

He really loves his cousin, Aurora, too.

I love listening to them play.

They have great imaginations together!

He is very talented. He likes to dance and sing. He has a very good sense of rhythm, he is constantly making a beat with different objects around the house. Usually.. it doesn't bother me. I didn't think much of it until I heard another child do it and they had no sense of rhythm and then I knew Keagan was really talented!

He loves things that are silly!

He found these glasses at the dollar store and wore them all around the house.
He reminds me a lot of his Great grandpa Stambaugh!

He also needs a lot of sleep. He tells me when it is time to go to bed.

He still falls asleep in various weird positions.

He fell asleep with his silly glasses on!

Here he is getting his awards and moving up to boy scouts!

Sooo exciting!!!

Wearing a silly hat!

rolling of the eyes, a common Keagan occurrence!!!

Singing in the choir

Another silly Keagan face, also a common occurrence at our home!

We love Keagan! His teacher wrote in his year book that she loves his kindness. He has one of the biggest hearts! He likes to make us breakfast in bed. (Melissa, too) A lot of times he will tell me wait, mom, and he will come and open my car door for me. He still likes me to tuck him into bed and say prayers with him and pretend that he doesn't like me to kiss him goodnight. :) I love how he gets so excited about things, he heard that we were having an apostle come for stake conference and that is all he could talk about! He makes sure we read our scriptures every night and say our prayers. He is also a time watcher. He doesn't like to be late!

On the other hand.. he is all boy! He got an i-pod touch for his bday and his favorite app. is the one that farts.. and burps.. really! How many times can you press that button..

We love our sweet, kind-hearted, silly, shy, talented, obnoxious, stinker boy and wouldn't trade him for anything!

Happy Birthday you big 11 year old!!!!

10 years ago!

What a fun group of kids we had for Joy School! Melissa, Maleah, and Brooklyn, Hayden, Andrew, and Brett.

I can't believe this was 10 years ago! Melissa & Adam graduating. (Adam is my "baby" brother). Melissa was almost 5, now almost 15. Yikes!

Rainers game

Every year the Lacey Elementary choir gets to sing the National Anthem at one of the Rainer's games. It is one of the things we like to go support. Keagan joined choir this year so he could sing at the game.
Ray & Melissa love baseball. Keagan & I tolerate it, but it is fun to be at Cheney stadium. (I like it better than the Mariner's games). This year it poured on the way there! When we got there it stopped raining for a little bit... long enough for the kids to sing their song. (Yay)! And then it started raining again! You can see on the scoreboard, it is 7:44 and the 7:00 game still hasn't started.

So we got to see Rhubarb the Rainer Moose...

See a couple of airplanes fly really close by...

See the kids sing...

We saw them uncover the field and

then cover it back up about 1/2 hour later.

Waiting

and waiting.

And then they finally called the game at 8:15 or so. So we got to see the kids sing, saw Rhubarb, eat our hot dogs(they came with the tickets), watch baseball on the big screen(they had the Mariner game on the big screen), and then go home. The good thing is because it was called a rain out, we get free tickets to a game of our choice. We just have to come up sometime when we want to go to a game anytime except the 4th of July game. I think we'll pick a nice day in the summer. Maybe a Friday night with fireworks.

preschoolers

Here is my preschool class that I teach with one of my friends Marie. This day we went to the bus barn for a field trip and got to ride the bus! Fun times!
I love teaching preschool. Where else could you have a part time job that works into your children's school schedule and do such fun things like: playdough, paint, singing, shaving cream, go on field trips, etc, etc.
They are constantly saying cute things, too. One of the cutest I heard a few weeks ago was this little conversation.
One of the boys, "I'll be the dad" Then one of the girls promptly said, "I'll be the honey!"
Another thing about this group of kids is that this year all of the kids are lds, we didn't plan it that way, it just happened. Anyways, at play time they were playing with the food and one of them said "WAIT! we for forgot to have prayer. They all promptly stopped, folded their arms, and bowed their heads, until someone said Amen. Too cute!

Lots of new blogs

In the next few days I'm going to try to catch up with my blogging. So now I'm accountable. I taught a lesson last Sunday in Young Women's (church girls 16 & 17 years old) about the importance of writing in your journals and decided I needed to be better at this too. Luckily I take pictures of everything so I can remember what happens in my life or mostly remember.

I couldn't believe when I looked at my blog it has been a couple of months since I have posted anything. When I was looking at the calendar this week it is as crazy as ever, but we don't have anything planned this weekend.. maybe I shouldn't say that too soon.. I looked back over the calendar and I don't think that we have had a "free" Saturday since mid February, maybe that is why I haven't found time to blog. I'm looking forward to staying home!

I'm going to try to post my blogs on their original dates, so you might have to scroll back to read them.. if you want to. :)

Vancouver BC Temple

Ever since I heard about a Temple being built in Vancouver BC I was excited and wanted to have our family go up for the open house. I love that the kids can go in the temple and see and feel the spirit of the temple. We got to go to the Tri-Cities Temple open house a few years ago, but the kids were too little to remember much about it. I also got to see the Portland Temple open house when I was a youth and it left a lasting impression on me. (Click here if you want to know more about temples) This is what we planned our mini vacation around -

The weather was beautiful for us!
And the temple is gorgeous!!!

Moroni

At first I didn't like this picture, we were goofing around, but then my sister told me, look at the picture, you can tell how much he loves you when he looks at you, after 17 1/2 years! That made me feel good that she noticed it and then I liked the picture. That's better! ;)

My sis Cindy and her daughter Aurora

The flowers were gorgeous too!

My mom & Thom

Cousins!

And Keagan being his usual silly self!

It was very nice we got there on the first day of the open house and didn't have to wait in any lines! We waited for Ray to get off work and drive up to Birch Bay, so we got a late start, but we made it!

My sister and the girls

What was very cool was that we went the first day it was open and the next weekend the youth in our ward got to go. They had to meet at the church at 5:30 a.m.! And they willingly did it. We had to give them notarized permission slips and copies of birth certificates to go, but it was well worth it!! I only heard good comments from our youth and I know they enjoyed going. Another great thing about Melissa having been there the week before - When the youth went there were a lot of people and they didn't have tour guides in every room like they did with us, so Melissa had heard what they were telling us the week before and she could share that with the others. Here are the Lacey 2ND ward youth a week later at the temple.