The Hibblog

When I was growing up we didn’t use car seats in the car.  We didn’t even use seat belts.  I never wore a helmet when riding my banana seat bike.  I played on metal playground equipment in elementary school.  My mom let me and my siblings roam free all day long in the summer.  We rode our bikes miles and miles away from home.  We swam in the canal behind our house.  And best of all….

My dad tied a rope to my stroller and pulled me around behind the riding lawnmower while he mowed the lawn.  Sometimes I wonder how I made it through childhood.  Times have changed.

It should have been my New Years resolution to keep the blog updated, but I don’t make New Years resolutions so that wouldn’t have worked out.  So here is our past 2 weeks…

Oakley got rollerblades for her birthday.  She was so excited!!  Unfortunately her birthday is in the middle of the winter, so she won’t get to use them much for a while.  She tried them on as soon as they came in the mail.

A couple days later she was able to try them out outside for a few minutes.  We’ve had lots of rain in the past week, it’s been crazy.  She did really well staying up on them and she loved it.  I can’t wait to see what she can do this summer.

Nash also wanted to try the rollerblades on when they arrived and Oakley agreed.

The rollerblades came in a good sized box.  Nash loves boxes.  He decorated it with crayons and then when it was bedtime he wanted to sleep in “Boxy”.

He lasted there for about 5 minutes and then realized that there are good reasons that humans sleep in beds.  Him and Oakley ended up having a ‘slumber party’ in a ‘nest’ of blankets on the floor.

Coy had a business conference in Las Vegas last week.  The big prize that he brought home was a reuseable grocery bag with the company logo on it.

Nash found a pair of Coy’s socks laying around.  He put them on and then danced around in them.  It was pretty funny.

Nash got a pretty amazing train table for Christmas.  Coy and I thought that he would spend every waking hour of the next year playing with it.  He really loved it at first, but then we had to move it out of the living room and upstairs, but now he won’t play with it.  It’s really annoying because it’s all he wanted for Christmas.  I caught him actually playing with it the other day.  Had to capture that moment.

Laken got her fingernails painted for the first time this week.  We went to Emmett and Karin painted them.  She couldn’t stop touching and looking at them for the first little bit.

This girl is a gum magnet.  She finds it and then knows to chew it and not swallow it.  I can’t figure out how she knows, but it’s so funny to watch her chew it.

If you’ll notice in that last picture, you can see a molar.  I didn’t even realize she was getting molars until three of them were halfway in.  I guess with your third kid, you don’t check their progress on everything every day.  I remember for Oakley I had a chart of a mouth and I would do daily inspections and then notate the date of when each tooth in her mouth broke through.  I don’t even think it matters in the grand scheme of things, but each tooth was an important milestone with my first baby.  Sorry Laken.

Another tooth note:  At breakfast yesterday Oakley announced that she had a loose one.  She’s been wanting to lose a tooth so bad that she always asks me to check and see if they are loose yet.  When I checked the tooth yesterday it actually was.  She is so excited!

Well, there.

Oakley turned 6 last week.  She didn’t have school on her actual birthday, but I was able to take cupcakes in the day before to celebrate with her classmates.  On her birthday, I took the kids to Bounce.  There are benefits to having every other day Kindergarten because we were the only 4 people there!!  All 10,000 square feet of bounce houses to ourselves.  It was nice!

Nash was scared of just about everything there.  He finally attempted a very small slide, but only if Oakley would go with him so they could hold hands.  He is not a thrill seeker, but he still had a good time.

We stayed for about 2 hours, then came home to make a special birthday dinner for Oakley.  She got to pick dinner and dessert.  She wanted Ravioli Lasagna for dinner and frosted brownies for dessert.  Coy also got to come home from Twin Falls that night, so it was perfect.  Oakley was so happy to have him there for her birthday.

On Friday I took some 6 year pictures.  Oakley wanted to wear her cowgirl hat and boots in some and she also wanted her stick pony to join her.  This girl wants to be a cowgirl so bad.

Oakley’s party was on Saturday.  She was so excited for this day.  She counted down all week.  About 15 minutes before the party was to start, the kids went upstairs and watched out the window to see who would be first to arrive.

She had so much fun at her party.  Opening presents, watching and dancing to her slideshow, eating pizza and tons of candy, having cake, and running around with her cousins.

As of Saturday morning I had to idea what I was going to do for Oakley’s cake.  I used to have high hopes of decorating really great cakes for my kids’ birthdays, but I have realized that I do not have the talent or the patience to do that.  So, I bought a bag of plastic horses, slapped some frosting on (at least it’s homemade, right?) and stuck some horses knee deep into the cake.  We also added a real horseshoe “gate” and a 6-candle “fence”.  Coy always helps with the cakes, so I can’t take credit for all of the genius ideas.  So…my cakes are ugly and I never love them and always feel a little ashamed of them, but my kids love them, so I guess that’s all that matters.

And finally, I don’t want to ever forget this hilarious thing.  I let Oakley go to the party store with me to pick out some stuff for the party.  I always get a bunch of helium balloons, so we picked out a bunch of them in different brown colors….then Oakley spotted this behemoth balloon.  It’s a horse that’s significantly bigger than Laken.  She was IN LOVE.  So back went the cluster of tastefully colored helium balloons.  We carefully stuffed this beast into the car and came home.  It’s bigger than it looks in the picture…really.

My grandpa Adams passed away last Friday.  Although it was expected, it’s still very sad and hard for me to wrap my head around.  This is the first grandparent I’ve lost and I feel so lucky to have had my grandpa here for this much of my life.  He was 89 years old and would have turned 90 on the day before my birthday.  He was a good man.  Always telling jokes and always concerned about everyone else.  He will be missed.  We were able to go see grandpa on the 5th of January.  We took the kids, so that they could say goodbye.    My very last memory will always be watching Nash give grandpa a big hug, hearing grandpa tell him he loved him and then Nash saying “I love you, too”.  I will cherish that.  We are lucky to have been able to have that time.

A few nights ago the kids enjoyed a glow in the dark bath.  We filled up the tub, put some bubbles in, turned off the lights and added about 20 glow sticks.  Oakley and Nash played in the bath for a good 45 minutes.  Laken just joined in momentarily.  They loved it!

Our lives have been so enriched, thank you, Pinterest.