Daddy and His Newest Little Man

Daddy and Jordan (14 weeks) enjoying playing on the ground together. Even though Jordan has chunkier cheeks and a rounder head than John, I think Jordan may grow up to look like his daddy! 

Madison Thinks She Knows Best - Thinks is the Operative Word

Middle of July and Madison apparently got exhausted. I walked in my room to find her sound asleep like this. How kids sleep in these positions I don't know.

Madison thought it would be fun to smear sunscreen all over her face. Yes, I took pictures - she looked ridiculous. I lectured her about not playing with sunscreen but it fell on deaf ears.

I had to go get the mail so we walked to the post office and found our friendly neighborhood chickens keeping an eye on things. Only in small town America do you get greeted by chickens at the post office! Walking home Madison's eyes started to burn. Apparently she kept touching her eyes with her sunscreen laden fingers. She was screaming bloody murder and unable to open her eyes by the time we got home. Needless to say she didn't ever play with the sunscreen again! Burning eyes are much faster teachers than a lecturing mother.

Alexis and Jocelyn decided to push the mail with the baby stroller while in their swimsuits. Adorable little ladies aren't they?

Wadley Reunion at Bear Lake

This is what happens when John leaves to go golfing for the morning and I'm left in charge! The car survived, but I felt rather stupid. I felt slightly better when Dave said that Jill nearly did the same thing right after they had saved my car.

Drew was so excited to "help" the big boys! John showed up right after they had saved my car and put the rocks back in place - lucky him!

Because we had everyone together we did a family picture with all the grandchildren. The truly astounding thing is - it's still current nine months later! Twenty grandchildren, five children with spouses and the two who started it all!

Grandbabies from Grandma and Grandpa Wadley.

Have you ever tried to line that many small children up from tallest to shortest? HA!

This is what it really looks like when you're trying to get them to all look forward and smile simultaneously.

Apparently they still taking pictures after this, we didn't last that long. They decided to take individual family pictures right after the big group pictures. There was no way my kids were going to cooperate for another hour so we changed them into swim suits and went swimming instead. We had grand plans of doing our family pictures later but it never actually happened.

Because we were doing family pictures, Jocelyn had to fall and hit her head. No family picture is complete without some sort of injury. Too add insult to injury Madison's haircutting debut was still horribly visible. It's a good thing Jocelyn is so adorable, even with injuries and haircuts.

The place we were staying at had a private beach with a floating raft that was tied down so the kids could walk out there and hang out or jump off of it. It was shallow enough that even Madison could walk all the way out, Jocelyn was slightly too small to make it, but she kept trying. All the kids had a blast playing on the raft and spent most of their time out there. It was a walk down a nice long grassy field to get to the beach, hence the golf cart that Jocelyn was riding in!

Jordan's Blessing

We were luck to get so many family members up for Jordan's blessing. Lest you think that we would ask people to drive four hours round-trip for a three minute blessing, we decided to bless him the day before the Wadley family reunion was to begin - at Bear Lake! Thus, we were really only asking people to come a day early. Because we did it this way, all of John's siblings were able to be there as well as some cousins!

The Gaede's were kind enough to make the four hour round trip drive just for us! They represented my side of the family as none of mine could make it. They're enough like family that they counted as family even if they aren't blood! 

The boys were having a ton of fun with our tree swing. The poor tree lost a few limbs in the process, but the boys were so happy I'm sure the tree wasn't to upset to lose the limbs. They would swing up and try to catch branches with their feet - the branches didn't always stay attached to the tree.

The smaller kids had a blast playing inside and being goofy. We apparently need more seating though because people were sitting on the ground. Come to find out, Jill was sitting on the floor so that she could be right next to the air conditioning vent. Hours later we figured out that the house was so hot because some kids outside were playing with the master switch and had switched the entire air conditioning unit off!

The man of the hour. He looks a little milk drunk here. He was a happy camper and enjoyed seeing so many new faces. John did a fabulous job with the blessing and Jordan didn't scream. We sure love our little man!

The Laughs and Tears of Potty Training

I looked outside to see Jocelyn swinging on the tree swing - pantless! She LOVES to take off all of her bottoms and then run around the yard. Swinging pantless appears to be a favorite.

Sweet little itsy bitsy Jocelyn took her pants off again and then sat on my couch. Usually it's not such a big deal but this time she peed on my seat. I wouldn't take a picture of her pee spots normally, but since it was a perfect outline of her cute little butt I couldn't help but take the picture.

While potty training is done, as you can see there are still accidents that occur. You can always tell when she's peed herself versus just getting wet because she walks bow legged whenever she pees herself. Only one more little guy to train and then we'll be diaper free forever!

Creatively Naughty Imps and Cherry Juice

Want to take a guess as to what my children are up to? Being naughty imps is at the top of the list. While I was feeding my newest little man my oldest three children were making cherry juice to sell on the corner. That's right, they were making cherry juice in my kitchen with ALL the remaining cherries and they were using their feet too! It was a big mess - not huge, thankfully! When I started telling them that they couldn't sell the juice to anyone - ever, they were not happy. They told me that they washed their feet with wipes so that it wouldn't be dirty. They however didn't think about washing in between their toes or the tops of their feet, or wash their feet after they had walked across the floor and then went back to mash more! When I told them to clean up the mess I went back in to find that they had poured all the juice, pits included into an empty milk jug - they were certain that I would change my mind and that I would allow them to sell it to our poor unsuspecting neighbors. They get credit for being creative, but the mess negated all of the credit they'd earned.

Jordan's Blessing Picture

Three months old and getting a receding hairline.

My children seem to lose their hair a few months after birth - it's rather sad, but they're still adorable!

I wanted to update our picture wall and we needed a picture of Jordan to include. Since his blessing day was coming up I decided to take pictures of him in his blessing outfit. Yes, I had him blessed in this outfit. I saw no point in buying a pure white outfit for him to wear only once. He didn't fit into Drew's outfit (which also wasn't white) as he was too big. Yes, Jordan is a chunky monkey! He's such a sweet little boy with such a pleasant disposition. At ten weeks he gave me his first true smile. He of course did this in the middle of night when all I really wanted was some sleep and was slightly annoyed that he was waking up yet again. I leaned over the crib to pick him up and he gave me the biggest smile. All annoyance left oh so quickly! He has no inclination to sleep which means that mommy and daddy don't get much sleep either. He is a sweet little man that loves to cuddle and the all the kids love to cuddle with him. He still doesn't hold his head up by himself but we won't worry about that until he's four months old!

4th of July Started on the 3rd this Year!

Only three of our kids enjoyed the 4th of July, which we celebrated on the 3rd of July this year. Jordan and Jocelyn were both tired and ready to go to bed. So John took the three older kids to sit outside the USU stadium to watch the fireworks show. They had a lot of fun and loved being able to come home late because they were the "big" kids! John and I were a little bit of the party poopers this year - we only did fireworks on the 3rd - actually we let USU do it for us! Five kids in six years does on a number on the two people in charge!