My little Vandalist

Okay, so admittedly, I used to think that when people said their kids were very "mischievious" and destroying their homes, I figured they must just neglect the "watching" of their children a little bit.  But now, I have changed my opinion.  Some kids are just born "mischevious"!!  I was lucky enough to have 2 kids that hardly ever got into things around the house... but then, my adorable little Griffin joined the family!  Cute as anything, but wow, that kid has been getting into things from the day he could move around!  We have had countless things broken in this house, walls and furniture colored on a gazilion times, and money and candy thieved from every hiding spot we can possibly think of!  This kid is a genius!  Even my Dad was amazed at him at age 2, how he managed to break new toys like they were made of tissue paper!  He said that some toy company should hire him to "test" the durability of toys!!  Seriously, he can take ANYTHING apart.  And why does he not understand that the only thing he should be coloring on, is PAPER?!!  Well, yesterday, his destruction rose to new levels!!  While I was gone (so it was luckily not my fault in any way, ha ha!) he somehow found some cans of bright colored spray paint in the garage that I didn't even know we owned!  Well, he had a great time spraying in the garage, on the rock bed between the houses, and get this, even on the neighbor's house!! Yikes, he has started creating grafitti at 4 years old!  So the neighbor's siding is covered in bright blue spray paint.  You can only imagine how embarrassed Lee was to have to go over and tell the neighbor what Griffin had done and that he was going to try to scrub it off, and replace the siding if necessary.  And of course Griffin had to apologize, but so far nothing has seemed to sway him from committing further crimes... we shall see... hopefully he will grow out of it soon!! Maybe one day we will be able to own nice things in our home for more than a week!

Moments that will embarrass my children one day!

I got a good laugh the other day when I caught Griffin playing Barbies with his friend, Devin, from next door!  They were in Dakota's room playing for a good hour!  It was really cute to hear them talk and play just like Dakota does with her friends! Having the boy Barbie come pick up the girl Barbie in the car, and getting them ready, and so on!  So funny, I never would have guessed that they would do that, especially for so long!  Griffin has played with Dakota before, and that's one thing, but for him to play there without her and just with his friend is another story!!  Ha ha, I had to take a picture to blackmail him in the future!  And if you look at the second picture, you can see Griffin grabbing Devin's hand to leave the room, I think he was kind of embarrassed when he saw that I caught them in the act!

Dakota's Last Dance Class

Here are some cute photos of Dakota in her dance "recital" - it's kind of a casual class just at Lake Chaparral Rec Center, but we get to come watch the last class, and see how they're doing!  Dakota improved quite a bit this year over last year, I must say, although she seems to have a bit of her Dad's dyslexia!  She can't seem to figure out which foot is left and which is right!  It was funny to watch!  It's also funny because you can either see her concentrating so super hard, or else she just wants to be smiling and looking at us the whole time and so she loses track of what she's doing and can't concentrate!  Cute girl -she tries hard and wants to look good in the pictures!!

 Dakota also loved taking this dance class because she got to go with two of her best buddies - Laura Tredinnick and Amy Hansen!  What adorable friends!  They are always hugging each other and are so sweet!  It's so nice to have such good friends that are members of the church.  Hopefully they can grow up together.

Random Moments

Just a couple random things that happened in our everyday life... we are STILL getting snow in the middle of April, yuck! So Griffin made a snowman all by himself one day - how cute! He was pretty proud of himself too! It will be nice when Scarlett is a little older and able to play with him better - the poor boy gets a little bored sometimes!

On another note, I thought this picture of Scarlett covered in black ink was kinda funny - maybe funnier now than it was at the time, but still. I guess Dakota gave her a black streamer to play with when she was fussing and next thing we knew, she was a black mess!! Who knew that streamers were so filled with dye??! Lesson learned! I'm sure most parents don't learn that lesson, because they are probably smarter than to give their babies any kind of paper to play with in the first place.... what can I say? Fourth child!! And random moment number 3, has to do with the fact that often at dinner time we all take turns talking about what our "Best and Worst" thing was about the day - kind of a good way to get the kids talking and learn about their lives. Anyway, I was just noticing yesterday that their answers really have a lot to do with what type of personality they have! And our cute little Dakota is so positive all the time - she hardly ever has a "Worst" moment from her day, she always thinks they whole

day was just great! How cute is that? I could learn a thing or two from that girl.

Easter Outfits

Although we were a week late on dressing the kids up in their Easter clothes (since we were at Ashley Lake for Easter), I still wanted to take pictures of them because they look so cute! My Mom usually buys all her grandkids new Easter outfits (thank you Mom!), and she let me help choose them this year. Dakota was thrilled to have matching dresses with Scarlett for the first time! How fun to have 2 girls to dress up now! I love it! I seriously couldn't be happier about having 2 boys and 2 girls. I think they all look pretty great too, what a lucky Mom I am! And looking at these pictures, I am noticing how much older Scarlett is starting to look! Can't believe my baby is 9 months already! The kids are having so much fun walking her around and taking care of their baby sister.

A bit of Backtracking...

I decided to go back a month because I really wanted to post my first child's baptism! It's a big event and it deserves to have some sort of record written about it!

My big boy Mason turned 8 this year, I can't even believe it, time has flown by! He was pretty excited to get baptized too!! (And Dakota was so cute, she was very jealous and can't wait until it's her turn!) We decided to baptize Mason in Drumheller with his cousin Jake Davies - they have birthdays around the same time, and we thought it would be fun to combine them so Lee's family could all come to see both at once. Not to mention it was a nice way to get a more personal baptism and avoid the big Stake ones that Calgary does! It really did turn out to be a nice day. My Dad, Grandpa Nielson spoke about the Holy Ghost and did a great job (and Jake's Grandma spoke about Baptism), and my Mom got up and bore her testimony since every one of her grandkids happened to be there. It was really nice. The girl cousins sang a song, but we forgot to practice it with Dakota, so she had to just get up there and wing it! She literally just mouthed it, it was pretty funny. Mason was very excited for his big day, although kind of nervous too to see all the cousins and stuff - you can probably tell by his very serious facial expression in some of these photos!! He would NOT smile! But he couldn't stop talking about it to us afterwards, he just kept saying "I can't believe I got baptized!" "I am the cleanest person in the family, aren't I?!" And he was very determined to stay as clean as he can and to repent if he made any mistake at all! (Unfortunately that has kind of worn off, but he really did try hard for a few days to be perfect!) He felt so good and I'm pretty sure he felt the spirit. We are so proud of him! Afterwards, we had a big family and friends luncheon at the church and then my side of the family went to the Dinosaur Museum. (My parents came, and Jocelyn and her kids, and Melanie and her kids). It was a lot of fun and some good memories to have!

Back on Board the Blog Train!

I have really been wanting to get started on blogging again for a long time, and I'm finally doing it today! Hopefully my commitment will last a little longer this time than the last (: I haven't been keeping a journal or anything so I REALLY want to record some moments from my life before it's too late and my cute kids aren't quite as cute anymore!
Anyway, here goes!
We just got back from a fun weekend in Montana, with just our little family! It was really nice to get away and have time to just play with our kids and not worry about all the other stresses of life! We got to play out in the snow which to our surprise there was a TON of!! We actually got stuck in the drive way and thankfully were rescued by my Uncle Ken who just happened to be pulling in at that time!! Thank goodness! He cleared the whole driveway for us with his bobca
t! The kids loved building forts with all the snow chunks and having snowball fights too! We also did a little shopping, had an Easter egg hunt, ate out at some yummy restaurants and played at "The Zone: Family Fun Center"! Good times! The kids loved the bumper cars and getting to spend $5 on whatever arcade games they wanted! Griffin loved the independence of having his own "swipe card" - he wanted to do it all himself and wouldn't let us influence his decision on what games to play! I told him he was wasting his money trying to get a toy from the one with the "claw" that drops down - I don't think I have ever seen anyone win at that, so I figured it was almost impossible. But Griff was so determined! He tried it like

4 times and wasted his money, but then Lee helped him aim it the 5th time and he got a green ball! (His favorite color!) Wow was he ever thrilled!! He let out a huge "YES!!!!" and walked around showing it off to everyone. Pretty funny, I guess he showed me!!

We ate a Famous Dave's too and they had a dressed up pig walking around to see all the kids. I really wish I had a picture, but we forgot to bring our camera in! The kids all loved him, except for Scarlett! She looked at him and started bawling her eyes out. It took a while to calm her down, but when we finally did and put her back in her high chair, the pig came back and she started crying all over again! Pretty funny! After that, the pig did his best to avoid her!

We also got to visit with Grandma and Grandpa Cooper on our way there and back, it was nice to see them! We even got to have Easter Dinner with Debbie and Barry and family too - talk about good timing for the drive home! Grandma knitted me a cute sweater for Scarlett, here's a picture:

I gave her the wool and pattern that I had found, and I think she loved the challenge! It took her a while and lots of undoing and redoing! What a cute Grandma!