Birthday Cake

It's a few days late, but it's really never too late for ice cream and cake. Tonight we broke out McKenna's birthday cake. Thanks Lori for loaning me the pan and giving me the idea for our giant cupcake ice cream cake. I think I assembled it too soon as the cake was a lil frozen and hard to cut through, but it was still yummy, especially on this hot evening.

We always take advantage of visitors :) and with the boys in town James and my Dad helped us move our furniture out to prepare for demolition next week. My Dad also helped put up siding on Thursday...so things are moving right along.

Happy Birthday McKenna

Most parents says it every year and like them I can't believe 4 years has gone by. Even the last year has seem to fly by in a whirlwind...well most days anyway. :) Thursday, August 24th was McKenna's 4th birthday and what a fun day it was! Looking at her pictures as a baby I can't believe how much she has grown and how far she has come. Her vocabulary continues to grow, her understanding and ability to understand things such as rules and concepts has gotten better over the summer. She's even eating peaches, something different from her usual foods. She's really a sweet girl and such a good sister and mother to Tyler. She's very excited about her new baby boy that is growing in Mommy's tummy, and continues to point to her own tummy when she is playing the "Mommy" Role. McKenna is a sweet girl who knows what she wants, when she wants it and isn't going to settle for anything less, something we think will serve her well as she gets older.

I tried to start out with a birthday song that morning, but was quickly hushed by McKenna with a "no singing," despite her excitement the day before of her upcoming special day. I think it may have something to do with my singing voice or maybe she doesn't know how to "deal" with directed attention. We continued on with our usual morning routine but you could see she was excited and she understood this year what a birthday was, something to do with presents, cake and ice cream. :) The day was a lot of fun for her as her Grandma & Grandpa Harris surprised her that morning bringing with them balloons. As the day continued she randomly got a present here and there and special "birthday" girl privileges.

Birthday outfit

We decided to give her 'big' present to her at lunch as she had been asking for it all week-a Princess Scooter. The look on her face was priceless! She knew it was coming but to actually get it...her reaction is why as parents we spend the $$ for the gifts. Good girl!

That evening we had a very small but exciting evening at Chuck-E-Cheese, which I have decided is just a Casino for kids, so many lights and loud noises. Tyler even had a ball going down the slide too many times to count and remember. After playing games for a while we had pizza and then opened gifts. Her face lit up when she opened gifts that contained a pair of red shoes in one and a dress in another. Her grandmother's have her pegged. She was insistent that she put those on right away and wore them over her clothes for the remainder of the evening. (I'll post pictures later after I get them from my Mom).

I'm pretty sure the day was a happy one for Mckenna, that night as I checked on her after she'd fallen asleep, she looked up at me with sleep still in her eyes and asked "where's the mouse?" and something a bout cheese and then declared she wasn't scared.

We Love you McKenna and we're so happy to have you in our Family!

The girls are cracking me up! As I sit and write they are sitting at their lil table eating "noodles & cheese" in their plastic pretend tea party dishes and saying "ahhh" as they open their mouths and show each other what's in their mouths. Maybe a little disgusting but the fact that they get such a kick out of it and they aren't screaming at each other makes it a fun moment. I love the little peaceful and happy moments like this.

On the adverse side Tyler has decided when she is bored the funnest thing to do is disrupt McKenna by taking something she has and running across the room as fast as she can with a big smile on her face while McKenna screams, "NO" at the top of her lungs. Should pry teach me to quit neglecting but at some pt I'd like for them to learn how to play by themselves a little bit.

Now they are standing at the window and McKenna is telling Tyler a story about Diego and something about something being scared. Ahhh...

Ok I forgot to post this next part a little over a week ago, but my friend Lori had her lil girl Regan on the 7th of August. Her big brothers Mitch and Jack got to come play with Tyler and McKenna the next day which was a lot of fun for us. Just take a look at some of the things we got to do.

Playing in the Water

Building Sandcast

Lunch, then Dress up

Happy lil Gardner

Blocks have become a family past time here at the Payne's...check it out, both big records for the girls in height! They even built them all by themselves!

This last Saturday Jack & Mitch had their birthday party. What a fun day playing in the sprinklers and pools, eating birthday cake and ice cream and getting to meet cute little baby
Regan who is a spitting image of her older brother Jack. McKenna was in HEAVEN and so sweet! She just held her and sang to her "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and a song she made up with both the ABC & Twinkle Twinkle little star.

Busy, Busy Bees

It's been a fun week at our house as (I think) the summer is winding down. We are trying to get in all those things we want to do at the last minute.


Tuesdays our ward does a Mommy & Me playgroup. We haven't always been very diligent at attending since Tyler is still taking a morning nap and the time is a conflict. One of my favorite places they go every year is Mudd Mountain, which is up towards Mt. Raineer. It's a great place with a toddler pool ( a big circle with a mushroom looking fountain in the middle), and it has 2 parks. There is a toddler park that is across the parking lot with lots of plastic little house walls, slides, swings and plastic dinosaurs to climb on. The 2nd park is a lot bigger with more slides, swings and several 'big toys.' The girls had a great time, especially in the cold toddler pool.


It's funny how you watch your kids and can almost see them "growing up". As I was watching McKenna on Tuesday I saw her bravely go up to kids who were about 2-3 yrs older than her and try to laugh and talk with them. Then in all her 3 yr old glory and almost social awkwardness start splashing them, after all it is a pool :) The funny thing is most of the 1st grade boys were doing the same thing with the girls. Tyler was a bit more hesitant to get in & stay in the pool, due to the cold temperature of the water, but she loved jumping in and then jumping right back out. My friend Leslie let me play with her camera for a bit. It's a fancy real photography camera and I found myself coveting it a bit. Don't know how the pictures turned out, but it was fun pretending. Towards the end of our pool fun I found McKenna sitting next to a boy who was around 6-7 yrs old. He was a quiet kid who didn't know quite what to do with this little girl who was following and mimicking his every move, so in attempt to save him I decided it was time to leave.

It was a lot of fun getting together with the girls and their kids, especially outside of church.

6 months and counting...

Make-Over Mama

I chopped my hair. It was way too long and has been driving me crazy so I went with my sister-in-law Ashley to see a friend who cuts hair and we both got a lil make-over. John was working on the house so I found myself a new little babysitter and she did a fantastic job! I was impressed how she didn't wait for me to leave to start playing with the kids and for once when leaving them they didn't scream and cry uncontrollably. It was awesome!

I have to admit that it's a little shorter than I was planning but it always is and the good news is I'm not panicking yet. Heidi Klum is on the cover of Redbook in July and I was going for her look,

obviously I need to curl my hair but we'll get there. Ashley suggested I do a before (curling) and after so we'll do that.

Girls Day Out!

Mommy Daughter Day/More Summer Fun

Yesterday was a busy yet very fun day, especially for McKenna and I.

McKenna needed some new levi's so I decided to take her "Back to School" Shopping. She was so cute we walked into Old Navy and I showed her a few pairs of jeans and she knew exactly which pair she wanted. Then she picked out a shirt and a matching pair of socks. She did spot a hat that we had looked at online to get for her and since it was on sale and I didn't have to pay S&H why not? She was so excited and giddy as we paid for her new lil outfit. We then headed to Target where she got a little distracted in the toy section claiming her "need" for many princess outfits and dolls. I managed to pull her out (she was holding onto my leg) and into the baby section to get a pack'n play I'm contemplating on taking back already (need vs want issue runs in the family). When I told her we were going to look for new shoes McKenna was ecstatic. I showed her boots, dress shoes, sandals and then she found "the pair." A pair of black shoes semi-dressy with silver and a few fake diamonds on them. One thing I can definitely say for McKenna that makes me proud. She's not a greedy girl, she didn't ask or beg for more than one shirt, pants or pair of shoes. She was so cute strutting her stuff for her Dad when we got home and got her dressed.

I had a Dr's appointment yesterday and since traffic wasn't looking good so I decided to take McKenna with me & utelize the HOV lane. :) She was very excited to go hear the Baby Boy's heartbeat and decided to take her baby too. She fell asleep on the way there, I can't believe some of the positions kids can sleep in. She was very considerate of making sure the baby was in a seatbelt and covered by a blanket before drifting off.

McKenna decided she didn't want to accompany me to the bathroom, who can blame her. The Staff was very nice and allowed McKenna to make herself right at home. When I came out I found her behind the desk sitting in her own chair writing on the calendar. It was quite comical.

"I Spy" a lizzard who moved in

John was a good sport and didn't even complain when he was left to care for and watch Tyler. She slept pretty much the whole time I was gone in the morning and all but an hour in the afternoon but I know he's feeling quite stressed with all the house projects he has to do. I told him there pry wasn't much he'd have to do in the afternoons she just loves to splash in the pool and then would go down for a nap. I was impressed to hear he'd taken her to feed the goats, check out the figs and had even sat by the pool while she played, apparently she doesn't play so well by herself :) and wanted constant supervision.

Last but not least as an update the last few days have been a lil warm and so the girls and I have spent quite a bit of time by the pool. It's been fun splashing around and eating ice cream and McKenna's been playing the puppy role a lot. (Pictures aren't bad considering they came from my phone aye?)

Puppy McKenna & Tyler discovered the magic of "pockets" and was smuggling Scrabble Letters.

A Mom's Holiday

It's 3 pm on Friday and usually I'm laying down for a nap since both kids are sleeping, but today I've decided that if I'm going to get this blog entered the nap is going to have to be sacrificed. You gotta do what you gotta do. :)

What was expected to be a very long week has completely flown by. John left early Monday morning for High Adventure/Boy Scout Camp. I'm not a good single Mom, I dread whenever John leaves for just an evening so a whole week away almost terrified me because yes my imagination gets the best of me at night and 2-bedtime usually runs smoother with John around. Talking to my friend Leslie who's husband was also leaving on the same adventure I found that she her plans to leave town had fallen through. I didn't necessarily want to stick around myself and mentioned this although I had no idea where I wanted to go... Leslie offered up her condo in Orondo which is close to Chelan a few hours away and I jumped on the wagon. It was a 4 bedroom/2 bath condo and thinking about the other men folk leaving we immediately thought of our friend Lori and invited her to go with us. Monday afternoon we met at Leslie's and with Lori (who is also pregnant and due in a 2 weeks) in her car with her 2 boys and Leslie and I and her 1 yr old and my 2 girls piled into our rental truck we headed...East(?). I'm horrible with directions I just know it was about 2-1/2 hrs away. It was a rocky start for us and after 15 minutes in the truck we did have to pull over and rearrange the kids order in the backseat.

After that the drive went pretty smoothly...well the actual driving and the kids cooperation. We had planned on stopping at Walmart in Wenatchee and the Garmin/GPS sent us on a detour which involved a dirt road and then returned us to the freeway...and then there is Easy Street in Wenatchee which is not actually that easy. Again in trying to find Walmart (which we never did see) we drove a couple of loops that continued to return us to Easy Street. We finally gave up and stopped at the Food Pavilion where they were actually selling boats out front. It was pretty funny, or we were just loopy from the driving.

The Condo where we stayed: Desert Sun Resorts was gorgeous. The condos are just off the golf course and according to the price sheet that Lori found everything in the place was very nice and expensive. (an $8 juice cup? really?) It made us a little nervous since we had 5 kids ages 4 and under so after quickly securing anything we thought could be broken we started on dinner. Murphy's Law was against us and our fun idea of English Muffin pizza's soon turned into disaster-can you see the bottle of Spaghetti Sauce my daughter was sticking her spoon into fly from the bar and fall all over the carpet? I can only imagine what the price to clean that up would've been, it wasn't on the price list. Luckily I had brought a couple of last minute things with me-Shout Gel for set in stains and a small bottle of OxyClean, 2 of my best friends especially at this point of the trip. I still can't believe that by the time we were done scrubbing from the surface you couldn't even tell.

It was a very fun trip that involved a lil Birthday party Monday Night for Jack who turned 4.

LOTS of Yellow cake and Triple fudge with choc chips frosting (so yummy, especially for store bought!) and although the sun wasn't always out we did spend some time out at the pool. The kids got a long great entertaining one another and with the Lil Tikes Playground Leslie brought, the kids had a great time together. Once again Tyler thought she was Queen of the Slide and you would often find her sitting at the top growling at those who attempted to walk up the slide or looked like they intended to come too close. Poor Tanner didn't have a chance, but was such a good sport, he crawled around begging for food and even stood up a few times. The kids also had a great time on the balcony yelling at golfers, throwing balls over the banister and eating their meals. (side note: don't tell your kids things that aren't true you never know who's listening. In an effort to persuade McKenna to stop screaming I told her Golfers didn't like you to scream and if you did they might hit you with one of their balls. Which if distracted it could happen...but Jack took this to a new level. My kid didn't listen but he was very good at reminding McKenna whenever she started screaming outside.)

One of the funniest things I saw was McKenna running after Jack and upon "catching" him she would proceed to hug him. He hugged back, but you could tell it was a little bit awkward for him, especially as it continued to drag on. He would finally pull himself free and then she would either try and hold his hand or he would run. Tuesday night as we were all getting ready for bed I found Jack and McKenna on a bed under the sheet (on opposites side of the bed) but laying there like an old married couple watching SpongeBob. I jokingly thought to myself you are way to young to be starting this.

Wednesday morning rolled around far too quickly, as the end of most vacations do. We did get in one last swim and then all packed up we headed home.

I believe Leslie gave me permission to use her pictures, the ones she has on her blog so those are the ones you see. Thanks Leslie & Lori for a fun week! Thanks Leslie for letting me use the pictures!