Coach Chipman

Mike has been coaching baseball for the last few months and he is loving it. We got to go to one of his games. It was a little crazy for me with the girls, but it was fun to see him in action.


Mike is so amazing that he juggles all he does and still takes care of us girls at home. I'm so grateful to have such an amazing guy for my husband!

A Day in the Life

I always feel like I have catch up on the random pictures before I can post the happenings of late. We have been pretty busy lately, probably too busy, but I'm learning and hopefully will be a little better at simplifying. Anyway, here's the post of completely random pictures.

Emma wanted to try her hand at photography so she took some pictures of Kaitlin in the bath.


Playing with daddy.

Anya snuggling up like baby Kaitlin.
Kaitlin had her first friend to play while we babysat some of our friend's kids.
Foxy is as cute as ever!

Hair Obsession Part 3

So I was playing with Kaitlin's hair the other day while she was eating and I got a little idea. I tried my little idea and realized: Holy Cow! I can braid Kaitlin's hair!


How do you braid the hair of a 6 month old you wonder? The answer is very quickly.



Taking these pictures of Kaitlin made me think of some things that I want to remember about Kaitlin at this age.

As you might have noticed, she is dressed in the first picture and naked in the second. During the course of trying to get a cute picture of her hair, we had to take a break to change her diaper. Kaitlin spends a lot of time being naked these days because she has a blow out pretty much every day. Sometimes more than once a day. Her record is that she pooped on 5 blankets plus two sets of her clothes in one day. And they weren't just little receiving blankets, most of them were big floor blankets that she plays on during the day.


A fun thing about her is that she loves getting kisses which is a good thing because she gets a lot of them on a daily basis. When I put her hair in a pony tail on the top of her head, it makes this cute little Cindy Lou Who thing because of her curl.


Emma and Anya usually get along, but one thing they often fight over is who gets to be close to Kaitlin. They like to lay over her and get right in her face so they often argue of who gets that spot. Kaitlin loves her sisters. They can always cheer her up and they make her really happy.


Kaitlin is by far the loudest person in our family. A friend was watching her yesterday and she said, " I can't believe how loud she is. She started screaming and I ran into the room to see what was wrong and then I realized that she was just playing and talking. " She likes to yell and scream when she's playing. She's an amazing baby who is happy all the time and is so much fun to play with. She is a very inquisitive and active little girl. I think she'll be able to keep up with her sisters just fine.

"Spring Break"

The week after our official spring break, my brother and his family came to visit from Oregon. It was so much fun to see them since we usually only get to visit together once or twice a year. Emma got to play hookie from school for a couple of days (shhh! don't tell!), but unfortunately Mike couldn't so he didn't get to hang out with us very much. : (

It is always fun having people come vacation by your house because you go places that you wouldn't normally visit. We found this amazing pool that is only 20 minutes away. It is tons of fun and super cheap. It had a lazy river, a kiddie splash area, diving boards, a whirl pool, water slides, water basketball, . . . it was pretty cool. We are definitely going to revisit it some time after baseball season.

After swimming, all the girls (Sierra, Whitney, & Macey) came back to our house for a sleep over. It was so much fun! Just looking at this picture makes me so happy. If I remember right, Anya was already asleep. I hope they all had fun because I had a lot of fun having them here. They did take a while to go to sleep which made for some sleepy girls the next day. When we were driving back to meet up with Lance and Sunni and the boys, they all fell asleep in the car. It was so hilarious watching Macey and Whitney in the back seat because Macey was doing the whole head bobbing thing and her head was literally bouncing off of Whitney's head for about 5 minutes. I was laughing the whole time.

Anyway, I digress. . . The next morning, the girls helped at preschool which Emma has been begging me to do since the beginning of the year. I realized afterwards that she didn't so much want to help, as she wanted to play at preschool. : ) Sierra was my little mini-me. I had to run upstairs for a second and when I came back down, she was engaging the kids in finding things around the room. I was impressed, that girl would be an awesome teacher some day if she wanted to!

Emma and Sierra helped officially christen our new backyard remodel with sidewalk chalk. (Which I just now realized that I haven't posted! Wow, where have I been? Anyway, I digress again . . . maybe I shouldn't type these so late at night. . . focus)After preschool, we drove to Golfland which has some awesome things to do. (Although the golf course is not stroller friendly.) They have this amazing outdoor climbing playground that is free and shaded. The kids were way more excited about that than they were about golfing.

Such cute girls!

The point of this picture was to check out the adorable first graders missing their front teeth which you can almost see with my awesome photography skills. Some day I will learn how to take pictures that actually look good. : )

We had a lot of fun and we can't wait to see them again this June!

I'm a Survivor

Since this blog is our family "scrapbook" and occasionally stands in as my journal, I have a few thoughts to share.

So this morning was one of those mornings. Where a lot of different things go wrong. Well I was sitting on the top of the stairs having my own personal pity party when I had a realization. I'm sick of this "well when" attitude. I know you know what I am talking about, "I'll be happy when. . ." or "I'll get it together when. . ."
. . . when I get a full night's sleep
. . . when we have more money
. . . when Mike's job gets easier
. . . when school is out
. . .when the house is all clean

The list goes on.

When I was in highschool I had early morning seminary, school, soccer practice, choir practice, mutual, and then homework when I got home. And I still had time to hang out with friends and get decent grades. What happened to that person?

If I could juggle that much back then, then I can do it now! So I got up off my butt, skipped my shower, fed the baby, changed two diapers, unclogged the toliet, cleaned up the cat puke, got preschool ready, took Emma her forgotten backpack and got home before the kids got here.

While I was driving to Emma's school I kept thinking of that song "I'm a survivor" (at least the chorus) and this song "take me away" came on the radio. A song about just take me away from my problems and do you know what? I changed the station! I'm sick of the world and this wussy attitude of needing to escape from life. Life is hard, but we are tough! We can handle it even when things suck. Satan and the world keep whispering you deserve a break, you need this before you can be happy, you're not good enough, you can't get it done . . . I'm sick of listening to it!

So I am going to get my to do list done today and I am going to quit this "well, when . . ." attitude and I'm RSVPing NO! to the pity party.

I am a survivor!