Standiford Family

It’s hard to imagine that Kaden was born a year ago today. The time has gone by so fast and except for a few months he never really seemed like a baby.

First birthdays are exciting times, but also kind of tough because the individual celebrating doesn’t really get into all the hoopla. I guess that is supplemented by older siblings who get extremely excited for his birthday. Megan said last night that she wouldn’t be able to sleep because tomorrow is Kade’s birthday and Mattey and Megan both have been counting down to his birthday for the past week. One of the most exciting things is that Kade can now sit in his car seat facing forward; Kelly actually went out to the van last night and changed that around so he’ll get to take his first forward facing ride while taking Mattey to her field trip today.

Happy Birthday Little Man!

We had the opportunity to celebrate with Amanda last week, but today is the actual day so I wanted to wish her a Happy 21st Birthday.  I hope you enjoyed your special day!

Friday Megan didn’t have school so we needed something fun to do.  I had watched Martha earlier in the week and she had made slime.  I thought that looked like something the girls would like to do.  So we did it.  It’s just a little glue, water, food coloring, and the important ingredient, borax soap.  Megan made hers green and Mattey’s is purple.  They had fun playing with it.  They held it in their hand and it would ooze out.  Mickey came home from work and had to make some.  I did too.  Sadly Kade is too little to play with it since you can’t eat it.  Check out the pictures in the gallery.  Have fun if you decide to make some too.  Watch out it gets everywhere!

Friday night Kelly took Mattey to a birthday party for a friend at her preschool. It was a pretend sleepover so she got to wear her pajamas which are probably her favorite thing to wear. She ate pizza and cake, played games, watched a movie and made a craft. Meanwhile back at the ranch, the rest of us had pizza with Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Amanda (who flew in for the weekend), and Bridget. We also had a craft as Megan instructed everyone on making shamrocks out of green paper using a heart shaped cookie cutter for a pattern. She was quite the leader.

Saturday morning I repaired the water softener which had sprung a small leak that I noticed too late last Saturday to work on. I was able to go out and buy a new o-ring and make the repair surprisingly easily except for one small detail. When taking the bypass value off I broke one of these small plastic clips that help hold it on. I checked three different stores before realizing the only place to get this was online from Sears. Luckily I was able to rig the thing together while we wait for the $2.49 part to get here. That is bad enough for this little two inch diameter piece of plastic, but then tack on the $5.99 shipping and I about lost it. Throw it in an envelope with a stamp and send it my way. Good grief!

Later that day we went over to Aunt Jan’s house to celebrate Amanda’s upcoming birthday. We had some good food, which I ate way too much of and enjoyed some time with the family. Mattey was quite the photographer while Amanda was opening her gifts. She takes some really good pictures. The kids really love it at their place, because it’s so roomy with many places to play. We were able to sneak in a couple of games of pool which is always a good thing.

Sunday was pretty laid back. We went to church and hung out around the house for the rest of the day.

I just posted some late Valentine pictures.  I wanted to take more pictures of that day but I needed another hand.  I did Mattey’s school party and I was doing too much to take pictures so there aren’t any from the party.  I will say it was a sucess.  The kids played "HEART" bingo, had cupcakes and cookies, played games, and then I read them a story.  Kade went along and he was really good.

Mattey had her St. Patrick’s Day party today since she doesn’t have school on Friday.  She was dressed in green from neck to toe.  She was really cute, green is a great color for her.  Kade and I got done really quickly at the doctor’s office this morning (His ears are finally good.) and had visited Mickey at work but still had some time left before Mattey would get out of school.  So we went in to peek at the party.  I was just in time to take some pictures of her eating her snack.  They had fruit on a stick with green dip.  There were green and gold jello jigglers.  And magic milk.  It started out white but when it was poured into the cup it turned green!  The kids got a kick out of that.  Mattey was surprised to see us.  When we got home she told me all about her day.  The Leprechaun came and made a mess of the room but left gold coins for everyone.  "It was a disaster!  The chairs were on the table, the numbers were up-side down, the room was a mess."  Mat couldn’t wait to dig in her goodie bag.  She did have some lunch before eating most of the candy.  She is so sweet, she even shared two chocolate coins with her sister.  I think she had a good time.  Thanks to the moms and teachers that put on the party.

This week’s feature film, for Friday night’s Family Movie night, was Yours, Mine & Ours. This is a remake of a 1968 movie that originally starred Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda. It was a good movie and for once I actually stayed awake for the whole thing.

Saturday morning I cleaned out the “dark room” as the girls call it. It’s actually the furnace room in the basement. I purged a lot of empty boxes and other stuff. It felt good. After lunch I took the girls outside to play in the gorgeous weather. I washed the van and the car while the girls played with some relatives who were visiting our neighbor. Megan really enjoyed playing with Kelley, an 8 year-old girl who was great at gymnastics. She was flipping all over our yard. Kelly took advantage of the nice weather by transplanting some flowers and Kade enjoyed just being outside. Later that night Kelly and I watched Walk the Line, the story of Johnny Cash’s life. I was not that impressed and wished I would have fallen asleep instead of keeping myself up to watch.

Sunday morning we attended church where Kelly ran the whole show in primary. Besides doing her normal assignments she also taught the kids music. She was a one-woman show. After church we rested for a little while before taking dinner to my Grandma and Grandpa’s house. We took salad and a Papa Murphy’s pizza. We haven’t been to their house in quite a while and it was nice to visit with them. My Grandpa was especially thankful for us bringing the food as he thanked me a couple of times. Afterwards my Grandma told my Mom that she was tired just watching us chase Kaden around. He loved the fact that they had electronic equipment (tv, cable box, dvd player) right at his level.

I was very concerned when my economics professor told us that we would be having a test the day after we came back from Spring break. The week off would be nice, but my memory is already bad enough without a week off. I was very worried that I would forget all the things that I had learned, so worried in fact that I actually attended a study session the night before the test. I don’t think I’ve ever attended a study session. Anyway I took the test on Tuesday and I left class feeling like I had really bombed the test, so imagine the shocked look on my face when the professor handed me back my test with a score of 90 out of 100. I almost got up and did a little happy dance right in the middle of class.

Today Mattey had show & tell and she was supposed to bring in something that starts with the letter M.  She told Mrs. Wright that she was going to bring herself in her bag for show & tell.  I thought that was pretty smart and cute.  Mattey couldn’t decide what she wanted to take.  She thought about taking me, Mom, but I wouldn’t fit in her bag and I would have to bring Kade.  So she decided to take something that was about herself.  This is a page I did about her.  I loved the picture of Mat and had to make a cute page with it.

I finally put a few pictures together of what Kade’s been doing lately and added them to the gallery.  He turned 11 months already.  I’m not ready for him to be one yet.  There is a variety of things that this boy has been up to.  He is still pretty good and seems to be getting over his ear infections.  But he has taken a lesson from his sisters.  He has been screaming and getting into all kinds of things.  He loves to walk.  He wanders all over the house just checking things out.  His favorite places to explore are the girls’ rooms because they always have something interesting that they left out.  Maybe someday it will teach them to put their things away, probably not until Kade can open their bedroom doors.  He’s already trying to do that.