Dustin and Erin Watson

These kids...

I love them so much. I'm so grateful that I'm the one who gets to be their mommy. Not only are they the cutest kids ever, they have me constantly laughing.

Almost every day, and sometimes multiple times in one day, Kate will request to watch the "daddy song". Which is the movie we made him for Father's Day. The kids love to watch this!

These pictures are pretty mellow (of course they calmed down as soon as I brought my camera out), but I need to video their real reaction to this someday. Kate has to comment (yell) about every picture. "That's me as a baby mom! There's Max! That's my foot! That's daddy!" And Max will laugh when he sees pictures of himself.

Kate loves to hold and "carry" her baby brother. And although he's screaming and struggling to get away, she'll still hug him tightly and say, "Max loves me Mom".

They both loooove the iPad. In order for Kate to be able to play it, we have a condition that she has to sleep in her bed ALL night. Which she still doesn't. But it's a good enough bribe to where she sleeps in her room way more than she used to.

I LOVE that picture. Dustin is reading them Peter Pan.

Kate loves to talk in past tense, but has no idea how to do it. She'll say things like, "I was a baby today", "I went to Disneyland last week", "Can we do that yesterday?", or "I ate lunch last year."

I've told her that eating good food makes her grow big and strong. So while she's eating lunch she'll often say, "I'm growing Mom!"

Kate thinks she knows everything already and uses phrases like "Actually..." and "because, that's why!"

I can't think of any more stories at the moment, but I promise I'll get better at writing them down!

4th of July!

I love the 4th of July. I really do. Growing up it was my very favorite holiday. I lived in an extremely small town. Population 2000. My graduating class had 47 kids in it and we were the biggest graduating class. And while I love living where I live, sometimes I yearn for the small town life again. Small towns have a knack for making holidays fun. There was always a festival going on at "the park" and everyone knew where you were talking about because it's the only one. We had tons of food, vendor booths, an enormous slip and slide, and my brother and I would sing the national anthem at the flag raising in the morning (a few times). Then in the afternoon my family and I would load up, drive to the town over, and camp out in "our spot" to watch the fireworks. We sat it the very front, as close as we possibly could, to watch the fireworks. We'd lay on the hood of the car and watch as the fireworks flew literally right above our heads. We'd get hit by the ash from the fireworks as it fell. It was awesome, and I miss it a lot.

While our 4th may not have been as awesome as I remember it growing up, it sure was a blast! On the Monday of last week, we got together with some neighbors of ours and had a pre-4th family home evening. We ate watermelon and popsicles, played with bubbles, squirt guns and waterballoons, and lit some fireworks when it got dark.

On the 4th we started the evening off by going to our neighbors house for the yearly block party they host. It was a very rare rainy day here in the valley so the weather couldn't have been better. How often to you get a 80 degree 4th of July? Never! There was a chili cookoff (which Kate got all over her dress so I had to change her clothes), and they also grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. Then we started lighting some fireworks and the kids started going crazy!

Then a little later in the evening Jaron and Beth's family came over. We lit fireworks in our backyard!

Then we went upstairs and watch the Schnepf Farms fireworks from the best view in town. My bedroom window! If I can't be sitting right underneath the fireworks, watching them from the comfort of my air conditioned room is a pretty amazing alternative!

God Bless America!

Snowflake

Last week the kids and I went to visit family in Snowflake. We were there Tuesday-Sunday and we had so much fun! It was so nice to escape the heat for a few days. Max ended up being sick (teething, fever, diaper rash) for most of it so he wasn't a very happy camper, but Kate loved every minute!

We spent lots of time outside. Playing on the trampoline, picking the berries off of the tree, playing with rolly-polly bugs, and playing with the hose and sprinklers! Kate even touched a snake! I was not there for that, I'm sure I would've freaked!

Poor Max was just an observer for the most part.

When we were inside, we introduced my teenage brothers to the likes of Disney and Nick Jr, watched movies, and played on iPhones. Kate loved to help Grandpa make breakfast and dry the dishes. She also loved to "take messages" on Grandma's computer.

Bahahaha! That picture is my favorite!

We also made time to spend with the Watson family as well. We had a barbeque at Sherice's house that Thursday night.

Kate learned how to swing all by herself!

We also went to Showlow on Friday and saw Brave! That movie was so good! I highly recommend it. I loved it, and I bawled like a baby. Kate and I loved it so much that we will probably go see it another time in theaters, and will definitely own it when it's released.

We had a fantastic time, but we are definitely glad to be back home :)

11 months!

Max turned 11 months this week! I can't believe it! He is at such a fun age now. He's so expressive and funny.

He can say, "woah", "wow", "oh dude", "ooooh", "oh yeah", "mama" and "dada".
He loves to play with cars and his basketball.
He loves to play with Kate, and she's good at toughing him up.
He loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Little Einsteins.
He wants to self feed more than he likes to be spoon fed, which is pretty tricky since he still has no teeth!
He loves his Daddy and gets so excited whenever he comes home.

The biggest news is, Max started walking!! He did it on Monday, so technically I can say my babies both walked at 10 months :) I was so surprised, I did not think he was ready at all!

*tear* Am I the only one who thinks he is too little to be doing this?

Here are some (well... a lot) of pictures of him. Partly because I needed to take his 11 month pictures, and partly because I needed to take pictures for the last assignment of my photography workshop. We're up in Snowflake this week so my little brother Jared helped me find a location and hunted down this radio flyer wagon for me! Thank you for that! I love how these turned out!