Our Valentine Plans

Valentine's Day has never really been a big deal for me and Scott. And once you have kids, it pretty much gets thrown out the window.

From the time the store start putting out the red & pink hearts the beginning of January my husband constantly reminds me "I hate valentine's Day". It is defiantly a constant reminder not to expect anything or talk about plans for the day.

Usually he will end up doing something, giving me a card and usually a few flowers, but never anything extravagant.

Looking back at our relationship, I remember our very first Valentines Day together, I tried to do something special, but it just didn't turn out and after I realized how much he hated the "holiday" I gave up.

Don't get me wrong, I am not bitter or upset. I have never been a really huge fan of the holiday anyway. Growing up, my mom used to try and make it special with serving pink malt-o-meal and strawberry milk for breakfast, little valentines in our lunches, we would pick out the cards and exchange them at school.

My worse Valentine's day was probably my junior year of high school when I actually had a boyfriend. I never really knew what to give a guy in high school, but this boyfriend got me this embarrassing large display of a dozen red roses and gave them to me in front of everyone...we had barely started dating.

This Valentine's Day we didn't really discuss doing anything until the night before, then again on the day of while I was still at work. Chili's had a Valentine Day special, but with money the way it was, we decided to not spend any money, but to just stay in instead.

It was actually a nice evening. Scott made hamburgers for dinner for us, we spent time as a family, sent the kids to bed a tad bit early, and just enjoyed each other...and a history channel special on Chocolate.

It was nice, easy and simple, but nice.

Happy Valentine's Day!

This was a truly rare moment this morning as both boys sat side by side for a picture, with bother actually looking at the camera. Is that Brendan's arm around his brother?? They were defiantly showing the love today!

Well, that of course did not last too long...

Going....

Going...

GONE!!!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Caleb's First Valentine's Day.

Cousins

One of my favorite part of having my sister close by is having our kids grow up together. Growing up, we were always very close to our cousins and I wanted the same for my kids. One of my cousins, Mikey, was 11 months younger than me. And while you will still hear stories of how unhappy I was for him to come as a baby, how I would hit Aunt's belly and I would scream at him sleeping in his crib, but we still grew up very close.

I have been waiting for my sister to have a baby so our kids can be close in age. When I found out she was three months behind me in pregnancy, I was super excited! Now with such close ages, we will be able to do all sorts of things together as our kids get older. During Christmas, we got all three kids dressed in their Christmas outfits together on the couch. I Love that we will have these types of pictures for years and years to come, and as the number grows as Bekah and my brothers have more babies, the holidays and other events will become that much more fun and hectic. I can't wait!

No while this photoshoot wasn't perfect - the only way to get Brendan to sit there was to give him a present to open, and Caleb was so enthralled with Lily's dress (hairbow, shoes, ect) he kept trying to eat her, it was perfect having the three babies together. I will never forget these times we have.

Family Photos

This year, since my parents had all their children & grandchildren all in one house for Thanksgiving, we took a few nice family photos. If you are Facebook friends with my parents, and/or follow my dad's or sister's blog, you may be a little tired of seeing these photos over and over again. But they turned out so well, I thought I would also post the family pictures for viewing. Currently, there are 11 of us all together. I can only imagine what the picture will look like in 5-10 years!

The Keys Family: Scott, Caleb, Myself & Brendan

The Atkinson Family: Kevin, Bekah & Lily

(Whats left of) The Reed Family: JT (Bud), Dad, Mom & Jon

The Family Picture

Grammi & Pepa with the grandkidsBrendan was defiantly done with pictures at this point. We were using candy to get a semi-decent shot.

It is nice to have the documentation of the family all together. I will give a Thanksgiving post soon! Just need to gather all the pictures into one spot...

Independence Day

This year we experienced our Independence Day in Star Idaho (just outside of Boise) with Scott's parents. I bought us all Old Navy Flag Tees which I love, Scott humored me enough to wear it for the day!

My mom bought Caleb a bib to wear for his 1st 4th of July. The bib was a little big for him!

In the evening, we went next door and had a neighborhood party. Caleb, being the newest grandbaby, at only 6 weeks old, was passed around from grandparent to grandparent. Brendan was excited to run around and play with other kids and new toys.

This was also Brendan's first experience with fireworks and sparklers (the video was posted earlier). He really was a little nervous and couldn't decide if he liked them or not, but we did about 3 sparklers, all the other kids loved them.

Unfortunately, it does not get dark until about 10:00 at night. We gave Brendan a late nap hoping that he would be able to make it. At first he started to get fussy, but he settled down on Grandma's lap and watched the fireworks. Much different than California, Idaho allows you to have actual fireworks that shoot up into the sky. It was quite an experience for me, I had never seen fireworks like this shot off from someones driveway! We started with some floor fireworks, move to bottle rockets, and then had the real, large fireworks in the sky. Brendan was the only kids who stayed awake through the entire show. He wasn't too fond of the loud noises, but got used to them and as long as he was held, he was fine.

Caleb on the other hand, slept through the entire thing, noises didn't bother him a bit!

Easter pictures

Just wanted to post a few more pictures of our Easter this year. We started the morning at church, it was a great service, not your normal Easter Sunday sermon but we really enjoyed the service. We then loaded up the car in our new 2nd van and drove out to the Salton Sea to have Easter lunch at Grandma (G.G. Pat to Brendan) & Poppy's house.

After lunch, Brendan got to open his Easter Basket. I think his favorite part of the basket was the bubbles. We also had an egg hunt for the kiddos in the front yard, and then an egg hunt for the adults. Every adult had one egg they needed to find with their name on it. Overall it was a very nice afternoon. The pictures speak for themselves! Sorry there are a lot of them, I have a hard time picking my favorites!