Austin's Motorcycle

So my brother-in-law just got a new motorcyle and it's killing Nate that his dad and brother both have one now and he doesn't. So he's taken me for a couple of rides in the last two weeks to try to convince me that he needs to get a motorcycle. I can see how they would be fun, but they are sooo dangerous and also very expensive (well, Nate's taste is expensive anyway). My aunt works for Red Cross and she actually calls them "donor-cycles". I just think Nate should borrow everyone else's motorcycles if he wants to go for a ride. Am I just a really mean wife, or what?! We actually got to see Austin's bike before Nate did because Nate was at work. Austin came over to show it to us and all the girls had to have a ride. They were pretty excited!!

Vacation to Arizona

We just got back from a long (for us) vacation to Arizona. But I have to start out by showing you Katelyn's cute picture. She got glasses and we picked them up on our way out of town. I think she looks pretty darn cute:

We left on our vacation on Saturday after two soccer games and a piano recital (oh, and an almost-flooded basement that we were really glad happened right before we left and not after we were gone). We got to stay at Nate's brother, Roman's house with his family in Provo. Then we attempted our 10 hour drive to Phoenix on Sunday morning. Between going to the bathroom, poopy diapers, and throw-up we finally got to our condo about 12:00 midnight our time (11:00 p.m. Arizona time). Needless to say it was a very long drive, but Nate and I's only goal for the whole vacation was to work on our patience and man was it tested, but regardless, we still had a ton of fun and our kids did great for the most part! I made sure to get a picture of everyone in the car since that's what most of our vacation was spent doing:

We got to visit almost all of my family that's in Arizona. We first visited my grandma, Booma, and my grandpa, Papa. The last time we saw them I was pregnant with Kenzi, so they got to meet two new great grandchildren.

Then Tuesday night, my aunt Carla invited us to see her cute home and have dinner with her. We had a ton of fun and she even gave us a tour of the area and we had a whole lesson on cactus, which was very interesting to those of us from Idaho. Unfortunately, I was having such a wonderful time that I forgot to take pictures when I was there. Then Wednesday night, my aunt and uncle, Mark and MaryBeth, had us over to dinner with their son, two daughter-in-laws, and 3 grandchildren. It was soooo great to see them and MaryBeth is a wonderful host and cook.

We left Arizona on Friday morning and stopped in Las Vegas for a night. That was a lot of fun too. We stayed in the Excalibur and the girls' favorite part was M&M World and riding on the Tram.

Then Saturday night we stayed at Roman and Roberta's in Provo again and went to church with them. And headed home Sunday afternoon. What a fun time we had, but it was also great to get back home!!

12 Week Body for Life Challenge

Okay, so we finally finished our 12 week challenge. I'm sure a lot of you are sick of hearing about it, but this will be my last hoorah and then I'll only discuss it if you ask me. We heard about Body for Life through our hometeacher, who was the grand champion winner for last year and won $25,000. Nate and I started looking into it a little more and decided it was something we wanted to do. (Which I'm so glad Nate did it with me because that made it a lot easier for me to have him to report to.) Body for Life is so great! It taught us how to eat right and exercise right. None of this starving yourself stuff because frankly, we LOVE food, and we couldn't do that. But I do have to say, if you choose to do body-for-life, definitely do the 12 week challenge and stick to it because it got us on a good daily habit and that's what kept us going. Here's the website if anyone wants to check it out: http://bodyforlife.com/ Another thing that really helped us keep going is this book with some AWESOME recipes in it called Eating for Life. I debated for a long time whether I should post these before and after pictures and I've had a couple people request them, so here they are. (Please keep in mind that I do still have 4 kids and that's always going to show up on my body.lol)

Before

After

Before

After

So there you have it! We didn't keep track of our body fat percentage or anything like that, but the final results were that Nate lost 26 pounds and I lost 9 pounds.

Dance

We finally had our big dance recital night. My girls did wonderful and they were all so cute! It took a lot of time to get them all ready since I had to curl all their hair and do all their make-up and stuff and you girls now how you can't do any of that until right before the recital starts or it will all be messed up by the time they dance (which I think it was anyway), but luckily my sister, Cindy, was a life-saver and came and helped me get them all ready. We were dashing around like crazy people trying to get them there in time and forgot Katelyn's cute hat that goes with her costume, so I guess I never did get a picture of her with her hat on. (But once again, thanks to Cindy, for running home to get it to her in the nick of time.)

My baby boy is 1

I can't believe Kyler turned one last week!! My baby boy is growing up too fast. He's not walking yet, though, so at least that makes me feel like he's still a baby. I think he's actually very smart...and I'm not bias or anything, but in my opinion he hasn't learned to walk because he doesn't see the point since he would just fall further and he can just get everywhere a lot faster when he crawls. That's how it was when he learned about the stairs...he would just crawl right to the edge, but never try to go down, so finally I showed him a couple of times how to turn himself around and he's been doing it ever since. He's also very observant...he'll notice that across the room, his sister is eating an ice-cream cone and all he has is baby crackers, so he'll cry and point until he gets what he wants...I think that adds stubborn to his list of traits too. I think he gets all three of those traits from Nate: smart, observant, and stubborn. I know this cake isn't that great, but I'm pretty proud of it cause I hardly ever make my kids birthday cakes and especially not creative ones. The letters and number are made out of starbursts rolled flat and cut out and around the edge is fruit-by-the-foot and more starbursts. The balloon suckers I just found at the dollar store.

Nate's such a good daddy! Kyler just wanted to grab that cake and candle so bad! I was excited to get a picture with him just covered in cake and frosting, but he actually didn't get that messy. I'm not going to go as far as saying that he's a "clean" child, but I've seen him be much messier.

We are trying so hard to get him to walk. All of our other kids were walking before they were one. It's such a fun phase to watch them learn!

Kyler LOVES balls!! He was working so hard at getting these two balls to stay on the windowsill that he forgot he wasn't even holding onto anything to stand up.

This was Kyler's present from Grandma Loftus. This was probably the longest he's gotten to sit on it since because the girls all want to ride it too. This is how Kyler's changed in the last year:

We love our Kyler and as you can tell, we spoil him rotten!! There's some advantages in having 3 older sisters and being the first boy!!

Our first year of soccer

So we've done t-ball and we've done a TON of dance and we even did a singing AND dance class with Nikosha and she's also doing piano...but now we're trying something new...soccer. I'm really excited because I actually played soccer in high school. I wasn't great, but I played. Plus, the cost of soccer compared to dance...not to mention all the practice and only one recital in dance. If it sounds like I'm a little burnt out with dance right now, I am. (I wouldn't know what to do if I was you, Karri.) Katelyn and Kenzi each have dance classes two times a week right now and Nikosha three times, all to get ready for the recital. Plus, they each have a DVD that they're supposed to practice with 5 times a day. Don't get me wrong, I love dance, and I especially love watching my girls dance, I just wish they didn't have to practice so much and that there was more recitals:

Okay...now that I got completely off subject...back to SOCCER. Nikosha is on the pink soccer team and Katelyn is purple. (Perfect for each of them because you know how the color of the team is sooooo important when it comes to sports. lol) The second game Nikosha played in the coach promised the team

he would wear pink hair for not letting the other team score in the last game, so if it looks like their hair is all a tint of pink, it's because they couldn't just let their coach have pink hair, they had to join in the fun. Nikosha's best bud, Katie, also plays on the team. She's really good about running around on the field, but she doesn't love to be aggressive or kick the ball much.

Katelyn on the other hand LOVES to take the ball and dribble down the field. This is her with her cousin, Carson. They are quite the pair because Carson is really good on defense and Katelyn is good on offense. So, hopefully, by the end of the season they can work as a team and get our team lots of points and not let the other team score at all.

And Kyler LOVES anything that has to do with a ball. He'll just sit and watch for a long time until the ball comes close and then he thinks it's his turn and he needs to go get it. His birthday is tomorrow so for his birthday we got him a bag of 100 balls...He's going to love it...he'll be in ball-heaven!

Birthday Party in Utah

We got to go to Utah this last weekend for a combined birthday party for both of my nieces and my nephew on the Loftus side. All three of their birthdays are within 3 weeks of each other so Roberta (their mom) decided to just rent out a roller skating rink and celebrate all of them together. And we've learned that Brazillians really know how to throw parties!!! It was so much fun! Nate always has just as much fun as the kids!!

Nikosha showing off her prizes she one playing games: Wipe-out, Skate to the dice, hokey-pokey, etc. (So much fun for all ages!)

Austin and Kyler were buds at the party. They were so cute just sitting there watching and eating.

The roller skating rink allowed the kids to bring scooters, which was absolutely wonderful!! But the girls each wanted to try out the roller skates and each lasted about 5 minutes on them.

Caleb will be turning 4, but he doesn't really like to have his picture taken much.

Tatyana turned 7 on Monday. She's missing her 3 front teeth, but still a blue-eyed model. The girls LOVE to get together to play with her.

Alyssa turned 2 today. Happy Birthday, Alyssa!! Isn't she a doll?!!

Roberta's mom made three cakes for each of the kids. The bear cake was Alyssa's and the racetrack was Caleb's but I guess I didn't get a picture of Tatyana's, which was a Spongebob cake. (I was taking pictures with Roberta's camera some of the time and forgot which things I had taken pictures with and with which camerca.) Not only were the cakes absolutely adorable, but they were each a different fancy, yummy inside too. Plus, the entire table around all the cakes was covered in homemade Brazillian candy!! And on top of that they had like 200 sandwiches, chips/dip, punch, etc. (Did I mention that Brazillian's throw awesome parties!?!)

We stayed in a hotel while we were down there because we didn't want to overload Roman and Roberta. Our hotel had a pool, so the night before the big party (while Roberta was slaving away at home) we took all the kids swimming.

On Sunday, we all went to the park and had a picnic. It was such beautiful weather! About 75 degrees...just perfect.