Kyler Walking

Kyler finally decided to start walking last Sunday at Kristi's house. He'd walk before if we made him, but all of the sudden he decided he wanted to walk everywhere. (I guess I can't hold the camera sideways when I'm doing video.lol)

I let my girls get on hair websites to pick how they want me to do their hair sometimes, so one day they decided that we need to have a hair blog. I told them I was not creative or good enough to have my own hair blog, but maybe one day I could take pictures of their hair. They decided we needed to do it right then, so here's their hair pictures (nothing spectacular, but I love Kenzi's stance against the wall where she looks like she's going to be frisked):

I also decided since Kristi doesn't have time to update her blog that I would post pictures of her beautiful new house:

We were all at Kristi and Stan's for Grant's 8th birthday party. He got this suit for his birthday. Isn't he so cute!! He's going to be one handsome missionary!!

Katelyn's Tooth & T-ball

Katelyn lost her first tooth three nights ago. I can't believe she's already lost her first tooth. She is definitely growing up way too fast. She's not even in kindergarten yet. Nikosha didn't lose her first tooth until the end of her first grade year. Is it true that your teeth take longer to fall out if they're more healthy? That's what we told Nikosha, anyway, because she really, really wanted to lose her teeth like her friends. And guess what? The tooth fairy didn't come that night. We've concluded that she/he must have been very busy that night with lots of teeth because he/she did come later that morning when Katelyn was in the bathtub. Whew! I think the toothfairy has to pay extra when it's late, so she/he will definitely not be late anymore. lol (It's been a huge debate in our house whether the toothfairy is a boy or girl.) Katelyn has also been busy playing t-ball. She's on a team of mostly boys, but she can definitely hold her own. She's quite the natural little athlete. And their coach, Renae, is awesome to be able to handle all those kids and she has two younger kids too. I've coached my share of t-ball and it's hard work with extra little ones too, so thanks Renae! I must also mention that the silly kid sticking out his tongue in the back row is my nephew. Gotta love that kid!!

Nikosha's 8th Birthday

Nikosha turned 8 years old on Monday. Man, time does fly!! I can't believe I have an 8 year old now. She's actually old enough now that she knew exactly what she wanted to do for her birthday and what she didn't. She's also been doing a countdown since June started. One thing that she really, really wanted to do for her birthday is decorate her own cake. She watched me decorate Kyler's cake with all the candy, so I let her go pick out all the candy she wanted to decorate with. (I went to a place where you can buy different candies in the bulk or just a couple of pieces, so it wasn't too expensive.) She obviously takes after the Loftus side when it comes to being creative cause she definitely doesn't get it from me. Katelyn and Kenzi wanted to help Nikosha so bad. It was hard for them to see all that candy on the counter and not in their mouths.

She got a snowcone maker for her birthday, so for her birthday party we had snow cones and pizza then I took all the girls to the beauty school in town to a "Glamor Party."

They each got to get their hair done and their nails painted. I forgot to take my camera, though, so I only got a picture of them posing after their glamor session. I think they all had a lot of fun, but I know Nikosha LOVED every second of it. Then they all had cake and sherbert. (Nikosha wanted sherbert instead of ice-cream, so maybe some of our healthy eating rubbed off on her.lol)

Nikosha is such a wonderful daughter! She really knows what to do to help me out when she wants to. Her little sisters look up to her so much and think she's pretty cool. Kyler loves her a ton too and actually thinks she's his second mom. We love you so much Nikosha!!

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.)