More Cute Kids!

While Becca was taking Makenna’s five year old pictures, she also took some cute pictures of the other kids. Here are a few of my favorites:

Makenna’s Five Year Old Pictures

So Makenna turned five back in March and last week our friend Becca came over and took her five year old photos. I think they turned out great! Thanks Becca!

My mom actually made both Makenna’s outfit and her hairbow.

So many cute pictures! How will I ever decide which ones to print out?!?

I need to do my update on Miss Makenna because I missed it at her actual birthday! Let’s see, as my five year old I depend on her WAY too much! There has been MANY a time when someone has invited Makenna to come for a playdate and I’ve told them no because I needed Makenna at home to help out with Max. She is SUCH a big helper and SUCH a great big sister. She is always playing with the boys and coming up with things for them to do. Max for one is lost without his Makenna to play with!

Makenna is such a smartie. She is now reading on a second grade level. Her current favorites are Junie B. Jones books and she reads them without any help. Max is always getting her to read books to him as well! She also knows how to add and subtract and tell time and count money and works out of a first grade math workbook during our “school” times. I had to laugh when we went to a meeting about kindergarten at her future school—they were talking about the kids learning their alphabet and numbers and colors and shapes in kindergarten. Umm, my future kindergartner is way, way past that point!

Makenna is way into fashion. She loves putting together outfits and picking out accessories to go with them. She doesn’t like to get dirty or not look put together! She also really enjoys having her picture taken. When the camera comes out, so do her poses!

Makenna’s favorites are playing Barbies and with dolls and playing dress up. She is also now really into coloring and drawing and writing notes to people. When she plays outside she enjoys swinging and riding her scooter. She loves dance and was super bummed when dance classes stopped when her teacher had a baby! She will be starting lessons up at a new dance studio in September. This little girl loves performing!

Makenna loves church. She always sits very reverently and volunteers to help during primary. She loves to sing and last year had every song memorized for the primary program. She also has most of the Articles of Faith memorized.

We love our Makenna! She is our great five year old!!!

Zoo Trip

So during the month of April, Austin is on an Internal Medicine rotation. Not only is this NOT his favorite medicine, this rotation is also pretty much nonstop work. He is on a four day schedule: the first day he goes into work at noon and he gets off at noon the second day (so he works a 24 hour shift) and then the third and fourth days are normal days. The entire schedule starts over the fifth day—meaning he does not get days off. Because of having to work every day during the month, including weekends, Austin gets two week days off. Yesterday was one of those off days AND just happened to coincide with our first really warm day of the year. So we decided it would be fun to have a family outing to the zoo!

We decided we would let the trip be a surprise. So after breakfast, we told the kids we were going on a car ride. They actually complained about it a little—the wanted to watch cartoons—but soon we were on our way. It was actually really funny—as we started getting closer to the zoo the kids recognized the road and started talking about the zoo.  They actually asked if we could go to the zoo again soon when we pulled in. They were totally shocked! It’s so fun as a parent to pull little surprises on your kids! : D

Despite a few mishaps—Makenna fell down and got super upset (not because she got hurt, but because her pants got muddy and she was dirty!) and Max didn’t want to walk and kept saying he needed to “take a little break”—the day was a lot of fun. We were only able to stay about three hours because of the weather (we were predicted to have severe thunder storms in the afternoon and by the time we left the skies were super dark and it was crazy windy and we had a tornado watch!) and because I had an afternoon doctor’s appointment so we didn’t get to see even close to all of the animals, but we still had fun with what we did see.

We sat waiting at the Penguin exhibit for quite a while because we were told (and the sign said) that they feed the Penguins at 10:30. We waited and waited and they never showed up to feed them! Rude! : )

Oh Makenna…

The tiger is ALWAYS asleep when we come to the zoo. In fact, the kids call him the “sleeping tiger.” So imagine our surprise when he was not only awake but walking all over!

The Artic foxes were walking all over too. I never even knew there were Artic foxes at the zoo—I guess they have always been sleeping—but they were running all over and playing. So, so cute! The polar bears were also all out and playing. It must be the warmer weather that brought them all out!

This little guy did GREAT during his first trip at the zoo!

He was a little fussy when we first got there, so I put on my Moby wrap and wore him. He went right to sleep and slept most of our time there! He had on this little bear hat and I had a lady stop me. She said she kept seeing me and thought for some strange reason I had a teddy bear strapped to my chest! Ha ha she said it took forever before she realized I wasn’t carrying around a toy but a baby! : ) After he woke up he was a little fussy so I fed him and after that he was content to sit in the stroller and look around the entire rest of our trip! Such a good boy and such a good family day!