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Peyton is our baby. We have been blessed with two BEAUTIFUL girls and two very HANDSOME boys.  Alas, we are done adding to our sweet little family.  Lately I catch myself saying Bailey when I really mean Peyton.  Was it really THAT long ago that Bailey was driving me crazy with dress-ups and leaving her dolls all around the house?  We finally got around to hanging our family photos that were taken last September and found some others of the kiddos before Peyton was born.  I can't believe how quickly they change from wee little things to big kids with a blink!  

 I am VERY grateful however, for digital photography.  While I can't freeze my kids and make them stay little, I can clog up our computer with thousands of photos constantly.  Peyton graciously accommodates my photo taking.  Oh how I wish I could keep them little a bit longer...

Valentine's Day

Just a quick post about the day of love.  Caleb of course had another awesome Valentine box he made for  his class party.  Bailey broke a bit of her dad's heart when he realized his was not the first (or the most exciting Valentine) Bailey received from a boy at cheer.  I hosted Easton's class party.  We played Minute to Win it and it was a hit.  Mat and I snuck off for a very early dinner before the hectic Monday evening hit us.  Overall a very short but sweet Valentine's Day.

One strong kid!

Easton has a bit of a different temperament than his older brother and sister. While he is awesome at team sports he struggles with listening to coaches and dealing with other players.  He asked if he could do gymnastics and we thought it was a great idea.  He has been taking gym since September and recently we added Caleb to Easton's class. We thought it's a great way for our boys to build upper body strength and flexibility.  Easton and Caleb have loved it.  We let Easton perform in the annual review (Caleb had only been going for a month) and we were happy to see how strong he was.  He was definitely one of the best in his group and looked like he really enjoyed it.  He brought home a silver medal and only needs to pass off one more thing before he qualifies for gold.  Love that kid!

I could happen to you.

 With thoughts from my last post in mind, here's another "it could so easily have been my kid" moment.  Last month when Southern Utah got their yearly "snow day" the day before the kids went back to school from Christmas break, a little boy in Easton's class was playing with a lighter and lit his flannel shirt on fire.  Although he "stopped, dropped, and rolled" the little boy had to be life flighted to SLC and suffered more than 25% of his body with third degree burns.  He used to live in our circle and just recently moved out of our area but still attended school with Easton.  Easton was very upset when he came home to tell me what had happened.  When I knew that we would be going to SLC for Bailey's cheer comp I messaged the little boy's mother and asked if Easton could visit.  She said of course and so Easton along with many notes and treats supplied by his class got to pay Jace a visit. 

 The following weekend the neighborhood had organized a race to earn money to help Jace's family with their medical expenses.  Of course we wanted to support.  Easton ran the mile in a whopping 6:30!  Caleb was feeling quite sick and had to stop a few times and finished with a 26 minute 5k time.  Bailey opted to walk/jog with her slower friends and came in somewhere around 27 minutes.  It was a gorgeous day!  the neighborhood donated over $15,000 to help Jace's family and even got a visit to the race by Jace himself.

I'm so very grateful for the health and strength of our little family.  

Bittersweet Weekend

 No one could imagine how excited we get to watch Bailey compete.  After her team got robbed at their Las Vegas competition last month we were ready for the team to take first!  It worked out that her SLC championship took place the same weekend as our nephew Gage's baptism.  We stayed at the same hotel as most of the team so we were able to send Bailey early to warm up with her teammate.  Mat and I took the boys over to the baptism and of course Gage was one of the last to have the ordinance done so we weren't able to stay for the confirmation.  We rushed over to the competition with about 10 minutes to spare before Bailey competed.  Well, our hopes fell when we arrived.  We had found out that one of the girls on Bailey's team had fallen and broken her arm in their warm ups and basically the team needed to pull it together and perform without her.  It was heartbreaking for us.  The girl was a flyer (same as Bailey) and we knew all too easily it could have been Bailey.  So with their teamate on a stretcher getting ready to head to have surgery and 3 pins put in her elbow Bailey's team took the mat.  They didn't look near like the team that competed in Las Vegas.  Clearly they were shook up.  They fumbled a bit and had a few minor deductions but I thought they actually might still pull off first place.  AND THEY DID!  After leaving the mat crying these girls deserved a win.  Their hearts were with their teammate and they still pulled it off.  Such an amazing team!

 We spent the rest of the day at Sandi's and Peyton got an overdose of dressing up with her girl cousins.  The girls were so flippin' cute playing together.  Topped off with a trip to Jump On It that night we had an awesome day!



6 inches gone!

 Peyton has the prettiest hair out of any of our kids.  It grows the best and it is SUCH a gorgeous color!  It had been getting a tad straggly however, so we visited the hairdresser's.  6 inches were cut from her lovely locks and along with it her babish looks.  She looks far too grown up now yet still draws as much (if not more) attention from onlookers over her beautiful hair.  She's just too darn pretty and she knows it!



What you get when you mess with the Holt's! (And even when you don't.)

 We came home a few weekends ago around 7:00 to find our house had been toilet papered.  My first instinct said that it was a certain group of 11/12 year old boys that frequently doorbell ditch our house asking for our 11 year old daughter to chase them.  Caleb and Easton insisted however, that it was their buddies from next door.  I believed them as I knew the kids had been toilet papering the construction vehicles across the street earlier in the week.  So we devised a plan of retaliation....

We still hadn't wrapped our Christmas tree in cellophane and needed to purchase a new roll so we did that night.  Easton had some left over construction tape from a white elephant party and so we covered the neighbors car with the remaining tape and put a good dose of cellophane around it as well.  When the neighbors came back that night they didn't even recognize the car and felt bad for the poor saps that it had been done to.  Sunday morning we got a chuckle as we were leaving for church and their boys were out cleaning up the mess.  Only problem was...WE RETALIATED AGAINST THE WRONG PEOPLE!  It was in fact the group of 11/12 year old boys after all.  In fact we were toilet papered AGAIN by the same group this past weekend and before we could even consider retaliation their dad had tracked them down and made them clean it all up!   Apparently he wasn't too happy when once again all of their Charmin they had just purchased was wasted.  Haha!

Ready to run!

 In the past I have SOMETIMES been referred to as just a BIT competitive.  What people don't know is that Mat is JUST (if not more) competitive than I am.  The result of such malarkey?  Extremely competitive children.  Lucky for them, they are inherited the gene that masks the competitiveness and they just look they like they are good at things. Well, they ARE GREAT at things!   The kids tend to not want to try new things, in case they may not be good at them.  Of course when you have very competitive parents you're going to be coerced into trying many things.  One thing we've realized is that our kids are fast!  They are small for their ages but that just seems to weigh them down less.  After entering Bailey in a few races here and there Caleb decided he wanted to give it a go.  He ran a few times with Mat and Bailey and shocked them both with the fact that he totally could keep up and even push them a little.  Easton had been asking to try out the running thing as well but we've still been a bit hesitant to let him try it out. 

 We entered the kids (and Mat) in the St. George half marathon/5k and tuff kids run in January and were once again extremely impressed with our kids abilities.  Bailey went from complaining as we showed up to the race that she didn't want to run to asking if she could run the half marathon next time.  She had a awesome time of 24:36 and would have placed second but when we showed up the divisions had changed to 14 and under so she took 4th, 27th out of the women, and 101st overall. 

 Caleb rocked his first 5k bringing in a time of 25:08 and neither kid seemed to tired at all.

 We entered Easton in the mile run and he surprised us with a time of 8:05!  He took 9th in his race.  Beat out by 13 year olds!

 These people AMAZE me!  I am definitely not a runner and could care less for it.  My kids seem to have just the right genetic codes for it and it doesn't even phase them.  SO PROUD!

Looking fine at age nine!

 When Bailey was little and I threw extravagant birthday parties for her I would have moms tell me " I used to throw fancy parties like this, but it's too much trouble now."  Truthfully, I thought I would NEVER have that attitude.  That I would ALWAYS want to go above and beyond for all of my kids.  Well, I've joined the ranks of the moms that want something simpler when it comes to parties.  This year we convinced Caleb that it would be a blast if he just took a couple of his closest friends up to Brianhead to go tubing.  We decided that midweek would actually be best and Caleb's birthday fell on a Tuesday so we had him take his two cousins out of school and they headed up to the mountain.  Bailey can only miss so many days of school and we are finicky about her missing so I stayed home with the girls and we decorated Caleb's room and set up cake and ice cream while the boys were away.

 Caleb had a basketball game that night and so we knew there wouldn't be much time for anything but the tubing hill was vacant other than our group of five so the boys wore out quicker and thus we were able to open gifts and have cake and ice cream before the game.

 I was taking cupcakes from the Sweet Tooth Fairy to Caleb's game as treats so I wasn't planning on getting a cake.  Caleb however, asked for a snow tubing cake and I thought I could "maybe" pull it off.  Well, it was a cake, and it had snow tubers on it, other than that it wasn't much to look at.  It made Caleb happy however.

Caleb is the most thoughtful, easy-going little boy.  He is always willing to do what you ask and sometimes shares a little too much.  His older sister and little brother know exactly how to take advantage of his kindness.  His baby sister claims him as her " Wawob".  He is SUCH a blessing in our home and I have cherished the past nine years with such and amazing kid!  Happy Birthday Caleb!