They're a BIG deal!

Just an old fashioned post about how amazing my kids are because they ARE amazing and deserve a post on our family blog with all of it's 9 followers. 

First off in the list of amazing kids I'm privileged to call mine is Caleb.  Caleb IS amazing!  He is an incredible artist.  Caleb has a lot of patience and could happily spend hours working with his hands creating anything and everything.  Caleb is an amazing athlete! He has tried several different sports over the years and has done really well at everything he has tried.  After years of teaching himself he finally convinced us to put him in gymnastics.  The first day the coach told him that he needed to be on a team because he already knew how to do everything.  Caleb loved it and has finally found his niche for his athleticism.

 Next up is Easton.  Easton IS amazing!  He is hilarious and makes friends wherever he goes.  Easton has a very tender heart.  He is always trying very hard to do sweet things for others and does a great job of taking care of his kid sister.  Easton is strong!  He plays soccer on a very good team and has had great foot work since very little.  Easton loves life and is boy through and through.  Fishing, hunting, building forts, getting stinky, you name it, Easton loves it!  Video games are not even wanted in our house.  These boys want to be outside running around being boys! 

 And then there's Peyton.  Peyton IS amazing!  Peyton has this incredible hair color that stands out everywhere she goes.  (Little tidbit: no we don't bleach our 5 year old's hair.)  Peyton has an extremely outgoing personality.  She has a crazy amount of friends always wanting to play.  Peyton is very expressive.  She LOVES dance and at 5 is a very beautiful dancer.  Cheer isn't her favorite but when she performs she lights up the floor.  Mat and I love to hear the comments in the stands of spectators commenting on "the little blonde one".  Peyton is smart.  She can read pretty fluently and speaks quite a bit of Chinese!  She even read the characters on her menu at PF Chang's the other day.  Peyton lights up the room and we adore her.

 Last but not least is our first born Bailey.  Holy cow this kid stole my heart the first moment I laid eyes on her.  beautiful inside and out Bailey IS amazing!  Bailey is an incredible athlete and really anything SHE decides to do she does it well.  Bailey of course is amazing at cheer but more specifically she's amazing at every aspect of cheer.  She's a fantastic tumbler, dancer, flyer, and has amazing jumps!  Bailey gets outstanding grades with very little effort.  She doesn't like talking bad about others and is a little too popular with friends and boys... Bailey is very helpful and is like an extra mom to her younger siblings.  With all of her beauty and talents Bailey is humble.  She will never admit that she is better than anyone at anything and frankly gets uncomfortable if you try to tell her she is. 

Small lists considering out amazing these 4 kids are.  Nothing can express truly how amazing they are to me however.  I LOVE being a mom to these kids.  I kinda won the lottery in the kid department.

A Week With Caleb

Our family rule is that when you turn 12 you get to choose somewhere to go on a trip with mom and dad (within reason) and mom and dad have the sex, drugs, and rock and roll talk, as Mat likes to refer to it, with each kid.  Caleb turned 12 this past January and he chose a trip to the Bahamas.  We decided that if we were going to fly there anyways we would take a cruise in hopes of saving a little.  We got to Florida a day early so we took Caleb on his first airboat ride and he got to hold an alligator and see lots of alligators in the marsh.  It wasn't quite as good as the reservation Mat and I visited outside of Fort Lauderdale the previous month but Caleb loved it.

 It was unusually cold in Florida so we walked around Cocoa Beach for a bit but that's it.  We would have loved to have Caleb take some surfing lessons but it was just too darn cold!

 This was our first cruise out of Port Canaveral and just getting to the port got us pretty excited.  When we boarded the Disney Magic it felt like we were home.  The ship smelled the same and looked the same until we went to our rooms and the sun decks.

 The rooms had all been updated with more stylish bedding and the sun decks (as well as the restaurants) had all been redone.  Their were two new slides on top.  We tried the straight slide out and thought it was pretty fun but we never got around to trying out the new hydrotube (by choice). 

 It was a shorter cruise so we only stopped at two places.  The first was Nassau, Bahamas.  We decided it would be fun to try out the Atlantis resort and beach.  Caleb loved all of the underwater aquariums that ran underneath the resort and loved seeing the many different types of sea life. 

 It was a HUGE resort and we didn't get to see everything.  We did try out a few water slides and spent some time at the gorgeous beach.  Caleb got a few pics of fish with his Gopro he conviently got for Christmas.

 Our second day at port was supposed to be at the Disney Island in the Bahamas but early that morning the captain came on saying that the weather was too bad to dock and we would be spending the day at sea.  The captain took the boat out to warm weather and just spent the day circling the ship.

 Luckily the next day was gorgeous and we were able to stop at Castaway Cay after all.  The water was a tad chilly but the sun felt great!  Caleb and Mat had a bit of trouble finding fish at the main beach so they snuck off into the "do not enter"areas and did some exploring. 

 We had a great time riding the water trike, playing pool and shuffleboard, and perfecting our tans. Of course the scenery was beautiful!

 When we arrived back into Florida we had almost a full day until our flight left and we had free tickets to Sea World so we spent the day trying out the roller coasters and seeing more sea life.  Caleb LOVED the roller coasters.  Luckily he had Mat with him as my stomach can only take once on each roller coaster.  The stingray roller coaster was my favorite I've been on however.  It was cool to lie down basically and fly through the air like a stingray in water.

 Overall it was a fantastic trip.  Both Mat and I got to see a side of our quiet, sweet Caleb that we've never seen before in such high dosages.  Caleb was constantly being silly, playing impractical jokers, and most importantly smiling.  I think Caleb liked having mom and dad to himself as we loved spoiling him for the week.  Caleb is an amazing son!  He is thoughtful, caring, and is pretty easy to parent most of the time.  Grateful for our talented and amazing priesthood holder!