Family pictures

We took our pictures for Christmas back in October at Bond Park. It is a really neat park that is close to our house. It symbolizes our time in North Carolina. We thought that doing them early would help us be prepared for Christmas. We still ended up procrastinating the making of and sending of cards.

Christmas

Our celebrations started Christmas Eve at the Cranes. We got together for cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate while we exchanged secret Santa gifts with the Gaspar de Albas and Cranes. Later that evening at home we opened up our Christmas pajamas. Christmas morning our kids did an amazing job sleeping in until 7:30 a.m. For our kids, that is a huge accomplishment any day of the week, but on Christmas it was phenomenal. It probably had something to do with three straight weeks of going to bed late since the beginning of track out.

It is fun to see the children's different personalities and how they react to the situations. Blake was happy to be crawling (his new talent) around to get to everyone's presents and to eat the wrapping paper. Julia was so excited to finally be able to open up the present with Princess wrapping paper that she had been eying for the last week. After she opened up her presents she was just content setting up unopened boxes around her. She would be happy with just one present. Brayden jumped into his candy right away. He went around and shared with everyone. He was very anxious to open all his presents and couldn't get to them quick enough. Kylee was the first one up waiting for everyone to wake up. She was content and controlled. She waited patiently for her presents and helped Blakey. It was a fun relaxing day.

Christmas Nutcrackers

We were able to celebrate the coming of Christmas with a few special activities. The first, on December 13th, was Kylee's participation in the Cary Christmas Parade. She had a few extra Friday ballet practices to learn her role as a Chinese dancer in her Nutcracker themed dance for the parade. It was fun to go and watch the parade as a family. There were various High School bands, dance groups, jump rope groups, girl scout and boy scout groups, and even the local jazzercise group. Brayden wasn't too excited to be there until he realized that many of the groups walking by were throwing candy to the parade watchers. He came home with 2 pockets full of candy. It was pretty chilly outside, but luckily we were sitting on the side of the street where the sun was shining.




The other activity was a girls night out to the Nutcracker on December 19th. Kylee, Julia and I went with Katrina and her girls, Kristina, Paloma, and Sofia. It was fun to watch and I think Julia did a great job. Julia loves to dance and do "ballet" so this was entertaining for her. She kept giving me hugs and kisses throughout the performance. She probably enjoyed the attention without having Blakey attached to my hip. Kylee's first comment when it started was, "This is boring." Within a few minutes though she was having a good time.

Julia community dance

Julia attended a community dance class with Sofia and Denali.  The teacher Ms. Maggie always brought different props for the girls to use.  Julia enjoyed it and was one of the few that would do most of what the teacher demonstrated.

Julia turns 3

Here is a little to describe our little princess. We call her princess because that is the kind of world she lives in everyday. Most days she only wears princess dresses, sings princess songs, listens to princess music, watches princess movies, and plays with her princesses. She also names every princess that she comes across. It makes Target difficult to shop in because every other isle there will be a princess towel, or bowl, or clothes and Julia will need to stop and name them before she can move on. She loves her princesses but her real bond is with her kitty cat and Randy. Those are her sleeping buddies. Kitty Cat makes Julia laugh, likes to lick people, she also screams, and sometimes gets in trouble. I will find kitty cat outside her bedroom door with the door closed. I will ask what has happened and she will tell me that kitty cat was a bad girl. Julia is a pretty independent little girl. She likes to do everything herself. If you try and help her she will just have to undo the work and do it again all by herself. Julia loves to dance and enjoys taking a ballet class at the community center. Julia is a good helper. She likes to help with making dinner, setting the table, and putting the dirty clothes in the laundry basket. Julia is also very loving, she likes to say I love you and goodnight to both Mommy and Daddy about 5 times each before she can go to sleep at night. We are very happy to have her be a part of our family. She has been a pretty easy going 3rd child.

We celebrated Julia's birthday with a combined party with Brayden. We had to change Brayden's party date and the new date ended up being the day after Julia's birthday. On December 13th we celebrated both their birthdays by having a bounce house party with their cousins and some of Brayden's friends. Matt made Julia a princess crown cake to help celebrate and she received some princesses for her presents.

Brayden's clay creation

This is a clay figure that Brayden made at school in his art class. He was pretty proud of it. It is a guy on a skateboard.

Brayden turns 6

Brayden is enjoying his Kindergarten year. He is learning a lot and loves to do any homework that is not required of him. Brayden says he has a lot friends at school and enjoys playing with them. Brayden loves candy. If there is any candy in the house he will find it, and we know when he has found it when we find candy wrappers under the couch, under his bed, and even in his sheets. Brayden is great at sharing. If you ask him he will share just about anything, even his beloved candy. Brayden is a collector. He says he picks up things that catch his eye, which includes bottle caps, paper clips, twisty ties, scraps of paper, plastic, and metal, and just about anything else that might happen to fall in his path. He talks about his ultimate goal of building a robot with it all. Brayden would be a good salesman because he doesn't take no for an answer. He will ask a question like, "Can I have a candy?" and if our response is "no" he will excitedly say, "Thanks, I will go get my candy now." Brayden tends to be a truth stretcher. If he is blamed for doing something, his immediate response is that the nearest sibling did it.
Brayden 's 6th Birthday was the day before Thanksgiving this year. He was lucky because he got to celebrate three different times. First, we celebrated as a family on his birthday by going to Red Robin for dinner. The next day was Thanksgiving dinner at our house with the Gaspar de Albas and Cranes. Matt made an R2-D2 cake to celebrate with the cousins. The 3rd celebration was a combined party with Julia at WiiiBounce, a local party place filled with large inflatable bouncing toys and big screen Wii video game consoles. The highlight of Brayden's birthday was that he finally got a pack of REAL POKEMON cards from Mamaquel. The homemade ones are now no longer needed.

North Carolina leaves

North Carolina has a lot of really tall trees, which results in a lot of leaves in the fall.  The city provides a fall leaf service to help manage the volume.  The leaves need to be collected in the front of the house and then on 2 days in the fall/winter season they come by with a truck that sucks them up with a big tube.  There were many days used to collect the leaves from the back yard to the front.  Matt used a tarp to move them.  The pile of leaves was a great place for the kids to play.  Brayden jumped in the pile one day with his flip flops.  He ended up loosing one of them in the pile and there was no way we were going to find it.

Beautiful colors

On Veteran's Day the kids had the day off from school. I wanted to go outside and enjoy the beautiful fall day.  The trees are red, orange, and yellow right now.  I love to see all the different colors.  The change didn't seem to last that long this year.  The leaves started falling off before the colors all changed.  Katrina and I took our kids on a walk to the park from her house.  The trail goes through the trees with the ground covered in leaves.  We are going to miss these neat trails when we move.

There is love

Between all the crazy fighting the kids do, sometimes there are some sweet signs of love. Brayden has had a little obsession with Pokemon cards. I mentioned earlier that he has wanted to get some to the point that he began making his own. On Fridays, for good behaviour, Kylee gets to pick something out of a treasure box in her class. For the first few weeks she was able to get something for herself and then get a Pokemon card for Brayden with an extra coupon. Then, I found out that her teacher stopped letting her get two prizes, and that Kylee had continued to get Pokemon cards for Brayden without getting anything for herself. I asked her why and she responded that Brayden really wanted the Pokemon cards. That made me teary eyed. How sweet.

Kylee also spent most her day recently making a crown for Julia.

Election results are in ...

Kylee was elected to the student council. After a month of Kylee asking me if she could turn in the permission form to be in her elementary school student council election, Matt convinced me to let her try if she wants to. There was a preliminary election with 6 children from her class. The top 3 wrote a short speech to give in front of their class. Then, on election day they voted again. Kylee didn't make any false promises unlike the kids running in Brayden's kindergarten class. That night when we were celebrating with root beer floats Brayden was telling us who he wanted to win in his class.

Brayden "I hope James gets elected because he is going to build a pool by the slide."
Kristel "Who else was running?"
Brayden "Luke and Trudy"
Kristel "Why didn't you vote for them?"
Brayden "Luke said he was going to build swings, but I can't go back and forth." (translation - he doesn't know how to swing)
A few days later when Brayden found out James won he was so excited. Who is going to let him know that James is probably not going to be able to deliver on the pool?

Halloween

Ghost and Witch

Snow White and Sleeping Beauty

C3PO and R2D2

With a busy week of worrying about Kylee's baptism Halloween kind of snuck up on us. The week of Halloween we had not decorated the house yet and we did not know what everyone was going to dress up as. I like doing a family theme, but with limited time I didn't think that was going to work out. The only person that was decided early was Julia as a princess. She has a lot of practice since she wears 5 different princess dresses a day. Brayden said that he wanted to be R2D2. I didn't think that I would be able to find a costume for it so I was trying to convince him otherwise. I found a lego costume on family fun that looked easy to make. I talked to him about doing that and he told me, "Why can't you let me be R2D2? I already told all my friends that I was going to be R2D2." So I decided to see what we could do. I found an example of homemade R2D2 costumes and decided that Matt could probably do it. Kylee decided to be a witch and we wanted to have Blake do something related to Brayden, so C3PO it would be. With a long week at work, Matt was left with Thursday night to get the costumes ready. (He is our local costume and cake maker.) Matt was spray painting gold and drawing on poster board until 1 a.m. I think that he did a great job. Blake was only in his costume briefly because the gold paint on the sleeper was rubbing off on whatever it touched. We spent the night eating chili at Aunt Katrina and Uncle Joey's house and then trick or treating in their neighborhood.

Kylee's Baptism

On October 25, 2008 Kylee Elizabeth Caldwell was baptized. We were happy to have GraMindy, Whetten Grandparents, and cousin Christopher visiting for the special occasion. Baptisms in our ward are usually done by the stake on the 1st Sunday of the month. Kylee's landed on Conference weekend, which wasn't going to work for our family. We were lucky enough to schedule a combined baptism on an alternate weekend with another little girl in our ward, Sadie Johns. With the baptism being on a ward instead of stake level, our family was a part of the program. GraMindy gave the baptism talk and Grandpa Whetten and Mamaquel bore their testimonies at the end. Kylee was very excited to get baptized and asked to go first. Kylee says she was happy and a little nervous before it started. Everything turned out great. We celebrated by going to lunch at Red Robin.
(In preparing for the baptism I was talking to Kylee about what she needed to take, Brayden jumped in the conversation and asked seriously, "Can I bring goggles at my baptism because I need to see in there":)

Laurel Park Elementary

While Grandma Mindy was visiting for Kylee's baptism we went to Laurel Park Elementary so she could see where the kids go to school.  This was the first year for the school to be open.  It was renovated out of an existing manufacturing facility.  It has a multi-track year-round calendar.  The kids go to school for 9 weeks and then are off for 3 weeks with one of their breaks being 4 weeks.  I really like the schedule because when the kids are getting tired of school it is time for a break, and when they are getting restless at home it is time for them to go back to school.  The school start time is 9:15 and goes to 3:45.  My dream schedule since I am not a morning person and it means not having to wake the kids up too early.

Kylee had to go to 2 different schools for the 2 years in North Carolina.  Her 1st grade year was at Briarcliff  Elementary with a traditional school year and a daily schedule from 8:30-3:15.  The Wake County school system likes to change the boundaries often.  Our neighborhood attended a different elementary school the year before we got there so the neighborhood kids went to 3 different elementary schools in 3 years.  Luckily the Gaspar de Albas were in the same zone as us so we changed together.  It was great for the kids to go to school with their cousins for 2 years.  

homeless children

Before I had children, I remember seeing families at stores with children with uncombed hair, stained clothes, runny noses, and dirty faces. I thought to myself, "my children will look nice and be clean when I go places with them." It is not a matter of wearing fancy clothes. It is just having children that don't look neglected. Well I now realize I am one of those neglectful mothers. Yesterday was a busy day with lots of things we were trying to get done. I took Kylee to get her ears pierced and then I met Matt to get the rest of the kids from him. Then, we had to continue running more errands. I had not helped with getting the kids ready that morning. As we were running (literally) through Target, I looked at my children and realized how homeless they all looked. The first thing I noticed was that none of my children had their hair combed, Brayden looking the worst with his hair standing straight up like he had just gotten out of bed. Kylee was wearing a white shirt with chocolate milk stains on it from the morning. Brayden had a splotchy face and green crust around his nose with mocos coming out. The only one that looked decent was Blake, and he was hidden in the stroller. As I rushed to get things done quickly, I thought, "please don't look closely at my children." I am sure people were thinking "that mother shouldn't have 4 children if she can't take care of them." The one bright spot was that they were all pretty obedient because they knew I was on a mission and needed their help.

Pretty ears

Kylee has been asking for a while to get her ears pierced. We told her after she was 8 she could get it done. Kylee and her cousin Paloma decided to do it together. This weekend we were finally able to find a little time to go and get it done. The 2 girls that got their ears pierced in front of us had a hard time. One girl had one ear done and did not want to do the other one. This made Kylee and Paloma a little anxious about getting their ears done. Kylee and Paloma ended up being very brave about getting their ears pierced. They got it done with just a few little ouches. Those ears look so pretty now.

shoeless Brayden

I want to remember all the funny things about our children. Brayden tends to have a lot of them. One thing that Matt and I have noticed about Brayden is that he is pretty lazy. When he takes off his socks and shoes he can't seem to finish the job. He usually ends up with one sock still on. It doesn't seem to bother him and usually spends half the day lopsided.

Brown eyed boy

Here is a little about monkey #4. Blake is 5 months old now. I think that we can officially say he has brown eyes. He is following in his siblings footsteps of measuring long at his appointments usually being in the 90th percentile. That means he grows out of clothes quickly. He is at the grabbing stage. He especially likes to grab at long hair that comes within arms reach, the girls don't really appreciate it. Blake slobbers a lot. When I hold him facing out I will hear his drool splatter on the ground, or I feel it when I step on it on the carpet. My left shoulder is usually wet because he sucks on my clothes. Blake is a content baby. He likes it when people talk to him and often, when he is fussy, he will will cheer up if you give him a smile and a little baby talk. He also likes to be held. He doesn't last very long hanging out on the ground by himself. Blake is a quiet boy and does most of his smiling when he wakes up in the morning. Blake is loved by all his siblings. They are all willing to play with Blake and help him to be happy. I love the touch of his small soft hand, his toothless smile, and the sound of his little deep voice. A final note for all those who say that 4 is the same as 3, it is a lie.

Tribute from Camille

(From Camille's Blog for my birthday)
Oh! NO...I have not forgotten!
Sister # 3




Kristel and Katrina.....too cute.

Dear Kristel, Kristella De ville, Kristelitas, brown-eyed girl, Turkey Monster.



Why do we love you?...this is why:

YOU LOVE..


and..

(minus the monks)

you especially like it when this:



is inbetween your..


(you love feet in general even without hair)

You have an unmatched ability to sniff out invisible hidden scents like a puma..



You,sister #3 are the best at ORGANIZING and anything involving meticulous tasks that send the rest of us CRAZY!

You are an AMAZING preschool teacher and especially with your four ones... not forgetting the new an improved darker model..the 1stBROWN CALDWELL!


p.s is there such a thing??


All of us would agree you WON the best husband award..




because he enjoys playing with these:



plus he is also..



your LOVE LANGUAGE is physical touch..



You are the best mom,wife, phone chatter, house cleaner, TV watcher,newley americanized, treat-eater, daughter n law, sister, preschool teacher, ward secretary, newsletter editor, college swimmer, friend to many, sea-world lover, project finder organizer, sister missionary,spanish speaker, lover of life and all thats great...


one-of-a kind SISTER # 3

HAPPY 31st BIRTHDAY!

p.s if I am 27 how are you 31????!!

ballet, ballet, ballet

Julia loves to dance, and she dances all the time. If you ask her what she is, she will tell you she is a princess. If you ask her what princesses do, she will tell you they dance. I caught this short video clip of her practicing her ballet in the kitchen while Kristel prepared dinner. Brayden interrupted Julia, and she gave him a little of her ballerina attitude.

Creative or Deprived?

When Brayden wants something, he doesn't take no for an answer, and he has an impressive ability to stay focused on the object of his desire. Brayden constantly tells us about toys that he would like to have. However, he doesn't understand the word "no", and answers excitedly, "Oh thanks!, I can't wait!". I have noticed that lately he has taken things into his own hands and created his own toys. Since his cousins, the Gaspar de Albas, received a Wii game last Christmas, he has mentioned numerous times that he would like one. After months of unanswered requests for his own, Brayden made a Wii controller out of paper. When he has company, he offers to let others use his Wii control.
Brayden was looking at a party magazine with different themes. He saw the theme of Pokemon and has begun asking for Pokemon cards. After not recieving any he looked closely at the pictures and made his own cards copying the little pictures as best he could. Even Kylee took pity on him and gave him a REAL Pokemon card she got from her class treasure box.
Brayden has also made some paper remote controls for his paper robot.

We are not sure if this is an indication of how creative he is, or how deprived of toys he is.