Pictures of Courtland

Well, everyone has been asking for more photos of Courtland, so here are lots of photos and a couple short video clips. He is such a little cutie! He is the only one of our boys who has a cute little cleft in his chin (like his Daddy). His hair is a light brown color, and his eyes are dark blue. He has a good little personality – he seems to be trying to sleep pretty well the last day or so, and since visiting a lactation specialist this afternoon I think we’ve got this whole nursing thing down, so things should be getting a little easier from here on out. He likes his baby swing and his pacifier, and since he was giving me a hard time with nursing the last couple days we found out that he takes a bottle really well too. When he was born Courtland had lots of red blotchy spots on his face and we thought that maybe he had really sensitive skin, but it has mostly cleared up since then.

His brothers all seem to like him – we haven’t had any jealousy issues yet (cross your fingers that things will continue to go well in that department), and every once in a while even little Isaac will come over and give him and kiss or hug without us even asking him to (we often ask him to give us kisses and hugs). I thought that the boys would do well with the new baby, but was a little concerned about how Isaac would react, especially since he seems to be more attached to Michael and I than the older boys were at his age, and because with moving to Utah we aren’t really around anyone else with kids Isaac’s age or younger so he hasn’t been around little babies at all, but he has done very well with Courtland so far.

Well, here are lots of fun pictures of this cute little guy:

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Eli's 4th Birthday Party

So, we had Eli’s birthday party on Thursday (he will turn 4 on January 31st). I made a Lightning McQueen car birthday cake which turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself. The boys were excited to help me curl ribbons and hang them from the ceiling, and to blow up balloons too. Since it was a Cars themed party, we got out the boys’ box of matchbox cars for all the kids to play with. We also got out several little boxes that the boys like to play with like they are garages for their cars, and a large box that we happened to have from the dishwasher that had to be replaced earlier this week. The kids enjoyed climbing in and out of that big box until it finally collapsed at the end of the night. Eli liked his cake and ice cream, and enjoyed the treat of drinking soda (we usually only get soda for birthday parties). And of course he had fun opening a few gifts from his friends, which he has been carrying around and having fun with the last couple of days since the party. Although it was a traditional Bradshaw family kid’s birthday party [lots of loud kids running around for the entire evening], the kids had fun and it was nice to see the parents and get to say hi to them too. You can tell from the pictures and video clips that Eli enjoyed the night – he has a big smile in every photo.

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Photos and Video of Camden and Isaac Playing Together

These are some cute shots of Camden and Isaac playing together. Michael had the day off work and went to volunteer in Kolby and Eli’s preschool class, so after letting Camden and Isaac play in the bathtub, I got them dressed and combed their hair. Camden wanted his hair parted and combed over to the side like Isaac’s – which made him look so different than he looks when we do his hair normally. I could actually see a resemblance between Camden and my brother, Matthew, when he was little, with Camden’s hair combed this way. I grabbed the camera, and had fun following the boys around and shooting pictures and video until Daddy and big brothers got home. I think that some of these video clips are so cute: Camden “dancing” (running around the room in circles and bobbing his head), Isaac walking (he is even fasted and more sturdy on his feet now than when I took these), Camden and Isaac playing together, and Isaac “walking” on his knees.

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Kolby's 5th and Isaac's 1st Birthday Party

On Friday Michael had the day off and we planned the birthday party for Kolby and Isaac for that evening. I made a couple of cakes the day before and decorated one to look like Cookie Monster for Kolby. And on Friday we finished getting the house all cleaned up and put up some streamers and ribbons for decorations. I ran to pick up the little cake for Isaac – Mel told me about this deal where you can just call any Albertson’s grocery store and ask them at their bakery about their birthday cake for a child’s 1st birthday, and they will make you a free cake. All you have to do is call at least 24 hours in advance and tell them what you want on it (I guess they can write the child’s name if you want, but it has to say “Happy 1st Birthday!” on it). It’s not a huge cake, but on our boys’ first birthdays we always give them their own cake and set them on the table and let them eat it all by themselves, and then I make other cake(s) for everyone else at the party. So, this free cake worked great for Isaac’s cake. We video-taped him eating it, and he gets the biggest smiles once he actually eats a bite and realizes that it is food. Michael did put Isaac’s face in the cake (as he has done with each of the boys), but he didn’t end up getting too messy from that. Isaac actually didn’t need Daddy’s help to get really messy – by the end of the night he had done a pretty good job of covering his face and hands (and arms, legs, tummy, table, floor, and high chair) with lots of bright multi-colored cake frosting. He probably got the messiest that any of our boys have with their cakes on their 1st birthdays. We found out later that the pink frosting happened to not wash off very well, so if you look close you can still see a few pink spots on Isaac’s forehead and legs today. Camden thought it was pretty exciting that Isaac got his own cake, and that Isaac was nice enough to share some with Camden after he started in on it. The one thing that night that was really frustrating was that the camera ran out of batteries during the party. It didn’t show that the battery was low at all until after the party started, and then it went dead after Isaac started on his cake, but before we brought out the Cookie Monster cake for Kolby. So, I was so sad that we didn’t get a video of Kolby blowing out his candles. But I did remember that Grandma Faun had a digital camera that she’d never used before, so I got that out of it’s box and was able to take several more shots of the kids throughout the evening before the battery ran out on her camera too. I think Kolby really liked his cake – when he saw that I had gotten some blue and black icing, he asked where the brown icing was to make cookies, and I told him that I wasn’t doing that. But I surprised him by putting real cookies all around the outside of the cake. The Eccles and the Mills from the ward were able to come for the party, and the kids all had a lot of fun playing games like Simon Says, What Time is it Mr. Fox?, and Duck, Duck, Goose. And Kolby was excited to show his friends how he could play some songs on the piano right before everyone had to leave. (I am amazed that after taking 2 lessons Kolby can now play a recognizable song with the right timing and everything – we’ve never done the whole music lessons thing before, but I just assumed that it would take a lot longer than that).

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Odds and Ends

So, here are some random photos and video clips. The pictures are of Camden reading his new “family book” that I had updated the photos in, Isaac walking with the help of Grandma Faun, Eli being silly at dinnertime, and Kolby showing us his piano books on the day he started piano lessons. The videos are just some fun ones: Camden and Eli having fun running circles around the dining room table, Eli with his contagious laugh (he thought it was hilarious to look away from the video camera every time I tried to record him laughing), and one that shows how fast Isaac can crawl and how Kolby has recently decided that it is really cute to play with Isaac. They’re all pretty fun!

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Isaac Really Taking Some Steps

So, Isaac had taken a step here and there since we returned from San Diego, but on October 20th after naps he took three steps across the room and got to the wall without falling down. So I pulled out the camera, determined to catch his new skill on video – this is the best that I got, but he really did take three steps in a row! He has only taken two or three steps since at a time then, but I figure that it won’t be too long before he really starts walking around.

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Camden's 2nd Birthday Party

We had Camden’s birthday party on Thursday and it turned out to be really fun. After seeing that there was a 20% chance of rain for Thursday, we waited until later in the afternoon before deciding that the nice weather would hopefully hold out and putting up the decorations in the back yard. I was glad that it didn’t end up raining at all that evening, because I really didn’t want to have to move the party inside and then have to clean up cake and ice cream off the floors afterwards. If I’m counting right, we ended up with about 15 adults and 22 kids at the party. Michael’s sister and her husband, Mel and Christian, and Michael’s cousin and his wife, Joe and Heidi, and their kids came. Our friends, Emily and Lamar May and their boys were also able to come up from Pleasant Grove. And the Eccles, Mills, and Harkers from church made it too, so it was nice to have everyone come. I made an Elmo cake – really, just a cake with white frosting with red frosting dots (it sure takes a lot of red food coloring to turn white frosting red instead of just pink!), and a little plastic Elmo figure on top. Camden liked the cake (although he needed help blowing out the candles), and he has carried the little Elmo toy around with him since then, taking him to bed and having him sit at the table with him to watch him eat his dinner. :) After most everyone headed home, the family came inside and we got some cute pictures of all the cousins together. And then the next morning we gave Camden our birthday gift – some more animals to add to the boys’ collection that they love to play with so much. I was glad that we had such a fun time at Camden’s party and that we got to celebrate with Michael before leaving town next week. And I love this picture of Camden – it shows just how much he was enjoying himself at the party too. Enjoy the rest of these photos and videos:

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Feeding the Birds

We went to Sugarhouse Park in Salt Lake for a little family dinner Sunday evening to celebrate Grandma Bradshaw’s birthday. When we realized that the family was setting everything up just a few feet from the lake, we knew it would be hard to keep the kids dry. Camden stepped in first, and then slipped and fell in up to his neck (then he was walking around in just a diaper for the rest of the evening). Kolby later fell in when he was trying to throw bread to feed the birds (and he was walking around in his shirt and boxers the rest of the night). And later Camden fell in again (I think this time may have been an accident) while he was trying to feed the birds. Michael caught this last fall on tape. It was an eventful night and several of the family members thanked us for providing the entertainment for the evening. Happy Birthday, Grandma!

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Snowbird

Here are a few pictures from the fun intern activity up at Snowbird last week. The boys played on the bounce house and slide, Michael enjoyed the zip line, and we all went on the gondola ride up to the top of the mountain, but the hit of the night was the trampolines – the boys really loved being strapped into the harnesses and then bouncing really high, especially Camden!

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Boy Oh Boy!

A couple weeks ago we babysat for the Kearls and the Hedgecocks because we owed them both for watching our kids more than once. It seems like it is harder and harder for Michael and I to ask anyone to babysit for us anymore, because we have a couple of good friends who we know we can always count on to watch our boys for us if we need them too, but we don’t want to take advantage of their kindness and ask them too frequently. And then most other people we have asked to babysit for us have never asked us back to watch their kids for them, so we don’t feel like we can ask them again. We just have more kids than many of our friends do, so it’s hard to ask people to take on so many little boys all at once. And I guess people don’t ask us to babysit for them because they think it would be too many kids for us, but these photos will lay those fears to rest. So, to all of our friends who read this, please, ask us to babysit – we are always looking for opportunities to trade babysitting with friends.

Anyways, coming back from that little tangent – we watched the Hedgecocks’ and Kearls’ kids, and the Wellses happened to come over that night and brought ice cream, so we ended up having ice cream with all the kids. With our boys and Marie Wells, there were 9 kids total, but it made it a lot more fun to babysit with friends over while we did it.

And the video at the end is from a different night, but it shows a typical game night at our place before we round up all the wild children and put them to bed so that the parents can enjoy some games. The boys (and Katie) will often run back and forth from the bedroom to the living room, and lately they have started yelling things while they run, like “Fire!” or “Tornado!” But a bunch of little kids age 4 and younger yelling “Tornado” sounds a lot like “Tomato,” so I had to grab the camera and catch that on tape. Pretty cute! But, of course, it didn’t take them long to realize they were being recorded, and then they all stopped running to pose and act silly for the camera. Isn’t that always the case – when I want to catch something on video, they stop whatever they are doing and pose for the camera, but if I wanted to take a cute picture of them, they would probably start running around the house.

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