Mylie is 7!

It's hard to believe, but Mylie is now 7 years old!

Mylie LOVES school so much, she wanted a "school" cake this year. I really had no idea what to do until she had the idea of putting letters or numbers or math problems on it.  From that, we came up with the idea of doing a "7" cake.  Super easy (which is completely my style), and Mylie loved it.

For birthdays, we always just invite all the cousins and grandparents, which is a houseful.  The kids all have a great time with each other. We are blessed to have so much family close by.

7 things about Mylie Jo:

1. She has a beautiful smile. From the time she was a baby, she has always been willing to share her smile. She was even nick-named "Smiley Mylie" before she was even a year old.
2. She loves her mama.  Of all my kids, I never question how much Mylie loves me. She's always been right beside me, doing whatever I'm doing.
3. She is a great reader.  She reads all the time and can now read just about anything. She cruises right through chapter books. From all this reading, she has also become a great speller.
4. She is a great big sister. She and Mariah have become best friends, which often takes a little patience on her part with the 3 year gap. She is also great with babies. She is always wanting to help with Brady, and he loves her too!
5. She is quite coordinated.  She picked up tumbling very quickly, and has since found that she is also good at tee ball, volleyball, and running.
6. She is very friendly. From the time Mylie was little, she has always made friends quickly.  Her teachers tell me she is a good friend to everyone in her class.  I remember once when Mylie was about 3 or 4 and we were at a McDonalds PlayPlace, Mylie quickly made a friend to play with, as usual. Connor came up to me and said, "Mylie already made a friend.  She really has a talent for that!"
7. She LOVES music. Although getting her to practice her piano is a chore right now, she loves dancing, singing, and watching musicals.

Happy Birthday, Mylie Jo!

Weekend Warriors

So, I actually had to get my calendar out before I could begin typing this post.  There have been 6--that's right, 6--weekends since volleyball ended. And it's amazing how great it's been to actually have some Saturdays with options as to how I should spend them! (I usually only have one Saturday off during an entire volleyball season.) So, here's a hopefully short little run-down of what we've done with this day I've added onto my week!

Saturday #1--Actually just stayed home. Very rare. I painted my laundry room ceiling, which had been water damaged after losing some shingles. Fun, right? Well, it gets better.  I put all my canned good from October's case lot sale on my storage room shelves and hauled a TON of garbage out of the basement and to the dumpster!  Maybe not the most exciting projects, but fabulous things to get done.

Saturday #2--A fun family trip to Laramie!  Tony and Connor went to 4 or 5 state championship football games, and the rest of us joined them for Cowgirl basketball, Cowgirl volleyball, and Cowboy basketball.  The pokes won every game we watched!  I also got to see Tyson, which was great. I love Laramie.

Saturday #3--We were able to go down to Provo to the temple. Olivia was kind enough to be our babysitter for the day. Thanks again, Livi!  After the temple, Tony, Connor, Mylie, and I went to Heber to watch a matinee showing of The Forgotten Carols, while Mariah and Brady stayed with Livi.  The show was fabulous as usual. It was Connor and Mylie's first time seeing it, and they really liked it.  We finished the day by eating . . . and eating . . . and eating at Chuck-a-Rama. Gotta love a good buffet!

Saturday#4--This was a really special weekend for the Micheli family.  Tony's grandpa Joe G, who was not a member of the church, passed away last November.  His wife, Grandma Becky, who had been a faithful member of the church all her life without the support of her husband, was finally able to go to the temple for her first time last December, which was an incredible experience!  Well, she passed away in July of this year.  Thanksgiving weekend, the all of their children and their spouses as well as many grandchildren were able to go to the temple and do all the temple work for Grandpa Joe G.  They were also finally sealed as a family, a blessing they had been hoping and praying for for years! 

Saturday #5--Tony was gone to his first basketball tournament of the year, and Tami came to visit!  She actually came on Friday and stayed the night.  Then we had a fun day with her boys here on Saturday while she went shopping in Utah.  We played and played and played some more!  The kids had so much fun together.

Saturday #6--Actually a pretty lazy day.  Slept in, worked out, went to a lunch/baby shower with some friends, did my grocery shopping, spent some time at Tony's sister's house, complete with pizza, then came home and hung out until bedtime.  Weird for our family to spend a day like this, but nice.

*I am aware that this post would be about 1000x more interesting with pictures, but let me just say that the pictures I did take in the past month are pretty much horrible quality since they were almost all indoors. I could actually use a new camera. HINT, HINT, Santa Clause!  So here are the 2 outdoor pics that I took in the past month, just in case you forgot what my kids look like. :)

LOVE

If you need a natural high today, look no further.

This afternoon . . .

 . . . while I was doing this (BORING, I know)

the rest of the family was doing WAY cooler stuff!

Mariah and Mylie were pretending to be bug doctors--that's right, bug doctors.

Giving the meds.

A little acupuncture.

Connor and Mylie (she bounces around a lot) made these sweet wallets out of duct tape!

And Tony and Brady were doing a little of this.

Life is simple, but good.

My Brave New Self

I've been thinking of doing this for quite awhile now.  And thanks to my sisters both cutting their hair in the past couple years, I finally decided to go for it!

And although it's only been a few days, so far I LOVE IT!!  I told Violet that I feel so much cooler with this haircut.  So cool, in fact, that I can even imagine myself wearing skinny jeans, boots, and a scarf!  Not saying that I will--just that I can now imagine it.  But my favorite thing of all? This hairdo, wet to finished, takes me less than ten minutes to do!  Oh, how I've longed for this day!

Brady--3 months

Somehow, as much as I'm trying to slow things down, Brady is already 3 months old.  It has been a crazy 3 months, trying to balance it all--school starting, volleyball practices and travel, and learning to manage 4 kids and all they are doing.  But it has also been a wonderful 3 months!  Brady has brought such love into our home.  I love seeing the older kids as they love him and care for him, and how much they want to interact with him.  They can hardly wait for him to grow up and play with them! 

He continues to be a chubby little guy.  We haven't had an official weight on him lately, but using the weigh-yourself-then-weigh-holding-the-baby method, we think he's just over 16 lbs.

Brady is getting close to figuring out his hands, but for now, he is constantly clasping them together and then trying to shove both fists into his mouth at once, which can sometimes make him crazy with frustration (not my favorite developmental milestone, I might add)!  He has also found his tongue, and loves sticking it out all the time.  Connor thinks this is a sign that he's going to be like Michael Jordan someday.

Brady is a really good night sleeper, and does ok during the day. We are struggling to find some consistency with daytime naps, as they sometimes only last 45 minutes, but other times will be 3-4 hours.  I never know what to expect.  But what has been consistent is that he either sleeps through the night (like 10-11 hours) or only wakes up once.  LOVE that!

Although I can rarely get him to do it for the camera, Brady smiles a lot, and already laughs!  I'm thrilled about this since Mariah didn't laugh until she was a year old.  He laughs when he's tickled, but has also laughed several times just because somebody does something funny. 

And since we couldn't get a smiling picture anytime in the last week, I'll just end this post with a pic that made me smile--the squishy-face photo.

Halloween Fun

Halloween really isn't a super big deal at this house.  I'm kind of the Halloween grinch, I guess. I don't dress up, don't really decorate for it, and generally just don't care all that much for this holiday.  But my kids do.  So I tried to do a few fun (but extremely SIMPLE, since that's how I roll) things this year.  Here's what we did:

Carved pumpkins, of course!  This year, we grew our own and ended up with two decent-sized ones.  We did one traditional scary-face jack-o-lantern, and then tried Connor's idea of a bucking horse, which turned out awesome, thanks to our talented carver, Tony.

And then we ate the seeds!  I roasted these with a little butter, garlic salt, and pepper. I think the kids liked these just as much as their candy.  They sure disappeared in a hurry!

Family Home Evening treats at this house are usually extremely simple--instant pudding or ice cream.  But I really stepped up this time, and made these fun whoopie pies with Halloween sprinkles.  Okay, they were from a boxed mix from Walmart, but my kids thought they were awesome!

Since I was going all out this year, we even did a little craft for our candy to hand out at the trunk-or-treat.  These cute little ghost pops were extremely simple (a tootsie pop covered with a tissue, tied with yarn, and then a little face drawn on) and fun for the girls to help make.

And the best part of all . . . the costumes!  This year, we had a football player, Hermoine, a ladybug, and a bumble bee.  (I really should have gotten one picture of them all together, but it didn't happen. Oh well.)

One final word on Halloween.  I've heard many mothers complain that the worst part of Halloween is having to manage all the candy consumption for weeks afterward.  I have a simple solution for that.  Just don't manage it, and the headache will be over very quickly.  The candy in this house was all gone in just 4-5 days. And if you want to speed up the process, just sneak a few of your favorite pieces here and there.  It works great!!!

Bull Sale 2012

This year's annual Micheli Bull Sale started the same way it has for the past couple years . . . with SNOW!

Well, it was actually beautiful and not blizzarding or too cold that day, so it was okay.  I wanted to get a cute pic of my beautiful girls but with the sunshine and the snow it was just way too bright.  Still kinda cute, though.

Here are some of the pens.  They sell about 35 hereford and 35 angus bulls each year. 

Tony has the job of making them look good in the sale ring.  He starts a week or two before sale day by "torching the bulls."  Basically he gives them a nice short cut using a torch, which is WAY faster than clippers, although he does use clippers on the head.  It's about the stinkiest job ever!  If you've ever been branding, you know the smell.  Now times that by about a hundred and you can imagine how bad it is.  I think it should be featured on Discovery's "Dirty Jobs."  But it's totally worth it when they look as good as this guy!

Then on sale day, they blow them off and brush them before the buyers show up, then again right before they head into the sale barn.  I'm always amazed at how great they look, especially on a mucky, muddy day like it was this year.  (A funny little side note on torching the bulls: The week that Tony torched them, I asked Connor what he was going to do that weekend.  He said, "Probably help Dad torture the bulls." I wasn't sure I heard him right, so I asked, "Torture the bulls?"  "Ya, torture the bulls."  Apparently that's what he thought it was called all these years.  HAHAHA!  And really, it's not torture for them.)

And speaking of Connor, as I headed out of the sale barn after the sale, I looked across the ranch and saw this.  Ya, he's just hanging out on a roof.  No big deal.  What a kid!

Life in October

October was a great month for our family. I always love fall! Here are a few random things from our October.

Volleyball was in full force, and my girls get into it a little more each year.  This fall they played a lot of balloon volleyball. Mylie even came up with a way to make some sweet knee pads out of mismatched socks from the pile. How cute is that!

After months of the kids begging, we finally tried out the cabin with a sleepover down there. We relaxed, watched a movie, and had some popcorn.  The kids thought it was cool to sleep up in the loft.

One day, we discovered these baby raccoons hiding out in our garbage can. Why they thought this was a safe place is beyond me! Anyway, they stayed there for a couple days until Tony and Connor finally hauled them off.  Cute faces, but they honestly scare me to death. I hate raccoon hisses!

We had a nice harvest this fall with LOTS of potatoes.  We didn't get very many carrots--lots just didn't germinate--but the ones we did get were huge and tasty.  We also had a couple mutants like this interesting one.

Finally, October was filled with lots of loving on our little Brady.  He has his siblings wrapped around his finger.  They just adore him.  Mylie loves reading to him, and Brady loves it too!

Two Months

Somehow Brady is already two months old. Well, he was actually two months last week. He is a good baby for the most part. He has started getting kinda fussy (ok, more like IRATE) when he gets too tired. We have to really stay on top of getting him to sleep in time, or things can get bad. But as long as he's rested, he is so much fun. He sleeps great at night lately. He usually wakes up once to eat, around 3 or 4. But he has already slept through the night (like 10 hours!) 4 times. :) He smiles a lot and already laughs when tickled. I'm soooo happy about this, since Mariah didn't laugh until she was a year old, and I completely missed out on that cute baby laugh sound.

Here's the little chubster.  He reminds me of Mylie, except MUCH fatter!  He weighed 14lb. 7oz. at his 2 month checkup, which is exactly what Connor weighed at 2 months. I love fat babies!

September

September sure flew by in a hurry! The highlight of the month was definitely starting school again.  The kids are all enjoying school and their new teachers.

Mylie is in 1st grade and has Mrs. Walk, who we already knew since she is Tony's assistant coach's wife. She's super nice and a great teacher! Mylie loves her.

Connor is in 3rd grade this year, so he is at a different school from Mylie now, Fort Bridger Elementary.  He likes going to the "big kid" school.  His teacher is Mrs. Proctor, who we had never met before. They're getting along well and he likes school, although maybe not as much as Mylie does.

Mariah got to start school this year as well! I am doing a mom's preschool with some friends again, and we have a fun little group of all girls this year.  We just go once a week, but Mariah thinks she is pretty big!

Mariah has adjusted just fine to having Connor and Mylie gone to school each day. Twice a week, I babysit my 2-year-old neice,  so she has a playmate those two days, but the rest of the time, she stays busy playing by herself (which she does VERY well), helping Mom, and loving on Brady.  She's a pretty happy girl most of the time!

Mariah built the Salt Lake Temple with blocks one day.

This year we got our best ever corn crop--about 150 ears!

A Wedding and a Blessing

Labor Day weekend this year was a biggie for our family! Sullivan and Michelle got married and had their reception, and then we blessed Brady that Sunday and had all our family minus Sullivan and Michelle (forgivable, I suppose) and Tony's brother Matt and his family.  In all, we had about 50 people at the house for lunch that day.  We are so grateful to have big families and for the wonderful people that they are!
Here are the pics . . . horrible quality due to having to use my #2 camera at the time, but you get the idea.

The girls' favorite part of the wedding? Their new fancy dresses! Such cuties!

My handsome little guy wearing the same little blessing outfit Connor wore.

These kids sure love Brady!

Brady's Newborn Pics

When Brady was just a week old, my (now) sister-in-law, Michelle did his newborn photos.  This is the first of my kids that ever had a real newborn photo shoot.  Spoiled, I know. . .  And they turned out GREAT!  I am totally in love with these shots.  He already doesn't look like this, but all the more reason to have captured all his newborn cuteness in this way!!