What We've Been Doing This Spring

Just kidding. That was from February when we went to visit the Fuhrs for the weekend...it has been cold, though!
We watched a lot of this. We love this team! They are really good--I'm not being biased at all! We sometimes stop at this happening town on our way home:
All because of this place--best Mexican food!!!
Here we are again with the freezing....
It was well worth it to see this guy play baseball! Watching 4-6 year-olds play coach pitch is the cutest thing ever! We also watched Megan play some exciting soccer, Jared earn the most hits of anyone on the 8th grade B team he played for (he was nervous about playing up with older boys but it turned out to be a great experience), and Amanda do great in track, overcome being injured and compete at districts in two events this year!
Also really enjoyed a springtime hike up Badger Mountain that Megan and I went on for activity days for the 8-9 year old girls at church. I don't think I've ever hiked it when the wildflowers are all in bloom like this--it was quite pretty!

Birthdays 1, 2 and 3!

Over the last three months I feel like I've either been freezing or sitting at my computer typing my fingers to the bone. Spring has been cold and my doctors who I type for have been busy. In between all that we've had some significant birthday celebrations at our house! I love birthdays! Jared joined the ranks of teenagerhood and celebrated with bowling and hanging out with his best buddies.
Jared continues to be a joy and a privilege to have in our home. My one complaint is that I have to keep buying him clothes to keep up with his rapid growth rate. I suppose that's a good problem to have!
Grandma turned the big 6-0 this year! We celebrated by surprising her with a birthday treasure hunt. Grandma is famous for the treasure hunts she creates for the grandkids, spending hours figuring out how to do the clues and how to make them rhyme. The kids love it! Her treasure hunt included a long walk, a stop at My Fro Yo, a boat ride (complete with getting dive bombed by swarms of bees which was not planned but made for lots of screaming and laughter), the movie Hop and dinner at Famous Dave's.
We feel blessed every day to have both sets of grandparents close and involved in our daily activities and are supportive and loving to our family.
Then, all of a sudden, I blinked and had a 16-year-old! I still can't believe it! She had quite a festive celebration with somewhere around 25 or so kids running in and out of the house, singing karaoke and eating and socializing! We wouldn't have it any other way (well Nate might, but he was a good sport and even made an appearance a time or two).

Amanda always amazes and surprises us! There is never a dull moment yet when its crunch time we see her strength, talents and commitment to do what is right. She has been one busy 16 year old but more on that to come!

Counting Blessings

Yes, the transmission completely had to be rebuilt on our car at 54,000 miles (right before Christmas). Then, the compressor broke on our heat pump as well as a couple of other parts. Kids have been sick, the weather has been cold and a few other minor things. HOWEVER, I still have a lot to be thankful for and I don't want to forget those good things happening in our family right now.

We get lots of help from grandparents who support our kids in their activities, feed us, celebrate report cards with us, take care of Bradley to give mom a break during the day once a week and generally help us in whatever ways they can. I feel so blessed to have two sets of fantastic parents/grandparents close by!

Amanda is a happy teenager right now. School is great, social life is great and how exciting is it when you are oh so close to turning 16!?! For us at home, that is huge and whenever the stars are aligned in our teenage daughter's universe life is really good, for however long it lasts! :)

We've survived teaching her how to drive. We are still doing this but its getting better and I have noticed that I can actually relax and chat while she is driving in the car now--HUGE progress!

Jared has a little moustache. Mostly this is fun because Bradley can't stop talking about it but he gets a little flack from his friends. However, I think he's kind of proud of it. The only down side is that I keep checking the mirror making sure as I am getting close to 40 that I'm not growing one, too. It would be bad to have mother/son twin moustaches.

Jared won 2nd place in the science expo for 7th grade in the Health and Fitness category. He tested jumping ability versus types of shoe wear. Oh, and his basketball team is amazing--its been sooo fun to watch them!

Megan is happy at school and has great friends!

Bradley is enrolled in Preschool for fall--woo hoo!

I had two weekends out of town in a row where I missed church. I feel blessed to have fabulous counselors/secretary who totally took care of Primary while I was away. They are amazing!

Nate is on the home stretch of his formal internship and last class at WSU!!! He recently paid his last tuition. Well, until Amanda starts college I suppose....

Valentine's Getaway

Nate and I got to do a quick trip to Seattle with our friends, Keni and April, to go to a broadway show called Rock of Ages. It was fun and relaxing trip!We love all the fun stuff to see on Pike Street
Nate's favorite doughnuts!

Ready for the show!

The Paramount Theater was pretty. The setting of the show takes place on the sunset strip in Los Angeles the 80s so we heard lots of "hair" band music, which Nate and Keni loved.

Thanks grandma and grandpa for watching the kids for us!

Four!

It's fun to have the celebration of the holidays linger just a little longer and we had one special four-year-old birthday to celebrate!!!
I was surprised at how sad I was when everyone headed back to school; we had a really nice time together!

Bradley and I kept busy by putting a little friend party together with just a couple of boys he plays with regularly from church. Paige was a special exception; Bradley wanted her to be the "one girl." We did a few fun games and had lunch and cake with none other than a Toy Story theme!



Bradley has a lot of things he says that we call "Bradleyisms." I want to remember these so here are a few examples:
One day while in the car, Bradley was not happy about me telling him he needed to act nice and have good manners when talking to friends and playing with friends. (He has a lot of trouble sharing when friends come to our house to play). After the mini-lecture he said, "MOM! The world is not about you!"

I wanted to get him to hurry and get going (probably because I was running late somewhere) and I told him if he didn't hurry he was going to have to be left at home. He replied, "You can't leave me! I know your phone number!"

He pretty much tells me we have a "game" meaning baseball, basketball or football during the day, what the name of my team is, how to play the game and when the game is over due to his team winning.

One day Bradley told me he had finished his breakfast and when I checked, he hadn't really touched it. I explained to him that he was lying and I asked him, "Do you know what happens when you lie?" He said, "you get in trouble." I said, it also mommy and daddy sad and it really makes Heavenly Father and Jesus sad. His response was, "Well, don't tell them!"

He is such a busy guy and these examples illustrate the fiery side of his personality but he is also very sweet and loving. We love him so much and he has every single person in this family wrapped around his fingers.

Happy 4th birthday Bradley! We love you!

Ringing in 2011

Several people from both Kraus' and Floyd families were still in town so we decided to host New Year's Eve at our home for anyone who wanted to come. The spread of food was ridiculous but YUMMMY!!!
The kids did several Minute to Win It games and Christopher introduced a game involving flipping whipped cream in the air which was a huge hit. The adults ate, ate and ate and played some Bunco.
Everyone, including Bradley, made it to midnight and the cousins went outside to bang on pots and pans and do poppers. There were fireworks across the river as well!

Happy 2011! We are looking forward to this year!

All Kinds of Catching Up to Do

I can't believe Christmas was a month ago! We had lots of fun and hopefully you won't mind a few catch up posts to get a little documentation of Christmas 2010 for the Kraus family. First off, the Parker's flight got cancelled from Denver to Pasco on the 23rd so we had a little time to kill on Christmas Eve while we were waiting for them to catch their next flight and drive from Portland so we went bowling!What was great about the bowling was that Aunt Colleen and her family were there bowling too so we got to bowl with cousins and it was fun to see them! We didn't know we were crashing a Robinson family tradition!

We were so happy when the Parkers made it in time for our Christmas Eve dinner at Applebees. My parents picked them up in Portland and there was a lot of sceaming and hugging when we all jumped out of our cars in the parking lot at the Restaurant. Brian's parents, Nannee and Papa and Sara and Joe also joined us for dinner. I didn't get a picture unfortunately but we had the group room all to ourselves so it was nice.
After dinner we headed back to Grandma and Grandpa's for Christmas at their house!




We did our reading of The Christmas story earlier in the day so we could stay late at Grandma and Grandpa's. The kiddos slept in until 7:00 a.m. which wasn't too bad...
Trying to contain their excitement!



After Christmas at our house we headed to Nannee and Papa's.
Snuggies!
AND Emily, Kevin and Jordan surprised us and came to town just in time for the festivities!