insta-april

{4.2.18} Easter may be my favorite holiday. We are still trying to figure out how we want to do traditions, but there is just so much good to be found in celebrating our Savior and his incredible love for us. Having Easter and General Conference on the same weekend makes things tricky to do ALL the traditions but I can't imagine a more powerful way to celebrate than listening to countless testimonies of His Life and Purpose, and feeling the Spirit pour out love and inspiration in abundance. #helives #andhelovesus


{4.3.18} With the Championship game last night, March Madness 2018 comes to an end. David and I both picked Villanova to win, so it was fairly anticlimactic, but we should still gets points for picking the champion! However, Lydia should get the most points for picking Loyola Chicago to go to the final four (their logo is a big "L", ha). She's the real winner this year! We love making brackets and following along with the games each year. When David and I were dating he was frequently getting up at 7am to wait in line to sit in the front row at the Spectrum to cheer on our USU basketball team. It's something I love about him, and I love that we can make this time a little bit special each year.




{4.7.18} We attended the Jordan River Temple Open House this morning and it was perfect (even with the drizzly rain). I'm so grateful for temples and that we have so many opportunities to teach the love of the temple to our kids. While growing up in Ephraim, everytime we would drive by/see the Manti Temple we'd sing "I love to see the Temple." Now driving home from anywhere North, especially at night time, we pass the Jordan River and Draper temples and can see the Oqquirh Mountain temple in the distance. We sing everytime the kids spot them, and my heart is full is gratitude knowing there are basically ten more within a half hours drive! President Nelson's closing blessing at conference is ringing in my ears and my heart, "My dear brothers and sisters, construction of these temples may not change your life, but your time in the temple surely will."



{4.7.18} Floating orange peels down the gutter. #childhood #playiseverything



{4.11.18} Lydia heard us talking about an upcoming opportunity to clean the temple and she wanted desperately to be able to come help. So we decided to help pick up garbage on the temple grounds for FHE. Building off of our visit to the Jordan River temple last weekend, we talked again about how special temples are. I think a lot of parenting is just taking things the kids care about and putting the effort in while they still care. I'd call this a FHE and parenting win. (Hopefully offsetting the many fails we've had lately.) #fhe#ilovetoseethetemple



{4.14.18} Escape Room - Walker Style. Date night with my siblings is pretty much the best. #piratetreasure Apparently we naturally line up in order of age (except the twins who swapped order tonight). @jennahaderlie @melissashaye@matthewswalker13 @jacobcolvinwalkerLove this family of mine. ☠️💰🔑💛


{4.17.18} We were flying kites yesterday afternoon but this morning we woke up to SNOW! ❄️ #sprinter Austin was thrilled and convinced David to get him all bundled up to play in the yard at 8:00 in the morning. #bestdad I actually love this kind of snow where it storms and storms, covers everything in snow, and then melts by noon!



{4.18.18} When @taushamarie flies into Utah just for the day (welcoming her parents home from their mission at the airport, yay!) and you're the lucky one who gets to hang out with her! This sweet friend took her day "off" and helped me do my dishes, clean my kitchen, and spent the afternoon entertaining my kids while we tried to chat. (She paitiently helped Lydia with a project she'd been working on, then played the piano over and over while the kids danced around.) As soon as David got home we went shopping before we had to get her back to the airport, barely making her flight. I wish AZ wasn't so far away! Miss you already Taush. #16yearsand7kidslater



{4.23.18}Jazz'n it up tonight! (In truth, I worked on several projects that I really needed to work on and am just jumping in for the last 5 minutes of game time). David and I make a great Basketball watching team. He loves the basketball 🏀 and I love the commercials!

{4.23.18} Lydia's kindergarten diorama: the Snowshoe Hare. Also note her "Snowshoe Hare-style", at her request. She went through the bag of extra tree/habitat pieces and made an evergreen out of some ocean kelp and took the leaves off the other trees (winter, you know). Her favorite part of the diorama was learning how to paint evergreen trees. I'd chalk it up to a success.

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insta-david

{4.1.18}     Congratulations to my amazing wife, the 2018 Peaden Family Bracket champion! She did awesome and picked Villanova to win it all. I am incredible lucky to have a wife who supports me in the things I care about and carefully reads about each team before making her picks. She also made sure we had some great championship game treats for tonight. Also, shout out to Lydia who correctly picked Loyola Chicago to make the final four and my brother Bruce who dominated our family challenge.





{4.11.18}       I love to see the temple! We had a great family home evening last night (Tuesday instead of Monday so we could go inside the temple). The kids loved running on the grass outside. We went in the waiting area and looked at the pictures of Christ, cleaned up trash outside for a service project and Shantel bore her testimony on the importance of the Temple. I'm sure they won't remember anything about this year's from now, but hopefully will remember what it feels like to be at the temple. We are grateful to have the temple.

Austin April Snow Day!

Today we had a snow day! It is one of those days that is the unexpected March/April/May snowstorm. Lydia had to go to school, but as soon as Austin saw the snow, he really wanted to get dressed up and go outside and play. I decided to help him dressed and outside together before I had to go to work. It was such a perfectly fun morning. Austin got his shovel and went through the whole yard shoveling snow. My favorite part was after he shoveled all around the yard, I helped him drop giant snowballs from off of the back deck. Austin thought it was incredible and kept asking for even bigger snowballs to drop.

Caleb Samuel: 12-13 months

Official Stats: 

Weight- 22 lbs 11 oz (71%)

Length-  30.5 in (75%)

Head Circ.- 47.6 cm (88%)

Non-Official Stats: 

-Basically 18 month everything. But that cardigan he's wearing in the top picture? Austin was wearing it and took it off. I put it on Caleb and rolled the sleeves and it really didn't look too big. Size 3 diapers, but probably would fit fine in size 4. Four teeth, two top, two bottom. 

Things to remember: 

-Barely starting to stand without support, will pull himself up on the coffee table and let go of it for two seconds, then grab back on and grin a huge grin. Sometimes he'll even lift his hands above his head like "look mom! no hands!". 

-Starting to cruise around furniture. 

-Favorite activity? Sneak into the bathroom and pull off all the toilet paper and/or stick his hands into the toilet to play. Ugh. (The latter is made exponentially worse by the fact that Lydia frequently forgets to flush. That's all I'm going to say, but, uuuuuuuuughhhhhhhh.)

-His favorite food is EASILY bananas. He whines and whines until you go get one for him, and as soon as he sees it he starts twisting his hands and feet, sticking them straight out into the air, until you give it to him. He's even started saying nana-nana-nana. 

-He's very independent and crawls all over, pulling things out of the tupperware drawer, putting things into the towel drawer, and even climbing into the appliance cupboard. 

-The weather is warming up and we're starting to get out more, which we have all been loving! 

-He's such a smartie. He likes to pull the silverware out of the dishwasher as we are loading the dishes, so one night David tipped a chair over sideways to block him from the dishwasher. He stood there squawking for like 2.5 seconds then immediately dropped to the ground and crawled around the entire island and started getting into the dishes from the other side. (I feel like putting a chair to block things worked for a longer time period with our other kids!) 

-As soon as David gets home from work, (even just when we hear the garage door open), Caleb sits straight up and makes a beeline for him/the door. He crawls right up on to his shoes and grabs onto his pants until David picks him up, then he gives him the best hugs! It's darling to see how much he loves his daddy. 

-He's becoming much more of a picky eater. He used to eat basically anything, and a lot of it (which was the hard part). But now he's started turning his nose up, literally, at most of the food that I try to give him. If I try to give him something that he doesn't want... like cottage cheese... he tips his head up and turns it to the side and squawks a noise that sounds remarkably like No -"Nah-NAH", until I give him something that he wants. He's basically living off of spaghetti (with red sauce, but not white sauce), frozen green peas (that have been run under warm water), and bananas. I'm determined to not raise picky eaters by not giving into their demands, but jeez, he's very demanding! (If I try to give him a strawberry, he acts offended but takes it from me, and immediately throws it as hard as he can toward the ground.)

-He crawls easily up the stairs and has even learned how to carefully go down stairs, too. 

-Falls asleep at 7 pm, and sleeps until about 6:30 (then I nurse him in the chair until about seven). Naps at 9ish, and 2ish. Sleeping babies are the best! 

Happy 13 months Caleb-love. We adore you!