Could a child be happier on their blessing day?

We invited all of our family down for the 4th of July and blessed Owen on the 6th.  He has the happiest personality.  He smiled all day long and let us get so many cute pictures of him with a big grin on his face!  I didn't know babies could be so fun to have around.  He hardly ever cries, loves to talk to me any time I take the time to play with him, and he entertains himself so well when I don't.  I really wanted this to be our last before we decided to have him, but now I think I will be up for another one.  I can't get enough of him!

June

June was a pretty low key month for us.  I did venture out to take the kids to the zoo while their cousins were in town and we made a trip home to Boise but forgot our camera so we are hoping to get copies from family (hint hint family!).

I was trying to get pictures of Owen with the kids so I propped Owen on Emma's back and he spit up all over her back.  She was laying there with her shirt covered in spit-up while I tried to get all three to look at the same time.  I never quite got the picture I wanted but what a good sport!

May

I am so far behind on my blogging that I am trying to just highlight what we have been up to the last few months.  Everyone loves taking a turn to hold Owen.  He is the sweetest baby and we have decided that having a baby in the home isn't such a bad thing.  He only cries when he is hungry, has gas, or wants out of a messy diaper.

Emma graduated from Kindergarten! I can't believe our first baby is a first grader now.  She loves school and learning and is always full of questions about the world.

I came home from my Sunday meeting to find the whole family sleeping on the couches.  It was so cute to see the all my guys chillin' on the couch together.  It took me a while to find Emma (she never takes naps!) but she was also asleep down in the sun in the living room.

Emma performed in her spring dance recital.  I wish I knew how to put her videos on here because she was so cute!

Emma also participated in spring T-ball.  She liked it a lot more than soccer because everyone gets a turn to hit and run.  She does not like to compete for the ball.

Memorial Day weekend, Kimball took the kids to "Day out with Thomas" and they got to ride the train, meet Sir Topham Hatt, play with train sets, get their faces painted, and bring home all sorts of new treasures!

Meet your new brother!

                                                                                                                    My parents brought Emma and Edison to meet their new baby brother Saturday afternoon.  They were so soft and cute with him.  They were excited to finally see him outside of mommy's tummy and each took a couple turns holding him, but got bored pretty quickly at the hospital.  They each brought Owen a present to welcome him to the family (Emma brought a stuffed frog & Edison brought some blue baby crocks to match his), but the highlight for them was the presents that baby Owen gave them.  Edison got some new cars from the Cars movie and Emma got some My Little Ponies she had been wanting.  I am excited to see them help me take care of him.

Welcome baby Owen

Owen Chase Hodges was born April 26th at 6:46 am.  He weighs 6 lbs. 15 oz. and is 19 1/2 inches long.  I was scheduled to be induced Tuesday morning but early Saturday morning he had different plans for us.  Saturday at 3:30 am, my water broke and I started looking online and called the hospital for what to do next.  I wasn't having contractions so I decided to shower and try and wait to wake the family up.  Kimball came in to see why I was showing and freaked out that I didn't wake him up.  By the time I got out of the shower I was having contractions so we called my mom to come stay with the kids and packed a bag.  By the time we left for Mountain View Hospital in Payson, I was having hard contractions about every three minutes and Kimball was excited to have an excuse to drive 100 mph the whole way there.  By the time they checked us in to the hospital and the anesthesiologist arrived, I was already dilated to an 8 and in way more pain than I ever expected to feel during delivery.  Thank goodness for epidurals.  The pain went away immediately and he was born about 20 minutes later.  The whole process from water breaking to birth only took about 3 hours and we got to enjoy him the rest of the day.

Cut it all off like Grandpa's!!

Edison's hair was getting long enough that we were actually going to have to comb it, so we decided it was time for a haircut.  We asked him if he wanted us to cut it all off and he said, "Yea, cut it all off like grandpa's!"  Kimball shaved it to a 1 with our clippers.  We didn't really think it was going to be as short as grandpa's but we think he looks handsome (and we don't have to style his hair)! 

Alvin & the Chipmunks!

My mom called and told us that Alvin & the Chipmunks would be performing at the Provo mall last Friday so I took the kids over to see the show.  

Easter

Easter was fun this year with two kids that both knew what they were doing.  We decorated easter eggs the Monday before Easter and the kids ended up having three easter egg hunts and way too much candy.  Emma told us next year to tell the easter bunny to only leave money and toys and not candy in the eggs and limited both of them to three pieces of candy a day so they wouldn't get sick.  It is so nice to have someone looking out for us and coming up with these great ideas!  This year Edison got a dog flashlight that barks when you turn it on and a horn for his bike.  The horn is incredibly loud even outside!  Emma got some money and two new ponies with shoe accessories.  She told us this was the best Easter ever.  Who knew that is all it takes!

Fairy Tea Party!!

In February I found out about a fairy tea party at the Provo library and had wanted to take Emma for years but only found out about it after it happened every year so I was very excited.  I started inviting all the little girls in the neighborhood and their mothers to go with us.  I looked it up the night before tickets went on sale, (planning to call and order some over the phone) and it said that you had to  bring your library card with you and you could only buy 8 tickets.  I had already invited more people than that and called the library and they informed me that this was such a big event it sells out in about an hour.  I had to call one of the neighbors to go wait in line with me for an hour at 8:30 Saturday morning so we could get enough tickets and one of the tea times was already sold out by the time we reached the front of the line.  Crazy stuff over a little girls party, but you know how we love any opportunity to dress our girls up and it was a really cute event and fun for all the girls to go together.

Emma has lost two teeth!

We were dreading the tooth loosing stage but it has been a fun new experience.  Emma told us she had a loose tooth and we couldn't really tell when we tried to wiggle it so we thought she was just wanting it to be loose because her friends had started loosing teeth.  About two weeks later she came home from school and had her tooth in a bag.  She said it fell out on the bus!  

A few weeks after that she was eating a fruit roll up and she said it hurt her tooth and her mouth was bleeding.  She didn't want mom to pull out her tooth so she went over to the neighbors and I guess her friend Libby pulled the tooth for her.  So far so good for mom because pulling teeth makes her queasy.  The tooth fairy brought her $1 for her first tooth and then she informed us that Libby got a fairy from the tooth fairy and that is what she wanted too so we wrote the tooth fairy a note and asked if she had any more fairies and Emma got a little fairy doll for her second tooth.