Memorial Day BBQ

As much as I would have loved to have been in Cali (Santa Cruz) with all the peeps and family we couldn't go this year so we made the best of it and spent time with friends instead, which is sometimes better than family! We had 20 kids total there, it was crazy and at times a bit out of control (okay mostly Jayden), but the company and food was so good!  Maybe I will have to start a tradition of my own!

The kids playing on the swingset and my kids being crazy!

This is all of the kids from the families there (minus 3 babies), From left to right

Faye, Treyson, Bryant, Daphne, Noah, Jayden, Derrick, Allie, Madyson, Ethan, Ashley, Chloe, Pheobe, Gwen, Payton and Carter!

We had such a great time, Thanks everyone for coming and spending the day with us!

It's been about Ma...

I guess Madyson has been the subject of all my pictures recently so this is mostly random pictures of her.  I finally got the guts to cut her hair off.  It was so long and stringy (its so thin) that it was a tangled mess every single  morning. I ended up cutting 6 inches off! I'm pretty proud of myself.  She also started a dance class just at a neighbors house once a week, so these are the pictures of her the first week, and she loved it.

My cute girl before the hair cut

So this is all I have of the boys,  the socks are to keep him from sucking his thumb!

She cried because she didn't want curly hair lke mommy, but she is so cute!

So excited

Twirling

I love it!

Before (sorry for the no clothing)

After (back)

After, sorry this is as good as I could get, she's so sassy!

So far we are loving the new hair do, it is not tangled at all in the morning (which makes things easier on both of us) and I can still do some of the things I used to with it.  It turned out shorter than I would have liked but thats the great thing about hair it grows back!

Bouncin' Around

A couple weeks ago we went to Salt Lake to a place called Jumpin' Jacks with the my sister and her kids and had a ton of fun!  The kids were a little weary of the jump things at first and after throwing them down the slides a couple times they loved it.  When the kids were about ready to go a lady showed up to paint faces and worked by tips only and the kids were so excited to get it done.  We will defiantely have to go back again!

Madyson

Jayden

Payton

Payton and Mommy

Jayden and Landon, these boys LOVE eachother!

Jayden, I mean Spiderman

Madyson was a beautiful butterfly, I loved this one

The older gang (we figured payton and tana wouldn't hold still)

We love when we get to hang out with the cousins the kids have so much fun together and can't seem to get enough of one another!

New Address

Hopefully you could see my new address on facebook, I canged the name so on your blog you need to erase the old address and add this one it is http://www.shannonfamily5.blogspot.com/.  Hopefully I don't loose people by doing this but ever since I started theis blog in october 2007 I have hated that I spelled my own last name wrong so I found out how to change it today so I did.

Easter!!

Where to start? Well last Friday we drove to James' parents to let the cousins do an Easter egg hunt.  The kids had fun seeing their cousins they hadn't seen in a couple months and got a bunch of candy.  Then last week we decided to color our eggs.  The kids did quite well until Jayden dumped the yellow into the blue so we ended up with a lot of green eggs.  Right away I peeled them and made egg salad, YUM!! Last Sunday they wore the Easter outfits they got, Madyson looks so good in purple so the boys got to match with a purple tie, they looked so handsome.  Then this past Friday we had an Easter egg hunt at my house with 21 kids (from 15 months to 9 years old).  Crazy it was but the kids had a good time.  And then this morning the kids woke up and found the Easter bunny had come and were so excited to see what he brought.  I was glad to see he didn't bring much candy but brought them some cool stuff instead!

Jayden coloring eggs and posing with them

Sunday best, he wouldn't smile nicely :(

At the hunt, easter morning and with the cousins, can you tell they are Shannon's?

Madyson did a great job and wanted all pink eggs!

She didn't want to give me a real smile (she had her tonsils out 3 days earlier), but she is still beautiful!

Madyson loves Papa and had a great time hunting for eggs, she especially loved that Allie was there with her

Finding her basket this morning and showing off her cootie.

Payton thought his basket was soooo cool, he kept looking at it and smiling.  He wanted to take it everywhere

He was not happy about taking pictures since we didn't include him in the dying of them.

We hope everyone had an AWESOME Easter like we did.

Happy (really belated) Birthday Madyson!

I wasn't planning on doing a birthday post for the kids this year because me along with everyone else just say how we can't believe our baby is so and so years old, but apparently I decided last minute to do one for Jayden so I wanted to make sure I did one for my one and only baby girl (so far)!  My little miss is 3 years old.  I don't know if time has flown or not because at some point I have seemed to always have a baby.  She is just the littlest thing I have ever seen, so at her 3 year check up (if I can remember correctly) she was 26 pounds (like 6th percentile) and 36 inches tall (40th or so percentile).  Just a peanut she is but I am okay with it.  One day she will graduate to a booster maybe by the time she is 5 or 6, lets hope!

A couple hours old in the NICU

Madyson's 1st birthday (check out Jayden's chubby hand getting her cake)

My 2 year old, she looks like such a baby in this picture!

Her 3rd birthday, licking her lips getting ready to swallow that cupcake.  She had to show she was a princess with her tiara.

I had to add a picture of my baby girl now, i love you Ma ma, Happy late Birthday!

Payton James

I love this boy, he is at such a fun age right now and I am enjoying having him in our lives.  I'm afraid to say he is out of the baby stage and into the big boy stage.  He jumps, runs, plays hide and seek and loves to torture his sister and brother. He has hit the terrible twos early in his life.  He throws a good fit way too often and throws himself onto the floor without paying attention to what he is going to hit his head on, so that usually makes the fits worse.  Thesee pictures are a from a couple months ago since I planned on doing his all about him post a good 2 months ago, but hopefully the pictures will give you an idea of how handsome this boy is. 

I let his hair grow out and I LOVED it, and then I made the mistake of trying to cut it myself so it ended up shorter than I wanted but it has started to grow back already!

He is such a silly boy always into EVERYTHING, it drives me crazy, and he got a big boy bed and does great in it.