Logan Dennis, 5 and counting

In his primary class Logan is literally a head (and sometimes shoulders) shorter than the girls in his class who were born at the beginning of the year. For whatever reason, he's just our little shorty right now. We're pretty sure he won't always be that way, but just because he's not very tall now doesn't mean that there's not a whole lot of energy, personality, vocabulary, and cuteness packed into him!
Logan turned 5 a few weeks ago and we had a very fun day celebrating him. We got up and gave him his new Star Wars t-shirt so he could wear it to his party. He was so excited that it was hard to tell him he couldn't put it on until after I'd given him a bath!
Grandma and Grandpa Lay picked up Logan and Luke and took them to McDonald's for lunch. They played and played on the playground there and Logan got a new Transformer and some matching cards from them. Here's Logan holding up "Sideswipe" in front of Grandpa Lay's face. Good thing we can tell it's Grandpa by the reflection in the mirror. :o)

I kept cleaning and cooking while the boys were gone and then as soon as Samantha got home from school we waited for the guests to arrive for Logan's party! Living close to cousins is like a party all the time, but it also makes for good party guests. Caleb, Jacob, Maryann, Isaac, Olivia, and Hyrum came to have a blast at Logan's Stars Wars party.

Here's our awesome little dude making a very cool Star Wars pose. Notice the sneer curling on his lips. He must have The Force.

The kids played a game in two teams where they had to stick stickers on planets and spaceships worth different point amounts. It was the boys (The Empire) against the girls and Luke (The Rebellion).

And here's the winning Empire team!

On to the presents! Logan obviously enjoyed this part a lot.

He loves the new Thomas the Train puzzle which Luke insisted for days afterward was his.

This is a great plush Mater that came with a soft brown blanket on the inside. Logan loves it and even started insisting that the Winnie-the-Pooh blanket he's loved since he was tiny was "old" and he only wanted the Mater blanket now. My little boy is growing up! Sniff.

Love this grin. We found a Bumblebee Transformer costume for cheap and Logan was thrilled to get to use it for Halloween.

The party guests minus Rebecca and Hyrum, and also Luke who had been in this shot until about 3 seconds before I took the picture. He wouldn't hold still. Sigh...

I racked my brain the night before the party trying to come up with how to do a Star Wars cake. I searched for pictures of R2D2 cakes online, made a weak attempt at drawing him, checked blogs of people I know who have done Star Wars parties and I couldn't come up with anything.
The next morning Logan said he wanted R2D2 and "that gold guy" on his cake. I started wishing I had an applique like I did for Samantha's cake. Finally, it dawned on me that I could just print a picture off the net. Success! I even found a bag of candy stars in my cupboard left over from our gingerbread house last Christmas. I picked out the white, yellow and blue ones and because I was of course running late during the party again, my mom and sister-in-law Celeste helped me throw the cake together. It looked FABULOUS and Logan was very happy with it. Why do we mothers freak out about things like this? I could have killed myself off trying to make something extra cute to impress everyone but the one who mattered most: the Birthday Boy!!!

See how happy he is? (Not to mention adorable?)

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ICE CREAM and cake!

We took the whole family to Applebee's for dinner that night. We were put in a booth, so there was no room for a high chair because the aisle was so narrow. We put Rebecca in a booster seat and she wiggled and wriggled and managed to dump her entire bowl of macaroni on the floor. Next time I will wait until a table is available!!! Aside from that little mishap, Logan loved the waiters coming to sing to him and getting his very own special dessert. (Notice Rebecca's funny face in the background and the fact that she's NOT in her booster seat.)

I realized that I hadn't gotten a picture of Logan in front of the game he was so excited about, so when we got home and he'd already put on his pajamas I made him put his shirt back on and pose in front of it. Yes, there's a glare and no, I'm not a good photographer. Someday I'll upgrade my camera, but since the subject matter is so darling I'm good for now.

My brothers used to get me to make this face every time my parents would try to take a photo of me. Logan does it well!

This is just us playing around that night. It's a horrible shot looking straight up my nose, but I love the fun, crazy, giggly feel the picture has.

We gave Logan a few more gifts before he went to bed. He'd been asking for a toy called "Tractor Tippin'" from the Cars movie. He asked everyone he saw that day if they present they got him was "Tractor Tippin' Fun" and so we had to get him on video when he opened it. He loves to talk and you'll notice I have a hard time getting him to stop. Again the lighting is poor, but it was still worth taking because he was so funny on camera.

He crawled into bed that night and said, "That was a REALLY great day!!!" and Ross and I were once again grateful to have been blessed with our funny little talkative short guy. Emergency c-sections can be worth the end result.

Three years of Luke Blaine

What a fun ride we've had so far! We celebrated Luke's 3rd birthday last week. It's fun to get kids to this age because they are so much more aware of what their birthday is. I got him talking about his day coming up and how old he'd be and much cuteness occurred in his answers. :o)

Our Helena cousins and Grandma and Grandpa Lay came for the party. It's been nice weather (up until today!) so all the cousins ran straight for the back yard when they arrived. It's so nice to have a yard! Two years in this house and I'm still thankful.



Rebecca was putting on the cute that night so she made it into a couple of pictures!

Luke got a rug from G & G Lay that has a picture of Radiator Springs from the CARS movie on it. He and Logan have been having a ton of fun running their cars around it!

This present was a big case full of play tools and a hard hat. I love that you can't even see Luke in the picture! Just his little foot.

We took the kids to the Dollar Store to get little gifts for Luke. Logan gave him this 25 piece Mickey Mouse puzzle. Luke LOVES it! He has been playing with it constantly since his birthday. He loves to "scwamble" it up and do it over and over again! (And isn't this a great pic of the top of my head!)

I found this idea online for his "cake". The one online was a little more elaborate and had colored frosting, but I love how my version turned out. (Samantha thought that the chocolate frosting meant these were coal cars!) I used Sour Patch Kids for the "people" and was thrilled to find the "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" toothpick candles for added decoration. It helped to already have a Thomas Train that was just the right size for the graham cracker cars.

Here's Rebecca stealing the shot with all her adorableness again.

My friend Kim posted pictures of her kids through the years which I thought was so adorable. So because I'm only creative enough sometimes to imitate others, here's my darling boy's life so far:

Newborn (My "little" 9 lbs 7 ozs baby!)

One year old

Two years old

Three years old with all his birthday loot!

Sunday in the sunshine

Aaaahhh...
The weather here in Helena has been so nice the past few weeks and my kids looked so adorable yesterday that I decided I needed to get out the camera and take some pictures to capture these precious moments. (I know. Cheese for ya. Right there.)
The previous owners of the house did a lot of landscaping in the backyard and while we don't really love some parts of it, it does make a nice backdrop for pictures. (Plus the kids love to hide in all the trees and bushes.)
So here's some of my favorite shots from our pleasant Sunday afternoon:


Our beautiful Rebecca

I've loved this dress since it was Samantha's. Rebecca seems to be dancing for the camera in this one!

Someday I'll get a more natural smile from this pretty girl. It comes out every once in a while, but I think with all the sun and her awareness of the camera yesterday this is as good as she could give me. Funny little face!

Samantha took this one.

Love the expression on Logan's face here. I'm also glad that Samantha's hair fell between her legs in just the right spot...

More kisses

Rebecca was a very tired girl by the time I took this one. I'm glad Luke was able to follow my direction to kiss her cheek though!

Luke Blaine in the sunshine

Logan loves to talk and I'm sure that he was talking to me when I took this. :o)

Sweet Logan

Photography by Logan

I begged Ross to tighten his tie up and come outside for a picture. He wasn't thrilled, but he did it and I'm glad. Happy wife, happy life, right? ;o)

Swimming in the Summertime!

Swimming lessons are a great part of childhood. The warm sun and cool pool, the fun teachers and classmates, and finding a love for the water make summertime the best.

I knew I wanted to get Logan and Samantha started in swimming lessons this year for a few reasons. One, it's a good skill for the kids to have just for safety reasons alone and it also makes the water more fun to play in. And two, I knew I needed to do some kind of structured activity with them this summer just to get us out of the house! I am admittedly a homebody, but don't want my kids memories of summertime to be watching movies all day with the fans blowing. Not so much fun for them...

We started lessons on July 6th and finally ended 6 long weeks later on August 14th. (I say long weeks, but truly, summer has flown by in so many other ways -- as usual!) The first session was the roughest for me because I could only get Samantha into one time slot and Logan into another. So we were there from 11:15 AM to 12:20 PM. Thankfully the next two sessions they had classes at the same time!

Rebecca and Luke came with us every day and I transported them around in the double stroller we've been borrowing from my sister-in-law Kathy. What a blessing that was! Luke and Rebecca didn't really like staying in it the entire time (especially the first session) so I let them out often enough. I had to make sure I had a fully stocked diaper bag and lots of snacks (despite the no outside food rule the pool has) to keep them entertained.

Of course, on more than one occasion, my rambunctious not-quite-three-year-old would make a break for it if I took him out of the stroller and looked away from him for more than two seconds. It's not always fun to look like the idiot mother scrambling after her child, but oh well. Rebecca escaped once or twice too. I do my best with them, I swear.

I also brought chaos upon myself a few days. One day during the first session we got out of the house without the diaper bag! I freaked out and then remembered that the Lord had blessed me enough to make sure that my bishop and his wife just happened to be there with their son for his lessons. I asked them to watch Logan while I dashed home and to make the transition from Samantha's lesson to Logan's. They did and I was beyond grateful!

Another day Logan left the house without his towel, so after I got the kids safely to their teachers, Luke, Rebecca, and I zipped to Kmart for a lovely new striped beach towel. It is so huge that little Logan is swallowed up by it. It will be great for the beach when we get back to California someday though, so I'll forgive him for forgetting. :o)

Grandma and Grandpa Wilkins came and visited us here in Montana during the kids' third session of lessons. Grandma came with us three times and Grandpa got to come once, too. It was fun to share this with them and I appreciated the help!!!

When next summer comes I'm sure I'll try to get them going in lessons again. Luke will be old enough next year and that will help! For now though, I'm glad we did it, but so glad it's over.

Samantha loving the water

The kids often played a game called "Mr. Shark! Mr. Shark! What time is it?" Mr. Shark says a number like "3 o'clock". Then everyone circles their arms forward into the water and steps forward 3 times. Pretty basic, but fun for the kids. Here's Samantha's turn.

My darling water boy

Logan was a fish and loved his lessons!

Luke at the pool on a day Ross got to come with me so I was actually able to take all these pictures!

Rebecca was a sweetheart at the pool most of the time. The time I wasn't paying attention she was trying to back into the pool like she'd go backwards down the stairs. Whoops!

Logan going down.....

down........

down the slide!

Whee! Let's do that again!





This little video isn't the best quality, but amusing to me. It's hard to tell, but the teacher was being "Mr. Shark" and Samantha and the little boy in her class kept wanting to run away from Mr. Shark instead of doing "shark arms" toward their teacher before she finally said, "Lunch time!" and they are supposed to run away. Oh well. When you're seven and you've got the giggles, sometimes you've gotta just go with it!