It's a girl!

On December 8th at 8:08am we had a new addition to our family. Kate Marx was born weighing 6lbs 2oz and is 18 1/2 inches long. We are all so excited to have her here especially Mom. (Kate 2 days old)

She is so much smaller than our boys were. Although her feet and fingers are long and skinny.

(Kate 1 week old)

The proud Daddy. Preston has to hold her every chance he gets. He has been worried about what to do with a little girl, but I can already see she is going to be Daddy's little girl. She has him wrapped around her little finger.

Kayson has been my big helper. Since I can't move around very fast, he helps me by getting diapers, and other things I need.

Peyton loves his little sister. Every time he sees her he says, "She's so cute, huh". He likes to pick out her clothes for the day. Although she doesn't have anything that fits her right now. For the first 2 days she wouldn't eat anything. It was really sad and frustrating. She dropped her weight down to 5lbs 6oz. I was getting really worried, but since then she has figured the eating thing out and is starting to gain the weight back. At 6 days, she had gained 7 oz and weighed 5lbs 13 oz.

Tyson loves his baby. He loves to hold her and thinks she is his. He of all my boys is having the hardest time. He wants to sit on his mom's lap all the time. It's hard because I know he is missing the time he had with his mom before the baby. He has been wrapping himself up in all the baby blankets, laying down in the bassinet, and has even tried to drink one of her bottles.

Tyson with some of his sisters bows in his hair. He wants to have everything his sister has.

Preston has been so good to me and the boys. He has taken off quite a few days of work to help out. Besides cleaning the house, picking up kids from kindergarten, and making sure everyone gets fed, he has been playing with the boys and making sure they have a good time with their dad. He took them sledding yesterday. They had a ball.

Peyton fell in the snow a few times and got his face cold, but he was a good sport about it most of the time.

Kayson loves the snow and has been playing in it everyday since it has snowed.

Tyson loves the snow, but gets cold fast and wants to go inside.

Kayson's Birthday

Happy Birthday Kayson! 6 Years Old!

Grandma & Grandpa came over for cake and icecream.

Kayson blowing out his candles. Tyson was by his side ready to dig into the cake.

We had a pinata. Peyton tried his best.

Kayson gave a couple of good swings too.

One of Kayson's cousins wanted to buy Kayson a birthday gift with her own money, so she went down the street to a yard sale and got him this cowboy hat.

Peyton went with his mom to get Kayson a new bike. He did a really good job keeping a secret.

Kayson giving Peyton a hug and telling him "Thanks" for his new bike. He had a great birthday. He is getting so big. It's hard for me to see him growing up. He's going to Kindergarten in a couple of weeks and I'm sad that he will be gone for part of the day. He helps me out so much. He has always been my boy that never wants to dissappoint his mom or dad. I love you Kayson!

Happy Birthday!

Summer Review

This summer seems to have gone by fast. We have had so much going on. I feel like we haven't had a free day fof a long time. So since I've been a slacker on updating my blog, here's a quick catch-up page. Here's what our summer has been like.
Kayson has been taking piano lessons and had his first recital. He did great!

Preston took us all on our frist trip to catch crawdads. We had a ball.

Preston even got a little wet trying to get the ones that fell out of the bucket.
Here's a picture of some that we kept. We caught around 300 of them.

This is kind of hard to see, but this chipmunk kept coming close to us. So I held out a chip and it came and ate it right out of my hand. It was really neat.
We did some camping and fishing. We love the outdoors. Tyson loved watching his brothers and dad catch fish.
Kayson with his cousin Braden fishing at the Nielsen reunion. He's following in his dad's footsteps.

These aren't goose eggs. These are mosquito bites. He got them all over his forehead. It looked like someone took a hammer to his head. His eyes even got a little puffy. He looked pretty beat by the time we got home.
Kayson & Peyton down at Polecreek cave.
I love the mountains. It's so pretty up there. Peyton likes being up there too.
We always return home a lot dirtier than we came.

Peyton and his cousin Parker trying to catch some waterballons in their towel. We did a lot of fun water games.

Preston & I played a lot of softball. Unfortunately, there were some injuries.

Preston's ankle he sprained in a softball game.

We had a great summer, but I think we are all exhausted. We are all ready to get back into our old routines.

Peyton after one of our many rides home from family activites.

Tyson enjoyed the summer too.

That was a brief review of our summer. I'll try to do a better job updating from now on.

Busy Week

I'm doing some catch up. A few weeks ago we got a new addition to the Marx family, a trampoline. The boys had had a rough month. There has been a lot of fighting and whining. We decided to try to bribe them into being good. We made a chart for the boys and told them that if they cold fill up all the spots with stickers they could get a trampoline. Preston and I had already talked about getting one for the boys. This way we could hit two birds with one stone. The boys tried really hard. The fighting slowed down and they were sharing their toys. Doing everything they could to gain stickers on their chart. There were still times they had to take stickers off for being bad. So far there haven't been any injuries (knock on wood). The kids love it.

(Left: Kayson can already do front flips. This picture looks like he landed on his head, but he rotated around and landed on his bum.)

This past week we also had our first T-ball games. Both boys hit the ball really well. Kayson even got some outs at first base. Peyton was so funny to watch. He is the youngest on the team. His shirt is so big, it comes down to his shins. They really liked playing. They also like that someone brings a after-the-game treat every game.

We also planted a garden this week. We did some corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and some squash. We'll have to see what survives. The other day, I watered the garden with the sprinklers. The boys started to run through it. They were really good to stay on the side of the garden and not run through it. Kind of pathetic that they had to use the sprinkler in the garden to run through. One day we'll have a lawn in the back yard they can play on.

Speaking of yards, this week we've been getting our front yard ready to put in. Preston has been working on our sprinkling system in the front yard and has almost finished it. The boys have been a lot of help with it also. Tyson just likes being outside. He sometimes isn't as big of a help as the older boys.

Tyson found some water in a big hole and thought it looked like a good swimming pool.

Kayson really did help his dad a lot. He even helped clean up the dirt off the sidewalk when they were done.

Graduation

On Friday, Kayson graduated from preschool. He is getting so big. It's kind of sad to think that I have a son that is going to be in Kindergarten next fall. After his graduation, I talked with him and told him that I was proud of him. He was really cute and said that he was so happy that "his eyes were starting to drip". He is such a soft-hearted little boy.

This is Kayson getting his graduation certificate.

Lake Powell

Lake Powell

I finally got the camera back so now I can show the Lake Powell pictures. Preston,Kayson, Preston's dad and his brother Sterling went down to Lake Powell last Wednesday and stayed until Saturday. Kayson had a blast. When he came home, he was so excited to tell everyone what kind of fish they caught and how little his Uncle Sterling's fish was.

This is one of Sterling's fish. Believe it or not, this wasn't the smallest fish Sterling caught on the trip.

This is Kayson wearing Preston's jacket so he wouldn't get wet.

The boys had a few problems when they got to the lake. First, when they went to start the boat, the battery didn't work. Luckily they found someone with a charger and were able to get the boat started. The next problem was when they tried to set up camp. They went to put up the tent, and when they unrolled it, there weren't any poles in it to set it up with. So they just layed it out flat and slept under the stars.

Kayson would just lay down and take a nap when he was done fishing.

Kayson wanted his picture on the bridge.

While the older boys were at Lake Powell, Mom and Peyton and Tyson stayed home. Peyton and I went to Monsters Vs Aliens the movie. It was nice to spend some one-on-one time with him. We had a lot of fun when they were gone, but we were excited to see them come home.

This wasn't at Lake Powell, but I just wanted to show some cute pictures of my handsome boys. The boys have their own bathroom upstairs, but I think they have taken more baths in my tub than theirs.
This is a few of us waiting in the car. I had to make sure I didn't get out of the car because Tyson loves to lock the doors. While the boys were gone to Lake Powell, my mom watched Tyson while I went with Peyton to rent a movie. When I had gotten back, my mom was outside walking around the car. Apparently she wanted to move her car from one side of the driveway to the other. She let Tyson sit up in the driver seat and pretend to drive. After she moved it, she got out and went around to open the other door. As she did this, he locked at the doors. She had happened to have both set of keys in the car. Luckily the car was parked in the cool garage. We spent 30 minutes trying to get him to push the unlock button. He had a blast in there. He pushed all the buttons, made faces as he pushed his face up against the window, and even found some chocolate candies in the car. He had a ball! With the help of a flashlight shining on the unlock button, we finally got him out. He never cried the whole time he was in there. I think he had a ball in there.

That's all I will do today.