6th Grade Promotion

My Futures So Bright, I Have to Wear SHADES!

I cant believe Tyler is old enough to be "promoting" from 6th grade. I officially have a child in Middle School. WOW! At the end of 6th Grade they have a promotion. The Principal gave a great speech about how they choose to use the word promotion, because it denotes moving on to bigger and better things whereas graduate means the end of something. They want to emphasize that these kids are moving on to something better in Middle School, it was a pretty good speech. Anyway, here are some pics of my biggest guy "promoting" from the 6th grade.

Above is Tyler in the 6th Grade Chorus. They treated us to a few fun songs.

Tyler receiving his "diploma" from his teacher Mr. K.

Posing after receiving his diploma.

Me and my boy

Tyler with a few of his friends.

Mrs. Constantine his 5th Grade Teacher.

Mr. K 6th Grade Teacher.

So, here is to growing up! Congrats Tyler on all the hard work in your elementary school years.

Baseball and piano

So the SYSA baseball season has officially begun. Abi's first year playing and she has been so excited. Unfortunately her first practice did not go so well and she "got scared" and would not participate. It will take her a while to get used to the idea. Doesnt help that she is the only girl on the team, but somehow I think she might be used to that ;) Noah's first practice was tonight and he had a blast. This will keep us pretty busy, thursday we have 3 practices at the same time at different places. Luckily they are all relatively close and between Jim and I we can work it all out. Cant wait for the games to get going next week. Luckily most of the games are all at the South Hill Sports complex, so Tues and Thurs evenings will be hanging out there for 3 or 4 hours playing baseball.

Tyler had his very first piano lesson today. He is LOVING it. Below is a video of him practicing before bed tonight. He has been very excited to get started on this new skill. It really was his very first piano lesson today and look at what he can do already!!!!

Thats all for tonight. Baseball and piano pretty much sums up our life for a while. It is so great to watch your kids playing and having fun as well as learning new skills and enjoying it.

So I am a total slacker!!!!

I just cant seem to find the time to blog anymore. Sorry guys. Here are some pics to get you up to speed on our life as of late.

We had a rough go of it for a bit with all the little kids catching a pretty harsh case of pneumonia and RSV. Little Jameson above spent 5 days in the hospital. Daniel and Abi (below) spent 1 night in the hospital. James was with Jameson as he was getting discharged while I was with Daniel and Abi in the ER getting admitted.

Daniel and Abi recovered fast and were out of the hospital the next day. I cant really say they enjoyed being in the same room becuase they were sick and in the hospital. LOL. It was one long week, but they all got healthy and are back to their normal selves. I get nervous at any runny nose or cough now, but they are doing well. We have such wonderful church members who helped with childcare, cleaning, and bringing us meals. Not to mention one great Visiting Teacher who took the top half kids a few times as well as gave me a great shoulder to cry on. Thanks to all who helped out. We really do appreciate it.

Other than the hospital stay, nothing too SHOCKING has been going on at the Snook house. We are just hanging out... Bouncing on the trampoline....

Enjoying hot dogs bigger than our heads....

Getting in touch with the ape inside of each of us....

Jumping for joy at the blessings we see each day....

Reaching for the sky at a higher potential in each one of us...

Spending some family time on hikes outdoors...

And enjoying some great bedtime stories....

I very much enjoy peaking at the world through the eyes of these little guys....

As they strap themselves in tight to me...

With working full time, school full time, and some various other duties (like laundry, kids, etc) I am staying very busy. One thing I am very grateful for is a loving family. I enjoy each moment I spend with these kiddos and thank my Heavenly Father every day for the chance to be their mother. I love them all and have learned a lot from each one.

Better School Pictures

With a built in photographer in our family, we have chosen to not pay for anymore unsuccessful "school" pictures for the kids. Instead, James and I take the kids to the park on a sunny fall afternoon and get new pictures of each one. Here are this years pictures.

Jameson is just growing so fast and getting so big. I cannot believe that he is 20 months, almost 21 months old now. It sure does go fast. He is into EVERYTHING! Climbing all over the place and generally getting himself into all kinds of trouble. Good thing he is so darn cute! LOL. We love his bubbly personality. He has shown his love for music and anytime he hears music from a comercial, the radio, or even his sister singing he will stop what he is doing and do a little baby dancing jig for us. He is a little ham and is always strutting his stuff. If it is not music he is enjoying, it is Elmo! The kid is an Elmo addict! He has few words that he can say, the typical Mama, Dada, Ty-Ty, and of course Elmo. Elmo and music though are nothing compared to his big bro Ty-Ty. Those two are best buds and Ty-Ty is such a wonderful help with his lil brother. Jameson is very fond of Tyler and I think Tyler is pretty darn attached to Jameson.

Jameson at 18 months old

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Daniel is 3-1/2 now and is growing fast as well. He has mastered potty-training (yay) and is showing the usual 3 year old interest in Buzz Lightyear and Woody. Daniel is a goofy little guy who is always making us laugh. He is always coming up with funny little things to entertain everyone. His future career may indeed be the stand up comedian!

Daniel at 3-1/2

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Abi has proven to be a little Princess Diva as we like to call her. She definitely rules the roost most of the time. James is very thankful to only have one melodramatic daughter on his hands. LOL. She can be very dramatic when she doesnt get what she wants, but boy is it fun to have a "shopping buddy!" I look forward to the days when we can go to lunch and get our nails done and do a bit of shopping together. Just her and I chillin as girls whilst the boys are out playing with mud and junk. Those will be fun times. I cannot believe that she is almost 5 and ready to start Kindergarten next year. She is looking forward to being in the same school as her brothers.

Abigail at 4-1/2

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Noah is doing wonderfully! He is learning to read and getting better at writing every day. For Christmas he got a Tag reader and he enjoys using that to build his reading skills. It is so fun to see him do things on his own. He is still very shy and worried about a lot of things, but I see progress every day. He loves being in 1st grade and cant wait to be able to read like the big boys so he can read things like Harry Potter and Fablehaven. He is happy with Geronimo Stilton being read to him for now and working out words with his Tag reading system. It is great to see him learning and growing each and every day.

Noah 7

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Jacob is a big 3rd grader now. He is an amazing reader and is on the 4th Harry Potter book and 3rd Fablehaven and somewhere around the 2nd Percy Jackson. He is very much enjoying reading the same books that Tyler has been reading for the past few years and being able to talk to him about the storyline and so on. It is fun to see this kind of interaction between these two boys. Usually Jacob is in the midst of reading 4 books at one time because as he says "he might get bored with one for a while so he has a back up, or 2, or 3..." LOL. He is a great kid. He is still a challenge at times with his ADHD stuff, but we have learned how to work through things a bit better and as long as he is making such good progress with school, I cannot complain at all. His teacher is amazed at all the ideas he has floating in that head of his and loves to read his daily writting, because he always has such great things to say. Along with reading, he has taken well to math and science and just generally enjoys school alot. I am grateful for this in my children. They have all loved school so much.

Jacob 9

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Tyler is in the 6th grade. Again, I cannot believe how time has gone by so fast. He is just a wonderful child. Always willing to help with the little brothers and sister, eager to play with them, and ready to help us with anything we need. I cannot live my life without Tyler there assisting me in my daily routine. He is truly a blessing to this family. Him and Jameson have developed a special bond and they very much enjoy playing with each other. Anytime we need Jameson out of the room (like when we are doing dishes and he is pulling all the dirty dishes out of the dishwasher faster than we can put them in) Tyler is ready to take him away and keep him occupied. Tyler too is doing wonderfully in school. He has taken a few tests at school and has scored "off the charts" according to his teacher. This year he has a great teacher who encourages these kids at such a critical juncture in their lives. He is trying to prepare them for the crazy world of middle school and I am impressed by his dedication and love for his kids. Tyler is blessed to have a great teacher like him. Tyler enjoys reading, math, science, and sports. He will be starting basketball soon for the school and is very excited about this.

Tyler 11

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This is a picture we tried to get off all of them crossing the bridge together. It is okay, but did not work exactly how I was picturing it. It was very hard to get Jameson to cooperate. It did turn out good though. I like how most all attention is focused on Jameson in the middle.

This is the one that we used for our Christmas Card this year. We tried to get everyone, including Jameson, to hold hands while walking towards the pond. Alas, Jameson proved uncooperative again in regards to holding hands with these guys. They kept pulling him over and such. We decided to let Jameson hang back and see what happened. We sent the big kids off walking towards the pond while holding hands and Jameson turned to look at us (probably checking to see if we were coming, LOL). This is the shot we got and I loved it!

Anyway, those are our school pictures this year. A friend photographer calls them "better school pictures" and takes them every year for her kids and some clients. Jim is interested in starting to do more of this kind of thing as well. We will see how that all pans out. It seems to be a pretty good business, once you get the client base going an so on.

Tyler

Well, our soccer season has come to an end. We are sad to see it go, but also very releived. It added quite a bit of caos to our little world taking 3 boys to different fields for practices 4 nights during the week and then 3 soccer games, usually at different fields ALL day on Saturdays. It was a busy time so I am glad that is over and we can get back to normalcy. But, I will miss seeing the boys in action. They had a wonderful time and it was fun to "get out of the house" for some exercise and sun.

All 3 boys participated in the Wendle Tournament last weekend, but Tyler's age group competed for championship. It was a rough first few games for Tyler's team, but towards the end of the season they really started coming together as a team and it showed during the tournament.

Their first game was on Saturday morning. They led most of the game 2-1, but ended up giving up a few undeserved goals in the last few minutes, mostly due to tired boys. They lost 4-3, but fought very hard to stay alive in that game. Their next game was Saturday evening and they slammed that team 9-1. The last game was on Sunday, which we did not participate in, but apparently they won this game as well putting them into the championship game. They were playing for 1st or 2nd place. Tyler's coach called after the game and said that they tied 7-7 so they had to go into a tie-breaker shootout, which they ended up loosing by 1 point. That means that Tyler's team got 2nd place overall for his age group. WooHoo. Way to go Tyler. They had a medal for Tyler, which we picked up a few days later. It sounds like it was a fun game to watch and the boys did an excellent job. They should all be proud of themselves.

Here is Tyler with his medal and a trophy that his coach got for the team. What a great soccer season. I am so proud of the hard work Tyler put into learning this new skill and the success he achieved with such hard work and determination. Way to go Tyler, your are AWESOME!

Soccer 2009

The boys are enjoying SYSA (Spokane Youth Sports Association) soccer this spring. It is so much fun to watch them play and enjoy themselves. It has made our life completely upside down busy with practices for each of them during the week at different places and games all on Saturday at different places, but so far we have made it work and it has been a blast. Jim and I usually have to tag team the kids and split up, he and I taking 1/2 of the kids and heading off in different directions. They are having a ball and doing great, learning some new skills, and enjoying themselves.

Our 3 Snook Soccer Studs!

Our little Noah is so fun to watch. His coach is doing well with him and it is great to see him grow so much over this past year. He has really begun to interact more with other kids his age and we are learning to work with his deficits. I was not sure how he would do at an "organized" sport, but I have to say now that it is THE best thing we could have done for him. He is enjoying himself so much and have a great time. He even almost scored twice now. He has his moments of "watching butterflies" out there, but he is starting to pay more attention and have a ball. I am so proud of him and the progress he has made in his little life. He has grown so much this year and I am so glad that he is my son and I get to see all these milestones and witness all this progress for him. Way to go Noah!

Here is Jacob really giving it his all. Wow has he really found something he likes to do. It is so good for him to get out there in practice and run off all the extra energy he seems to have in that little body of his. At today's game, his coach practiced a lot with him beforehand in the goalie position. He was doing so awesome. He was so excited to get a chance to play goalie. He got out there and had a ball doing it. he made one really good save, but good for his team the rest of the time he was in the goalie position, all he did was stand around. Seems our team dominated and we were down on the other end of the field most of the time. Jacob had fun and stayed in his goalie stance the whole time he was out there. He was so cute to watch. He really is excited about playing the goalie position. I am happy that he has found something he likes so much and can have fun doing (and something that can wear him out LOL.)

Tyler is having a great time also. His team is in an older age group so he has a bigger field, bigger goals, etc. It gets pretty intense at his games sometimes with a crowd of parents, family, and friends cheering on those players. It is amazing to watch. Tyler has done soccer before, but it was coached by High School kids and they pretty much just let them run around and kick the ball. This is his first "real" soccer experience and he is doing great. He is out there keeping up with kids that have been playing for a few years and making some pretty cool moves. He is getting a hang of dribbling and running at the same time. LOL. It is fun to watch them grow and gain new skills. Keep up the good work buddy!

They are all halfway through their seasons. They have had 3 games and have 3 more games to go. I wish them all luck. We have a few week break after soccer and then start into baseball. that will be a lot of fun to watch as well. I hope they continue to be so active and have fun playing sports. James and I are both big sports fans so it is great to have kids that want to be out there doing it. LETS GO SNOOKS!!!

Blue and Gold Banquet

With 2 boys in Cub Scouts, this year we had the chance to make 2 cakes for the Blue and Gold Banquet. The theme was the United States, so the boys decided on what they wanted to do.Jacob wanted to do a flag. He chose the Betsy Ross Flag.

Here he is learning how to use the star tip and putting stars on the flag. As you can see it is just a basic rectangle cake pan decorated with red, white, and blue frosting. We got the can of red and blue, I thought that would be easier with the lines and such. Before we put the stars on, we marked on the blue with a toothpick the position for each star, so we would not end up with a lopsided circle.

Tyler really wanted to do a boat cake. He wanted the Mayflower. I was hesitant to do the cake at first, but then I remembered that for his birthday we got a SD car cake pan. I figured that we could use that and turn the car on its top giving a basic boat shape and then cut/shave it into an actual boat shape. It turned out pretty good, I think.

We had fun decorating it and cutting it up. The first cut to put the back and deck into the boat, it actually fell apart. I was afraid that we were done for right there. Luckily I brought home a lot of chopsticks from a party at work, so we used 3 chopsticks from back to front that held the whole thing together. Covered in icing you never even see them. LOL.

The front chopstick that angles out is actually holding the front of the boat together as well. Towards the end of putting it together, the front end started to crumble and fall apart. I was afraid we were going to loose it before the night actaully came. Tyler said if it did then we would just have a crashed Mayflower and explain how thankful we should be that this did not really happen. He had a great spirit about it. I was afraid he would be upset if it fell apart, but he really proved that he understood how hard of a task it was. he did a great job decorating it.

Here he is piping Mayflower onto the back of it with black icing. He also put the sails together and figured out how to do the crowsnest. We were tempted to put a few lego guys on deck and in the crowsnest, but did not want to tempt fate in holding the boat together.

Finished Mayflower


Finished Betsy Ross Flag

Both finished cakes together.

It was a pretty fun night. I was a bit overwhelmed at the thought of putting together 2 cakes with working full time and all, but it got done with happy boys in the end. I could not ask for anything more. They had a great time, learned a few things about cake decorating, and of course had fun eating it all as well.

Tyler's cake won Most Original and Jacob's cake won Most All American.

Basketball Game

Tyler starts our long journey into the wonderful world of school sports. Sheridan Elementary 5th and 6th grade students get to play sports throughout the year. The basketball season started in January and they had their first game tonight against Whitman Elementary. Tyler had a blast and it was fun for us to watch him as well.



They had quite a few 6 minute games that they rotated all the boys into. Tyler got to play in 3 of the games. He did a great job. It is amazing the different sizes of all the kids out there. Tyler had to guard mostly kids twice his size, so that was a bit scary for him, but other than that he had a lot of fun. We are looking forward to many years of sports in the future.


Tyler is Green #27 in the video

The boys sledding

We decided to make a backyard sledding run for the kids to enjoy. It is small, but they had a blast going down the little hill we made.

There is just a bit of a slope to our backyard, so after piling snow up we were able to make a nice little run for the boys. Tyler and Jacob really had some fun. Here is some video of them going down.

Towards the end, Tyler added a few bumps and was trying to catch some air while sledding. He had a great time.

First Day of school

We have 3 in school this year. It is amazing to think that I will only have 3 kids at home during the day. Boy, what will I do with all my spare time. LOL. We have been anxiously awaiting the first day of school, so it was a releif to finally be at this point.
Tyler is in 5th Grade this year. He has been very excited to get the chance to make some friends here in Spokane. Since I am posting this very late, I can already tell you that he has become friends with a boy who is in both his class at school and also at church. He is a triplet with a brother and sister in the 5th grade also, so he has made some good friends and I cant complain too much. He enjoys walking home from school with them every day. It is great to see him growing up.

Jacob is in the 2nd grade this year. Wow, I cannot believe it. He is getting big so very fast. Jacob is very excited to be reading and getting to a point where he can keep up with Tyler a bit better. He is learning and growing and becoming a great student. We are excited for the progress he has made.

Noah is our big Kindergartener. His big day is finally here. We are so proud of him and all the work he has put in the last year to get to this point. The school we are going to this year has all day kindergarten, so he is at school all day with his brothers. This is so great for him (as well as for Mom). He enjoys school very much, but it does wear him out by the end of the week. I am excited to see him start his school career and begin all the fun stages we have started with the older boys. It is amazing that he is at this point already. Yeah Noah.

I am so very proud of all 3 of my school boys. They are doing so well and enjoying school so much. I wish them all a good time at school this year.

Tyler's 10th Birthday

Double Digit boy. I am so proud of Tyler. He has grown into quite the young man. I cant really call him a little boy anymore, can I? It is amazing to think that 10 years has gone by, he has been a joy the whole time.

There are so many things about Tyler that it is hard to narrow it down to just a few. Here is a list of 10 wonderful things about Tyler for his 10 years of life.

• The bestest big brother that anyone could ever have. He plays with, takes care of, and looks out for each and every one of his brothers and his little sister.
• Loves cars, bikes, skateboards, and as he tells me anything with wheels. It is fascinating to watch his mind work when it comes to vehicles of all kinds.
• Has taken after his mom and loves to read. I enjoy being able to read the same books as he does and discussing things with him. We have enjoyed reading the Harry Potter Series together and he is now following me in reading the Twilight Series. It is great to have a reading buddy.
• He enjoys school so much and is eager to learn and grow.
• He loves Cub Scouts and is always eager to earn whatever badge I put in front of him.
• He is a hard worker. If I give him a task, he accepts it and does it to the best of his ability. He has taken very nicely to emptying the dishwasher and vacuuming, something I need help with more and more these days. He is happy to help and tries hard to get it all done with a smile on his face.
• He is the funniest 10 year old I have the pleasure of knowing. He is quickwitted and comes up with some very funny things just in the spur of the moment. One funny recently was stated in the wake of me teasing him that I was going to "break his bum" for some teasing to me of his own. He immediately turned and said, "Don't break my bum, It alread has a crack in it!" Okay, so crude humor, but funny nonetheless. He is always able to come up with these kinds of things so fast.
• He loves sports and outdoor fun. This is exciting for Jim and I as we were both sports people ourselves growing up. It will be fun watching him (and the others) grow into whatever sport they choose.
• He has a great personality that is very easy for anyone to get along with. He is a bit shy (like his mother), but once he opens up, it is so easy to just like him.
• He has such a wonderful spirit about him. He has such wonderful faith in the gospel that comes very easy for him. He never doubts or questions anything, he just simply believes. He is a constant reminder of how easy the gospel truly is and how we just need to simply believe. Tyler loves the Lord and always thinks of what the correct thing to do is. His wonderful spirit is just an added blessing in our home.

We love you Tyler!! Happy 10th Birthday!!