Many firsts...

The theme of "Firsts" came to mind as I started working on this blog post as the past few months have held many firsts for our family!

On July 20th our darling Kinley celebrated her first birthday! She makes us smile every day with her happy personality and determined nature! She started walking on her birthday, which then quickly turned to running! She is always on the move and has now mastered climbing up on everything that she can push herself on to. Busy would be an appropriate word to describe her daily routine!

On the day of her birthday we celebrated as a family with cupcakes. This was her first taste of sweets and as you can see from the smile on her face she thought the cupcake was pretty yummy!

Kinsie thought it would be fun to celebrate Kinley and her birthdays together, so we held an ice cream party with our friends in our backyard near Kinley's birthday and then had a family party at our home on Kinsie's birthday. Kinsie wanted a polka dot themed party, so everything was decorated with polka dots! (For some reason the picture of Kinsie's birthday cake did not upload, but it was a circle with polka dots!)

Caden started Kindergarten on August 17th!

He is doing so well with the transition (and mommy is too!).

So far his favorite part about school is art class!

This past Saturday was our first home ISU football game of the season. Although the weather was pretty dreary, we had a great day with friends and family! It was also our nephew Adler's eighth birthday and Brandi arranged for Cy and some of the spirit squad members to visit our tailgate.

This is the Iowa State cake that I made for Adler's birthday.

And another first is that Kinley has started using a fork to eat!

And today was Kinsie's first day of preschool!

New Pictures

We had Caden, Kinsie and Kinley's pictures taken recently at Portrait Innovations.

They turned out very cute!

Kinsie (3.5 years), Caden (5.5 years) and Kinley (10 months)

End of May

The end of May was a busy time at the Shay house!

Kinsie celebrated her last day of preschool with a program for family and friends. Along with her classmates, she sang all of the songs that they had learned throughout the school year. She also had artwork displayed throughout the room that we were able to see and take home with us, and we were also able to see pictures that the teachers had taken at the different events they had participated in. Ater the program we were treated to cookies and lemonade! Below is a picture of Kinsie with her teachers, Miss Hope and Miss Diana.

Kinsie and Caden's last days of preschool both fell on the same day, so we had a full day of celebrating! After Kinsie's program we went to lunch at the Iowa Machine Shed and then in the afternoon the kids had fun opening their gifts from Cass, Kinley and me for doing such a great job in school. They loved their new pillow pets!

That evening was Caden's preschool program and graduation ceremony. It is very hard to believe that he will be attending Kindergarten in the Fall! He and his classmates sang songs and then he showed us his artwork that was on display. Both Caden and Kinsie were very excited to have Papa Curt and Grandma Terry there to celebrate their special day!

Caden and Miss Niki

Caden and Miss Norie

Caden and Miss Dale

May also marked the end of the spring season of flag football for Caden.

He did a great job again this season!

We also made it to a few parks. This swing is one of Caden and Kinsie's favorites!

Kinsie wrapped up her first gymnastics class and is excited to be moving on to the next level when she begins the summer session! On the final day of class, I was able to go into the gym with her and watch her show off her skills up close!

Miss Monica, Kinsie and Miss Nicole

Kinsie started playing soccer and is having a lot of fun!

This past Saturday evening our neighbors fired up their fire pit and several of our families got together for smores. The kids all had a lot of fun making their treats and playing together!

At the end of May we also attended the Smokin' in the Junction BBQ contest in Valley Junction where the 2 Shay BBQ team participated in the competition. They did a great job and we had a lot of fun hanging out with everyone! Unfortunately, I did not get my camera out for any pictures!

May

The month of May has been a busy one so far!

Kinley continues to grow and change every day! She is busy crawling and exploring new places, pulling herself up to anything that she can, clapping and moving to music. She is such a happy little girl and is very loved by her big brother and sister!

Kinsie is participating in a soccer league and is having a lot of fun! Cass and I do not know much about soccer so we are hoping she picks up a lot of skills at practice!! She is still taking gymnastics and her last day of three year old preschool is this Thursday.

Caden is participating in flag football again this Spring and will graduate from preschool on Thursday. I do not think that this mommy is ready for that!

April

Once again time has gotten away from me with updating our blog!

Here are some pictures from the month of April.

Miss Kinley turned 9 months on April 20th! She is such a happy little girl! She is no longer content to sit still, pulls herself up to stand, can move to a sitting postion from laying down and just started to crawl yesterday! She has also started picking up food to feed herself and especially enjoys eating puffs! Papa Curt has given her the nickname of Smiley due to the bright smile that is always on her face!
One of Kinley's favorite things to do right now is swing!

We recently had new carpet put in our living room and Kinley is fascinated by it!
She spends a lot of time examining it with her fingers!

The kids have been so happy to be spending more time outside. We laughed one night when Kinsie fell asleep at 7:00 pm on the steps! She was very worn out from playing outside!

In preparation for Easter we colored eggs. The dye kit came with a "magic" wax crayon that the kids could use to write on the eggs. After dipping the eggs into the dye they could see the words and drawings that they had made on the eggs.

Our sweet little bunny kicked back in her seat and watched

as Caden and Kinsie colored the eggs!

Often when I am working in the kitchen I will set Kinley down in front of our toy refrigerator manets. She loves playing with them, but has also become very fascinated with the refrigerator door. She likes to reach her hand out and stop it from closing when I am taking things in and out. She is especially curious of the items that are in the door. One night after dinner she was able to get ahold of this bottle of chocolate syrup. She thought the lid was very yummy!

Yummy!

This past Friday we traveled to the farm for the holiday weekend. We were very blessed to spend time with all of our family, including our cousins Brian and Jeff and their families. Their children are the same ages as Brandi's and ours and they always have so much fun together! With ten children ages 9 down to 9 months and four dogs running round it was a bit chaotic, but a lot of fun! Friday evening we had pizza at Brandi and Tory's house and the kids played. On Saturday we attended the annual Tingley Easter egg hunt and then had dinner with the family that evening.

All of the cousins enjoying tacos at Uncle Mel and Aunt Doris' house.

As we were setting out Easter baskets Saturday night Caden thought the Easter bunny might need some help identifying which basket belonged to each child, so he left this note for the Easter Bunny to let him know what color each of their baskets were!

The kids were all very excited when they woke up Sunday morning to find that the Easter bunny had filled their baskets with a lot of goodies!

Kinsie's favorite gift was her pair of Sketchers light up shoes!

It was so fun to watch Kinley with her Easter basket!

Uncle Mel and Aunt Doris hosted Easter lunch at their house. Before lunch the kids participated in our annual Easter egg hunt...the Easter bunny is always very generous! (Ironicly he gets a lot of help from our family pediatric dentist...I think he is trying to add some more business!!) Each year we take this same picture of the kids at the starting line...it is fun to see look back and see how they have all grown and how our line has grown with each new addition to the family!

Caden and Kinsie searching for some candy.

Kinsie and Laurel

Kinley taking in all of the excitement!

Enjoying some candy!

Kinsie has been very afraid of dogs, but this past weekend she overcame her fear and now she loves to play with them! She loved spending time with the four labs that were running around and now asks daily if she can have a dog!

All of the kids took turns taking four wheeler rides with Brian!

The kids enjoying a yummy Easter lunch!

With all of the fun and excitement it was difficult to get them all to sit down for very long!