Sawyer John Kolste

Our little baby, Sawyer finally made it here.  (Well, a couple weeks ago, but you know how it goes).  The delivery went really well.  I must just have a short memory, because I was surprised by how hard it all was.  Anyway, we sure are glad to have him here now.  I don't have a lot of pictures right now, so I will just post a few.  We did have his pictures taken by our friend who is a real photographer with a real camera, so those will come soon.  

 He is our smallest baby weighing in at 7 lbs 12 ozs.  

The kids have both done really well with him.  Savannah LOVES her new baby brother.  She wants to hold him all of the time, and she does really well with him.  She loves to show him off to everyone.  Maxwell doesn't really care, but occasionally he shows a little interest.  One morning, while I was getting ready, the kids were watching him in his swing and singing to him.  It was really cute, so I had to grab my camera.  Of course as soon as I pulled it out, Max started showing off, but it was still cute.

Update

Yet another random post filled with lots of pictures.  We have had a great fall and are happy that we have been able to enjoy some good Utah weather.  Here is a quick update on our family:

Matt recently took a hunting trip to Montana.  I couldn't go because it was too close to my due date, but he decided to take the kids along anyway.  They were excited to see Grumpy and Grandma Peanut, and I was excited to get to sleep in a little.  Thanks Grandma!  Matt got his deer about 4 hours into the hunt.  I think they all had a good time, and now he has been  busy making jerky.  Anyone want some?

I am having a baby soon....hopefully this week.  We are excited to meet the new little guy, and I will be happy to be able to breathe again.  It has been a pretty good pregnancy, though.  Nothing too crazy,  I'm just obsessed with chewing ice.  

Savannah is loving preschool.  She is always singing funny songs, I assume she learns there.  Some of them, I am certain are completely made up though.  She is still obsessed with any kind of animal.  If you took her to the toy store and let her pick anything she wanted, it would certainly be a stuffed animal.  She recently had a speaking part in the Primary program.  She walked right up and said her part, nice and clear.  It surprised us both a little bit.  

Maxwell certainly keeps us entertained.  He still has quite the temper, but he can be pretty darn cute too!  He loves naps, and will often sneak upstairs and put himself down for one.  He talks a LOT (it seems to run in the family), and love to play pretend.  He copies just about anything his sister does.  Max is obsessed with the neighbor's kitty, and will chase it around all day long!

My mom is doing pretty well with her treatments.  She is half way done now, which means she gets to switch to a drug that is not quite as intense.  We are hoping it will mean her side effects will be more mild.  She did get an infection and had to stay in the hospital for a few days, but it is all cleared up now.     We appreciate everyones' thoughts and prayers for our family.  

The boys all shaved their heads for mom.  Matt, Jake, and Jakers did it at our house (Miles was already bald).  Joe, Bubba, and Mike also did theirs.  They get all sorts of comments at work, since they are all bald together.

One day, when we were at my parents, we saw a baby deer in the backyard.  We brought the kids outside to see it, and were making sure they were quiet, so they wouldn't scare it away.  We soon realized it was pretty tame, and it walked right up to us.  We brought it into the garage for a little while to feed it some treats.  She has been around a few times since.  We hope she survives the winter.

Matt continues to acquire new animals for our own backyard.  A few weeks ago, at a wedding reception, Matt approaches me and says: "So, I may have just committed to taking a miniature donkey home."  Funny thing is, it didn't really surprise me at all.  He picked it up on the way home from Montana, along with our new baby goat.

We need to get a picture of the donkey, Batman.  This is our baby goat, Dandelion.  Savannah was completely in love with this little goat.  She would spend all day with it outside, and even took it to show-and-tell at preschool.  Sadly, she died a short time after we got her.  We were all pretty sad about it.  Savannah still talks about her, and wants to know if we can get another one, and name it Dandelion.  We might, but probably not until the spring.

Savannah, passing out treats for her classmates to feed the goat.  

Of course we took a trip to the pumpkin patch this fall.

 The kids painted their little pumpkins, while Matt and I carved the big ones.  This is the first time we have carved pumpkins since we were dating.  We tried to let the kids help, but they thought the guts were too disgusting.

 Maxwell, posing by our pumpkins.  They actually looked a lot better than this, I promise.  The BYU one looks funny in the picture, because the candle is showing.

Halloween was a big hit this year.  Savannah was so excited!  She kept yelling downstairs to me the night before that she couldn't sleep, because she was too excited about being able to go trick-or-treating the next day.  In the morning she was looking out the window in the backyard, and asked if the candy was already hidden out there.  I think she was confusing Halloween with Easter.

 She wanted to be a deer, but I told her I couldn't find a costume, and wasn't going to make one, so kitty-cat was the next best option.

 Maxwell was a monster, and a pretty scary one at that!

We went to our ward's trunk-or-treat, but got rained out.  It was still fun though.  Afterward, we headed to Jake and Krystal's to do a little bit of real trick-or-treating.  They were all pretty darn cute!  I think it may have been the best night of Savannah's life.  She still keeps saying that Halloween is her favorite holiday.  What can I say?  The girl loves her some candy!

Well, that about wraps it up.  Other than that, we have just been chillin' at home.

Hopefully we will have baby news soon!

Pink Party for Mom!

 A lot of you know my mom was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer.  It has been kind of a crazy month for our family.  I thought I would do a little update for those that want to know, but don't see her updates on facebook.  She is receiving treatment at Huntsman in Salt Lake.  We are grateful that she has a good team of doctors helping decide her treatments.  We received the bad news that it was inflammatory, then had some biopsies we thought confirmed it was not.  We were excited about that news, but now we know those tests were wrong, and it is for sure inflammatory.  We are hopeful, and feel confident with her doctors.  The Lord has blessed our family so much, and we appreciate all of your prayers.  She starts her chemo therapy on Monday, the 27th.  It will be a 16 week regiment where she goes in every other week.  She is planning on surgery around late January.  My mom is pretty amazing, and is one tough lady!  We love you mom!

Last week, while my sister was in town helping out, we decided to throw mom a pink chemo kick-off party.  We decorated everything pink, dressed in pink, and ate a dinner full of pink food.  It was a fun way to be together, show some support, and lighten things up.

Our pink table

A completely inappropriate, but really funny cake.

I will post occasional updates throughout her treatment.  We sure would appreciate any extra prayers in her behalf.

Since we've been home..(part 2)

I am just doing a bunch of posts together to try to get caught up.  Things have been a little crazy around here since we have been back in Utah.

Savannah has officially started preschool.  I have been nervous about how well she would do.  She doesn't adjust to new things really well.  I am happy to report though, that there were no tears from Savannah or her mother on the first day of school.

I wish I could say it has stayed that way, but she does have a hard time going on some days.  I am hoping once she realizes that she is going to school no matter what, and that Maxwell and I do not party the whole time she is gone, she will do better.

Our ward had a daddy-daughter camp out, and Savannah was so excited about it!

Uncle Joe and Jersie went along too.  I am so proud of Matt for actually taking some pictures of them.

Her dad taught her all about roasting starbursts instead of marshmallows.  She loved it since she isn't a big fan of roasted marshmallows.  Words can not express how much I love this picture!  I can't look at it without laughing.

The next week, we decided to head up hobble creek canyon to take the kids on a little hike.  It sure is fun with them all, because every little thing is so exciting to them.  We inspected all sorts of rocks, sticks, caterpillars, horse poop, suspicious looking leaves, etc.

I can't believe all of them are actually looking at the camera...well except Ashley, but babies don't count.

These two crack me up.  They are always together!  I have never seen two year olds play so well together.  Our kids are so spoiled to have so many little friends to play with all of the time.

Jaxon was so cute in his little hiking pack. 

Since we've been home....

We have been able to spend a lot of time with family, since we have been back.

All of the cousins came over one night for some dutch oven dinner, and playing in the hot tub. 

It is always a little bit of chaos, when we are all together, but we love it, and the kids love being together.

Over Labor Day, we headed to my hometown for Leamorado Days...of course.  My mom is the mayor now (I know...isn't that cool?), so we had a lot to do, to put things together.  It was a fun day.

I'm pretty sure I have this same picture from last year.  Maxwell is just a little smaller.

This sweet tractor was one of the raffle prizes.  We actually won it this year.  I was so excited!  I have probably only missed a couple of Leamorado Days since I was 4, and this is my first prize to win!

New to the festivities this year, was a little train for the kids to ride.  It was a huge hit.  My kids would have ridden in it all day long!

Maxwell took a little snooze on dad's lap, while he drove the train around.

Our little cowgirl

Matt had convinced Savannah that she wanted to ride the sheep.  He did a good job of it, because when she thought she wasn't going to be able to, she was sobbing.  Low and behold, they decided to let some more kids try, so they ran out there.  Immediately after taking this picture, and right before they let the sheep go, she changed her mind.  I think she had in mind riding a sheep like a horse where you go for a little ride, until you are ready to get off, and the sheep stops to let you off.  It probably didn't help for her to see every other kid that had tried it come walking our of the arena in tears.  (I secretly am glad she didn't ride it, but don't tell my hubby.)

Savannah and Connor, checking out the cows.

Savannah wanted me to take a picture of her snazzy new boots.  She is pretty proud of them.

Last week in Texas

Our last week in Texas, we had a big potluck dinner.  Matt and Darrick decided they needed to have a bunch of craw fish before we left the south.

The boys ate a lot, but there were way too many of them.  Unfortunately, a lot of them had to go to waste.

We also took the kids back to Brazos bend to try to see some alligators one more time.  No luck on this trip.  Just lots of bugs, and some hot, sweaty kids.

Cute Porter is the lucky one.  It is more socially acceptable for him to be naked in public.  Savannah and Max miss their cousins, and will be excited for them to come to Utah soon.

We packed up all of our stuff and started our trip home.  We made pretty good time, but did have a little accident on the way.  Someone cut us off, and we lost control of our car.  We swerved around quite a bit before finally spinning all the way around and stopping in the median facing the wrong way.  It was so scary, and I still don't know how we didn't roll.  We were pulling our car behind us on a dolly.  It swung around and banged up our other car pretty bad, but luckily we were able to keep driving and made it home.

On the way home, we stopped in New Mexico to visit with Britney (Matt's sister) and Jeff.  We couldn't believe how good the weather felt.  Our kids spent a lot of time outside, and loved playing with their cousins.

We were able to be there for baby Sam's blessing.  He is an awfully sweet baby!  Good thing we are having our own soon, because he made us kind of baby hungry.

Savannah loved being able to hold him.  She keeps talking about what a good sister she is going to be.

We are so happy to be home!  We had a lot of fun in Houston, but there is no place like home!

Brazos Bend

 

We have been trying to do some last minute things for our last week in Texas. One thing we have been wanting to do is visit a state park close by, Brazos Bend.

Of course, I have to mention it was very HOT!  But it was really pretty.  We walked along a trail that circled around the lake hoping to see some wildlife.

Maxwell's favorite part was throwing rocks into the water of course.  What little boy doesn't love that?

Matt, trying to point out a frog to the kids. 

We were expecting to see a lot of alligators, since the lake that is covered with them is close by.  We walked most of the trail and only spotted one little one out in the water, but right toward the end, we were looking all over and suddenly saw this guy:

It was kind of creepy.  He was just a couple feet away from the trail we were on.  Matt was pretty excited.  Then, on the other side of the trail we noticed this guy:

It is hard to tell, but he was really big.  I was not a fan of being that close to them, especially since we didn't even notice they were right by us.

We left the big guy alone, but the smaller one was somehow provoked to get up and walk around.  It may have had something to do with Matt trying to grab his tail.

While I am impressed with my hubby's manly animal catching skills, I was not very happy about him trying to catch this alligator. Sorry mom, I tried to stop him. The alligator was hissing like crazy, and I was still worried big guy was going to decide to come help him out.  Luckily Matt did not bring this one home.  I think the alligators is what he is going to miss the most about Texas.