May 2025 part 1-A Wedding and Magic Island

 Ava holding Kai while he's in his sleep sack. It is so fun to watch the relationship between Kai and each of his siblings. They all adore him! Ava loves to hug and kiss him. Coen loves to hold him and tells me how cute Kai is ("Why are babies so cute?" and "Kai is my most favorite person in the world", and Audrey loves to make Kai giggle. 

A video of these two together:

Two littles in my bed one morning. This swaddle was so perfect for Kai who liked to keep his arms up by his face always.

One morning I looked down and realized that Kai and I were matching!

Sister Gray (a friend Brent met working in the temple) had a granddaughter come to Hawaii to get married. It was at the Taggart's property and we got to go! Audrey was very excited. 

It was a very small intimate wedding and so beautiful. Spencer Taggart married them.

We had a dinner afterward on their pickleball court.

At family prayer we go around the circle and each person tells the person praying that night something they'd like him/her to pray for. We started this so that the kids can pray for each other, and also so that they'd have some variety in their prayers. Something I want to remember about Audrey at this age is that every night she asks to pray that she doesn't have bad dreams. One night it was Ava's turn to pray and Audrey said "I want to say the prayer! Because last time I got a bad dream when Ava did it!" Haha. Apparently Ava didn't bless that we'd all have good dreams because she was sick of praying for that. We're working on teaching Audrey that she can say her own prayers too and bless whatever she wants!

Kai turned 4 months old!

Brent did an impromptu kids party and we invited about 10 kids from our street to have pancakes and watch a movie. They chose Who Framed Rodger Rabbit.  

The Rappleyes came to visit and leave us lots of food etc. We are sad their mission came to an end and will miss seeing them and having someone from home nearby.

We had the Packers for a few hours after church so their dad could rest, since their mom had been out of town. We walked to the "flat grass" as Audrey calls it, and played. 

Little sweetie in his church clothes.

A video of Kai laughing while eating:

A beautiful rainbow one morning! It was so brilliant- hard to capture in a picture.

I had a work training on 401k audits over a couple days and listened to much of the conference like this:

Getting very strong at tummy time:

A video of Audrey making Kai laugh. He thinks she is so funny.

A picture I took of Coen playing with the neighborhood kids (far right, white shirt). He loves to play handball and was holding his own out there!

I took a walk on the beach. My work was doing a wellness challenge and one of the things we could do was send in a picture of "What wellness looks like to me." So I sent in this picture because walking along the beach is so amazing for my mental wellness!

Brent made homemade pizza!

Hilarious picture Coen took of Kai. What a chub!

I had to take Kai to a doctor appointment in Honolulu (to make sure the bones in his head were growing correctly and his soft spot didn't close early). It's an hour+ drive each way, so I let Audrey skip preschool and she was my backseat babysitter! Kai is happy in the car as long as he has a sibling next to him. Audrey can also feed him a bottle as we drive which is super nice. 

I felt like a frazzled mom, arriving there a few minutes late despite leaving an hour and a half before the appointment time. There was traffic in the busy city, and it took me a bit to figure out which parking garage to use and where exactly the clinic was in the medical complex. I had packed Audrey a bag of things to do in the car and the doctor, and she spilled her water in the room. Luckily the doctor was very nice about everything and also said that Kai's head is completely normal. Phew!

We took advantage of being in Honolulu and went to Chick Fil A for lunch and then to explore a new beach I've been wanting to go to- Magic Island. It was so gorgeous!

Audrey told Brent, "Dad! We found a new beach where there's no sharks!" As if we see sharks regularly at our other beaches :)

I hadn't really planned on going to a beach, so I didn't have swimming suits, but Audrey still got in and waded in her white dress.

These purple trees have been in bloom all over the island and I think that's the closest thing to spring we're getting. I love them!

In April and May Audrey's behavior was getting more and more difficult. Like, really bad. We discovered she was having behavior issues at preschool (what?!). In a matter of weeks, she did the following at home: peed in a cup in her bedroom and left it, only to be discovered by me when trying to figure out the awful smell. Got into my makeup and got red lipstick in her carpet. Carved her name in her bedside table with a metal screw. Pinched kids. Dumped out the entire container of new soap on her bathroom counter. Unrolled multiple rolls of toilet paper and wasted it. Plugged up her toilet with said paper. And carved hearts in our car:

As this blog is my journal and way of remembering everything, I try to balance showing the good and the bad, but also respecting the kids' privacy and not documenting their difficulties too much. I feel like all of us surviving Audrey's sudden spike in behavior is one for the books though! Sheeeeesh.

Coen's primary activity was painting for their moms for Mother's Day:

The Young Women learned how to make boquets and made them for their moms. This was Ava's- I loved it!

We met some new friends at church and went to the beach with them. All the kids hit it off and we had lots of fun together;

Audrey drew a picture of Ava. If you zoom in, you can see she drew Ava's braces. Audrey tried to draw the picture in a mean way, but I thought it actually turned out so cute.

For my Mother's Day weekend I wanted to go on an adventure to a new beach on the eastern side of the island (Waimanalo Beach). Ava and Coen are not fans of driving for so long, so they stayed home and we brought only the younger two. Audrey was very excited about a park at this beach! Kai was happy to be there too.

We were only at the beach park for a few minutes when it started to rain and we had to wait it out for a little bit. Then the skies cleared and we walked down to the beautiful beach, and did a little photo shoot of Kai:

We ate lunch in Hawaii Kai at a pretty little spot right on the water.

Audrey wanted to show Dad the same beach from last week, so we went into Honolulu. This time we had swimming suits.

A rainbow appeared!

After the beach we went to Costco and I got their cooked shrimp. It gave me food poisoning that night! I woke up feeling so strange, threw up once, and then went back to sleep a few hours later and was ok in the morning. It was so weird! 

The kids made me a scavenger hunt to find my presents that morning. I was ok to go to church luckily and had a nice Mother's Day RS lesson and then they served us yummy acai bowls.

These cuties fill my life and give it purpose. When I was a kid, all I ever wanted to play was "house." I played with my baby dolls for years and dreamed of being a mom. Having four of my very own kids is such a dream come true and I feel so grateful for them every day.

I am still pinching myself that I got a FOURTH baby. Lucky, lucky me.

Mother's Day was also Coen's half birthday. We got this beach toy set at Costco, so gave that to him :) 

This was so funny- we discovered Kai is simultaneously scared and intrigued with balloons. Here's a video of Kai screaming at the balloon:

Lots of sweet helpers to give Kai bottles. I nurse him first, and then we give him a bottle for the second half of his meal.

Kai and I went to visit Brent's class right after devotional. Here's Brent outside his classroom chatting with a student:

The kids went swimming at BYUH pool with our neighbors:

Baby giggles because we want to bottle these up and keep them forever:

Brent and the kids have been feeding the stray cats while the lady who does it was out of town for a month. They also stop by and feed Rocket:

I took Kai to his 4 month check up. He was smiling huge gummy smiles at the doctor the entire time. He weighed 14lb 1 oz and was in the 13th percentile for his weight- up from ONE percentile! 

Part 2 of May will be continued...