Skylar

The above picture is our final picture as a family of 5. We were on our way to church when we got a phone call from my doctors office asking us if we could move up the C-Section time to as soon as possible. We made it to the parking lot of the church and decided to grab our bags and head over to the hospital immediately. We are dressed in our church clothes, dropped the kids off at Kelly's parents house where we snapped this last picture.

It's official, we can finally change our blog title to "K Kerr Six". Our newest addition, Skylar Konalani Kerr was born December 18, 2011. She was 6 pounds 9 ounces and 19 inches long. This was the first year that we weren't able to get our first full family photo at the hospital. Because it is flu season all children under the age of 16 years old are unable to visit patients. The kids were able to stop by the hospital but had to look at their sister through a window. I unfortunately was unable to see them until I was discharged from the hospital. Skylar was a planned C-Section. Because I had Mylie as a C-Section I could not be given medication that would induce me without causing complications to my old C-Section scar. I was only dialated to half a centemeter at 39 weeks so it was very likely that I would have to have a C-Section regardless. In order to be home for Christmas I opted to have her on the 18th, which had to be planned anyways since Skylar had turned sideways. Even though she turned back at my last Doctor appointment I still chose to have the C-Section. Below is the first photo of Kelly, Me and Skylar in the operating room right after she was born.

Here is a picture of our sweet girl.The proud Daddy after we got her ready in her going home outfit. Mommy and her newest baby.The kids love their new little sister. They can't stop holding her, kissing her and hugging her enough. More pictures are to come. We still need a complete family picture which has yet to be taken but maybe on Christmas Day. Skylar is such a sweet little baby and we are so blessed to have her in our home. She is such a good little baby that hardly cries. She sleeps a lot, smiles in her sleep and has our entire little family wrapped around her little finger. We love her and are so excited to have her home and healthy.

Haircut

Kelly was painting in the house so he asked me to take the kids out for a few hours. I took the kids to In-n-Out and noticed Mylie's hair looked really weird. When she got into the car she had a hoodie on so I didn't notice when we left. I thought she may just have hat hair from wearing the hoodie but when I looked closer I noticed it looked more like a mullet....yep, she now had a mullet.It's hard to tell from this next picture but the other side of her hair is barely 2 inches from her head. The story goes...Scissors are hidden in random places in the house because our kids, especially Kora likes to cut things up. Well, this particular week was the kids school break and Hunter decided to bring home his school box which had a pair of scissors in it. Kora got hold of the scissors and talked Mylie into giving each other haircuts. Mylie gave Kora a haircut, which wasn't good but it wasn't so bad either. I just had to shorten Kora's hair a bit. After Kora's haircut Kora gave Mylie a haircut and cut off about 4 inches on the sides only.
I tried to even it all out the best I could and this is the finished result. It has been about a month since this happened and it's finally growing out a bit. When I first cut it you really couldn't see how choppy it was but now that it's longer you can see all the random shorter chunks. She's going to need another haircut soon to even all the chunks out but it works for now.

Painting Pumpkins

Sorry that they are all shirtless. I didn't want paint on their clothes and I have yet to make them little smocks. It's on my to do list...among millions of other things. I love the idea of painting pumpkins instead of carving. This is our second year painting pumpkins and I still love the idea. In past years we would buy each kid a pumpkin and they would help me gut the first one, get bored and I would get to do the rest of the work and carving. This way they can make their pumpkins all their own and use colors. They love it and I love it.

Halloween 2011

Hunter was Captain America

Mylie was her favorite fairy, Tinker Bell.

Kora was Rupunzel....after her haircut, thus the brown hair :)

I have been so busy that my blog has really taken a back seat. I was asked to post Halloween pictures so here they are.

Meet "Auto"

Meet the newest addition to our family. After long multiple discussions we finally decided to get another dog. Here was the criteria the new dog had to fit into: small dog, a dog that doesn't shed too much, good with kids, preferably potty trained. This dog is 3 of the 4 but the shelter that we got him at taught us about crate training which helps speed up the potty training process. So far it seems to be working well.

We named him Auto after "Autobot" in Transformers. For those of you who don't know, the Autobots are the good guys. It was Kelly that came up with the name but Hunter who led us on the path in choosing his name. Hunter originally liked the name "Prime" as in "Optimus Prime" but Prime just didn't seem to fit. Auto is half Toy Poodle, half Terrier. The poodle in him means less hair to be shed. I love that. One of the biggest things I dreaded about getting another dog was having all the dog hair all over the house. Auto is a very good dog that loves to cuddle. He is very content sitting on your lap. Thankfully, he is very mellow but also loves to play with the kids. Mylie loves to lay down and let him lick her face. She tells him not to do it but she's the one that purposefully lays down and laughs the entire time. Hunter woke up early this morning so he could play with him outside. Kora loves being the boss and protecting Luke from the dog (who is terrified of the dog but for some reason calls him but freaks out when he actually comes to him).

Auto seems like a very good fit for our family so far. He's a sweetheart and we hope he stays that way. Lots of chew toys and a good brushing every night should help tremendously. It's nice to have a dog that can actually chew on toys rather than devour a toy in 5 minutes like our Carson. We loved him but he was more than we can handle. It's good for the kids to have a dog again. Auto is a little more fragile than our moose, Carson but they'll learn. They have been great with him so far. He is very smart and learns very quickly.

First Day of School 2011

School Started August 1st. Hunter has started 2nd grade. His teacher's name is Mrs. De la Rosa. Kora has started Kindergarten and her teachers name is Mrs. Towne. It's interesting having 2 kids in school. It's amazing how quiet it is at home while they are both gone. I miss them tremendously, but I also enjoy the time with Mylie and Luke.

Beach Day!

We took several trips to the beach this summer. Unfortunately, I rarely remembered to bring my camera. Here are a few pictures of the kids enjoying the sand and water. Mylie still asks me almost every day if we can go to the beach today. Unfortunately, Hunter and Kora are both in school which means our beach trips for the year are over until next summer. I love the year round school system....but I hate that we miss an entire month of summer.

Camping 2011

For the first time EVER Kelly told me that we needed to go camping. I immediately jumped at the opportunity and asked him when he wanted to go. The kids would be starting school August 1st so I wanted to do it before school started. So, this is our last hoo-rah before school started. We went up to our favorite spot up in Big Bear. Kelly took Friday off so after we were packed we headed up. It was a good thing we left early because as soon as we got our spot and started unloading things the campground was filling up fast.

This is the picture before we left. We pulled out the back seat and moved Hunter and Kora to the middle row with Mylie. As you can see, the van was packed full to the brim. We had 4 tri-folds with us that took up a ton of the space but the comfort they gave us while we were sleeping was worth the space it took up.





I am so sad that this picture came out blurry. It was the only one where all 3 kids are looking at the camera and smiling. I love it! The kids are cooking their hot dogs for dinner. The kids had such a great time. Hunter was so sad to leave. We had so much fun we are greatly anticipating our trip next year.



I have to include this last picture. Last year, I learned the hard way to not pack nice clothes for camping. For some reason, my kids love to roll around and play in the dirt. This year I packed grubby, play clothes that I didn't mind getting ruined by dirt. Which made it so much easier to let the kids get dirty.

It's a Girl

Well, Kelly and Hunter are no longer "just" out numbered. They will now be "tremendously" out numbered with now 4 girls (including myself) to 2 boys (including Kelly). We got the news today that we are having yet another girl. We sort of predicted this. Why would things ever be easy for us? We like things difficult and we'll take the challenge head on. This newest baby...for those of you who didn't know I was pregnant...Oh wait, that should be all of you since I'm not that big and hid it pretty well and didn't really tell anyone. I am 5 and half months along and this baby is due December 24th, yes, a Christmas Eve Baby. As you know, babies never come on their due date and she'll come when she's good and ready. We figure it will be Christmas Day, just to make things fun. We're excited! We have already picked a name, so far it's just a first name, Skylar. We haven't told Hunter and Kora yet since they were at school during my appointment but we'll tell them tonight. Hunter was hoping for a brother...well, we were hoping for one for him too but we're excited for our Skylar to make her entrance....now to get things prepared for her arrival. Hummm, now to make a decision to cram 3 beds into the girls room or add a girly crib into Hunter's room? Poor Hunter.

Hunter turns 7

We ended up coming home from our Vegas trip Sunday afternoon. Hunter's Birthday was on Monday so we had a nice quiet birthday for him at home. The picture above is Hunter with is first of 3 birthday cakes. I didn't have enough candles so we had to improvise and I got 3 normal candles so he could blow out 7.

Here the kids are getting ready to watch the fireworks that we bought to shoot off in front of our house. It was the first year that we actually lived somewhere that allows us to shoot fireworks from our own front yard. It was a lot of fun. Hunter has always hated fireworks. The loud noise freaks him out. This year for his birthday he asked for an MP3 player....we compromised by getting him a CD Walkman, which he loves. We told him he could listen to the music really loud and it was the first time that he enjoyed watching fireworks with us.

All of the kids got to help Kelly light some of the fireworks. It was fun watching them light them because as soon as the fuse was lit they would run to the safety of the blanket so they wouldn't get hurt. After our small pack of fireworks was lit we went into the backyard and watched as some of the neighbors shot off illegal fireworks. Later we went into Kelly and my bedroom and opened the windows and watched them from the higher view. The kids loved the fireworks. It was such a fun 4th of July that I know I'll remember for a very long time.

Above I had mentioned that the cake that Hunter was blowing out was only 1 of 3. We ended up having 2 birthday parties for him this year. 1 with our family (which I was too lame to remember to take pictures) and the second was a friends party.

When we had Mylie's Friends party for her birthday I had gotten a pinata. When I brought it home Hunter asked me why I had never gotten him a pinata for his birthday. Of course I felt guilty but I also made sure that I would get him one for his birthday.

Here the kids are waiting for their turn to whack the pinata. Surprisingly, it was a very sturdy pinata and all of the kids were able to take at least 1 turn.

After the pinata we had a slip'n slide. The kids had a great time. The one we got was a racing slide and the kids had fun racing each other to the end. Finally, Hunter's last cake. Yes, all 3 looked exactly the same. I was lacking in creativity this year. I can't believe my baby is 7 years old.

4th of July Weekend

Kelly had been waiting months for the third Transformers movie to come out. We normally stay home 4th of July weekend (which is when it came out) because of Hunter's birthday, but this year we went to Vegas with my parents. Thankfully, Vegas has movie theaters so Kelly got to see the movie the week it came out. We actually saw 2 movies this weekend. The first was Cars 2. The kids loved it. Unfortunately, Kora got really sick during the movie. She had an extremely high fever and ended up having one the entire weekend....and of course, later sharing the fever with her brother and sister later on. It happens. Hunter wanted to take a picture in front of the Optimus Prime poster they had at the theater. He loved the movie. It has been more than a month since he saw the movie but he still talks about Transformers all the time.





One of the days that we were up there we drove out to Lake Mead and rented a boat. It was a large Pontoon boat. We all loved it. The desire to own a boat is so strong while you're out on a boat, swimming and enjoying the day. Maybe someday...






Kelly and I were both excited to see Hover Dam. Both of us have seen the front side of the dam but never the back that is only accessible by boat. Of course we had to take plenty of pictures.



After the dam we found a nice boat free area and went swimming. The temperature was 108 and the water was a wonderfully cool 74. It felt amazing. The kids were afraid to get in the water. At the boat dock there were tons of extremely large carp. The kids knew there were fish in the water and were afraid the fish would bite them. Of course, 10 minutes before it was time to take the boat back all 3 kids jumped in the water and had a great time swimming. Too bad it took them so long to get in. Maybe next time they can enjoy more of the water.



This last picture is of Kelly trying to feed Mylie to the large carp. We had such a great time that we are thinking of making this an annual trip. We stayed in my parents time share which didn't have a casino attached to it. It was so nice not smelling like smoke.

Dilemma

What do you do when your daughter decides to play hair dresser on herself and cuts off a large chunk of hair?





You even it all out. Actually, Kora cut her hair about a month before we actually decided to even it out. Fortunately, I think we have found out that Kora looks great with short hair.

Fountain Fun

We went to Victoria Gardens with one of my friends and her kids and had lunch then played in the fountains. For all of you who don't know, Victoria Gardens has a kids program that allows them to get discounts at different restaurants and stores. Chipotle actually gives your kids an entire kids meal for free with absolutely no purchase necessary. The kids each got Quesadilla meals and I got a yummy Chipotle Burrito. It's definitely worth signing up for.

This is the only picture I got of my friend, Julie's kids. I was trying to get a picture of them but every time I snapped they would turn around and I would get their back. I should have just asked them to pose...yeah, didn't think of that at the time...

Kora in the water.

Miss. Mylie...when she saw this picture she wanted to make sure everyone knew that she is wearing a Tinkerbell swimsuit. She LOVES Tinkerbell.

The Lukester! This boy LOVES the water. Although, once he noticed the stairs and the field of dirt right next to the fountains I couldn't keep him away from them. Go figure.

There were so many kids at the fountains. It was a hot day so I guess that everyone had the same idea. I definitely need to make another trip up there before school starts. Such a fun day.

Preschool Grad!

Kora has endured 2 full years of Preschool. Let's just say that it hasn't been the easiest of times for her. Most of the time she didn't want to go and I would often leave her kicking and screaming....literally. I have really appreciated her teachers. I am sad that Mylie will not be able to go there this next year, but we are hoping that next year schedules will allow it. Once Kora got over the seperation issues (5 minutes after I left) she did fine in her class. She participated and had plenty of friends. Kora is excited for Kindergarten at her new school. So, here is our Preschool graduate!

These are two of Kora's teachers, Mrs. Crystal and Miss. Leainne giving her the diplomma.

We are so proud of our Kora and excited for her new adventure of Kindergarten!