A life flashing before your eyes

Miles has been a member of our family for a year now! Crazy how time flies. 

He came to us as a calm little guy, but quickly let his personality come out. He has shown his hunger for life (both to do things and to eat), his love for his sisters (whether they want him around or not), and his desire to learn and explore (more often in areas where he shouldn't go than where he should).

Now he continues to be off the charts huge! 

Weighing in at a whopping 26 pounds 2 ounces (can't leave  off the ounces) and standing (no longer sitting or crawling) a respectable 33.5 inches tall. 

He proudly shows off his eight teeth with a large grin.

He loves to climb on the table, dance, play with his sisters, be outside, and sleep with his gator.

 We love you Miles!

Happy Birthday to Miles!

My how time flies. Miles turned one today! The girls insisted that we have a great mustache party for him (not sure where they got the idea, but it was a fun time).

Every birthday has to start to waking up to a room filled with balloons.

Miles enjoyed them thoroughly.

At some point this was done to the front room. I was gone to work for this portion of the festivities, so I have no idea what was going on. You can notice the mustache themed balloons though.

The girls all worked together to create a mustache cake!

Miles was loving the little lawn mower he got. He likes to walk around and push it everywhere he goes (and this is much more manly than a baby stroller).

 Miles started slowly. I think he was unsure if he was really allowed to dig in to the chocolaty goodness.

So dad got to help show him how it's done.

He got the hang of it eventually. He got his very own chocolate mustache and beard!

The girls also prepared delicious chocolate mustache pops.

The Meldrum mustaches!

Miles started to use his lollipop for a spoon.

Miles had a great time at his party. I think he wishes everyday was his birthday (his sisters might agree since they got to help with the decorating and more importantly, the eating of cake).

Rach got to get in on the action at the end too.

Preparing for clean up. 

Overall, he was much more timid than the girls at eating the cake (we are unsure if that is behavior related or just due to the sugar coma setting in early).

Cookies and Popcorn

Hadley and I made some cookies in the morning, pumpkin chocolate chip, and we were going to take the cookies with us to a playdate.  I  was getting things gathered together to take and ran to the restroom.  I was gone about 1 min, and when I came back I found Miles, standing on the stool where he climbed up was eating a cookie.  Smart cookie he is.

On Sundays, we frequently make popcorn and the girls love to help.  Miles just loves to eat the kernels that fall jump onto the ground.  Miles also likes to make a huge mess, grabbing handfuls of popcorn and getting about 1 or 2 in his mouth at a time.  

Beachfront Property

It rained...and rained and rained and rained for about 18 hours and as a result, our house became beachfront property!  Elephant park became Elephant Lake for a few days and after school on the day it stopped raining, the girls ventured out to the park to see the water... which inevitably lead to getting into the water.  Once Miles went down for he second nap, I let the girls change into their swimsuits and go out to play in the water.  Well, 3 hours later and about 75 kids later, we had so much fun playing in the water.  I had a dilemma of which is better... to not let them play in the rain water which probably had some sort of disease in it... or be the fun mom and let them play.  It had rained about a week before and so I decided that maybe the old storm washed away the scum and this water was not as bad.

 Either way, the girls were excited that I let them play.  The water was about up to Hadley's shoulders for the most part, and they had the time of their lives.  I vividly remember playing in the culdesac after a huge storm when I was a kid.  They played well into the evening and I finally had to drag them in to eat dinner.  

 They needed a mid-swim snack, but were cold so they all shared a towel to stay warm.  And graham crackers.

Miles woke up and I tried my hardest to keep him out of the water, because I did not want to get in it!  We played on the playground and made silly faces.  Fun day for sure!

Natural Bridge

This weekend Aunt Melanie decided to pay us a visit. Since she was coming down from the suburbs of the North Pole, we decided to let her get out in the sunshine of Arizona. We went for a family adventure to hike a mountain (since the girls keep asking to go hiking all the time). Melanie was great and rode in the back seat between the girls everywhere we went (and the hike was about a 1.5 hour drive each way). Once we got there, everyone was excited to see the cool views. 

We went to Tonto Natural Bridge State Park where we could hike down into a canyon and see what we could find. The girls were excited to get the day started.

We hiked about a half mile back and forth to get straight down into the bottom of the canyon. We found a cool cave down at the bottom of the trail. Here we all are looking for bats.

The natural bridge is a huge rock arch formation in the bottom of the canyon. 

Here is the crew at the bottom (the extra lady struggling to get out is not actually part of our family, but I don't know how to use photo shop).

A few more pictures of all of us down in the bottom looking around.

Inside the arch, the river formed a giant pool

 (except they don't allow swimming there :( ).

We took a few pictures inside the arch looking around.

The hiking Meldrums.

On the way out Rach decided we should go the long way back up the canyon. This was much longer and required lots of climbing over boulders and jumping over the river. Everyone enjoyed the challenge (the sign at the exit said this was very challenging and not for the faint of heart).

Since it was such a long hike back out, we stopped to play in the river for a minute. That was the only time Miles got to be out of the backpack. You can see he was a little excited for this portion of the trip! (he got to do one of his favorite things and play with rocks) 

While hiking out, we got to walk past the waterfall that feeds the river. The water was seeping out of the rocks and created a natural shower.

It was a great hike up in the mountains. 

Cooler weather, neat landscape, and lots of hard work.