Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Christmas Letter!

Season's Greetings everyone! Here is our Christmas Letter and Photo for those of you whose address was not incredibly handy (sorry, that's my bad). This is so much easier! Love to all!



Merry Christmas!

This year has held many exciting changes for our little family! Here’s the short version.

Dan
answers to “Daddy”, “Honey-would-you…”, and now “Dr. Budd”!
accomplishments: graduated dental school with honors and began practicing in NV
adventures: camping with three small children, Disneyland, gardening!

Courtney
answers to “Mama-where’s-my…” and “Honey-where-did-you-put-my…”
accomplishments: three small happy children (“clean house” not in our vocabulary)
adventures: search and rescue (of favorite toys)

McKenna
age 5; sings, dances, writes, reads, twirls, giggles, draws, jumps, get the picture?
accomplishments: tying her shoes and learning to tell jokes with no punch line
adventures: pre-K classes and fieldtrips—the world is a big, wonderful place!

Jacob
age 3; climbs, climbs, climbs, how about that picture?
accomplishments: learning to write his letters and numbers with Mommy
adventures: train rides, mini golfing, apple-picking

Hannah
age 9 months; laughs endlessly at siblings’ antics, melts hearts with her sweet smile
accomplishments: first few words, crawls lightning-fast, stands alone
adventures: so many cupboards, so little time

We are living in Carson City, Nevada and settling in nicely. We are so blessed to be happy and healthy. We are very grateful for our family and friends and especially for our Savior. We love you all and wish you all the joys of the season.

Love,
The Budds

Friday, December 12, 2008

Christmas Tree Cutting!



One of the blessings of living in a somewhat rural area: we got to (legally) cut our own Christmas tree! It was fun to go hiking back into the Tahoe woods and let the kids help us choose and cut a tree and bring it home. What an adventure!

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Dan is not allowed to use my beaters anymore.


Please note the dough INSIDE the gears. I do believe this one is a loss. Maybe Santa will apologize and bring me a new one for Christmas.

Halloween--Dan's Favorite

Dan just loves this time of year when I make him dress up in something I have sewn and parade around the ward party and around the neighborhood with the kiddos. He is such a good sport. This year I went easy on myself and made everybody wear what we wore last year since it was so much sewing last year. I had to take in my Wendy dress several sizes since I was pregnant with Hannah last Halloween and I just made her a little Princess Tigerlily costume so we could all be Peter Pan and crew. Aren't we cute? Let's just all assume that the grim expression on Dan's face is because he is
"in-character" as Captain Hook.






Our Little Pumpkins

Tune in next Halloween for something completely store-bought. :)

McKenna is 5!

McKenna turned five at the end of October and her (very obvious) wish was to have a princess birthday party. So, Mommy whipped up a princess castle cake (no, I will not do another one so long as I live...probably any amount of money is worth the bakery doing it special-order next time).


We decorated the house with crowns and castles and pink and purple toole and ribbons everywhere. So girlie. McKenna was in heaven. The kids got to decorate their own crowns and make princess (or race car) magnets. We had a few princess games and a treasure hunt. Everyone had a great time, even the boys who just kept asking for more cake...





McKenna continues to excel in her little Pre-K class and keeps us smiling with the jokes she makes up herself (you know, the kind with no punch line but her infectious giggle at the end of it makes everyone laugh anyway). She has lots of friends and always seeks out the little kid who gets left out. She is such a sweetie...although once in a while a bit of sass creeps out (I am sure she got those genes from Mommy.) Here is a little comparison for you. The first picture is McKenna at age 5. The second picture is McKenna at age 5 minutes! The scowl. She is so good at it. She really was born with it. We love you, McKenna.




Jakers is 3!

Jcob turned 3 (yes, at the end of September, but here it is.) Jacob wanted a Lightning McQueen birthday party, so we had some race car cupcakes on a racetrack...


Here, let me help you take off the paper... and the candles.

Grandpa made a race track for the kids to play with!


Each of the kids painted a little race car.

A little birthday attitude from our brand-new three-year-old.

Nothin' like spending the rest of your birthday in your birthday-suit. (No guests present.)


Jacob is an energetic little jokester. According to the pediatrician, he is off the charts in his verbal skills (what's new around here) and so we enjoy listening to the kids pretend-play and hearing what they come up with. Even though Dan expresses his dismay when Jacob dresses up in full princess attire, Jake is all-boy: climbing, vehicle sound effects, rude humor, dirty fingernails, wrestling moves on any living object. His latest trick is to pretend to zap us with laser beams (complete with "psssshhhh" sound effect) if we ask him to do something which does not suit his fancy. Stink bug. We love you, Jacob.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Hefty Blog Entry



Hi everyone! We need to catch up, so here's a fatty entry to let you know what we have been up to since we graduated and moved from San Francisco. So, if you do not have the time or the interest in a long entry, I don't blame you.

For those of you who are looking for a little free entertainment, read on for a peek into our family adventures. In this picture, we are moments before driving out in that huge moving truck you see behind the kiddos! Someday, we are going to look back at how little they were when we moved.



We settled into our little home in Carson and did lots of playing around this summer. Here's a picture of Dan to prove that he had time on his hands....





Over the summer, we did a lot of gardening and playing in the backyard. Since the kids haven't seen the sun much living in SF, they liked enjoying the yard in their undies (two out of three photos, the one on the slip-n-slide I included so you would know that our children actually DO own bathing suits).






When we would garden, the kids got a kick out of finding ladybugs and then holding them FOREVER. McKenna was explaining to Jacob how you need to be gentle with ladybugs and that he probably shouldn't hold them. He indignantly put his hands on his hips and said "But I'm a good ladybugger!" That's right, folks. He is pretty good at buggin' the ladies.

Here he is watching his ladybug. They would drop him in the grass accidentally--"Where did my ladybug go?"--the poor thing would think that he got away--and then, "Oh, here he is!" and they would scoop him back up for twenty more minutes of climbing all over their hands.


We went to Lake Tahoe a few times....




We visited Dan's family in So Cal. Here's one of the kids' favorite activities: riding Grandpa's electric chair around the park.




We spent a day at Disneyland with Grandma and Papa Joe! McKenna got some one-on-one time with the princesses! She was in heaven! (Jake was busy riding the train with Daddy.) In her sugary-sweet voice, each princess would talk to McKenna and ask her questions and tell her to "use her princess smile" for the picture and "we could be sisters because you have pretty blond hair just like me" and McKenna ate it up!



Hannah and Daddy at D-land.


We'll see if Papa Joe is so eager to climb in when she's sixteen...


Talk about crazy drivin'...

Grandma and sweet girl.


Mischievous Mickey...


Done for the day...


Look at these pretty aunts just lavishing attention on Hannah! I think she loves it.






The kids had swimming lessons when we got back to Carson...




Hannah met her Great-great Grandma. Here she is with Grammie (my mom) and Great-great Grandma Jensen.


We hiked up to Angora Lake....
(Note the big stick that little boy is holding. Typical.)



We went camping at Sugar Pine Point (up by Lake Tahoe), and between the hammock, dirt, tent and s'mores, the kids couldn't have had more fun! Here's Hannah snuggling in the sleeping bag in the morning--it was cold! She's not quite ready to get up yet.









Aunt Lauren visited and we went to the beach and rode the steam train...




McKenna started a Pre-K program. First day of school! She absolutely loves it, and we've been told by other parents that their girls come home talking about McKenna. Apparently she's a star. The teachers say she is far ahead of the curve and quite ready for school (but in Nevada, you must be five in September to start Kindergarten and McKenna's birthday is in October).


Dan started work! Long time, no income. Dr. Budd is in da house!! Dan is working four ten-hour days at a salaried position at a clinic and the other day each week at a dentist's office in Carson that we are looking to partner into. We made a banner for our Daddy to come home to after his first long day of work.



Here are some of my favorite random photos from the last few months.

McKenna lined up all her babies:




Three kids in the tub! We need a bigger tub or we need to stop at three. No, I am not asking for your vote. :)



Hannah and Mommy


Hannah vs volleyball. So cute!



Hannah thinks she's a puppy. She spent the afternoon with this slobbery sock hanging out of her mouth. She was as happy as could be.


Pretty girl. She is getting so big!



Three happy kids.



We are happy and healthy and busy. We are enjoying living near family and hope to see more visitors, so come on over! We will try to be better about keeping up our blog. I am sure we will be posting again soon since we just had Jacob's 3rd birthday and McKenna's 5th birhtday. We send our love to all.