Fall Break

This is where I went for Fall Break.  Jealous?

The kids had Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off from school.  Josh was a good husband and took Friday off from work to spend time with his family. Not sure why it's so hard for him-darn work ethic. Although we're up to four weeks of vacation now so that helps. :)

We let Logan and Ally each bring a friend along.  I never thought I would be okay with that, but it wasn't bad at all.  I think the secret lies in who you invite.  However, I swear our food consumption doubled!  That's a lot of kids to feed!  We turned into a family of eight for a few days.

We left Thursday night and made a stop at the pumpkin walk in North Logan.  It's become a family tradition for us.  We love seeing the creative things that people do with their pumpkins.  We especially loved the "Angry Birds" display.

This one was for Holden.  He is OBSESSED with Phineas and Ferb.  Thanks to Netflix we can have 24/7 "Finnny Ferb" at our house.  He even pretends to talk to them when he is playing with his toys.  It reminds me of Ally and her imaginary friend "Boo" that she had when she was little.  I'm pretty sure it was the "Boo" from Monsters, Inc. So funny to hear the one sided conversations!

Anyway, it was a really nice weekend.  We spent Friday relaxing, reading, playing outside and of course going on four wheeler rides.  Josh found this pretty spot and has been wanting to take me to it for a couple months.  In fact, he wants to do family pictures here next year.  I keep trying to tell him that it won't work.  Everyone would have helmet head and dirt smeared faces by the time we got there!

Cheesy, huh?

Josh is helping Jensen across the water.  It was a bit comical.  Those helmets are heavy and made him a little unbalanced!

Logan and Taden.  They had so much fun together and even wanted to play together as soon as we got back on Saturday.  That's the sign of a good friend if you still want to play together after spending two full days together!  We came home to do yard work and clean out the garage etc.  It was nice to have Josh helping and the house and yard were nice and sparkly by the time Sunday morning arrived.  It was overall a very, very nice weekend!

Holden is Three!

Holden turned three on October 17th.  It's hard to believe my "baby" is getting so big!  But we are so glad to have him in our family. He knows how to make us laugh and always keeps us on our toes!

I was planning on taking him to the Dinosaur Park on his birthday, but we both woke up with colds and the temperature dropped 10 degrees overnight.  But I decided he would really enjoy it so I went anyway.  Well, I was wrong.  He was scared to death!  They always play a soundtrack of dinosaur noises as you walk around and it was extra loud.  As soon as we came out of the building he wanted to leave!

So I took him over to the ducks.  He spent a lot of time feeding the ducks and getting used to the noises.  It was also a bummer because the playground toys were all wet so he couldn't play on them.

I finally convinced him it was okay to walk around, but he was still hesitant and wouldn't get too close to the dinosaurs. This was probably the closest he got the whole time.  I still think he enjoyed walking around outside but we didn't stay very long.  Then I took him to lunch at Arctic Circle, where he had an ice cream cone first, and then I took him to Wal-Mart.  Josh and I hadn't really gotten him a present and I thought he would like to pick out something.  I was wrong again.  He didn't even want anything!  I'm not sure if I should be worried or proud!

He doesn't usually take naps, but he wasn't feeling the best and fell asleep on the way home.  I peeked in at him later and this is what I found.  Nimbus sneaked in the house and decided to take a nap with Holden.  It's funny because the cat usually avoids Holden like the plague.  I guess we can call this picture "Sleeping with the Enemy."

I didn't really feel like cleaning my house for another party, so we had everyone meet us at Pizza Plus for his birthday party.  Holden loves to run around and play with the games.  He's still at the age where he can be happy just pretending to play them. :)

Eating the yummy food!  They seriously have the best bread sticks ever!

Our cute birthday boy and his froggy cake.  We love you Holden!

Ramdomness

October is a busy month for us.  We had a combined family party for Josh and Ally on the 2nd.  Ally and I made cake pops for the party.  FYI: Cake pops are NOT easy to make.  We have done it four times now and I think we are finally figuring it out.

These are supposed to be owls. Can you tell?

This is Ally  with her birthday cake.  Doesn't she look so grown up?

This is just a cute picture of Bubs.  He is finally figuring out what his name is and will call himself "My Holden" when asked what his name is.  The other day he made us laugh when we asked him what his name was and he said "Bubswee".  We call him that on occasion and it was so cute to hear him say it!

Ally is at her happiest when she's at the piano.  I always know when she's happy because she can't stay away from it.  In fact, she's been composing lately.  I love to sit and listen to her play and compose.  She is working on a song for Reflections and it is really pretty!  I'm a proud mom.

Josh has been taking loads to Moose, Wyoming (by Jackson) and has begged me to go with him.  Well, it was his last load so I finally said yes.  The fall colors were gorgeous and the drive was so pretty.  It's nice to have some hubby time without kids once in a while.  We ended up staying at the cabin overnight but then rushed home at 6:20 in the morning to make it for church at 9:00.

That's been our month so far.  The Young Women had their "Young Women in Excellence" (more cake pops-augh!) last night and it was very nice.  Ally came home very excited to work on Personal Progress and my goal is to work with her to earn my award as well.  I think it will be a great experience for us to share. So wish us luck!

Family Pictures

Yes, it was that wonderful (horrible) time of year recently.  Family picture time!  The first step was finding coordinating outfits. Not matching by all means.  That was so last decade.  And you all know I'm always up on all the trends, ha ha.

I thought I did pretty good on the outfits.  Of course Josh hated his shirt, Ally picked out something completely different than I bought for her, and Logan's was bordering on too small.  But it was only for a few minutes and I informed everyone that there was no complaining allowed during the photo shoot.

I wanted something casual this year, so I decided to do them at our house.  It was too bright outside, though.  We are all squinting in almost all the pictures. I also forgot to get Logan and Jensen's hair cut. Ooops. The pictures were still cute though.

Once I photoshopped my fat rolls out of the pictures I liked them a lot better. :)

My favorite four kiddles!  Love them!

I don't really like this one.  I think my face is three times the size of Josh's.  When did that happen?

Cute Ally.

Handsome Logan.

Silly Jensen.

Mischievous Holden.

Party!

For some stupid reason I decided to let my kids have "friend" birthday parties on their even numbered birthdays.  I should have said every four or five years-they are such a pain to put together.  But my kids have really good memories and won't ever let me forget!  This was a friend party year for Ally and she decided to have it at Box Elder Camp Ground (not my house-yay!).

Here she is with her friends: Breonna, Carolyn, Chelsea, Sarah and Kylah.  Two of her other friends canceled at the last minute. :(  Notice a theme going on in this picture?  I'll give you a hint: read the shirts in the front row-too funny! Aero is the "in" thing!

Here is everyone after the scavenger hunt.  I feel bad for the girls who didn't realize the campground is full of mud!  Their poor shoes!

Thanks to a 20 foot long broken branch, Ally's team won.  The scores were 57 to 70.  Unusual objects were a bracelet, a hanger, a tobacco pipe and a flat green rock.  Kylah also found a snake!  She gave us quite a shock until we realized it was plastic.  It was actually pretty realistic looking.

Jensen had fun twirling the snake around.

We had hot dogs and smores for dinner.  And no, I didn't start the fire.  My friend Wendy who I brought to help me was the fire queen of the evening.  Thanks, Wendy!

We saw marshmallow ropes at the dollar store and wondered if they would be good toasted over the fire-and they were!  Everyone liked them a lot.

Someone was excited for presents.

What a fun evening! Happy Birthday, Ally!

Ally is Twelve!

Ally turned 12 (TWELVE!) on September 28th.  It's hard to believe I have a twelve year old!  I don't feel like I'm aging until I have to tell people how old my kids are.

She may be twelve, but she is still excited about presents!  She has been wanting a lace shirt ever since I got one and so I surprised her with one to wear to school on her birthday.  She is so tiny I had to get an XXSmall.  It's crazy to think she is in WOMAN's sizes!  No more cute little girly things for me to buy. Sigh. Soon she'll want to borrow MY clothes (or maybe not because they won't be cool enough-who knows).

She requested that I take her to lunch so her and I (and Holden) went to Old Grist Mill so she could escape the yucky school lunch.

Holden picked out a birthday balloon for her and then ran around the house chasing her screaming "my banoon, my birfday!"

Ally loved this backpack from Aeropostale but by the time she saved up her money, they didn't have any left in the stores.  After some online shopping (done by me), Grandma June was able to get it for her anyway!

We always take the Birthday child out to eat on their birthday and invite the Grandparents.  Ally picked Chili's to eat and they happened to be having a free kids meal day!  Ally still qualifies for a kids meal for one more year-yay!  All my kids ate for free. :)

Logan got Ally some earings and a flower clip.  Jensen got a free pizza certificate at school for being good and was so excited to give it to Ally for her birthday-so sweet!

Holden loves corn on the cob!  Happy birthday Ally!  We love you and love having you in our family!  I'm also excited to have you in Beehives with me (whether you are or not)!

Up Behind

Last Saturday we decided to take the kids "up behind".  It's actually called Inspiration Point, but my whole life we have always said "let's go up behind", meaning up behind our beautiful mountains.  Our kids had never been up there before because the 4 wheelers always seem to be at the cabin and I am too much of a chicken to drive our van up there.  It's not a terrible road, it's just narrow and scary!

Holden looks so funny in this picture!  Those are my sunglasses that Josh lost on the way back down.  He put them in his hoodie pocket for me so they wouldn't get scratched.  Well, I'll never know if they got scratched or not because they are somewhere on the road up there!  I had to give him a hard time for loosing them.  I made a big deal about how expensive they were.  Unknown to him I only paid a dollar for them!!  Such a big loss.  And now I can go buy some new ones!

Holden didn't like riding with me at all.  He insisted on going with Josh after a few minutes.  Look how happy he is!  I started with Ally and Holden and ended up with Jensen and Logan.

At the top.  Holden was thrilled to get out of his helmet and did not want to put it back on to go back down.

Beautiful views!  This is looking towards Ogden.  The kids were disappointed we couldn't see our house.  It was still really neat and the kids all thanked us for taking them up there.

Jensen and the pretty colors on the mountain.  We could even see over into Cache Valley.

This was taken on the way back down.  We saw three moose and six deer on our trip but I wasn't fast enough with the camera to take pictures.

Beautiful sunset from Willard Basin.

Holden was glad to be done and get out of the helmet for good!  We're such mean parents making them be safe!