Happy Birthday, Adam!

Our little guy turned six this year. He's the last of our birthdays for the year, so we're finally done with birthday cake. :)  We were in Cowley for his birthday since it was the day after Thanksgiving. We opened presents in the morning. Here's our big man relaxing, waiting for it to be time to open.

He got some fun stuff, like a watch, toy gun, and candy. He requested marshmallow creme, so here he is enjoying some spoils.

Later that day we ate another Thanksgiving dinner with the Asays.  A great time was had by all, as always. After dinner we sang Happy Birthday and had rainbow cupcakes, which Adam had picked out all on his own from pinterest.

Here's a good view of Jenna's new haircut. So pretty!

Happy Birthday, big man!!! We love you!!

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year Joel took some days off of work, so we headed North for the holiday. We got to Cowley on Tuesday. I already have forgotten what we did Wednesday, but I do remember that Joel helped Daniel do tile in his house. Oh yes, and I did some shopping and getting ready for Thanksgiving the next day. 

On the day itself we ate dinner with all the Robertsons at Joel's Aunt Karen's house, which is Brenda's house in Lovell. It was fun being back in that house. Lots of great memories there.

Dinner was delicious, of course, and it was great seeing everyone. Audrey had a fun time walking around and stealing any food she could find.

 Here's Jenna with her still long hair. She got it cut the next day.

I'm not sure what's happening with Erin's face here.

Adam with one of his best buds and cousin, Gavin.

That evening we went to Marianne's for pie and games. It was a lot of fun, but I didn't get any pictures! We were lucky enough to have another Thanksgiving dinner on Friday with the Asay's. That also happened to be Adam's birthday, so pictures from that will be with the next post.

Joel is THIRTY!

Joel turned 30 this year! Pretty exciting, right?! His birthday was on a Sunday, and it was a pretty normal Sunday. But we had some delicious dinner, and cherry cheesecake for desert, since Joel picks that for his birthday every year. :) This year I also made some individual cheesecakes, for those who wanted something other than cherry. 

Unfortunately, most of the pictures I took ended up too dark or too blurry, so this is the best one I got of the birthday boy on his big day. Happy 30th, sweety!!

Halloween

Happy Halloween! This year we had a witch, a vampire, a doctor, and a pumpkin. Do those costumes look familiar? They should, they've all been worn by someone or other in our family. Halloween was quite chilly this year, (though not snowy, thank goodness) so you can see in the pictures that the children are bundled accordingly.

We took everyone to the Stake trunk-or-treat at the church. Like I said, it was cold, but the kids were fine and they got a lot of candy. Then we came home and let the older three trick-or-treat around the neighborhood all by themselves. All in all, one more successful Halloween over and done with.

Random Stuff

I've got some random pictures that I've been meaning to post.

This was taken months ago when the Bades came to visit us. We had a blast, of course! Audrey and Isaac got along nicely. Sweet babies!

About a month ago Audrey decided to carry around her little bowl of snack in a bread pan. Why? Good question. But it was adorable.

 Adam bought a book from the book fair at his school recently. It came with 3D glasses and has some 3D pictures in it. Doesn't he look so studious? :)

Audrey liked the spaghetti we had for dinner. I'm not sure what she enjoyed more: eating it, or putting it on her head.

William got a Responsibility Award at school the other day. I was very proud of him.

School Pictures

Kindergarten, Third Grade, and Sixth Grade. Wowza!

William is Nine!

William had a birthday! He's now a big nine year old. He was looking forward to and counting down to his birthday for weeks. The few days before his birthday he kept saying, "I wish it was Friday!" And, "I don't think I can wait for my birthday!" I assured him he could and he would, since he didn't have a choice. :)

The kids didn't have school that day so that was an extra treat. He opened his presents after scriptures in the morning. He got Jenga, an Animal Encyclopedia, a Wii game, four erector set things from Grandma R, and cards and money from Grandma and Grandpa K and Grandma Flash. He has happy with his haul. :)

There was a lot of Wii playing in the morning, and McDonald's for lunch. Then he had a friend over to play in the afternoon. We had chicken alfredo for dinner: Will's choice. And for his cake he picked hot fudge pie. Which wasn't so pretty for pictures, but was so gooey and delicious with our ice cream!

After cake and ice cream we watched a documentary on Netflix that Will chose. There weren't any good movies at Redbox or on Netflix, so I asked if he wanted to choose one of our movies to watch or pick something on Netflix. He decided on a documentary, so we spent the evening learning about Animal Odd Couples. It was very interesting and entertaining!

Now that Will is nine he will be in Bears in Cub Scouts, and he's done a great job of finishing up his Wolf before his birthday. He's also in Jr. Jazz basketball right now, as well as doing piano lessons. He's quite a busy boy, but he does a wonderful job of balancing everything and not complaining about being busy or having to miss certain things because of his commitments. We are so proud of him, and feel very grateful that he's our son. Happy Birthday, William!

First Day of School

This young lady entered 6th grade this year. It's hard to believe! Doesn't she look so grown up? And beautiful!

And these handsome boys are in Third grade and Kindergarten! I thought they looked adorable in their matching shirts. :)

And here's our little Adam in his classroom. He told me about a month after school started that he was really nervous on the first day because he thought some people might be mean. I asked him if anyone was, and he assured me that they were all very nice. It was so cute!

Big Horn Mountains

While we were up North, Joel and I wanted to take the opportunity to take our kids up on the Big Horns. We don't get to do that often enough. They've been to Five Springs many times, but we wanted to take them up on top. So the Saturday after Erin's wedding we packed up some fishing poles and headed up the mountain.

First we stopped at a little creek, which I'm 98% sure is called Half Ounce Creek, and did a little fishing there. First we had to walk a little ways from the car to a spot that Joel decided was okay for us to fish in. The kids had a fun time learning to fish (it's not really something they've done much), and Will even caught a little fish!

See that little fish on his line?

While we were walking around Jenna fell into a muddy swampy thing about up to her waist and she was soaked and filthy! When we got back to the van she put on some of Joel's shorts and my sandals that we happened to have, and we tied her pants to the top of the van so they could dry out on the ride over to Bald Mountain.

When we got to Bald Mountain campground we had some lunch, Jenna changed back into her filthy (but dry) pants, and her wet shoes and we headed up Baldy.  Now, that large hill is a lot steeper and longer than it looks, I've decided. But we all made it to the top and enjoyed a nice view.

After that we decided to head to Sibley Lake for some more fishing. Again, Will is the only one that caught a fish. But the other kids didn't seem to mind too much. They seemed to be happy just being there, doing it. And it really was a good time. It rained on us a bit while we were at the lake, but we persevered. Audrey and I did hide under a tree for a bit.

It was a great day on the mountain, and by the time we got back to Cowley we were all thoroughly exhausted. It was wonderful!