BIRTHDAYS

October, as most of you know, is Birthday month in our family. Adam, Logan, Annie and I all celebrate our special days! This year Adam and I celebrated my birthday apart since he was on a business retreat! We went to a fun dinner for his birthday and celebrated Logan’s at an indoor bounce house party place! It was a great way to have a birthday party, let the kids run wild, eat pizza and cake, send everyone home and then jump in the car and go home with no mess, clean up or stress!

Annie’s birthday is still kind of ongoing since we haven’t had her party yet! We’ve been so busy with sports that we haven’t found a time but now that sports are on break for a while we’ll be having it soon!

Happy Birthday to Everyone!

ADAM

Adam spent a few days in Sedona, AZ on a retreat for some of the Managers in his firm. It was a few days before his Birthday and an exhilerating experience! Lookin’ pretty good for an old man1

MARILEE

Since Adam was out of town the kids treated me to a kids home cooked dinner!

They did such a good job! They definitely made it a day to remember!

 

LOGAN

He could hardly stand seeing all the presents on the table and having to wait for Adam to get home before he could open them!

Logan’s favorite gift!

King for the day! Logan soaked up every minute of his Party! Having the King Chair completed his perfect Birthday!

ANNIE

  Annie was kidnapped by the YW the night before her birthday!              She had so much fun being the “birthday girl”!

We can’t believe that Annie is 12! She has become such a beautiful, talented, fun, happy, and wonderful girl! We are so blessed to have her in our family and look forward to watching her change and learn and grow over the next few years! We love her so much! Happy Birthday Annie-Girl!

The Safety Kids!

A few girlfriends and I decided to start a playgroup/joy school rotation with our little 2 and 3 year olds this year! It has been so much fun to send Avery off to “school” and have her come back talking about her school and acting like a big girl! She goes once a week and each of the moms take turns “teaching”! One of my friends was a 2nd grade teacher for 8 years (something like that) and has the greatest ideas and the cutest supplies for us to use. Carpet squares for the kids to sit on, singing time games, craft ideas, Who’s here today board, etc. It makes the days that each of us is the “teacher” so much fun and so easy to manage! The best part is that we send the kids with their lunches so when I get Avery home she has already eaten lunch and its “Nap Time”!

Avery’s first day of Joy School! This girl LOVES her hair bows!

My first turn as the “teacher” was so fun! We made up a schedule of who teaches when and what we teach. I was telling the Mom’s about these tapes my mom got us when I was little called “The Safety Kids”. I found them online a few years ago and ordered them for my kids. They have the cutest songs about being safe and so my teaching days are the days we talk about Safety. The kids are still a bit young to really understand it but its never too early to teach a kid about strangers, in my opinion, so we’re going with it! The craft the kids did was color a hat and staple on the strap so they had a “Safety Kid Hat”! The kids LOVED them!

PLAYTIME AFTER OUR CRAFT

                                   Avery                                                            Brinley

                           Jacelyn                                Braeden                                           Dane

Getting ready for our walk with our “Safety” Rope!

                       Checking out the Fire hydrant                        Walking down the street

It’s the Safety Kids!!!!

Avery and Zoey

BESTIES for LIFE!!!

Avery’s BFF is her cousin Zoey! Zoey is 4 months older than Avery and the two can’t get enough of each other! After Zoey’s mommy, Auntie Laura, had her new baby we had Zoey come up for a sleepover! The girls had so much fun and did so well together! They even slept in the same room together without so much as a giggle once I told them it was time to go to sleep! They were adorable!

 

                                       Avery Jean                                                         Zoey Jeanne

Playing outside!

The Breakfast of Champions! Chocolate Milk and Pink frosted, sprinkle donuts! (don’t know if she’ll ever be permitted to come back)!

Baby Dolls!

The girls kept fighting over the doll Avery had so in my efforts to keep the peace

(and maybe to bribe Zoey so I’d be her favorite Auntie )

we made a trip to the toy store so the girls could each choose their very own baby doll!

Baby Aurora and Baby Cinderella were the winners!

Fall Sports

Fall is my favorite season of the year for many reasons. Of course top on the list is that my birthday is in the Fall (but I won’t dwell on that right now) . I also love it because of the change from the hot summer days to the cooler weather. I also love Halloween and Thanksgiving which are fall Holidays! But as a mom, aside from the kids being back in school, I love the Fall because it means its Football and Soccer season! There are few things in life that I enjoy more than watching my kids play sports and although it is a CRAZY busy time of the year with practices and games almost every day of the week plus Saturdays, I absolutely LOVE it!

This year Spencer is once again playing football! It is hard to believe that this will be his last year of Youth Football as he will be playing for the High School Freshman team next year! He’s been playing since he was 8 years old when High School seemed like a lifetime a way but here we are in his last season before High School! Wow!

Spencer LOVES his coaches and teammates and although its been a rough season with only 2 wins he has loved it! This year he is playing center again and is the Offensive Line Captain. He loves it because, in his words “I get to touch the ball on every play”. He is a good center and has learned and become really good at the long snap, which according to Granddad, makes him an invaluable player! When I know he has to make a long snap I get really nervous but he keeps his cool and gets the ball where it needs to be! He really is doing great in that position. His coach told us that in all his years of coaching he’s never coached a center as good as Spencer. Nice compliment, eh? Sadly I don’t know if playing center is in his future unless he grows 2 feet and gains about 150 lbs! I must say that I would miss seeing him over the ball but I would be just fine if he doesn’t grow quite that big!

I LOVE this picture! Spencer’s QB was is friend Ryan who he played with last year! His mom and I want to FRAME this pic for each of them!

Heading out to mid-field for the coin toss! (Spencer’s #42)

 

Another great photo!

Annie is playing soccer again! After playing basketball and soccer at the same time last fall she wasn’t too sure she wanted to do it again because she got so burned out! Once she got back on the field she was glad she was there. Her coach is a friend of ours who is in our ward and she has loved getting to know some new girls, including a girl in a neighboring ward who is the daughter of a friend of mine I knew in High School and at BYU from Calgary. It’s been fun reconnecting with him, getting to know his wife and kids! I adore his wife and feel like we have been friends for much longer than just 3 months! Having a friend on the sidelines has made watching the games a lot of fun!

Annie’s team also had a rough season with lot of tie games and a few losses. They finally won a game the last game of the season and were qualified to play in the “Friendly” playoffs. Annie has played amazingly this season scoring goals at almost every game. She has even scored a hat trick (3 goals in a game) three times this season! Its been so fun to watch!

Annie in Action!

            Annie and Abby (her new soccer BFF!)                                          Team Cheer

Garett and Logan have been playing basketball this fall which has been great! They practice once a week and play games on Friday evenings. We love it because it doesn’t make our Saturdays too over booked and we have been able to watch all of the kids games without too much overlapping times! I don’t have pics of G and Logan yet because the season is going to be going for a few more months. I’ll get them up as soon as I remember to take my camera to the gym!