Montana Camp

We went to Montana Family Camp this summer with Brad's parents. Something we hope to keep doing in the future. The kids had a blast! Traveling with a potty trainer makes for an interesting road trip though...I can't tell you how many times we pulled over on the side of the road! I couldn't resist taking a pic of the little cutie pie!

There were quite a few families from Cedar Park that came over to Montana Camp also, so that made it fun for the kids to have little playmates! I had no idea how close it was to Dawn's house either (about 10 minutes)! So it was fun to pop over and see her a few times too!

Is this not the most gorgeous view you've ever seen? There is absolutely no editing done to this picture whatsoever, it's just straight out of the camera. Amazing, huh. This is the view from Dawn's backyard, standing on her porch. Absolutely breath-taking.

I was cracking up at these two! When they were 3 and doing swimming lessons together, all I heard was, "Caleb's my boyfriend!" When they turned 4, we did home-school preschool together, and they were already planning their wedding, "Caleb and I are getting married when we grow up!" Now that they are 7, they are too cool for each other! ;)

Toothless grins!

Buds

Most of the gang, minus the littlest two.

Josiah and Grandma planting some flowers in Grandma Jeanette's flower bed.

One day after a morning service we took the kids to a Black Bear habitat. It was pretty cool. Thankfully you stayed in your car, and just drove around getting an up close and personal view of the bears. Fun, yet a little scary at the same time.

Dawn invited us over for the 4th of July, so we headed over to her place just in time for Strawberry Shortcake -yummo! Here are some pics of the kids with their fireworks!

Chloe was fascinated with the sparklers.
The fireworks...not so much.

Madelyn's first sparkler!

Minutes after this picture, Madelyn started crying and saying, "Owie! Owwwwiieee!" I thought she was getting burned by the sparkler (the stick was was probably just heating up). So I panicked and tried to wrench the sparkler out of her grasp. She wouldn't let go, so I ended up twisting and bending it back and forth, and I accidentally bent it back on her hand and burned her! Then she really started to scream! Talk about feeling horrible. Poor little thing. She'll always have a little souvenir from her first sparkler, just in the shape of a pretty white scar. =0( There have even been days recently where she'll look at her hand and say, "Mommy, I have an owie by a firework!" Sad. Good thing she doesn't tell people the truth that she really has an owie from her mommy! =0(

Cousins - Summer 2010

I have a few hours while the kids are napping, (actually I should be cleaning our house that is completely trashed with Christmas decorations/boxes all over the place), but posting pics is way more appealing at the moment! =0) So I thought I'd try to crank out as many updates as I can, since there really never seems to be a convenient time.

At the beginning of the summer, my sister and I met at our parents, and had a little vacation with the kids. They reminded us so much of us when we were little. Always having a big "plans" and ideas of things to do. They had high aspirations of making a fort. There was lots of digging, moving boards around.... and very little accomplished. But it did keep them occupied for a few hours, which was heavenly for us moms! =0)

Even the little ones wanted to help!

After all their hard work, they wanted to go swimming. So we took them up a few miles to a private beach that my uncle is building a cabin on. It's small and quiet, and usually we have the whole beach to ourselves.

Reagan caught a tadpole

Madelyn, never one to be outdone, is trying to catch up with her little cousin Stefan, as he swims past her with a life jacket.

These two are quite the pair. They have a love/hate relationship, that we hope one day will even out into a friendship. They really do love each other about half of the time. They are so cute to watch! They chase each other, hold hands, and belly-laugh like the best of friends. And the other half of the time they are taking things away from each other, competing over everything and tattling like the best of them. =0)

These bikes caused World War III, but as soon as everything was settled.
They were off and riding!

My parents have an ancient old tricycle. I mean so old, that I don't even think the tires have air in them, they are some weird kind of tire that just feels really hard. You'll have to excuse my lack of mechanical knowledge... I'm sure there is some word for that. So since I had my camera out anyway, I couldn't resist taking some cute pics of my sweet little nephews feet! =0)

Aren't they sweet!

I love this pic!

O' Christmas Tree, O' Christmas tree...how lovely are your branches!

I am the worst Christmas tree decorator in the WORLD!!! No joke! My Christmas trees have always been pathetic. All I've ever done is put Christmas balls on the tips of the branches, and scatter a few snowmen around (I had heard people say you were supposed to decorate a tree with a theme) and that's it. I've never even had a tree topper before, that's how bad I am.

Well, in a few weeks we are having a bunch of friends over for a Christmas party, and the thought of everybody seeing my eye-sore of a tree was motivation enough for me to do a little research. I typed in, "How do you decorate a Christmas tree..." and voila! So much information, I didn't know where to begin. For the past two days, I've been decorating, re-decorating, watching videos... and still don't have anything spectacular to ooh and aahhh about, but I did pick up some good tips! I didn't know you were supposed to put decorations deep inside your tree to create depth, didn't know you were supposed to use large over-sized ornaments, and never for the life of me could ever figure out how to put ribbon on our tree. Now I do. And I finally have a tree that is not anything special, but at least it's not embarrassing.

Not the greatest of pictures, but you get the idea...

The thing I love about it is that it's not so matchy matchy that I can't bring out my ornaments that have special memories. When Brad and I got married every year we would buy one ornament that symbolized a major event that took place in our lives that year. In fact if you look at the picture above, there is a white house in the middle of the tree; that symbolizes the year Brad and I built our first house in Cda. I also have pregnancy ornaments, baby ornaments, work ornaments, vacation ornaments... one of my favorite parts of unpacking all the Christmas decorations is taking a trip down memory lane and looking through all the ornaments that have brought so many fun memories to our family.


Madelyn is hilarious! She loves to take the ornaments on the bottom half of the tree off, then put them back on again. She makes up little songs about how fun it is to decorate the tree, today I even overheard her patting herself on the back, "This looks WONDERFUL!"

What a little cutie!

Thanksgiving

For the first time in our married lives Brad and I had our own Thanksgiving dinner at home. It wasn't planned that way. We had intended to go up to my parents, but Josiah got really sick, and we thought it would be best to stay home and let him heal up completely. At first I wasn't looking forward to it, okay, who am I kidding... I cried. Then, I talked to my grandma who said, she thought every family with school-aged children should start their own holiday family traditions. The more I thought about it, the more I was inspired. It would be fun to make lasting memories with the kids. So I enlisted their help too, see below. I also found a free 63 page Martha Stewart Thanksgiving cookbook online. So fun! Every single recipe I have tried from that cookbook to date, has been hands down awesome! I highly recommend it. We ended up having a friend that I grew up with come over which made it all the more fun.

Josiah's Thanksgiving hand-print napkin holder he made in Royal Rangers.

Reagan helped write everybody's names on their place cards.

Thanksgiving ended up being way better than I anticipated, and it reminded me of how much I have to be thankful for...especially my mama! Preparing a Thanksgiving meal is hard work! I was up until 2:30 the night before prepping stuff, and getting everything ready! Fun, but exhausting all at the same time.

My poor neglected blog has gone by the wayside, much like my well intentioned scrapbooks. Never fear, I won't give up, I'll keep chipping away at them. It may just be every six months or so... =0) Our sweet little Maddy turned 3 back in August. I was too busy and unorganized to put together a birthday party, but since my dad was over here visiting my grandma we decided to throw a little family birthday party together. Super fun! Madelyn insisted on wearing her "princess". Which is kind of a shocker, considering just last year she threw a temper tantrum for a full 30 minutes,"NOOOOO!! I WEAR JEANS!!!!" when I tried to dress her up as a bride for Halloween.

My kids love going to Grandma's! Not only is she the best gift-giver, (always has been, when I was growing up Grandma's presents were always the most anticipated present to open), but she always has the cutest little gadgets. Take this blooming flower candle for example. Plop it in the middle of a very ho-hum ordinary chocolate cake that I made.

It twirled around and around singing the Happy Birthday song, and at the end, unfolded into this huge flower with a lit candle on every petal. And look how cute that boring old cake just became! The kids loved it!

Madelyn loving being center stage for once in her life! =0) What a little princess. I'll post more pics of her real birthday during nap time, but at least this is a start!