Fridays are my favorite day...

I love Fridays for three simple reasons:

#1 - No Homework

#2 - There will be no homework for 2 more days after this

#3 - So my kids get to do stuff like this:

Yay for Random, Last Minute Social Get Togethers!

It was late August, early September, not really sure when now, but it was an early Friday evening. We looked at the calendar and realized we had a completely blank Saturday on our calendar. Not to be wasted away I quickly facebooked many of our friends and invited them to a last minute pot luck at our house. Many good times and fun ensued:

 I could not get that darn Grant to look at the camera!

Enjoying root beer floats L to R:

Brayden, Samanthm Emmy, Lillie, Madison, Tristan, Brooklyne, Delylah

(Samuel and all the big boys were upstairs playing and sadly I never made it up there to capture a pic)

Still can't get silly grant to actually face the camera...

until I threatened him. Not sure what with anymore but I'm fairly positive 

I had to pull some sort of threat out of my mom bag of tricks.

Da Boys and Breanna:

Breanna, Joel, Tim, T.J, Dean

The Lovely Ladies:

Audrey, Ashley, Robyn, Shawn, Brooke, and Denise

I love good times with good friends!

1st Day of School 2013

Summer! Where have you gone! This summer has brought so many changes: new house, new side of town, new friends, new church, and now, a new school. Goodbye Burke, we'll miss you! Hello Redland Oaks! 

Here's my Great Big 4th Grader:

 Here's my Super Rockin' 2nd Grader

And here's my very last year of Pre-School ever:

                 

With all of the other changes we kept one things the same. Grant is still at the same pre-school. Yes, I drive 40 to 80 miles on a pre-school day depending on if I go back home in the middle or not. But we have had all of our kids here and we love it so much! So for one year and one year only we are heading back to our "old" side of town twice a week. A I blog this I've already been taking him to school for about 6 weeks. Is it hard? A little. Is it worth it? Completely and totally YES! He has Ms. Jodi again, his same teacher from last year and he is really loving it there. 

Have a great year in school guys. I love you and I am so proud of all of you!

Book of Mormon Read-a-thon!

I's got's myself called into Young Women's. How do I feel about that? I feel like this!!!!!!!!!!:):):):):):):):)!!!!!! I love being in YW's just a little bit ;)

One of the last activities we did during the summer was a Saturday Book of Mormon Read-a-thon. The girls totally loved it! We read from 9am to 4 in the afternoon. The girls wanted to do something like 7am to midnight but us leaders shut it down. Lame of us, I know. But we had a great and spiritual time anyway and I believe we made it from Alma through the end of Helaman. Not too shabby!

Since then our ward has split and while I am still in YW's it is in the Sonterra ward. I want to remember these lovely and fabulous San Pedro Ward YW so here they are from L to R in every pic:

Sydney, Sierra, Bailey

Makenna, Sheridan

Bella, Sister Terri Kjar

Jairus

Sydney, Mikkele

Towards the end everyone got in on a back rub to make it through

Jairus standing in the back then Bailey, Sister Shalece Barrow, Mikkele, Aimee, Becky, Sydney, Sheridan, Makenna, and Sister Kjar in the back.

Samuel Looses His 1st Tooth - Finally!!!

I know all kids loose teeth and different ages and neither I nor the dentist were worried that Samuel hadn't lost any teeth and we were heading into 2nd grade. He however was quite anxious! We would think he had a wiggly tooth and then it would seem to firm right back up again. Well, he finally had one that got wiggly and stayed wiggly. He was more that a little ecstatic :)

Random Summer Fun 2013

Samuel building his Lego Transformer kit that he bought with his birthday money:

Lillie and Delylah making name crafts:

 I love to see my kids cuddle up and read to each other! 

Makes a momma smile :)

L hanging out in "her tree":

Finally... a sleepover with the Holland's at our house! 

The Holland's came to visit for a fun 3 days after they moved to Dallas. 

Our kids had a blast spending every single moment together: playdates with old friends, 

pool time, and late night movies. Those are the best kind of summer days!

L and Auntie Allison's beautifully decorated cupcakes:

The kids and Auntie Allison plus our next door neighbor BFF William 

having a water balloon fight in the backyard:

Fun story about William: we met him a couple of weeks after we moved into our house. He came over to play with the boys in the front yard one day and introduced himself as Antonio. He played all day and the next day as well, with us calling him Antonio all along. So on the 2nd day his sister comes to pick him up and asks for her brother William. I said "there's no William here but there is an Antonio." She was like, no, I have no brother named Antonio. Well, I told her to come and see him anyway because I was pretty sure we were talking about the same boy. Come to find out, I was absolutely right! It was so funny that he changed his name for us. For the next couple of days the boys kept calling him Antonio and it was hard to re-train ourselves to call him William. Needless to say William has become a permanent fixture at our house and we love him! He is a year below Samuel in age and grade and they get along great! 

I love you, lazy summer days! Thank you for the gift of having my children with me every single day with no schedule to follow! Please don't end and turn into school days!

Happy 9th Birthday Lillie!

I can't believe that our Lillie is already 9 years old! That means that of all the time that we get to raise her, half of that is already over! This makes me very tear-eyed :( 

However, I digress. Lillie's birthday really was an entirely happy affair! 

Here she is in front of her birthday door:

We went to chuck e. cheese in the morning for an hour or two as a family:

Chillin' out and enjoying some birthday relax time with her favorite kitty Gracie :)

G-ma and G-pa were visiting from Utah so we enjoyed b-day festivities with them

Lillie spent her birthday gift card from Uncle Jason and Aunt Becca on a glitter tatoo kit at Target. The girl completely covered her arms and legs with these! Samuel and Grant wanted them too and would not listen to me when I warned them that the tattoos were all a tad girly. They loved them anyway!

That was party Numero Uno. However, Aunite Allison, Lillie's favorite cake decorator was still in school on July 22nd. So.....once she came home and had ample time to create one of her masterpieces we threw another party! 

It was worth the wait:

Lillie LOVES Taylor Swift! She had no idea what her cake was going to look like but I don't think that she could have been more thrilled with anything else. She was ecstatic when she saw it!

This year Lillie chose to trade a friend birthday party for money so was instead allowed to invite one friend over to spend the night. She invited Delylah Hurt and they had a marvelous time :)

Gettin' our croquet on!

Lillie at 9:

Favorite Foods:
Raspberries, red velvet cake, atulfo mangoes, nature valley crunchy granola bars - dark chocolate, sushi, Pei Wei caramel chicken, pickles, Tillamook smoked cheddar, Baby Bel cheeses, any kind of gum - if ever she is allowed to pick a treat she always picks gum,  vanilla ice cream, Taki's - but we don't let her eat them very much, daddy's omelets

Favorite Books:
The Babysitter's Club series - a girl after her mom's heart. I read them all the time when I was her age. I'd save my allowance money, then buy one and read it in a day or two. I've saved all those books for all these years thinking that maybe my daughter would want to read them. And low and behold she loves them as much as I did! Now it's me who's leaning into her room late at night catching her under the covers sneaking in some more reading time. I secretly love it!
She also loves Judy Blume's Fudgemania series, and any encyclopedia books about animals.

Favorite Things To Do:
Read in Autumn and KC's (our neighbors across the street) reading tree, play outside in the cul-de-sac with her brothers (bikes, scooters, any kind of racing games), help Autumn and KC decorate dog treats with icing for their dog treat business, throw the ball for Chelsea the dog (also belonging to Autumn and KC), swimming (Lillie progressed even more in her swimming skills this year and made it onto the swim team at the Y!), crochet and sew alone or with one of her awesome Grandma's - Lillie will often take some of my scrap fabric and create something out of it without a patter. Just recently she made a satchel and also a shawl :) She also loves to ice-skate, dream about where we should take our next vacation, make movies on the computer using our home videos, bake - especially her amazing peanut butter bars!, and come up with creative make believe games.

Favorite Places:
Grammy's house, Grandma's house in Utah along with all of the friends that she has made on that street, Autumn and KC's across the street, the Great Northwest pool with all of her friends and the red and yellow slide, the Holland's house, Six Flags, and The Main Event.

Favorite TV Shows and Movies:
Wizard of Oz, Wild Kratt's, Littlest Pet Shop

Not So Favorites:
Homework (seriously, it's my least favorite part of the day too), going to bed, chores

Things We Love About Lillie:
Lillie is such a creative girl and she is such a great learner! She is always looking for a new and interesting thing to do and a creative way to occupy her mind. If she's not baking in the kitchen making treats for her teachers, then she's hauled out the sewing machine to make blankets for her dolls or design a new outfit. One of my favorite things about her is how she will randomly set down at the computer to do a self appointed research project - she'll just get something in her head that she wants to learn about, put together a power point presentation, then print it out and take it to her teacher. She is such a kind and a good girl and will randomly make and leave kind notes for members of her family to find. I love to see the way she is growing in the gospel - I often find her reading her scriptures or working to memorize her articles of faith and everyday I see her put the gospel into action through service. It is such a joy to have her in our family. I can see that in the past year she has taken her baptism covenant seriously and works to be like Jesus Christ in all that she does.

We love you so much and we are so proud of you Lillie! You are a kind and beautiful girl and you are growing into an amazing young woman. It is a true joy to love you and raise you. Have a wonderful year in 4th grade going to your brand new school!

Love,
Mom and Dad