FALL!

I really do love this time of year! I took a few pictures of my youngest kids in their costumes out in our front yard. Cami loves to throw leaves up and try and catch them. Kate, she just wanted to go run in the road. :( I have more pictures of Cami throwing leaves up into the air without a costume on. I am going to post those later....if I get to it.

This year, Cami wants to be Spiderman for Halloween. Kate is going to be that dragon. Braedon is going to be Harry Potter again. Kyle is going to be a mad scientist, and Shay is going to be a pirate. I just hope it doesn't rain. That always makes trick-or-treating loads of fun. ;)

Back to School

The kids went back to school this week! I can't believe the summer is "over". Last week I took their "school pictures". I usually only buy their class pictures.

Shay is going into 7th grade this year. In about four more months, she will be a teenager! Am I really that old?

This is the serious picture of Ky. A happier one is coming soon...after I edit some more pictures. Ky is going into the 5th grade. He is super excited about his new teacher. Shay had the same one when she was in 5th grade. This will be his last year of elementary school. We sat down and made some goals for this week and for the coming school year. He is going to try and be more organized. He is also going to try and keep his desk clean. Maybe clean enough to actually find something in it. :) We'll see!

I haven't edited the rest of the kids' pictures, but they are coming soon. I just thought I would post something since it has been a while.

It is HOT!!!


We hit 105 this week. I am from Tucson, AZ...I know what it is like to be hot, and I KNOW I don't like it! :) One good thing about our 1930's home, is that we have air conditioning. The kids went out and played in the water while I stayed in and watched them out the window. I thought their methods of trying to stay cool were pretty creative. They hung the hose up like a shower for a while. Then they took a bucket and poured water on top of each other. Then they chased one another and played wars with the different hoses we have. I love to see them play together and use their imaginations. They stayed outside for hours. Thank goodness for sunscreen.

See the hose they hooked up on the post there? They had fun getting sprayed by it. Ky thought he was pretty darn awesome after getting a bucket of FREEZING cold water poured over his head. Um...go Ky. Nice dance.

Cammie's scary face as she is cooling off in a bucket full of water. Looks like snot is flying off her nose, but it is only water from the hose. That kind of grossed me out at first. ;)



Of course, the kids had to drink out of the hose as well.

One of the days, I took her out in the shade, and she enjoyed sitting on the airplane. She didn't like the water much.

Kate's First Birthday!!!!

Kate turned one today! She didn't like her cake at all. She wouldn't even touch it until we gave her a spoon. Then she was more interested in sticking her foot in it. I was disappointed. :( I had dreams of taking pictures of a very messy baby, but I had no such luck. Actually, NONE of our kids have ever liked their cake. That makes me sad. She didn't even want to play with the frosting! As for her presents...she was more interested in handing daddy the wrapping paper. Very cute. She also liked standing on her presents.

It is hard to believe that a year has already gone by. We love you Kate!

We had Nate's brother and his wife in town this week. We had a great time with them. We don't have visitors very often. We took them to Rattlesnake Ridge. I just love it there. We had a picnic. My kids' favorite thing to do is to throw rocks in the lake. Well, that is a lie. Shay doesn't like to do that, but she climbed into her favorite tree and read a good book. I think we will have to go up there a lot this summer now that Kate is a bit older. Here are some pictures from our outing. I have decided that I need to have more pictures taken of me and the kids...no matter what I look like. I need a haircut and to lose several pounds, but hey, do my kids really care?


Actually, the more I look at this picture, the more it scares me! I think Kate might have nightmares if I put this picture in her room. It is either this one, or the one below. Not a whole lot of options. She was being a cranky baby! I was trying to get her to laugh. Maybe I was just scaring her and she wanted down? ;)

It took Ky a little while to get to that spot without getting wet. At least he didn't fall in on this trip. :)


Hey, did you notice the sycro'ed splashes?

Shay is reading "House of the Scorpion". I love that book. She has read it more times than she can remember. She says that she has read it at least four times. Look at all that hair she has!

Okay, I finally got a few pictures to go along with this post. This has been waiting a while.

"Mini Man"....that's what my son's teammates call him. He is WAY shorter than all the other boys. When he gets up to bat, they chant, "Let's go Mini Man, let's go!" I loved it when he played catcher. He sure looked cute with all that stuff on! I like watching these guys try and play baseball. It is the best.



Braedon is trying to tag someone out at home. :) The little kid ran away from him. I love this age!


Ky also played baseball this year. He REALLY wanted to pitch and he had two opportunities to do it. The first time was...well, we just won't talk about it. The second time he did pretty well though. I don't think his hand is supposed to twist like that is it? I don't know much about pitching.

Ky got that guy out at home. It was pretty lucky. Actually, it was pretty lucky that he didn't get hurt!

I finally have a few moments to catch up!

Nathan is so fun. For Mother's Day, Nathan and my son Ky came up with the fruit dude. This guy is my favorite fruit creation yet. You open up this guy's head and eat the fruit out of it. Shalene said, "I probably won't get a guy who will do something like that for me." She looked all sad and disappointed. I will have to make sure that we do some wacky fruit dude for her birthday. :)

Also, for my birthday, Nate finally got me my white seemless background paper. It is only one year late, but better late than never! I took a few pictures with it. My editing needs help, but I love the paper!

I like her little smirk! :)

I have flowers from the bulbs I planted last fall! I know that might not seem like a big deal to many of you, but I am from AZ. I have never planted bulbs before. I got a little too excited and planted too many, too close together. Oh well, I will arrange them better next year. I am just so excited to have my own flowers!

The focus is wrong on this picture, but I like it anyway. I will try and take another one tomorrow. :)

Nine months old! I took her in for her well baby check, and she is in the 65 percentile for her weight, 50th for her height, and...no surprises here...off the charts for her very large head!

She took her first steps last week. She causes lots of trouble, and we just love her to death.

Silly or Scary? I can't really make up my mind! Kate loves to make this face at us. It is so funny. We all laugh really hard when she does it which just encourages her to do it more. I would love to know what is going on in her mind when she does it! She also has this really fake cry already. It makes me laugh. :)

Where is the calm, cuddly baby that I have always wanted? My kids are just way too busy. Kate is now walking across things. If she is holding onto the coffee table, she will use the coffee table to walk over to where she can then reach across and make it over to the couch. Does that make sense? I would be very surprised if she isn't walking in her ninth month. I would love a baby that didn't walk until over a year, but my kids are just too eager to get into trouble.

Seattle

Last week for Mid-Winter Break, we went to Seattle with some friends. I don't drive in Seattle by myself! :) It scares me! I am directionally challenged! Anyway...we started off at Gas Works Park. The kids really enjoyed it there. We had lunch, and then took off to see Mr. Troll. That was interesting! The kids loved climbing on him. The picture of the kids is taken with his hand. Do you like Cammie's pose? That kind of made me laugh. Then we went to the locks to see a few boats go through. The kids really enjoyed themselves and so did I!

I asked Cammie about our day together, and she said, "We went to the machine PARTS not PARK! It isn't a park! We run down the hill, we run up the hill. Is that mean? I was like 'Mom! We're leaving you!' Then we went to the fake monster place. I been on his hand, his arm...um, the monster, he's just fake so he can't drop us."

There you go! That was our trip to Seattle!

Here is a link about the troll: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Troll
Here is a link about the Gas Works Park: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasworks_Park I had never heard of this park before. I had no clue what to expect. It was a pretty weird place, but the kids enjoyed the artifical kite hill with the sundial. They also liked climbing on the stuff in the play barn. I got this from the website I just posted the link to:

A Web site affiliated with The Seattle Times newspaper says, "Gas Works Park is easily the strangest park in Seattle, and may rank among the strangest in the world."

Here is one more of the "play" area. http://www.vrseattle.com/pages/vrview_fs.php?vrs_id=vrs1075&ftype=flash Now you can see why Cammie said what she did about the machine PARTS not park. :) She kept asking where the park was, and we kept telling her that this was the park! Too funny.

Well, we had a lot of sunlight last week, so I decided to take some pictures of Kate. I just love all of the faces she makes. Oh, I have a picture of her crying too. I should probably include that one as well. That is what she does a lot lately. I think she might be getting some teeth. Maybe I'll change it later.

She started crawling the day after my last post. She can go any where she wants now. Heaven help us! :)

Cammie

I have decided that four is my favorite age so far. Cammie can be a pill, but when she is cute...boy is she cute. Here are some things that she has done or said lately that have made me laugh a little.

• The other day she hurt her toe. She was obviously in a lot of pain, but didn't want to cry about it. She said, "I'm okay! It doesn't hurt that bad! (She falls to the ground and grabs her toe.) It just hurts a little. I'm okay! My toe is just falling off! I'm okay!"
• "No! I can't put my shirt away! I'm the busiest girl in the whole world!"
• "Mom, could you please squish that cute little bug. It's scary!"
• Cammie loves to sing. She tells me that she is a singer! Every single day, she asks me if she can sing along to the song "Tomorrow" from Annie. It drives her siblings nuts! She sings and dances to it as if she were in a big performance.
• I am NOT spiderman! I am spiderman girl!

Kate is 7 months old! I really can't believe it. The time has gone by too fast. Kate is very close to crawling. She just can't seem to stop moving. I would think there was something wrong with her except that all of our kids have been like that...constant movers! She seriously can't sit still.

She is so funny when she doesn't like what I am feeding her. She throws her head back and starts yelling. She has plenty of attitude! We all just love her to death. I love to watch our other kids interact with her. We just can't get enough of her.


Oh, and she still loves her tongue!