The Blackwells

Is 3 posts for 1 birthday to many?

2012-01-26T22:39:00.000-08:00

NOT WHEN THE BIRTHDAY GIRL IS THIS CUTE!!!!
( I made that hat, by the way)

After seeing how cute Claire was as a bumble bee on halloween I decided to go with a black and yellow bumble bee theme for her paty. It was a lot of fun, Billy and I stayed up way to late the night before decorating cakes and making the bumble bee cake pops (that I loved by the way) I made them lemon flavored just for a change, yummy!!

I wishI was a better rememberer, thats a word right? I wish I had thought to get pictures of everyone who came but I didn't so here are the ones I did get.

It is impossible to get a good picture of Claire now that she is mobile. She does not sit still for a second so everything is always blurry. I tried.

The pinata. I bought it and recovered it to match the theme. I just counted 16 pictures but I am pretty sure that one of the twins missed out on a picture somehow (Sophie, however, was pictured 3 times while hitting the pinata, I wonder who had the camera???) so there were 17 kids hitting that thing! We started with Claire and went through all the kids there then finally let Jason hit it open!

The presents! We got Claie that cute little chair she is sitting in an she was so cute in it! She sat there and opened every present and really looked so interested in everything she got. She got way to much stuff but she really ddn't have any age appropriate toys so she is loving life now!

Ok, this was the hardest part. I really have about 75 pictures (thanks again Joni) of Claire eating her cake and they are ALL cute so it was tough to chose. If anyone feels like they missed out just let me know and I will post the rest. Here are some cute ones...

She was dainty about it at first but she wasted no time. Dove right in.

A little messiness did not bother her at all.

She was noticing the big crowd watching

She got a little more serious as time went on

see.

told you

I love this shot because it shows her frosting mascara :)

She finally picked it up

Yes, that is like half the cake stuck to her face. She totally did not even care.

I have really never seen a baby go at a cake like this girl did. It just got more and more funny the more she ate. I had to keep stopping her to clear a little airway for her to breathe, her nostrils were plugged up with cake.

We finally ended it and rinsed her in the sink before taking a full on bath. Even while we were rinsing her she was rying to lick cake off her hands. Cutest thing ever. We all stood around laughing at her and she didn't even care, as long as the cake didn't go away.

The after party.

Claire's B-day celebration (not party, that comes later)

2012-01-23T21:17:00.000-08:00

This will be a mostly pictures post. It's pretty self explanitory. We met up with some family at 25 main to have cupcakes for Claires birfday. It was good times and Claire did an awesome job with her cupcake. I fed her at first then I handed it to her and she stayed surprisingly clean. Turns out she loves cake and frosting and didn't want to waste any of it!

Sophie came in wearing her birthday girlshirt which I thought was a little strange at first but upon further inspection...

I realized that it had been altered to say "Im with birthday girl" It was pretty funny. Only Joni can figure out a way to reuse a birthday shirt!

I LOVE MY BIG ONE YEAR OLD!!!!!!!
(actually she's my little one year old. She went to the Dr today and we found out she is in the 5th percentile for weight!!)

Day 2 in THE BIG APPLE!!!!!!!

2012-01-15T14:31:00.000-08:00

I am a little less confident as I write this post, I have a horrible memory and I am just not certain what things happened on what days anymore. I have a basic idea but theres a good chance I will get something wrong! That being said,I'm pretty sure this was our first ride on the subway! We were super excited to ride the subway and might have made fools of ourselves trying to figure it out. We were headed to battery park to catch the staten island ferry and we survived!

Proof that we survived! Well I guess I am here typing too so thats pretty good proof. This is the ferry station,I made that up, I don't know if it has a real name. The date was 11-11-11 and our boat left at 11am and someone (not Karen) was freaking out about our safety.

See how scared we were.

Its really hard to get everyone in the picture, next time we should hire a professional photographer.
Fair warning: There are some not so pretty pictures of me coming up but Im a trooper and I'll post them for the enjoyment of others.

We ventured outside on the ferry for a very short time because as you can see it was seriously windy. Like it made me think of home kind of windy. Everyone else had a hood to wear but I only had a scarf so Joni fashioned me an awesome hood out of my scarf! Thank you Joni!

Joni didn't bring her camera she brought a video instead, so now we have this awesome video of everything we did! It was so fun to watch it with the girls after we got home. It's only an hour long if anyones interested I will totally have a viewing party, with cheesecake.

Lady Liberty. It was really awesome to see the real deal but I do wish we could have climed up in there. It was closed for rennovation when we were there.

Here I am in all my glory! After Joni so kindly took this picture of me she started laughing uncontrollably. Then she told me I kind of looked like one of the original immigrants! Hahahaha. We got a kick out of that one for quite sometime!

The plan was to walk across the brooklyn bridge after we rode the ferry but instead of doing that I had to go back to the hotel and take a test. It was the best part of the trip. I did get an A but still it was pretty lame.

Awesome little Bryant Park. We got a recommendation from a close family friend, Kelly Rippa, to go check out Bryant park so we did! It was very cute and fun. Little shops set up and the skating rink in the middle. We didn't get to stay to long because we had things to do!!

This picture is one of my favs. Not only because I am not in it but because right before we took it we were talking about the strange urine oder we could smell then right after we took it we realized there was a homeless guy right behind us and could have very easily been standing in his bathroom.

Or sitting in it.

Remember the "other things" I talked about?? THis is it, WICKED!!!!! THE MOST AWESOME BROADWAY PLAY THERE IS. Well it is the only one I have seen but I still think I am right about that.

Cute tree lined streets. I have to write about our horrible ride to the theatre. I couldn't find any pictures of it because I think we were all to scared for our lives to get a camera out. We hadn't yet rode in a cab and we had no way of knowing how much it wouold have cost us to get there in a cab. (but now I know it probably would have been 8-10 dollars split four ways) This "driver/thief" pulls up and tells us we will never get a cab and he will take us for 40 bucks. Holy Moly, I guess you have to get ripped off at least once in NYC. Believe it or not, that was not even the worst part, this guys driving was HORRIBLE. Scary and sicky. I was on the verge of barfing the entire way there. Then to end it on a high note this guy drops us off like 4 blocks from the theatre. SO after that experience we stuck with yellow cabs the rest of the trip!

waiting for the show!

Here's the guy who ripped us off, I mean sold us our souveniers. It took us about an hour to decide and he was very tolerant of our horrible decision making skills.

Im going to try and see how many pictures I can post of Joni eating. We went to roxys or roxies after wicked for a late dinner and CHEESCAKE! The food was so so and the cheesecake was cheesecake but we sensed that there was something more out there so we continued to look.. We walked back to the hotel and were amazed at all the stores that were open until 2-3 am. It was so awesome, I wish St. George was more like that! Oh well, at least we have walmart. I remember looking for a head wrap/ scarf or anything to keep my ears warm pretty much everyday but never actually buying one. Stay tuned for more, I will try to make it in less than 2 months this time :)

Family

2012-01-14T18:29:00.000-08:00

I have New York day 2 post loaded and ready to go but I wanted to post about my family real quick. I am so thankful to have so much wonderful family all around me. The top picture is all the cousins on my side and the bottom is billys side. I just counted and there are 18 kids in both, I never realized that before. I am just feeling so blessed and so happy that my children have all these people in their lives that love and care about them. Thats it, I just love all these sweet kids and all their moms, dads, grandmas and grandpas!!

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!!!

2012-01-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

How did we go from this.....

to this so fast? The calander says she's one today but I don't believe it.
I sure love this little burthday princess!!

In case you didn't get enough of New York...

2011-11-25T21:59:00.001-08:00

(WARNING: THERE WILL BE AN EXCESSIVE USE OF EXCLAMATION POINTS IN THIS POST !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I can finally say I LOVE NY and mean it!! We had so much fun on our little trip to NYC. I didn't really want to do these in a slide show but I dont know how to get the pictures off of shutterfly onto my computer. (anyone know how?) SO I will do it like this and write the comments here all together :-) We did A LOT of stuff and took a lot of pictures so I decided the best way would be to do 4 seperate posts of the 4 days we were gone. Really we were gone 5 days but we didn't take pictures of each other being majorly sick on the way home from the horrible turbulence on the flight. Who wants pictures of the end of a vacation anyway?

1. Karen waiting to catch our flight to Maryland, where we had a little layover. We had to be to the airport at 4:30 in the morning, waaaaay to early but so worth it! We couldn't sleep anyway we were so excited!

2. My memory fails me on this one, big surprise. I think this is when we were having a little lunch waiting for our flight into NYC!!! One thing I am sure of, this is definitely Joni and Karen!

3. Unfortunately, mom was on a different flight than us but being the wonderful daughters that we are we waited in the airport for her so we could all ride in together.   I even made her a little sign with her last name on it while we waited! It seemed like we were there for 9 hours but I'm sure it wasn't really that long. Anywho, once she got there we went to get a cab, hello massive line! So we called a driver, it was only ten bucks more but we did have to wait 30 more minutes for him to get there. Maybe we could have got a cab by then but who cares, WE WERE IN NYC!!!

4. oh, oopsie, this ones actually out of order. We hide to ride a bus around the airport to get to the terminal mom was coming in on so we took a picture of it.  It wasn't really all that exciting but it was our first bus in New York! Oh my goodness, I just realized that is not what this picture is. Pretend you never saw this one.

5. Here is our first meal in New York. I really can't remember what time it was, it felt really late though. I would guess 9:00 at night, luckily we weren't in St. George or everything would have been closed down by then. We had some good stirfry and a warm bottle of soda. While we were eating someone had the brillant idea that we should have a peice of cheesecake everywhere we ate so we could say which one was our favorite. Wesent Joni up to buy it and we let the guy talk us into trying something called napolean or something like that. Dissappointment. We didn't let that happen again.

6. After we ate we headed down to Times Square (or Time Square if you're Codee). I must confess that when we first walked out of our hotel we did head the wrong way for a couple of blocks, not bad, it only took us a couple of blocks to figure out. As soon as we could see all the lights we decided to take a picture.   It was raining a little but we did not even care!

7. A nice gentlemen came and offered to take a picture of all four of us. We busted a guy getting in the back of our picture and had a good laugh with him and the photographer. Im still not sure if they were in on it together, it was a little unclear!

8. Close up! Remember the rain, thats why our hair looks a little flat!

9-12. We went into this awesome store there called aeropastle. Just kidding, I know we have those in SG but we were looking for headbands and hats, we were unprepaired that night!  It did have a kid section and ours doesn't so there! Anyway, we were a little tired and excited and took these pictures of each other. Karens is totally my favorite!

13. The picture says it all!

14. The whopper bar, we took this one for Trevor but I'm pretty sure he doesn't read my blog so whatevs.

15. Here I am exhausted in our cute, cute, cute hotel room. No I am not pregnant so you dont need to ask. The room was small and the bathroom was tiny but look at that adorable wall behind me. Not that the hotel matters much, we were so tired everynight we could have probably just slept out on the street. It continued to rain harder and harder that night and considering we had a twenty minute walk back to the hotel, we were pretty wet and freezing when we got back but once again, WHO CARES, WE WERE IN NEW YORK CITY!!!!!!!!!

Let me just add a few extra comments that dont have a picture to go with them. This trip has been a long time coming! I still cant believe we pulled it off. I guessI actually do have a picture of Joni jumping in the air right after we bought our tickets back in July.. I think we all shared the same feelings. Then we had to wait a little while to save up some more funds and get our hotel. Mom bought her tickets and we had a little meeting at her house one sunday night to pick the hotel. SO FUN! Soon after we bought our wicked tickets and our rockette tickets. Then we had one last formal planning meeting, we all went out to dinner and made plans while we ate cupcakes at sweet toothfairy. We went to the bookstore and bought maps and tried to make plans. There might have been a few clothes shopping trips mixed in there somewhere. Anyway I honestly almost cried on several occasions because I was so exited and I really couldn't believe that I was going to be in NYC!!! These little episodes just got closer and closer the closer the trip got or the closer the plane got! I remember the feeling I had in picture 6 when we first recognized Times square. It was that excitment that makes you feel like your throat has closed off and you almost cant breathe! It was unbelieveable and I hope I can go there soon with Billy and share all the fun with him. I am so thankful that I was able to go and especially with some of my favorite people in the whole world!!

Click here to view these pictures larger

I cant even come up with a title for this

2011-11-08T20:47:00.000-08:00

These are some seriously random pictures. I havn't been a good blogger lately so I had to get a few of these up that I don't want to miss. I dont think I posted this picture of Chloe and Cam yet but I'm not really sure. It was Campbells first day of preschool. I mostly wanted to post it to help me remember how close in size and looks these two are. It's like having another set of twins! They are also such good friends! It is so cute, they really miss each other when one is gone. They play so good together and I love how close they are. I think it would be fun if they were closer in school but I am not ready for Cam to be in Kindergarten next year so it's ok i guess!

Well, you can pretty much see why I posted this one. I love this little stink bug, who started crawling today by the way!

A while ago on a Sunday afternoon we had Eric, Karen, Joni and Codee all over for a big family bikeride! It was so fun, we didn't get to go very far but it was still fun and I think the kids had lots of fun. I meant to take more pictures but this is pretty much it!

Here is our crew on Halloween night. (I just noticed that only half of Chloe made it in the shot) There was a whole mess of kids there and I wouoldn't have it any other way.

I really didn't want to forget this. We have been going to this really cute neighborhood to trick or treat for the past few years and it is awesome! It is a cute neighborhood anyway with big trees lining the streets and little white fences but they are all decorated for halloween too! One house is always playing loud halloween music and someone usually has a haunted house and there are tons of kids, which I love. This year they had a HEADLESS HORSEMAN!!!!!! It was so awesome, the kids loved it but not as much as I did!

These are my cute little bumblebees!

Oh hey, how did they get in here twice?

The weekend before halloween we had a visit from Dylan! Aaron and Abbi were here too but I didn't get any pictures of them! Its hard to tell by their size but Dylan is actually the younger cousin! He is such a cute chubby little man and it was fun having them all here for the night!

Happy Birthday Ninja Turtle!

2011-11-04T21:50:00.000-07:00

I am a horrible blogger. I know. I have a lot of catching up to do but I had to skip ahead and say Happy Birthday to my little happy buddy! He gladly reused the ninja turtle costume this year. He was a pretty cute ninja turtle too! It's hard to compete with a 16 month old little girl being a ninja turtle but he held his own!

I LOVE that Cams birthday is on halloween however, it does cause a few problems. I don't feel right about doing a pinata or treat bags and really even cake is to much! This year he wanted pumpkin pie so we went for it, it worked out pretty good,

This is a cute bat he made for preschool but I LOVE this picture of my little funny boy.

Birthday morning! Billy thought it would be funny to put his big boy bike on the table and it was, he loved it. We took him for breakfast at McDonalds with his cute friend Mollie, I never take the kids in to play so he loved that. The best part was that Billy took the day off so he got to be with his best buddy all day!

Some stuff about Campbell at 4.
He is so funny, like adult funny.
He talks to EVERYONE, the walmart greeters LOVE him!
He squeals, alot. When Billy gets home he squeals Da-dy, he squeals for Claire and he just squeals for no reason.
He rides his bike with no training wheels like he's been doing it for years. He learned on the tiny bike and was awesome on it. I was hesitant to get him a bigger one then 2 days before his birthday I ran over the tiny one so it made the decision pretty easy.
He loves charleston chews and wants Billy to bring him some everyday.
He goes to preschool and really loves it.
He sleeps on bear bear (a fake bear skin thing) and uses his cozy everynight. (a halloween blanket he got last year from gramma loni)
He still loves to get in bed with me and Billy in the middle of the night and he moves around like crazy. He is pretty stubborn in his sleep too, I push him away from me and he instantly moves back to where he was.
He has a great imagination and plays more make believe type games than any of my other kids.
He loves to block you in the closet or whereever and make you guess the password (usually kitty or waddles waddles waddles).
He really wants the baby alive doll that drinks a sippy cup and goes poo.(?)
He is really into firecops, I'm not sure if he knows it's actually two seperate things but either way he loves them.
My most favorite, he gives me a big hug EVERY morning when he gets out of bed!! Chloe told me one time he didn't want to get out of bed because he didn't want to give me a hug but I dont believe it.
I know there are tons more things, I'll add them when I think of them.
I love these sweet little boy with all my heart, he makes me laugh and smile everyday. He is a genuinely happy kid and I love that about him!

Oh Sophie, you little cutie.

2011-10-23T15:45:00.000-07:00

SAY CHEEEEEEEEEEESE!

I love this little girl, she is hilarious. I have been trying to capture her little "say cheese" face for a week or so now and this weekend provided a great opportunity! We had Sophie and Jackson for a double sleepover. It was fun for all. We were stranded at home bceause we cant fit all these kids in our car so we played outside alot. Soph and Campbell go along surprisingly well, bonus. Anyway, what a ham, I love it!!

Kindergarten here I come!

2011-08-28T15:45:00.000-07:00

Chloe on her first day of real school. I want to point out that she picked out about 4 new outfits that are all this same style, long shirt or dress with leggings. She was also attracted to glitter, sequins, peace signs, butterflys and sparkles. She looks like such a big girl in her school clothes

She literally ran to her class, she couldn't hold back her excitement!

Slowing down just a little so she doesn'tcollide with anyone.

She found her seat with her name tag at the blue table. Chloe really wanted to ride the bus home so I let her. I tried to get her picture coming off the bus but it didn't work out. She is only supposed to be on the bus for about 10 minutes but that first day they forgot to send a bus to pick up the kindergarteners so she was about 20 minutes late. I knew there would be some confusion the first day so I wasn't to worried. The second day of school something went really wrong and she was on the bus for 1.5 hours. Holy canoli, her face was bright red when she finally did get home. Poor girl, we took the next day off of riding the bus but by Thursday she was begging to ride again so I agreed. Thursday and Friday were much better, she was home within 10 minutes!

Later that day we headed to Jonis house, Owen was there so I took a picture of the two Kindergarteners together. Something doesn't look quite right though, they don't look like they should be in the same grade do they?

The preschoolers didn't want to be left out of the photo shoot.

Now this little one DOES NOT get to go to school just yet but I just threw this one in so you could see what she looks like when we take her piggys out. A little clown like if you ask me!

First (or possibly second) day of school 2011

2011-08-28T15:24:00.000-07:00

The first day of school is hectic enough without trying to add pictures into the mix so we went with second day of school pics this year. If you want to get technical is was like a week before school for Chloe. This was the morning of her kindergarten assesment so she was up and ready in her new school clothes. Campbell might have been standing to the left of these guys thinking he was in the picture but I cut him out because I really wanted one of just the kids going to school, does that make me a bad mom?

Here is Carter,all ready to go. He and Cooper have different teachers for the first time this year. They seem to be fine with it, it's kind of a pain for me having two different SEP's and different homework but I think it will be really good for both of them.

Here's Cooper looking all big. I wish I had done pics the first day because they wore these really funny koolaid shirts, I will have to get them the next time they wear those. In case there was any doubt, that is not coffee in Coopers cup, I promise. They found these cups from last winter and started drinking water out of them. This also explains the water all down the front of his shirt,well the next picture does.

He was practicing his "waterfalling" skills. He got pretty good at it to.

Chloe Grace, so cute and excited. She at least had the sense to hide her cup, she knew it would take away from her cuteness. I love my kiddos so much and I miss them when they are gone. I drop them off in the mornings and feel a little sad that they are old enough to be at school. Not sad enough to try homeschool or anything, just enough sad to make me feel like I am a good mom because I do miss them when they are gone.

The Williams turn 9!!

2011-08-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

Here they are, my big 9 year olds! This was the morning of their birthday, it was the week before school started and they were really used to sleeping in. I had to wake them up early for a cub scouts field trip to the national guard armory, thats why they look a little sleepy. A few days before their birthday I took them to pick out some heeleys for thier present, it was one of the best presents we have ever bought them, they LOVE them and they are getting exercise while they play! On this morning I made them a blueberry pancake breakfast at Coopers request. Then on Saturday Billy and Codee took them, Campbell, Jackson, Spencer, Owen, and Jacoby to play lasertag! I guess we kind of spread it out over the whole week for them this year but they enjoyed it!

MEGA SLEEPOVER!!

2011-08-09T22:21:00.000-07:00

That's right I said MEGA SLEEPOVER! All the children (and 2 extra adults) seen here had a big ol' sleepover at my house last week. It was so fun, I LOVE that my kids have so many cousins on both sides of the family it makes for lots of partying. There were 17 of us total and if you have been in my house you know it doesn't really accomodate that many people, it barely accomodates the 7 that actually live here! Another thing that doesn't accomodate 17 people is mine and Jonis vehicles but we made it work.

Brandi and her kids moved to California about 7 months ago and this was the first time we had seen them since. They were here for 2 weeks and we made the most out of every second of it! We had all the kids over at Matt and Shenelles the night they got here to surprise them and we didn't leave there until about 1 in the morning. That was pretty much how the next two weeks went, staying up way to late then meeting up again the next day way to early! I think most of the kids are still trying to catch up:-)

More July parties!

2011-08-07T21:39:00.000-07:00

Joni, Karen and I tried really hard to have every day packed with things to do so we didn't go crazy this summer. This particular day we took the kids to Springdale for a picnic lunch and some ice cream. Jackson was with his grandparents so Joni and Karen each had 1 child with them and I looked like the crazy lady with 5! I guess the truth is I am the crazy lady with 5-haha! Luckily I have awesome sisters (like sister sisters- not sister wives) who help me out however they can; chasing someone, holding someones hand across the street, wiping someones face, you get the idea.

Heres Carter Sophia and Chloe cooling off with some fro-yo. Carter and Sophie have been little buddies lately and its pretty cute! I think it all started at the gym daycare, he thought she was really funny and she liked all the attention so they really hit it off! Cooper has been trying to form a similar relationship with Carson but its still a work in progress.

Claire is getting cutier (get it?) by the day, as you can clearly see here. I got her one of the these fruit thingys and she seemed to really enjoy this frozen peach. The week after I bought this we were in Marysvale for the 24th for 4 days, when I came home I found this thing hidden in the box of ramen noodles with a moldy banana in it. I threw it away and have yet to buy her a new one, but I will someday.

Oh yes and Claire also got her first bath time mohawk!

And we have arrived at the 24th of July pictures! As I said we were in Marysvale which is always a blast for everyone, especially the kids! The boys got a few shooting lessons from Uncle Cory,

and Billy got a lesson (and an injury) in archery from TJ. Thanks for sharing your weapons guys!

Campbell and Luke pushed each other in this little car for so long, it was so cute but they wouldn't hold still for one second for me to get a picture of them. Those two are so funny together!

The best part of all, the kids got to be in the parade! They had a seventies theme float (grandpas truck) decorated with balloons, signs, streamers and an awesome disco ball! The sign says* peace love popsicles* and the kids all threw otter pops, they were by far the cutest float in the parade!

We just watched!

Taking turns holding our cute little Claire Bear

After the parade they had games and booths in the park, the kids loved every second of it, Chloe got an awesome feather in her hair from Aunt Emilee!

I might have lied when I said the parade was the best part because after the games they had FISH RODEO!! We were a little late but the kids still got in on a little fish catching. I am not a big fan of fish in any form, in a bowl, in the ocean, on my plate but especially not in my childrens bare hands! It was a struggle for me but I put a smile on my face and let them have their fun!

I think if you get there on time the fish are alive and swimming and thats kind of like the rodeo part of it but im pretty sure these guys were just floating when they were caught but whatever, a catch is a catch.

Claire turned 6 months in July and has been practicing sitting up all by herself! I love her a whole bunch, she is the happiest baby ever and so fun to be around!

Fourth of July PARTAY!!!!!

2011-07-09T22:21:00.000-07:00

Joni and I threw a killer Fourth of July party this year, just ask anyone who was there, it was awesome. (We really missed you Karen but it was still awesome and next time you should take us to Puerto Rico with you) We made super fun invitations that looked like firecrackers (3D). Once you opened them there was an invitation in there and some little pop its (we call them poo poos, I don't know who started that but that is what they are in my family) for the kids. I didn't take pictures of them but I think Joni still has one at her house if anyone wants to see it.

We swam in the pool

ate licorice, popcorn, watermelon and salt water taffy

played on the swing set

visited, laughed, and had fun

had a corn on the cob contest, Jason won, and now I know why

We made our own Italian Sodas, super fun and super delicious

Carson REALLY wanted his own

and Carter (I'll be honest, I wasn't positive that was Carter so I asked Billy and he's really not sure either so I'm going to say 90% sure that's Carter) REALLY enjoyed the whip cream on his!!

And last but not least some pictures of the hostest(s) with the mostest(s) and their cute baby girls!

Oh yeah and we played slip n slide baseball, here's Eric and Carson running the bases, it was pretty cute!

FUN FUN FUN!
I love my family and I am (usually) so glad we all live so close together!!
Except Brandi and her family, we miss you guys!

Three cuties (not the little oranges)

2011-06-28T21:47:00.000-07:00

I don't know how these got overlooked! I love love love these pictures of all the girls. My fabulous friend Chelsy at http://www.bcouturephotography.com/ took these amazing pictures of Chloe, Claire, and Sophia. It was so fun, Billy was home with my boys and Jackson went to a friends house while the girls got their hair done and pics taken! Good family fun! Thanks Chelsy, we LOVE them!

Look who joined the big girl club

2011-06-28T21:32:00.000-07:00

Chloe got her ears pierced for her birthday this year! She had been asking for a while but I really thought she was going to chicken out. She was so brave though, she didn't cry at all! She had a puppy that she used to squeeze when she got her 5 year old shots and she meant to take it with her but we forgot it. Luckily they had a little teddy bear for her to hold at Claires (she thought it was pretty awesome that they named the store after her sister) She picked the cutest little hello kitty earrings and unfortunately has lost one of them already. I am bummed, I really liked them and they were a little pricey for an earring. They weren't supposed to be replaced for 6 weeks but we don't really like to follow rules anyway.

The boys were super excited to be in a jewelry store! At one point they asked to go to the bathroom so I explained where it was and I was pretty sure they could find it in our teeny tiny (totally lame) mall. They came running back in the store a few minutes later and I asked them if they made it to the bathroom but Carter said, "No we couldn't find it so we bought some candy." Funny funny boys, the candy machine is practically right in front of the bathrooms. Campbell was not with us on this trip, he was spending some much needed (by both of us, probably one more than the other) time at Grandma and Grandpas house! We missed him lots while he was gone and skyped with him every night. One night while we were talking on skype Chloe asked Grandma if she could be next to stay the night and that maybe she could use skype while she was there and Campbell said, "then I can get my ears pierced!" So be waiting for those pictures coming soon!

A quick(or maybe not so quick) catch up!

2011-06-12T22:51:00.000-07:00

We have been so busy lately! I feel like summer is almost over and we have only had one week of real warmth! I was planning on putting Chloe and Cam in swim lessons this summer and I got a call from my friend (the awesome teacher) on memorial day asking if we could start the next day! It was last minute but good timing because we didn't have anything else going on.

They both did amazing but Chloe really took to it. She LOVED it and is pretty much water safe! She is a little fish, I am hoping she will take after her mother! (not that I was good, I just enjoyed it) I actually did a mom and baby class with Claire right after their class was over. It was fun too, Claire usually fell asleep i the first 10 minutes we were in the pool but it was still relaxing!

This one is pretty self explanatory, Claire started eating baby food! Yay, Claire!! (She is also officially out of her bassinet and sleeping in her crib in the room with Chloe)

We have been to the lake a couple of times with Matt, Shenelle, Joni, Jackson, and Sophia! The kids are in heaven on the boat, or on the tube I should say! Claire doesn't really like wearing a life jacket but she eventually falls asleep. Billy wasn't with us this day but he did go with us the next time, he skied and tubed!

In between al the madness we took a little break to try out the new anti-gravity center! Another big hit with the kids! They were beat that night! The boys played dodgeball most of the time while Chloe and Campbell bounced their little hearts out.

We camped! It was the first time since Campbell was a baby. We went up north for our nehew Tysons baby blessing and Billys grandmas 80th birthday party. It happened to be Billy's birthday that weekend and Chloe's birthday later on that week so we decided to turn the trip into her party. We (and by we I mean I) didn't get much sleep the first night, it was cold and Claire decided to wake up every 30 minutes or so. The second night was great, however, warmer and Claire slept straight through the night until 10 the next morning!!

We went to lunch with Billys whole family for GG's birthday! It was a rather large group of people and so good to see those northerners that we haven't seen in way to long. All the grandkids were there together so we started snapping some pictures with GG!

These were the birthday party activities that we took part in, mini golf and the water park. The kids always amaze me at the stuff they enjoy. I think something is going to be fast orscary for them and they all end up loving it. I took Chloe and Campbell down the river rafting ride and I thought for sure Chloe would be in tears by the end of it but she was smiling and laughing the whole time! Cute kids, they are the light of my life and I love love love being their mom:-)
(This took way to long and I am not even going to re-read it for errors so please dont judge)

I think I forgot to tell you

2011-05-16T22:03:00.000-07:00

That Cooper and his awesome pinewood derby car got 3rd place at the regional scout expo!!!

( Cooper felt bad that he got a trophy at his pack meeting and the scout expo so he let Carter have the bubble wrap that the trophy was wrapped in!! Carter looks a little happier than Coop actually-HaHa)

Here is the proof, in case you didn't believe me- Thanks for snapping that one Billy!!

Claire Claire Claire Claire Claire

2011-05-11T21:31:00.000-07:00

Family mustaches

2011-05-09T21:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we get really bored at our house and stuff like this happens.

my girls

2011-05-03T21:20:00.000-07:00

Check it out

2011-04-18T15:21:00.000-07:00

By now I'm sure everyone knows how blog savvy I am, I don't know how to do more then like 5 pictures in one post but I had a lot I wanted to blog so I did 4 new posts below! Don't miss them, they are all equally awesome :)

Carsons Kite party!

2011-04-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

Carson turns 2 on the 19th of this month and we went to his really fun kite party on Sunday. When we got there it was super windy and seemed like the party might be ruined but it turned out so fun! Karen had a kite for all the kids and once the wind died down a little it was perfect kite flying weather! I think at one time there were 10 kites flying at once, it was so cute! I love this picture of Eric Karen and Carson because Eric and Karen are both laughing, Carson would not look at the camera for nothing, he just kept saying up, up, up!! He wanted to get up on the table. He is so cute and funny!

Campbell flying his kite with ease thanks to the perfect weather!

Look closely, thats NINE kites and two extra strings all tied together flying high in the air! Billy and Codee got a little caried away, they actually added two more kites after I took this picture. Then the string accidentally got cut and it flew away to the other side of the park where another party caught it and kept it flying after we left!! Haha!

Here is a picture of the proud kite flyers! I have another picture of them talking about how akward this picture was!!

Cake #2

2011-04-18T14:53:00.000-07:00

Joni and I made another cake, this one was for Carsons 2nd birthday. We had lots of fun making it and if you look close enough you'll see that we also drank a lot of soda making it!

The finished cake. We took it to the park to put it together, you know like the professionals do, but that majorly backfired because it was super duper windy and our cute little kites got blown on top of each other and messed up the decorations. I thought it was still cute.

Happy Birthday Joni!!!

2011-04-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

Joni turned 28 this past Saturday so we took advantage and went out to dinner and to play a little BINGO! We always get together for each others birthdays but it's really fun when we get to do something other then just dinner or a movie. For some reason most of the pictures I took were blurry, these are the best of them. Jennie, Mom, and Shenelle

Mom was really not getting it, luckily she sat next to Jennie who was the Bingo expert. (There might have been an incident where someone (definitley not Karen) could have won $150 but somehow missed one of the numbers called and didn't notice it in time.)

Here we are on the other side of the table. Kylie, Joni, me, and Karen! Lots of fun, however, My birthday is in Feb, Karen and Kylie in March and Joni in April so we have decided from now on we are going to go on a fun trip every year to celebrate all our birhdays!!

Claire turns 3 months old

2011-04-18T14:31:00.000-07:00

Our sweet little baby was 3 months old this past Tuesday so Chloe and I took a couple pictures of her.

I swear I didn't pose her with her hand in her pocket like that, okay maybe I did but I still think it's cute.

Chloe took this one all by herself, I think she was going for a dramatic angle.

Cousins

2011-04-15T08:33:00.000-07:00

We had everyone over last weekend and did a little photoshoot with Claire and her cousin Brighton. He is the cutest chubbiest little boy ever! He is only 2 months older then Claire but I think he is like 10 times her size. Those jammies he is wearing, those are 12 month jammies, He is 5 months! He was getting so excited and kept waving his arms when I would take a pic so most of them have a blurry arm right in Claires face, it was so cute and fun!

If there wasn't an arm in her face I couldn't get Claire to look at the camera! I just threw this one in to illustrate Brightons excitment!

Then another cousin came along and wanted to part of the photoshoot. (Some people say she resembles Big Baby from Toy Story 3) I love to watch Sophia with Claire, I'm pretty sure she thinks Claire is hers! One day I was holding Claire on my lap and Sophia came and offered me a trade, her fake baby for my real one. Im afraid when I accepted the fake baby from her I enterd into some kind of a contract with her that I wasn't aware of.

After Sophia joined us we started drawing a pretty big crowd. Carson was there too, he just wasn't interested in pictures that night! We have 2 new cousins waiting for us up north that we can't wait to meet! I am so grateful that my children have so many fun aunts, uncles, and cousins in thier lives!

Claires blessing day

2011-03-31T23:20:00.000-07:00

A weeks worth of fun!!!

2011-03-21T19:37:00.000-07:00

Well it really was only a few days worth,it started on St. Patricks Day, the boys had thier pinewood derby. They were really excited about it and had been trying to work on their cars all week (we forgot all about it until the week of) but Billy was sick and not really feeling up to carving a block of wood. So they did pretty much all the work the night before and the day of. They both had awesome cars, Cooper even got first place overall! Im not trying to brag but it was actually out of two wards and he still had the fastest record! I loved watching both of their faces watching their cars come down the track. Coop got first all four races and Carter got 2 firsts and 2 thirds. Cooper gets to go race his at the scout expo now, he is pretty happy about that!

Friday was a pretty fun day too. I went out to dinner with my sisters for Karens birthday. I dont have any pictures of it but we had such a good time laughing and just being ourselves. When Billy came home from work (I think he could tell that I was at the end of my rope) he insisted that I leave Claire home with him too. So I had a night out all to myself, that may sound selfish but it was necessary at that point.

Anyway, all these pictures are from Saturday, we went to Springdale for a St. Patricks day parade. It was a dinky little parade but we always have fun when we are with Eric, Karen, Carson, Codee, Joni, Jackson, and Sophia!! We went to lunch first then watched the parade, took pictures with each other and some star wars characters, and Coopy was even in a jello eating contest! Then we headed on home.

Here is my sweet little Claire bear right before we headed out the door, she slept in her carseat the whole time so she missed out on all the pictures!

In case you were wondering...

2011-03-15T20:50:00.000-07:00

SHE STILL HAS CRAZY HAIR, AND A LOT OF IT!!!!!!!!

My Little Cub Scouts

2011-02-27T20:51:00.000-08:00

Carter and Cooper have been begging us to get them their scout uniforms since the day they turned 8, that was like 7 months ago, we finally did it!! They love scouts, it's so fun to see them come home on Tuesdays after school so excited for scouts! They had the blue and gold banquet this month so we all got to go with them.

As part of the banquet they had each scout make and decorate a cake, so these are pics of them decorating it. I think they did a pretty good job! Carter even got a little icing on his hair in the process.

The masterpiece

Here is Coop with a little bear paw on his head, Carter had one to but was to embarrased and wiped it off right away. They are good boys and it's fun watching them grow and get into different activities. I can see our lives getting crazier and crazier from here on out!

A turn face??

2011-02-23T20:12:00.000-08:00

Can you believe that this post is actually about Campbell and not Claire? It is. Campbell is the funniest little boy ever. He keeps us laughing all day long. (I have to admit that he is also my most difficult and frustrating child, is that how it always goes?) The other day I was going to get us some always delicious taco bell for lunch. Campbell overhead me asking Billy what he wanted and he chimed in with "I want a turn face." We were baffled, what the heck is a turn face. So I asked him and he explained (and demonstrated) to me that its the thing you have to turn your face to eat, A TACO!!!!
That is just one of the many funny things he has said recently. He is really into quoting movies right now and its hilarious. SOmetimes I can't pinpoint the movie it's from but I know it's from a movie. He has the same crazy memory as his dad! The movie quotes started with him telling me "I'm not myself today" it took a while but I figured out that one is from cloudy with a chance of meatballs. A few other movie lines he favors are:
"Squid Launcher, OH YEAH!" -Despicable Me
"Mr. Perkins, your son is here" -Despicable Me
"How did we do today girls?" -Despicable Me (can you tell which movie we have been watching lately?)
"DId you hear that?" -Elf
" Have you always wanted a career in nursing, Stevens Henager" -Stevens Henager commercial (technically not a movie but pretty stinkin funny)
That's all I can remember right now, he definitly did not get his memory from me!

Happy Girl with a perm.....

2011-02-15T20:11:00.000-08:00

I love that when I wash Claire's hair it is so curly and cute, it looks like she has a litle baby perm! It takes about 2 minutes to dry then it is standing straight up again! I was trying to hurry and snap these pictures so I could remember how curly it was but it was already half way dry. I'm not sure why but she was really happy once I started taking pictures, I love it!

Seriously Claire??

2011-02-13T16:06:00.000-08:00

What is going on with your hair??? I love it soooo much, it is out of control and I can't get over it! All my other kids have been baldies so this has been pretty fun. There is really no styling it but we have figured out that she doesn't NEED a headband to wear a clipie!!

Claire had some really cute newborn pictures taken about a week and a half ago. Chances are if you read my blog you will probably get one in the mail but if you want a little sneak peak you can go here.
**Thanks Jen for the "how to insert a link" tutorial**

All dressed up

2011-01-31T12:14:00.000-08:00

Here is our sweet little Claire all dressed up in her first big girl outfit. She had to go in for her 2 week appointment so I thought that was an appropriate time to put on the big girl clothes! She is so fun to dress up and take pictures of, let that be a warning to you all that there will probably be a whole bunch of pictures of her on here. (She got great reviews at her appointment, weighing in at 9 lbs 6oz)

Honestly I set out to get full body shots of her in this cute little outfit but I couldn't resist a close up of this adorable little face!

We had Billys parents and grandparents over for dinner last night and I caught this shot of Claire getting a little bit of attention. I wish I would have got the camera out sooner because the was pretty much what it looked like all night. It almost makes me cry everytime I see a sight like this. (honestly, I am fighting back the tears to avoid looking like a huge baby) My children are blessed to be surrounded by so much love. They have wonderful grandparents and great grandparents, not to mention aunts, uncles, and cousins. I don't think there is anything better then having a great big loving family.

I generally don't like to have my picture taken until I have lost at least half of the 200 pounds I gain each pregnancy but I sacrificed to be able to take a picture with my sweet little angel. I just love this little baby with all my heart, I can't imagine anything better then just staying home and taking care of her. (and the other kids too I guess) Ok, I'm kidding of course I love all of my sweet children more then anything in the world and I am so fortunate to have each one of them to love and care for. I am one happy mama!

Here she is....

2011-01-26T13:28:00.000-08:00

Claire Paisley Blackwell

her blog debut

she has tons of hair

and we all love her lots and lots and lots!! (more to come soon)

Happy Birthday Sophia!!!

2010-12-15T14:16:00.000-08:00

Look at this beauty!!! Joni and I made this all by ourselvess. We practiced one time on a tiny little cake and look how nicely this baby turned out. It may have had a few blemishes on the back but at least we were smart enough to put them all in the back.

Sophia had a nice little winter party for her first birthday and it actually was a little cold outside, like we got to wear our sweatshirts AND stand by the fire!! Thats rare around these parts. The kids even got to throw snow in the air.

Here is Joni's cute family, I'm not sure why Jackson looks like he hates me because I swear he loves me. My camera ran out of batteries before I got any pics of Sophia by herself but she was really cute! She got the whole top tier of cake to herself but she wouldn't touch it until Joni peeled the fondant back.

Here's Chloe, she won a prize! Joni had wrapped up a box that had a bunch of tiny boxes of nerds and all the kids got to guess what was in there! Chloe got it pretty quick and kind of spoiled it for the rest of the kids, girl knows her candy! Fun party, cute birthday girl I cant believe she is 1 (or that I will have a baby girl turning 1 at this time next year)!
***we are now taking orders for custom cakes***

You can not outsmart this thing

2010-12-07T00:10:00.000-08:00

I tried and it didn't work. I am super lazy about my blogging and the easiest way for me to post is through picasa which will only let me do 4 pictures at a time. So I did 2 seperate posts but I did them backwards, I tried to trick blogger into posting the second one first but it didn't happen. That is why below you will see part 2 first but if you are cool and you want to do it the right way you can scroll down and read it in order!!

baby shower part 2

2010-12-06T23:36:00.000-08:00

Here I am on the way down. Karen suprised me with this little gem, a real cupcake inside a fake cupcake! It was awesome, nice work Karen!

Joni Lightyear? It might have gotten a little goofy towards the end. Well, this was only after one store so maybe it was a little goofy the whole time.

Ryanne lightyear? She actually started it, Joni was being a copycat.

Weird, it's Joni doing some crazy activity again. I tried to talk Joni into going in this Hurricane thing when we tool our trip to SLC back in July and she wouldn't do it. THis time she couldn't say no, it was MY babyshower! I did have to fork out the 2 bucks but as you can see from my head thrown back laughter it was totally worth it! SOmebody must have said something, I don't remember it really being all that funny.

Did I tell you???

2010-12-06T23:35:00.000-08:00

That I have the best sisters ever? Seriously. They gave me a baby shower for my FIFTH baby! (not to mention every other baby too) Since it was my 5th they came up with a fun idea to have a "baby shopping shower" in Vegas. We all rode down together and had a blast.

Here is a pic of me and Ry Pie the little french fry, my neice, at Mimis. This was our first stop, you can't lose when you start your day of at Mimis.

Here is the whole group eating breakfast. You see how awesome they are? While we were eating they gave me a card with my own money to spend on the baby. AND a cute bunny pillow pet! Now you see.

Next we hit babies r us. There was way to much cute girly stuff there, and I am horrible at making decisions. So I had Joni who is just as bad at making decisions help me out alittle. You can tell by the look on our faces, it was serious business. I got a couple of things there, one of them being a cute little sweater outfit that made me cry when I saw it. If it makes you cry you pretty much have to buy it right?

This was my favorite part, after being in Babies R Us for a little while I got tired and decided to try out the rocking glider thingy (which I totally want now). I just sat there with my feet up and my mom (who is not one of my sister but is still very awesome)and Joni just started bringing me stuff to look at! You can not ask for better service than that! Next we went to the mall and Burlington Coat Factory. Luckily I had saved some money because I found the cutest stroller ever and had just enough to buy it! This was such a fun day and I really do have the best sisters I could ask for, including the ones who weren't there. I am so excited for this baby to come, I dont remember feeling this anxious before. Maybe that is why I am up at 1 a.m. blogging instead of sleeping.

Seriously St. George?

2010-11-05T13:15:00.000-07:00

I realize these pictures don't have a date on them but I swear to you they were taken yesterday. November 4th and my kids are running through the sprinklers in their swim suits.

Chloe and Campbell were out in the backyard playing when the sprinklers came on at 6pm and totally soaked them. (We had to add an extra watering for a few days because Campbell took it upon himself to turn them off all together. Who knows how long they have been off for but he almost killed off our 2 month old sod) They ran in to get their suits on and Coop decided to join them.

While I enjoy the pictures and I am glad the kids had a little fun, I am sick of the heat. I realize that in an un-pregnant body this might not be considered "heat" but to me it is.

SO those of you in cold/snow can be jealous of my warm sunshine pictures and I will be jealous of your snowboots and hats pictures!

3 years ago today

2010-10-31T19:16:00.000-07:00

How did he go from this...

to this, so fast?

Today is Campbell's birhtday. My baby is three, now you see why I HAD to have another one, a few more years and this kid will be in school. Then what am I going to do? ( Work, um no thanks, I'll stay home a few more years with my sweet baby girl!) I really thought Campbell would be the last and I actually blame it on him that we decided to have another one. He was by far my best baby and he has been such a fun little boy and so entertainging. Every time he would go through a new stage I would think to myself "oh no, this is the last time I am going to have a baby do this." I couldn't let that happen! I was reading back through my old journal from when Campbell was a baby and evey entry said the same thing about Campbell being the happiest baby ever. I still feel that way about him. You cant really tell in this cop picture but he is so happy all the time, I love it! I was looking for a better recent picture of him and even tried to take some today but he is anti-picture right now for some reason. I cant even sneak pictures because my camera makes this beeping noise when it's focused and he can hear that beep a mile away. Anyway, Happy Birthday Campbell, I love you!! Now on to more Halloween pictures.

Cooper was a penguin this year. He has had a strong love for all things penguin for about the last year and a half. I was so excited when he said he wanted to be a penguin this year instead of a super hero!!

Here is Carter the banana! They both really went outside the norm this year. It made it really easy to spot them in the halloween parade.

Chloe wanted to be a clown this year, which was also really fun! They had some really cute girly ones online but when we came across this one we knew it was THE ONE! It was huge on her and had a little fan in the pocket that made it blow up huge. She wore it to dance class on Wednesday, then preschool on Thursday and by trick or treat time Sat night the fan was broken! Oh well, she still looked cute. Her going to dance class had to be the funniest thing ever. There were nine cute little princess/ fairies and one massive clownn! I thought it was pretty fitting.

One more collage of everything else. We had a small party for Campbell with some family before trick or treating on Saturday. Jackson came as an awesome ninja (with double swords!!) Sophia was a ballerina, Carson was a firefighter with an awesome wagon turned into a firetruck to ride in, and Joni came as Dot. By far a highlight of the night. If you haven't seen spaceballs, you should watch it, then you'll get her rad costume. WE had a good night. I cant tell you how glad I am this crazy hectic month is over and that was a good way to end it!

Happy Early Birthday Campbell

2010-10-28T13:01:00.000-07:00

We gave Cam his present a little early this year. Sharing a birthday with Halloween is awesome but sometimes his birthday gets overlooked. That and we are pushovers! I think this is going to be a video. If not, well then I don't know how to post videos!

A baptism, a blessing, and a few pregnant ladies...

2010-10-19T09:23:00.000-07:00

We had a seriously exciting/exhausting weekend about a week and a half ago. Carter and Cooper were baptised (early) Saturday morning. We had lots of family and friends there, not to mention donuts and chocolate milk after! The next morning (even earlier) we went to Zoe's baby blessing. (That is Billys sister Emilee and her husband TJ's baby, in case anyone doesn't know that) It doesn't really sound like the makings of an exhausting weekend but it was. Maybe it's the pregnancy or that we decided to go to a football game friday night, I don't know but it wore me right out. It was worth it though, you can always catch up on sleep later! I wish we would have gotten a few group pictures of everyone but we didn't so here is what we did get!

Somehow I didn't get any pictures of Zoe, duh. SO I thought I would include this awesome one where Billy decided to cut her head off for some reason! If you want to see how adorable she really is you can click on Emilee and TJ's link to the right. This is actually the pregnant lady picture, or recently pregnant. I am the furthest along, Melissa is 6 weeks behind me, and Debbie is 6 weeks behind her! Okay I guess Emilee is actually the furthest along because she obviously had her baby already but we threw her in the picture to remind the rest of us what the end result is!

Needless to say we had lots of good food over the weekend, this was by far Campbells favorite part! A brownie with whip cream piled high on top!

Here are my four (for now) sweet children. I am so proud of Carter and Cooper, they are WONDERFUL big brothers and great examples to all of us. I want to share a quick story that happened after the boys got baptised because I think it is super cute! A few months ago Cooper and his friend (name withheld!) got in major trouble for killing a bird that they found. I hate to assume things but from the little bit of eavesdropping I did, it sounded more like a torturing. This is not the cute part by the way. I tried to take advantage of the opportunity to teach my boys about taking care of and loving all of Heavenly Fathers creations. (Except spiders and snakes, or anything gross or harmful) Anyway after the baptism, I was in the bathroom helping the boys change and Cooper looked at me and said, "Mom, finally I don't have to feel bad about that bird that we killed." Silly Mom starts to cry. ( and might be getting misty just retelling the story) I just loved knowing that he really understood what it meant to be baptised. You know how it goes, you teach your kids things and wonder if they get it. Then when they prove that they do get it, it blows your mind! Anyway, sweet boys, I couldn't imagine loving my children anymore!

Carter, Billy, and Cooper. I'm not usually one to share my feelings on my blog, don't know why, it's just not me I guess but I just need to say that I am so grateful for my lovely family. I couldn't ask for a better husband, he is such a fantastic father and really takes care of me and the kids. Everyday when he gets home from work the kids all start yelling and run over to give him a huge hug! Seriously, everyday. If that doesn't tell you something I don't know what does. I am so excited to have a new baby in our family. I am only 24 weeks but I feel huge and extremely uncomfortable already. It doesn't matter though, I LOVE being pregnant and the thought of having a new baby makes me smile a thousand times a day. Sometimes I feel like wowzers, 5 kids is a lot, can I do it? But I know I can because this is really what I love doing, I love being a mom and staying home with these sweet little children! Okay enough of that business, let me just blame all this extra feeling and emotion on the pregnancy! Thanks for listening, if anyone did!

Were back!!!

2010-09-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

This is just a meaningless post to say " HOORAY I finally got a new camera!!" Here are some random pictures of the kids!

I'm a big girl now...

2010-08-20T10:30:00.000-07:00

Here is Chloe all ready for preschool! I couldn't decide if I wanted her to do it but she talked me into a few days before her class was supposed to start. She kept drawing pictures of herself at preschool and that really put the pressure on me.

Walking into class all by herself. Don't judge the preschool by those big nasty bears out front, the teachers are wonderful and the program is too! She will probably skip right to first grade after this!!

She even has her own cubby for her princess backpack.

I think this is my favorite of all the pictures (although that first one is pretty cute). Once she found her desk and started working she was way to into her work to say goodbye to me. I know she is loving it so much and we miss her when she's gone but it's fun to have a couple of hours alone with Campbell! (until Jan anyway)

You do the talkin'

2010-08-17T17:12:00.000-07:00

Happy 8th birthday Cooper and Carter

This year the boys birthday happend to fall on the first day of school AND family night at the big Washington County Fair!! We had never been to the fair here before and thought that would be a fun birthday treat. We were all having a blast until Misty decided to buy the boys these nasty little hermit crabs for their birthday. I guess I shouldn't say that, the kids all LOVED them, they just made me want to barf everytime I saw them. Unfortunately they are no longer with us. RIP spongebob and patrick, we will always remember you. (It was an accidental death, I swear)

Here we are having some good times with family and friends! Cooper and Billy went on the gravitron and looked like heck when they got off, it was pretty funny. That Cooper LOVES the rides, he wasn't afraid of anything there!

P.S. I am still cameraless so my kind sister Joni posted these for me. SHe left me a nice litte note reminding me that it had been way to long since Sophia had made an appearance on my blog. SO here is a little Sophie for anyone who has forgotten (or never knew) how cute she is! Oh and you're cute too Bandit!

A blast from the past...

2010-07-16T15:39:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed a lack in my blogging lately. I have a good excuse, my camera broke. It was he last day of school water party that did it in I think! Joni was kind enough to loan me her camera for Chloe's party but we have had no fresh pictures since. Anyway, I thought I would take you on a little trip through memory lane and post some old school pictures (like so old that I had to scan them in, who needs digital?)

We will start off with me as a young child, maybe 3ish. I think its obvious but I am the one on the far left.

Here is Billy's family when he was a youngin. You can tell he is ALOT older then me by the style of clothes right!!!

Flash forward to high school, our glory days! I was on the swim team and this is at our state swim meet at BYU, but I couldn't tell you if this was 97 or 98. Either way, lots of fun, I loved swim team and I am in the process of talking my kids into going that direction! (Shhh don't tell Billy)

Here is Billy with a baseball trophy. Im going to go out on a limb here and say they won state and he was a senior (that part is a total guess) He is napping right now or I would find out more details. I actually enjoy baseball too, and would allow the kids to play that sport,its wrestling I'm totally against.

Okay you might start recognizing us now. This is a picture of us the very first night we officially "hung out" together. It wasn't our first date but still pretty fun to have! This was in August of 1999.

And if you cant tell by the attire, this is our wedding day! Hope I'm not showing to much leg here, haha! The photographer seriously made him take that thing of with no hands, it was funny and akward!

Here comes the good stuff, a select few of you have been fortunate enough to see some amazing pics of us in the Army but to those who haven't, this is my little gift to you!!! Can you find me?? I kind of hope not! This is actually in basic training, I wasn't that hideous the entire time I was in the army.

We were still in training during 9-11, which was seriously scary. About a month after we were done and finally able to live together again my unit was supposed to be deployed to somewhere (I cant remember where and again, Billy prob does but he is still napping!) I got issued all this desert gear so we took pictures of course. We didn't end up going on that deployment and I hurried and got pregnant to avoid any future deployments!

Oh and this is my scary face, I got in trouble in basic all the time for smiling and laughing to much but somethings you just cant change!

So me getting pregnant didn't really help Billy with the deployment issue! Here he is in Oklahoma just 6 weeks after Carter and Cooper were born. Not nice Army, not nice. Doesn't that cot look super comfy to sleep on for 2 months!

I was really hesitant to include this one for a few reasons; 1- my pasty white skin thanks to living in the state of washington where the sun shines about 3 days of the year, 2- Billy's sweet hair cut and, 3- my rather large pregnant body. In the end I decided it might be good to prepare all those people who don't believe me when I say I get HUGE in my pregnant state. Get ready it's coming and it's not pretty when it does!

NO BOYS ALLOWED

2010-06-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

My sweet little Chloe turned 4 this past Tuesday! I can't even believe it, she is going to school in one more year?? We decided to have a little girls only party this year and it was tons of fun. First we had arts and crafts time at Brushfire, our local pottery studio. Chloe made a lovely blue unicorn with red polka dots. She invited all her (southern) girl cousins and their moms, and of course her grandma Loni.

Brushfire is conveniently located a couple doors down from 25 Main, our favorite place to get cupcakes in town! So we headed up there and everyone picked their TWO favorite flavors to enjoy. (I got strawberry lemonade AND raspberry lemonade and I strongly recommend them both)

We finished up our girl day at Taylor Andrews where all the little girls got their toe nails painted hot pink with black zebra stripes. They turned out very cute, as you can see! We had such a fun time and I'm pretty sure Chloe felt very special on her big day!

We finished off the day at pirate pizza (this is Chloe we're talking about, she's not your typical girly girl)with the family. I snapped this picture on our way out and realized that she is definitely growing up way to fast.

Schools out for summer..

2010-05-29T14:51:00.000-07:00

My neighbor Jennie threw an awesome last day of school party for the 4 boys on our block! We started the party a little early and filled water balloons to soak the boys with when the got off the bus. One of the boys is actually home schooled so he came over and helped us with the ambush! We had tons of fun and I cant think of a better way to kick of the summer. (Bonus: I got a sweet sunburn all down the front half of me and am now sporting an awesome stripe down my legs!)
The four boys; Carter, Cooper, Preston, and Coby

and don't forget Campbell. Oh and Ryker, but I didn't get any pics of him:(

The girls, not in school yet but still happy to support the cause! Bella and Chloe

WATER BALLOON FIGHT!!

Preston and Carter (clearly more interested in the licorice then the fight)

VS Cooper and Coby

They also had a pool for swimming, water guns, and a beach ball that had water spraying out of it. I was to busy getting my burn on to get pictures of everything.

Girls!!!!!!

2010-05-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

Yes its true, Chloe probably would have told me about the hole in her shoe long before her toe touched asphalt, however, I don't remember any of my boys doing this:

Yep, it happened. Bye bye long hair that took us about a year and a half to grow. No more cute pig tails, or bangs for that matter. She had her hair in piggies for church but I guess she wasn't very fond of them. She completely took one of them off and gave the other one a nice trim. The bangs I don't even need to describe, you can see how lovely they are in the picture.

Luckily we have a hair genius in the family who fixed Chloe up wih this nice little bob! Gotta love it!

Unfortunately there was just no helping those bangs. We thought about extensions for the bangs but in the end decided against it.

Here she is proudly posing by her pile of hair that took us a day and a half to find! When we first found her she wouldn't come out from under her blankets and was sobbing. After a while we calmed her down but she still wouldn't tell us where she got the scissors or where the hair ended up. The next night she was feeling a little more confident with her newly styled do and spilled the beans. I said "Chloe where did you put the hair?" She whispered "Are you going to get mad?" I reassured her that she wouldn't be in trouble and she came clean! She hid it in her art desk, a huge pile of hair just waiting to be found!

Boys!!!!!

2010-05-20T09:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, these are the shoes Cooper has been wearing to school. I don't know if you can tell from this pic or not but that hole goes all the way through. I mean all the way like his sock is touching the pavement when he walks. Heres the kicker, HE NEVER TOLD ME!!! He just kept wearing them like that. I'm pretty sure a girl would have clued her mom in on the shoe situation. (Don't worry, these shoes were quickly replaced!)

2010-05-10T14:13:00.000-07:00

One day last week Carter casually made a comment to Billy that he could eat more packs of oatmeal than Billy could. I don't think Carter realized that those were fightin' words as far as Billy was concerned. The next night we headed off to Walmart and this is what we came home with.

Round 1, we had 3 rounds but I only got pictures of this one because I got put on oatmeal making duty.

The damage.

Carter and Cooper were the champs, only because Billy caved at the last minute and let them be a team! The individual pack totals were; Billy 8, Cooper 6, Carter 3. Carter really did not pull his own weight, considering he started the whole thing. Cooper was hilarious, he had some serious determination. It took him about 30 minutes to finish that last pack and I even had to spoon feed him the last 4 bites but dang it, he did not give up!! (I love that he is holding his stomach in this pic!)

2010-05-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

Campbell. No words, just Campbell.

dear blogger,

2010-05-05T10:51:00.000-07:00

Dear Blogger,
I hate you, why do you have to be so lame? All I want to do is change my picture to a more spring/summer shot and you will not cooperate. I'll get it one of these days, just you wait.
Love Jamie
P.S. what did you do with my titles???????

copy cat

2010-04-27T15:39:00.000-07:00

I admit it, I am a crafting copy cat. The truth is I'm horrible at crafting and I could never come up with anything cute or even decent on my own but every once in a while I see something and I think "Hmmm,I MIGHT be able to copy that". That was the case with this project, I saw it on my sister in laws blog (Thanks Lindsay!) and wanted to give it a go. So here it is, this is what I started with...

and this is what I ended up with...

Joni also made one and hers turned out super cute, she got the creative gene in our family. I had a picture of her mid-project but being the good sister I am I decided not to post it. (I will however, hang on to it for payback in the future if she ever decides to post a not so great pic of me!)
P.S. I also made a good amount of the bows on the board! (Thanks to the talented women in my ward who also allow my to copy their creativity!!)

I'm gonna punch you down...

2010-04-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

I had to give Chloe a little praise here because this girl is the wii boxing champion. Here is a shot of her taking down Auntie Joni. So far she has beat Mom, Dad, Carter, Cooper, Campbell, Grandpa, and Joni. Not a bad track record if you ask me. At first I thought it was her remote so I made her trade me and I still lost. I cant explain it, natural talent I guess. Anyway if she says she wants to "punch you down" she's only talking about the wii, not real life!

After school treasures

2010-04-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

The boys have reached the ripe old age of 7.5 and a few months ago I decided to start letting them walk to and from the bus on their own. Well not fully on their own, they walk with a friend the same age and for some reason that makes me feel better about it! The best part about it (besides yesterday when they got distracted by a "way deep hole" and missed the bus) is all the wonderful treasures they find on the way home. This one is by far the best just because it is huge and I love picturing them carrying it down the street. The runner up is the bone they found from who knows what kind of animal. We have had numerous other pieces of metal, wood, and trash find their way home. For a while there it was a rock collection, I had to put an end to that when I realized that the neighbors were getting bald spots in their landscaping!! Anywho, I'll keep you posted if anything better then this awesome pole shows up.
P.S. This pole actually did come in handy! Billy was in the middle of finishing our wall and it got super windy so we had to use it to help support the block, thanks boys!

Easter 2010

2010-04-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

Im a little late getting these Easter pictures up but better late then never right?? We had Easter at a park this year with my whole family. The weather was really nice and we had a fabulous time. Lots of yummy food, way to many deviled eggs (we didn't think it was possible but there were actually left over eggs), easter egg hunt, and this year we decided to throw a hula hoop contest in the mix! It was a lot of fun, Ryanne (my niece) was amazing. I'm pretty sure that she lasted longer then all of us put together. Chloe and Campbell finished off ALL the candy the very next day, it made for an interesting night!

just a little photo shoot

2010-03-08T15:43:00.000-08:00

Theres three new posts, dont miss them!

2010-03-04T14:26:00.000-08:00

An amazing birthday/life/family...

2010-03-04T14:05:00.000-08:00

Not only did I do a backflip on my birthday, I got to celebrate a few times! The day before I went to the park with some awesome friends from my ward (one who had her 30th birthday 2 days before mine)who I love! The day of my long time and dear friend Audra took me to lunch. After lunch Joni, Jackson, and Sophia brought out some tiny cupcakes and flowers. Jackson walked in, handed me the flowers and said "Happy Birthday, ya old lady" Billy and the kids took me to a delicious dinner at Samurai 21. Later that night I went out with that same friend and my sister and mom to a movie and dessert. We didn't get home until about 11 and there were Billy and the 3 older kids waiting up to show me this.

They baked this cake and got me a gift for each 10 years of my life! (and 1 extra from Campbell just for the heck of it!) It was so sweet and thoughtful. I love this life I have been so blessed with and wouldn't change any of it!

Funny little side note: The next morning I woke up to a loud CRASH. Went to see what the heck was going on and found Campbell standing in the kitchen with a smashed up cake and cake platter shattered all over the ground! Thanks buddy. Don't worry, Billy and the kids remade the cake that day and it was delicious!

Harlem Globetrotters are awesome!!!!

2010-03-04T13:53:00.000-08:00

About a month ago we went up to Cedar City to watch the globetrotters! I was a little nervous that I was going to walk away disappointed feeling like I didn't et my moneys worth. I was SO WRONG. They are so awesome! We had a blast (shout out to Misty for watching Chloe and Campbell) We had watched amazing race with the boys last season and the two main players were on the show so that made it even more fun!

The boys were so excited! They were honestly laughing out loud the entire show!

We were pretty excited too, as you can see in this picture. Maybe a little to excited?

Cooper was lucky enough to go out on the floor for one of their little acts! It was totally a mistake but worked out quite nice. They were down on the floor and he was playing with the basketball and dropped it, it rolled out on the floor. Big Shot, one of the players, picked it up and had Coop come out to get it so he got to do YMCA with them and some other kids! It was an awesome night and I recommend you go see the show when you have the chance!

A little valentines fun!

2010-03-04T13:29:00.000-08:00

Here are a few pictures of our "awesome" homemade valentines this year! Every year (so far) I let the boys pick out their own valentine and we TRY to recreate them. They never turn out quite the same as the original and every year I vow to do store bought valentines the next year, but I never do! Cooper has a thing for wall-e so he picked the robot valentine and Carter picked the ipod! Valentines day really came out of no where this year so we were up way to late Thursday night making the treats and the boxes!

Carters turned out pretty cute I thought! He set this pose up himself by the way!

You know it's not like Carters were perfect but they kinda looked it next to these guys! They had so much potential, I dont know where we went wrong. The candybar feet were so heavy that they kept falling off so I ended up hot gluing them. At that point in the night I really didn't care if the chocolate was edible or not. Whatever, he was happy. (just so you know, I am not one of those moms that does all the work, if I had, they would not have looked this good.)

Cooper also has a thing for penguins so we came up with this little guy. I was pretty happy to think of something to use my old food storage can for! He probably would have turned out a little better if Billy could have loaned us his artistic ability but he was in the middle of a serious battle with his friend on modern warfare! (Seriously, we can't compete with that!)

And finally we have Carters box, an alligator. What? you couldn't tell that was an alligator? I don't see why, it looks exactly like one!

Who likes free stuff???

2010-02-27T13:21:00.000-08:00

Have I ever told you about my adorable, creative,and oh so stylish neighbor? (Not to mention her wonderful family!) Well if I haven't you should check out her blog because it is so cute AND she is having a GIVEAWAY!!!!! Jennie is an awesome friend and we hit it off the minute we met, I am so grateful to have her for my neighbor. SO GO. GO CHECK OUT HER BLOG. You will be inspired to decorate and recreate, and possibly even glam up your personal style a little! I almost forgot to tel you what her blog is. You can click on Jennie and Kevin from my friends and fam or just head to www.larsenloves.blogspot.com

thirty shmirty

2010-02-25T15:08:00.000-08:00

THIS ONES FOR YOU JAMIE CAMPBELL

WE'VE STILL GOT IT!!! (I know it looks like I'm about to land on my head but I actually landed this!)

Some nights...

2010-02-10T20:48:00.000-08:00

I come home from school to find a flag flying in my front yard, (I swear to you Billy did this all on his own, he doesn't even read my blog)

Campbell asleep on the floor by his crib, and

Chloe super excited about her new duct tape purse that Daddy made her! All in the same night, What a great Daddy!

Campbell and his new nanny

2010-02-04T20:21:00.000-08:00

So Campbell got a new helmet the other day and we decided to break it in by going on a family bike ride. I pulled the kids in the trailer and Billy rode with the boys. Somewhere along the way Billy found an old gemstone homes flag laying on the ground and decided to pick it up and carry it around while riding his bike. The boys were pretty impressed with that but I eventually made them put it down. (if it were up to Billy it would probably be out in front of our house right now)

They all agreed on a big pile of dirt to plant it in and pose for a funny picture with it! DORKS!!

Anyway by the time we made it back home Campbell was asleep and Chloe was proping his head up for him.

Billy carried him and put him on the couch helmet, shoes and all. Chloe was not okay with that, I think she felt that he should at least be able to sleep in comfort so even though we asked her not to touch him she took it upon herself to get him nice and comfy!

First, she carefully removed his shoes and unzipped his jacket for him.

Next she covered him with a blanket, added a pillow on top and another blankie to cover the pillow (I don't know why)

She made sure it was all tucked in nice and tight.

Once she got that all taken care of she added a couple of stuffed animals to the mix so he wouldn't be scared when he woke up

Gave the animals a blankie and then layed down right next to him to be sure that no one would disturb him! Unfortunatley I don't know that he was really ever that comfortable since she left the helmet on the whole time, but it's the thought that counts right!

I don't know about you (or CPS) but I think this proves that she is old enough to stay home and babysit by herself.

Just dance

2010-02-04T12:47:00.000-08:00

Make fun of me if you want, I cant figure out how to rotate this stinking video! So here you go, a sideways video of Chloe getting her groove on (oh yeah I also cant figure out how to get my camera to pick up sound so just sing the words to yourself) Don't miss the hip action in the very beginning! This girl makes me so happy, I love the serious look on her face, to funny!

The most pictures I have ever posted...

2010-01-03T19:23:00.000-08:00

Each year on Christmas eve we have a talent show with all the kids. It's pretty fun and getting a little more interesting now that the kids are getting older! Jackson voluntered to go first with an impromptu display of the different faces he can make! Carter, Cooper and Chloe (Campbell was rehearsed but wouldn't perform) sang santa claus is coming to town, Lily sang feliz navidad (a tribute to her ancestors) while Morgan, Spencer, and Owen all played bongos along with her. Ryanne also sang us a couple of songs but somehow I didn't get her picture. For the closing act Carson had a costume change where he dressed up like a christmas elf and passed out goodies to everyone!

A few shots of Christmas morning, I never get good pictures because I am trying to enjoy whats going on and sometimes the camera is a distraction. This year Santa brought the kids a trip to Disneyland! He gave them each a ticket, Mickey Mouse Ears and a Disney backpack. Their stckings were also full of Disney goodies. (Thank goodness Santa stopped by Target one day before Christmas and the whole dollar section was full of Disney supplies!)

We left Christmas morning after opening gifts and packing up. Our first day at Disney was the 26 and the kids (and parents) were SO excited! We stayed in a hotel about 2 blocks from Disney and took the shuttle to Disneyland each day. The first morning our shuttle was decorated like "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" and as far as Chloe is concerned that was our first "ride"! She is always talking about the Meatball bus! So these are pictures that we took with a bunch of different characters, there are a few others that we didnt get pictures of. Chloe saw Goofy and he bonked her on the head and then he kissed her on the head. I wasn't there but that is what she says happened! We also saw Mr. Incredible and tried to get a pic of Billy with him but Billy wasn't going for it!

Here are a few random shots throught the trip. My mom and her cousin Jennie came down and met us on Sunday. Carter was clinging to my mom the whole trip and at one point she was giving him a piggy back ride around Disney! The castle was so pretty with all the snow and christmas lights on it. I got a good pic of it all light up but I forgot to add it, maybe later. It was so fun being there at Christmas time, with the HUGE tree and awesome decorations. It was pretty crowded but it didn't bother us! We hardly had to wait in a line thanks to the awesome fast passes but it was a little tough manuevering through the crowds at times. We discovered that Cooper is out little thrill seeker, he LOVED every roller coaster, even the upside down one!!

Last we have a small sampling of the snacks we ate while at disneyland! The first day we were there Billy was on Indiana Jones with the boys and I took Chloe and Campbell on a little walk. We walked by a store that was selling pickles and I thought man that sounds sooo good but I am not nearly brave enough to buy a pickle, so I kept on walking. Then it was my turn to go on Indiana Jones with Cooper and when I came back Billy was sitting there with the kids eating pickles! I was SO excited! It was over after that, we ate so many pickles while we were there. So that was our snack of choice but we mixed it up with some churros, popcorn, huge suckers, fruit snacks, and of course the CUTEST CARAMEL APPLES ON EARTH! Totally worth 9 bucks each right!
Okay I could go on and on but I wont! We had the best time ever and today is Billys first day back to work and we are having Daddy withdrawls! Tomorrow the boys go back to school and I guess things have to go back to normal. I am not excited about it but I think I will survive.

my little ballerina part 2

2009-12-21T22:03:00.000-08:00

Chloe had her very first dance recital last weekend. It was very short but very cute! Here she is posing for a few pictures before we left!

Me and Chloe after her big performance, I was one proud mommy!

Here she is on stage, oh yeah and the back of some guys head, nice! She is all the way to the left.

Waiting backstage and coloring with her friends. I love this picture cause it shows off how huge these costumes were, they were adorable.
In the meantime Campbell was at home doing this. Not really, he was at home with a sitter who I'm sure would never have given him dp. This was after we got home and daddy was giving him a taste of the good stuff!

Happy Birthday Misty...

2009-12-18T10:41:00.000-08:00

You old lady!

I got a call from Misty yesterday morning asking me if I wanted to go out to the Hurricane airport and watch her jump out of a plane! So Chloe, Campbell, Jackson, Karen, Carson, and I went to watch her! She treated herself to this for her birthday!

Waiting for her turn and taking pictures!

Practicing with her friendly instructor.

Getting ready to land! It was so fun to go and watch her do this, the look on her face (and Jacksons) was so awesome when she got back. She is going again on Saturday in Mesquite! I love you Misty, you are an awesome sister and my life is better for having you in it! You can't beat having a sister in law that you cant even call your sister in law because your relationship goes way beyond that. Once again, I love you and hope this next year is the best one ever for you!!

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gingerbreading

2009-12-03T20:47:00.000-08:00

These pictures are totally out of order, just so you know! I guess that is something that bothers me even though I doubt anyone but me would know if I didn't say so! Oh well. We have an awesome tradition of doing all FHE activities in December (and sometimes late november) with my whole family. We each pick a night to host and plan an activity. This was our gingerbread night.

After we attempted a group shot of the kids we let them all dog pile on Eric, they thought it was pretty fun!

Here is the best group shot I was able to get, thats a lot of kids in one picture. You would think it would be the young ones ruining the pictures but it's not usually, it's Morgan and Quinn the two oldest!

The Espitias hard at work

Our masterpeice (BTW this is the first year ours has made it home without breaking!)

Gramma Loni with Eric, Karen and Carson.

Misty and Ryanne. I can't believe I forgot to post the picture of Misty hot gluing her house together, she is such a cheater! At least you can see the glue gun in this one, there's your proof.

(Sorry Joni and Jackson, for some reason I couldn't get your picture to rotate and decided not to post you sideways!)

A little update

2009-11-22T21:02:00.000-08:00

I have been a horrible blogger lately so now I am trying to catch up. Here we are last weekend bowling with a little bit of Billy's family and a little bit of mine! We had a great time and really enjoyed the delicious nachos and fries from the snack bar! Thats what it's all about right?
I got pictures of everyone bowling but when I went to collage them it looked like a lot of the same picture so I dont really know who made the final cut but here they are anyway. Chloe and Luke were so funny (we didn't let Campbell bowl for some reason). Chloe bowled by her self everytime and came running back to us so proud then she cried and cried when we had to leave. On the way home Ryanne (my 9 year old niece) said, "Hey Jamie, you know Luke (my 2.5 year old nephew)? He beat me!" I think I see professional bowling in his future!
The weekend before last we had Joni's (my little sister) baby shower. It was a TON of fun! This was the invitation that we delivered to those who lived in town, it is of course a super yummy cupcake from 25 main with a flower invitation stuck in it!

So I had a lot of pics for this event and had to split them into 2 collages! These are the "people" pictures. Our theme was sugar and spice and everything nice. Girl showers are so fun and easy! We played our own version of candyland and made Joni dress up like princess lolly. (Im pretty sure that this is one of her all time favorite pictures of herself so be sure to get a good look at it!) There is also some before hand preparation pictures in there. The three little girls were bowing down to the princess when she got there in another picture. Anyway, it was fun.
And of course the food! We really went overboard with the sugar part of the sugar and spice theme! I cant even remember all the deliciousness but just look closely and you'll see it all! Hooray for Joni and her baby who we can't wait to meet! Get here soon, not to soon, but soon!

Look what I walked in on....

2009-11-17T08:38:00.000-08:00

I know it's not a very clear picture but I think you can tell whats going on here. The funny thing is that Campbell actually went! Maybe thats the trick to potty training a two year old, a personal coach??!!

More Halloween Fun!!

2009-11-05T08:50:00.000-08:00

As you can see I gave in to Cooper and Carters whining this year and let them pick their own weird costumes. Cooper is the unknown phantom and Carter a warewolf. They weren't allowed to wear masks to school so they would have been wearing a black dress and a flannel shirt with some hair on it, so they wore lasts years star wars costumes! Chloe finally decided on a girl costume this year HOORAY and went as tinkerbell and Campbell was his own version of captain hook!!

Chloe has always been my brave little girl and loved scary movies and haunted houses. She really wanted to do the haunted corn maze but I didn't let her. I think that was because she had never really been scared before, well this is a picture of the guy who ruined that for her! He scared the pants off her, you know the old trick, he was sitting there still like a statue and then moved to scare us. Which is normally funny but HELLO there were a bunch of small children there dude with the mask. The other kids liked him, just not the three and under crowd.
As I was posting this picture Chloe walked in and said "Hey there's freaky whitey" and that pretty much sums it up! Chloe wasnt loving this look either. He was dancing again by the way.
It seems like our Halloween was full of dancing even Joni(who dressed up like a pregnant lady) and Misty got into it!
Here is our large group of trick or treaters, minus Carson who was still getting situated.
I had to give Morgan a spotlight this year because he is always so creative, I dont know if anyone remembers his last years slim jim costume but it was so awesome! So this year he was like duct tape man, he made this whole thing himself, it was really cool. He even had his shoes covered in duct tape! Way to go Morgan!!
And I also had to spotlight Carson because he is so stinking cute! This was his first halloween and he had a super cute monkey costume and he was a good boy the whole night, he even held his own bucket for a while! Also I wanted to make Karen feel guilty that I am blogging about her baby and she isn't SO GET ON IT!!!

2 years and 1 day!

2009-11-01T17:57:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday to Campbell, the happy little pirate, we love you!

Guess who's back....

2009-10-30T22:26:00.000-07:00

Yep thats right, it's the incredibles! My friend Natalie had a halloween party this year so we decided to dust off the old super suits. Aaron happened to be in town so we busted out the cat in the hat costume for him and off we went!

Billy and Aaron busting a move to some backstreet boys!

It was an awesome party with tons of yum food and activities and everyone had great costumes. We live in an awesome ward with so many fun people, I hope it stays this way for a long long time!! Most importantly, we won the golden toilet seat. What's that you ask?? It's the best costume awad of course!! We are already working on next years ideas! Happy Halloween!

Lets see if it works this way????

2009-10-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

If you want commentary, refer to my previous post!

Fall has arrived

2009-10-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

There have been so many fall activities going on this past week, it is confirmation that the year is coming to an end. I was getting suspicious when I had to wear close toed shoes to school, got to turn my AC off and actually felt like going outside for a bikeride all in the same week! So here we are at our most recent festivity, The corn maze. We look forward to it all year and it gets better every year!

CAN YOU FIND ME????
I guess these are a little backwards, oh well! On Thursday night my awesome friend Becky hosted a witches tea. It was so fun!!! I think there were 17 witches there and 3 witches in training! We had yummy soup, spooky storytelling, a cackeling contest, and a recycled gift exchange! The party was wrapping up at about 9:30, 4 friends and I made a beeline into St. George to hit another witches party that ended at 10. This awesome home decor store Krumpets had a contest with 5 categories of witches and gave away 50 dollar gift cards to the winners! None of us won but we still got some super cute halloween decor for 75% off and had a blast!! Cant complain about that!!

Here is a very small sampeling of the pics I took at the corn maze. We LOVE Stahlei Farm, they have 2 corn mazes (scary and not scary), pumpkin patch, petting zoo, tons of cute activities for the kids and tons of delicious food the adults! Don tmiss the picture of the goat eating Kylie's (my cute sister in law) hair!!

To sum it all up, I love fall! But most of all I love my family (near and far) and my friends! I am so blessed with so many wonderful, kind, happy, caring people in my life!

22 Hours of fun

2009-10-12T21:59:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday Roberts was having customer appreciation days. They gave away 50 $25 gift cards. Half to the first 25 people there on Friday and the other 25 on Saturday. A couple friends and I decided to go cash in. The catch was that Natalie had been there an hour early on friday and was about 200 people to late! So this is us in line at 5:20 AM!!! Was it worth the 25 bucks, I dont know, but it was totally worth the experience! We had a good time chatting, Mindy and Natalie both brought books but I didn't let them read at all!

Two hot Mamas, even at 5 in the morning, you would never know!!!

Seriously, it wasn't that cold, someone was just being a sissy!

Okay, here is a horrible picture of me but I just wanted to add in some proof that I was there. My age is really starting to show. As you can see we were numbers 23, 24, and 25, that means there were people there before 5:20-CRAZIES.

When I got home I wished I could have gone back to bed but that wasn't to be, there were projects to be done. We gave Campbell Chloes old bed and put this new bed (my old bed that my dad made me in High school) in Chloe's room. She was pretty excited, she had a friend over while we were doing it so these three munchkins gladly posed in a pic for me!

This is how I found her the first morning after actually sleeping in the bed! Not one wrinkle on the covers, I hope she continues to sleep like this.

My last event of the day I dont have any pictures of because I am really smart and after taking it all the way to Vegas I left it in the car! Joni, Codee, Billy and I all went to watch the BYU vs UNLV game in Veas that evening. (If you can even call it a game) Billy's wonderful dad watched the kids for us, it was so fun to have an entire evening to talk and have fun without any interruptions! I had forgotten what that was like. At one pint Billy was making me laugh so hard I was crying and almost wet my pants! We had a blast and I cant believe I didn't get any pictures. We didn't get home until 2 am, needless to say I was exhausted but it was all worth it. I am one lucky gal!

Friday night fun!!!!

2009-09-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

So we have a new family activity that we have been enjoying in the past few weeks. We have been supporting the Hurricane High football team. Well we have supported them twice anyway, its pretty fun stuff!
Campby had the best seat in the house!

Heres half of us, Cooper was back there too just didn't want to be in the pic.

Chloe was introduced to the licorice straw for the first time, it was a hit!

I caught Campbell cheering on the tigers!

And of course playing on the flagpole! I consider the night a success, in the past we have only gone at half time (so we dont have to pay and the kids dont have to sit there as long!) This week we braved the whole game and it went pretty good, we stocked up on snacks before hand, had to take few trips to the bathroom, lost a couple of shoes under the bleachers, and couldn't last through the overtime but still considering that Billy is really the only one "into" sports we did great! We might even go to another game!

Family history time!

2009-09-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

So I had a little experience earlier today. I was going to post some of my sister in laws stuff on craigslist and sell it for her.(a couch and a treadmill, if anyones interested!) I had to borrow her memory card to get the pictures off of and when I uploaded the pictures thinking those were the only pictures on there I got a little surprise! A while ago she came across some old family slides, projected them onto her washing machiene and took pictures of them. I was totally in for it, I thought oh how cute, Ill just look through these really quick. A whole hour and a lot of tears later I was finally done. Most of you know that my dad passed away in 2005 and my grandpa in 2004. For those of you who didn't know them, I am sorry, they were two of the greatest men I will ever know. I just wanted to share a few pictures of them with everyone and say how much I love and miss them both. I could not have been blessed with a better family and I hope and pray I can provide that same feeling for my children. I wish so badly that they could both be here enjoying life and getting to know their grand and great grandchildren. I know it wont be long before we see them again, and for that knowledge I am also extremly grateful, without it I would be lost. I have so many wonderful memories of my family and I am so glad my grandpa was the picture taker that he was. He came to every event in my life and always had his camera with him to document it! I love the picture of my grandpa up top because that is SO him. In the wilderness and making a joke! Two main parts of my gramps, his humor and his absolute love for nature. In case you cant tell he wrote in mustard on his peice of bread, LOST, then of course made someone else take a picture of him! I love it and I could go on and on but I'll stop myself here, ENJOY!

Best Buddies

2009-09-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

Chloe and Campbell have been getting along so good since the boys have been back in school. It seems weird but it's true. They do funny stuff together all the time, this was one thing they came up with all on their own the other day! I was sitting at the kitchen table doing something and they came rollin' in together like this, it was so funny to see those little minds at work.

Then a few minutes later they got off and switched places, I love it! They keep me smiling, (for the most part)!

Oh and yes this is a toy for babies much younger then both of them and we have since passed it on to Carson.

AND here is another cat picture for all you cat lovers out there. I dont consider myself a cat lover but she is a really weird cat and I thought it was funny that she went to sleep like this on the bean bag. I knew they were irresistable to humans but to cats??? I swear I will never blog about my cat again.

my little ballerina

2009-08-30T16:20:00.000-07:00

Here is Chloe all ready for dance class! We had her first class last Wednesday and it was so fun, I tried to get lots of pics because normally her teacher doesn't want parets to stay. She was so fun to watch and did everything the teacher was showing her but she was just a little shy, I'm sure she'll warm up to it!

I kind of feel like I should change my background to match the cuteness of these pictures but last time I tried that it ended horribly so just imagine something really pink and frilly instead of this total boy one!(Which usually works really well with pics of Chloe!)

Look what happens

2009-08-16T21:48:00.000-07:00

when we dont use the duct tape. This is what I find. I guess it's better then him being in the toilet, he's really getting wise in his old age! (Don't be fooled, he's not actually going potty, he just sits there and says "I gotta go potty, all done." then he slides off flushes and gets back on, repeat about 1000 times until I catch him and make him get dressed again!)

Here is Carter on his first day of SECOND grade- I can't even believe I just wrote that about one of my own children!

Here is Coops-I made him smile big so we can see his teeth cause I cant get enough of it!

Here they are together showing off their NEW school colors! Their class won the spirit stick that day and they were quite proud!

And one more thing before you go....

Thats right, I couponed! I have been saving up my coupons for about 6 weeks and finally went this week. It was lots of fun, Chloe and Campbell were my happy little helpers (and only made me buy one extra item that wasn't on my list!) I spent 30 dollars and saved 80-woohoo for coupons!!! I cant wait to see what I can get next week! (there is a lot more food there then it looks like)

2009-08-10T22:42:00.000-07:00

This is a continuation of the birthday post below, in case you want to read it in order! I guess I'll never be able to outsmart this thing.
Nerf Dart Tag was a HUGE hit!

What could be better than dart tag in your undies?? (Which by the way, is why there aren't many pics of Carter and Cooper on my blog because these boys are ALWAYS in their undies and I try to limit the half nude pictures that I post!)

Carter taking aim! It didn't take long for them to realize that the velcro on the darts would stick to most pieces of clothing so I ended up walking arould with darts all over me and I wasn't even playing!!

Campbell totally got into it too! He loves the glasses, and shooting Billy!

Oh and this is our cat Suzy. Just thought I would throw it in. I was trying to catch her in action, she jumps up and hangs on the door handle to let us know she wants out or in. Occassionally when a door is left unlocked she can actually let herself in and out-it's weird!

The birthday boys!!

2009-08-10T22:37:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it has been seven years! I love these two boys so much, they make me laugh and smile all day long. They are the kindest, funniest, sweetest, most caring, helpful and happy 7 year olds I know! I also really love all the missing teeth. Poor Cooper (the one missing both front teeth) can hardly talk to me without making me laugh because he sounds so different without those teeth!

Blowing out the cake with a little help from Chloe. It was a pretty sweet cake this year, space ship gone circus tent! We just went with it and said the aliens were having a circus in there, I never claimed to be good at cakes, its just really fun to let the kids pick out a cake and me attempt to make it!

Ahh bean bags, everyones new favorite seat in the house! Coops and Campbell

One of the many great things about having four children is that they do learn to share pretty good! Carter and Chloe. (We had a party for the boys on Saturday thats how I was so prompt in getting these pictures up-it wasn't time travel or anything!) I love you Cooper and Carter, hope you have a GREAT 7th birthday.

This is what it has come to...

2009-08-04T21:36:00.001-07:00

thats right, its duct tape on the diaper! Campbell is such a stinker, taking all his clothes and diaper off the second I leave him alone in a room. So we went "Papa Gil" on him and taped him into it. (My dad was the first one to tape Carter and Cooper into their diapers after babysitting them for about 20 minutes!)
He was pretty ticked when Billy was wrapping him up in tape but as soon as the camera came out he was happy and posing!

This is just a little bonus picture of Chloe showing off her cute kitty tail! Brandi gave her these pants to use for halloween last year and they have become her favorite pants to wear around the house!!
The last time she was wearing them Billy put a littly kitty face on her to match them! It was really cute, its not a very clear picture but I just love the face she is making!

Feeling the love!

2009-07-27T20:02:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all those who stood by me in my moment of crisis! It was all thanks to your support that I made it through and got this baby up and running again. Now to the real reason it all came crashing down in the first place, my super talented cousin Jessica has an etsy store. I was checking it out yesterday and was totally amazed at her craftiness and I had to share it with everyone. She gave me some bum directions on how to post a link, not really I just messed it up all on my own but anyway its there now and you can all go be amazed by her abilities too!

This might be it for me

2009-07-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

As you can see, I was trying to "upgrade" my blog and something went terribly wrong. So here is my new and improved blog, plain white with no extras! Right now I cant even figure out what I did enough to get back to the layout page so I can change my background, I am getting totally frustrated and considering giving up all together. I am sure it is an easy fix for most people so I am going to sign off, let myself cool down and see if I can conquer this thing in a few hours from now.

Chloe's dream come true!!!

2009-07-25T20:23:00.000-07:00

It seems like I haven't posted in a while and there have just been a few small things going on that I would like to share.

Here is Chloe holding her sweet little cousin Carson, she has been waiting for this day for a long time, she finally got to hold him! Isn't he the cutest baby? I LOVE all the hair!
This is Chloe and her new friend Savannah. I say new friend even though we have known them for over 2 years now, Chloe and Savannah have just started getting along! It was a signifigant day for us- Savannah has an older brother that is Cooper and Carters age so our playdates are much more peaceful these days! We were babysitting last week and I had just painted the girls nails so this is a pic of them waiting for thier nails to dry!

This is another one of my fantastic collages of us in Brianhead. I didn't get great pictures (thanks to us having to wrap up our weekend early because 4/6 of us had the flu!)but it was an awesome weekend. Billy's friend invited us up last minute and it was so fun! We stayed in an AWESOME cabin with lots to do and it was only 75 degrees up there!!

P.S. Tonight I learned that you can upload these pictures straight from picasa to blogger in a snap! Way faster then when I do it through blogger-gotta love that!

check it out!!!

2009-07-11T19:26:00.000-07:00

Remember when I said I wanted to learn how to do this? (It was just a few days ago) I totally taught myself!!! No thanks to Adobe photoshop free trial which was WAY to complicated for me, I downloaded picasa for free from google and it was super easy. I cant promise it will get much fancier but I am quite proud if you cant tell!
Oh yeah, I guess I will explain what the pictures are of now. About a month ago we went to a midevil fair with Emilee, TJ, Beau, Luke, Misty, Quinn, and Ryanne. It was a little bit lame but we all had free tickets to get in! The kids loved the jousting show (that includes Billy and TJ), I loved the food booths, and all the boys loved the paintball/ airsoft/ whatever else gun booth. We got some cute pics anyway and it was better then sittin around doing nothing!!

The best weekend ever!

2009-07-06T21:40:00.000-07:00

You know, I like to pretend that I know what I am doing with this whole blogging thing but apparently I don't! I somehow managed to load all the pictures backwards, but it could be kind of fun, it will be our trip in reverse, so here we go! (I really wish I knew how to combine a couple of pictures into one like some of you blog savvy people out there so please clue me in how you are doing it.)
Our trip couldn't have ended more perfectly, at Krispy Kreme. I guess thats not true, I really wanted the kids to see them making doughnuts and they weren't, Billy even asked them to make some special for us and they wouldn't-RUDE!(The whole purpose of our trip to Salt Lake was to go and meet our sweet and perfect brand new neice(and cousin) Mataya. She was blessed on Sunday (right before we hit the krispy kreme) and somehow I didn't end up with one picture of her or the festivities in her favor-lame aunt-I know. So I will just say she is super duper cute and we had a great time with the whole family!)
We had 4th of July dinner with most of Billy's family and I did manage to get a picture of all the girl cousins who were there, only Mataya is missing.
Right before the BBQ we were at the Hogle zoo. This was our last activity while at the zoo, the awesome train ride, it was cute, I had never been on it before.
The boys took advantage of every photo op like this one that we ran into! Bunch of monkeys!
Seriously, the monkeys were so funny, we kept trying to walk away but we couldn't because they were super entertaining-that was my favorite of all the animals. Maybe because they remind me of my own kids. So I made Billy and the kids take a picture in front of the monkeys so we would always remember how funny they were!
Cooper being a lemur.
Chloe's favorite part of the trip by far! She was talking about Lexi and "Tataya" the whole way up. That girl LOVES her babies! She also LOVES TO TALK, she kept us laughing the entire 10 hours we were in the car.
We had a temple reservation for 5 on Friday night to take the kids to the open house. We got on the freeway in Hurricane at 12:45 and I thought we were going to miss it, but somehow Billy got us there in plenty of time! It was an awesome experience.
All packed up and ready to go. The kids were perfect angels on the way up-we stopped one time to get lunch and potty breaks. We made up for it on the way home by stopping four times between Kaysville and Springville! It took us a little longer to get home then it did to get there!
So totally out of order, I dont know what happened, but I love this picture Billy took of the kids looking at the giraffes. It was such a wonderful weekend and I am so glad we were able to go. (We almost changed our mind at the last minute) I think I am starting to annoy Billy with all my zoo talk but I cant get over how active all the animals were. We got there right before feeding time and it was nice and cool so the animals were quite happy. The Lion was so noisy and so were the monkeys. We even saw the alligator move, I was starting to doubt that those things really moved at all! Anyway I posted a smilebox because we had a ton more pictures (that I couldn't even fit in there)that I wanted to share but like I said, I need a blogging tutorial. Thank you to Melissa and Ryan for hosting us and to Lindsay for having a baby-giving us a great excuse to come up and visit everyone! We love you all and hope your fourth was as wonderful as ours!

Make a Smilebox photobook

FHE

2009-06-29T21:45:00.000-07:00

Can you guess what our FHE was about tonight??? I'll give you a clue, it rhymes with pimples. Yep, you got it, it was about temples! I was so excited to have this lesson tonight because this Friday we are going to take the kids to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple and I thought this was a good opportunity to teach them about the appropriate behavior in the temple BEFORE we get there. It was a really fun lesson we talked about the "steps" you take to get to the temple and they each got to walk their little paper doll up the steps to the temple. They liked that part but once that was over we got to make our own temples out of marshmallows, that was a hit with the kids! Of course Billy made the best temple and all the kids wanted him to make one for them too!
Coopers was a close second, he made a flat version of the temple and I thought he did a great job!
Campbell didn't even try, he just ate his temple!
Chloe's temple ended up a cute little snowman that daddy made for her!
Cooper was in charge of dessert and he really wanted cherry sundaes, he talked about them all week. He didn't really care what was on the bottom, as long as it was topped with cool whip and cherries! It was a fun night for us and we cant wait to travel up north this weekend and see all those we haven't seen for a while, or seen at all yet!!

An insight into the future???

2009-06-22T19:17:00.000-07:00

Billy had laid these plans out on our bed one night after work and then left them there while he jumped in the shower and this is what he found when he came out!
I know they looked posed but I swear he was really interested.

He looks pretty happy to me, if he is anything like his dad this probably is where he will end up!

So this is just a funny little story I wanted to add on. The other day I was at Costco with all the kids and on our way out we had a little "scene" at the water bottle vending machine. Chloe really really wanted her own bottle of water. By the time we made it out to the car she was fine, and had forgotten the whole thing, or so I thought! On our way home I picked up the mail and there was a card for Chloe in there from Grammy and Papa. After unloading all the kids and the goods I sat on the bed with her to open the letter. She slowly opened the card and when she saw the 2 dollar bill fall out her eyes lit up and she said "now I can get my own drink at costco!"
You can see the genuine excitement here in this picture, who would have ever thought that a bottle of water would have been her favorite birthday present!
So a BIG THANK YOU to Grammy and Papa for making Chloe's third birthday the best it could be!

Chloes Birthday Luau

2009-06-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

Here are all the kids at Chloes party, sitting on her present! I think its a descent picture considering how many kids are in it! There was only one of the cousins that we couldn't get on the tramp and that was Carson so I will post one of his glamour shots next!(okay I just realized that you can't see carter in this picture, he is in it and if you look REALLY close you can see the top of his blonde head right behind Ryannes! So technically they are all in it!)
I'm serious he gets cuter and cuter everytime I see him!
In case you forgot how Chloe feels about cupcakes, heres a pic to remind you that SHE LOVES THEM!! (So much that she got frosting all in her hair and eyebrows!)
We had a few fun activities, this is the kids having a potato sack race, I think Spencer one that one!
And of course you cant have a luau without a limbo! It was my favorite part of the party watching all the kids try to limbo, some were good and some were entertaining! Jackson did some type of roll whenever his turn was up but I could never get a picture, it was creative!
Now those are some serious limbo skills!
Of course regular limbo wasnt dangerous enough for the older kids so they had to turn it into a high jump competition! As you can see Morgan was pretty good at this too, but not to be outjumped by.....
T.J. Oh no, he couldn't resist, he was by far the best high jumper at the party!

Happy Birthday Chloe!!!!

2009-06-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

What's a mom to do?

2009-05-25T21:28:00.000-07:00

It starts out like this,
an innocent switch from the cute girly swimsuit with a skirt on it to Campbells boy swimsuit with big sharks all over it.

Then she cries until I help her get the "spongebob" shoes on, so I do it.

You throw a little water into the mix and she figures "hey, this just isn't safe"

Soooo we bust out the floaties, but still, something is missing....

There we go, that's better! Have you ever seen a happier girl?

I swear people, she did this all on her own, I had nothing to do with it. In case you dont believe me I will show you one more thing she did all on her own;

This one goes out to all the other moms out there who are blessed with one sweet precious little girl, who happens to be a tomboy.