Amy's Birthday

Amy is Eight!

What a special birthday for Amy! She has been anticipating this day for a long time. For her birthday she requested a donut cake for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch and Chuck E. Cheese for dinner! She had donuts for breakfast and we will see what else the day brings.

Amy is our soft spoken, smart girl! She loves all things that girls do. She is a whiz in school and fantastic reader! Amy is a great friend to everyone and her friends love to play with her. We love having Amy in our family!

As a part of birthday tradition we talk about the day they were born. So far Amy was my best delivery!

She loved her Uncle Bent









We pick up her birthday pictures today.. for another post!

Happy Halloween Again!

What a night! The weather stayed nice and calm until...5:30pm it began to pour! So bummed. The storm lasted almost the whole duration of trick or treating time! Luckily Uncle Brent, Lori, Jodi and Jill were here to take the big kids out while. THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

Mike, Christian and I stayed home to insulate the attic. Yes, that's right Mike chose this time to insulate our attic. In between shoving rolls of insulation up into a tiny hole in our master closet I would run down to the door and hand out candy. Makes ya think about where your candy came from next time you go trick or treating.

Our annual gooey, grotesque dinner.
Same menu as last year: jack-o-lantern pizzas, monster toes, green slime, bones, bloody soup etc.


Monkey Brent and kiddles
Change to the previous line-up: Katelyn went cheerleader or I say "1/2 cheerleader" since she is only wearing a shirt

Christian "helping" hand out candy

Tyler's Loot

A very happy Brigham

Both Ty and Brigham left the house with very high spikes in their hair and they came back pretty wet and flattened out!

This years pumpkin patch. Amy- Frankenstein Kates- the tin man Tyler- skeleton, Chris- happy Jack, Briggy- night before halloween guy

Toothless Tyler

I have to do a post about Tyler's first lost tooth. He is so happy to have extracted his own tooth well before his sisters lost their first teeth. He will proudly tell you he lost his "first tooth at 6 years old"!

Tyler's handsome, if I do say so, 6 year old picture

School Halloween Parade

The spooks and the goblins came out early this morning for the elementary's annual Halloween Parade. It is always fun to see all the cute kiddie dressed up! Lots of parties, candy and fun!

Katelyn didn't want to damage her reputation or physical appearance in all this Halloween fun so she went with a safe cardboard costume that was easily removable.
She was the only iPod!

Amy was a beautiful witch!


Tyler went as Johnny Appleseed. When he was a little guy he loved to have Mike read a Johnny Appleseed book to him. Tyler would refer to him as "Johnny Appleseed Head".


Briggy had to dress up too. So we went with Spiderman and some spiked hair. He loves sporting around those big muscles!

Christian had to be woken up right before we left and the verdict is still out on what he will be this Halloween. A future post I guess! When he gets his picture taken he gets shy and always messes with something on his face.

100,000 Milestone

We went up to Idaho on Friday to Natasha's wedding reception we hit 100,000 miles on the van!
It was so good to see Tasha and meet her new husband, Chad. Natasha lived with us for about a year when we were in Maitland, FL.




We hit 100,000 miles with the van. A little over 7 years old! I think when we bought it new it had 13 miles on it.

Where have we been in those 100,000 miles?!

Happy Birthday Big T!

Today our big guy Tyler is 6 years old! We have been celebrating his birthday all week.





We had a party at Olive garden with my mom, whose bday is Sept 29th. Then he took treats to his class at school and celebrated with them on Friday.

We started today off with a donut birthday cake.I kind of wimped out this year in the cake dept. Tyler got a fishing pole for his birthday and has been fishing all day.




Tyler always takes care of all of us. He is a great helper. Tyler is a fast learner and is doing great in kindergarden. Right now he wants to know if something "stains?" and he also wants to know the time ("what day is it?", "how many days until halloween?", "how many minutes until he has to go to school?").
He is a greta friend and outgoing to those he just met. Now he is a great fisherman!
We love you Tyler!

Renovating again...

Can we not renovate? I think it is impossible for us..

Got rid of the wet bar and getting a new kitchen in the basement before the up stairs kitchen redo.


Basement redo- all English Tudor insides gone

Latest Injuries

We have had the normal scuffs and falls, but it seems lately we are just getting beat up!
Saturday last week everyone was spread throughout the yard and I hear Christian start to cry and pretty soon his cry is hysterical. I run out to see and there are wasps chasing him. So I figure he has been stung, but the wasps are following us into the garage and C is still screaming! So I run into the house, slam the door to keep any more wasps out and grab the ice to put on his stings. Christian is still screaming and I start counting the stings 5..6...7.. HOLY COW!!! I try to tell him the ice is going to make it feel better, but he is still hysterical. As I am looking for more bites I catch a glimps of a wasp butt. The dang thing had been up his shorts and into his diaper continuing to sting him the WHOLE TIME!!

I ripped off his clothes and diaper and beat the thing to death. 11 stings in total!! From his foot all the way up into his diaper.I felt awful. :( Luckily he wasn't allergic and not too bad of swelling. Gave him some Tylenol and went out to make sure no one else would get stung.

Mike was out near their nest swatting away with a tennis racket hitting them left and right. It was a nest I had already used a whole can of wasp spray to get rid of. The wasps had burrowed out a hole under a rock walk way and it is impossible to get to their nest.

So Mike goes out the next morning while we are all asleep and tackles it again, but comes back injured. He put a hooded sweatshirt on, but they flew inside his hood and stung him under it. These wasps are nasty things!

Mike and Tristan all swollen


So after we get home from church we suit him up and got him all protected to head out again. Killed probably a hundred with the tennis racket again.


We ended up buying one of those wasp nest catcher thingies from Home Depot and we haven't had anymore attacks since. 34 wasps dead and counting...

Later that week Brigham fell in the creek while playing with the neighbor's grandkids and split his chin open. He really didn't want to get stitches so I butterflied it and put Dermabond on it. It is healing without infection, but I should have gotten him stitched up. It will be a big scar. Dang it!

He wanted me to take a picture so he could see what it looked like.

Christmas Tree Meadows Cabin

Mike was able to land us a couple nights at a cabin up in the Uintahs. We had a relaxing weekend!

It rained a bit, but that just made things cozier.

A beautiful rainbow after a storm

The beginnings of the Provo River

Katelyn and Lilly

Chow Time

Fishing at Mirror lake

Mirror Lake
This was my first time being up this way (that I can recollect). Beautiful mountains! Really rocky, but tons of evergreens. We are used to seeing lots of aspens. On our way home we hiked a little trail to Ruth Lake. Was windy and exclusive. Very breathtaking!