Birthday Presents

Benjamin's birth-mother is always generous and kind to all of us. This year again she sent something that Benjamin loved. Here is his reaction as he opened Dusty cropduster. Many thanks!!

Birthday boy

This is our excited Birthday Boy.  He wore his birthday badge all day at school.  He counted down the days to his birthday this year and jumped out of bed when he realized it was his special day.  Here he is with his special bookmark waiting to open his presents.

The lego set present

Scooby-Doo birthday cake

I made lego cake pops for Benjamin's classroom.  As it turned out he couldn't take them because they have a no homemade stuff rule.  I ended up going to BJ's and got cupcakes and cider for the classroom and Benjamin delivered the cakepops to his favorite teachers.  In the end it worked out well.

This morning Benjamin woke up super early.  Before 7 am -and breakfast, he and Daddy had the model plane that his birth mother sent together.  I expect to have it flying around the house upon his return this afternoon.  

Cure for cold weather

We installed a new fireplace.   I really love it.  It's so nice to hit the remote and have a fire.  It's also equally nice to be able to shut it off if it's too warm or if we are leaving quickly.  Many thanks to my brother Scott who gave up a valuable Saturday to come install it.  It now looks beautiful with our stocking hanging from it in hopes that Santa finds us.

The kids building a snow man and making snow angels.

I couldn't resist including this picture of Alec on his sled.  He will wait forever for someone to pull him on his sled around the yard.  He is the most patient of all the children.  We made lots of trails back and forth in the front yard as there wasn't enough snow to go sledding.  Ther'e snow in this weekend's forcast though -- hopefully we get enough to sled.

Santa?

We have a 3 season screened back porch just off the family room. It has storm windows, which we open for summer. This last week with the weather still being somewhat termerate we didn't exactly get around to shutting the storm windows for winter. Yesterday we got the first blizzard of the season, -- snow in the horizontal direction. We got probably 2 inches snow at 25 MPH. The result: the porch was covered with a skiff of snow, couches and all. The snow blew through the screen openings.

By the time I noticed what had happened it was dark, so I showed Joseph what happened and told him to remind me the next day and we could sweep it out. Joseph went out to shut the screens for the winter. In the process he had to step up on the snow-covered chairs to access the screens, and left some footprints.

In the morning, he seized an opportunity. Joseph told the children that Santa Claus came to see if they had been bad or good, and that he crawled in the window to peek in our sliding door, during the night. The children bought it, hook, line and sinker. Lily even surmised that Santa was looking for a way in, because we have a gas-burning insert now. Benjamin told me he had seen magic sparkle dust in the snow, which Santa must have used to land the sleigh.

I can’t help but wonder how many more years the magic will last. I sure love the Christmas season through their eyes!

Dress up

Dress up is always the activity of choice in our house.  Here Benjamin is Air agent Steve.  He spent most of the day packing and repacking his backpack and jumping off the picnic table or swing set and coming in to report his jump.  He sometimes wanted to be referred to as Air Agent Steve and other times wanted to be know as Aviator Steve.  Regardless, I'm glad I have Benjamin still in one piece.

Our little Ballerina loves to put on performances.  I really need to find some dance lessons for her before the excitement wares off.

Pumpkin Carving

Lily loved carving out her pumpkin this year.  I love it when she is all smiles.

Benjamin was also thrilled with his pumpkin and the chance to carve it any  way he wanted.

Alec was kind of grossed out at the thought of digging about in his pumpkin.  But as always if the big kids are doing it -  he wants to do it too.

I don't think we ever got a picture of the finished product on the front porch.  This picture will have to do.  Sunday at Church a woman in our ward gave the kids crazy glasses and a treat bag.  They were thrilled.  I'm glad Daddy had the thought to snap their picture right after church.

Field trip

I think this is Ben's first time on a real horse.  We went on a field trip to a pumpkin farm with the school.  They had a little petting section with a horse, goats, a sheep, some rabbits, and a donkey.  Their was also the hayride out to the pumpkin patch and the corn maze.  I love that I can stay home and be able to attend these sorts of events with the kids.  We are really blessed to live in such a great area.

Alberto VO5

The boys have all had haircuts by now, but about a month ago their hair was getting long.  Alec decided he wanted his hair spiked for school.  I started calling him spike and then Alberto VO5.  Now from the back seat of the van I'll here him say, "Mom, call me Alberto VO5.  What a crack-up.

How does he sleep like that?

One of our favorite things to do when we go to bed is to sneak into Alec's room.  Inevitably he is upside down or off the bed or in some strange contorted arrangement that in my opinion is not condusive to sleep.  This picture was taken in the dark, and came out okay.  It's not uncommon for him to be off the bed entirely with just his head or foot on the mattress.  Crazy kid.

Candy grabbers

Check out our little pirate.  He was masterful at saying Arr.....  The funniest thing about our night of trick or treating is that Alec's little legs made it hard for him to keep up with the bigger two.  He could often be heard while running across the lawn toward the open door and person handing out candy "wait, ...one more kid!"

Lily was so happy to be a princess.  She wanted to be called Rapunsel and was quick to tell people that she didn't have the hair.

Our policeman.  He was so excited about his costume.  He carried real hand cuffs and their keys and a whistle to make sure the bad guys listen to him.

Lily's school costume.  Fearing that the weather would be too cold Lily opted to be a bumble bee at school.  Her class preformed at the schools spook-party.  Her favorite song....It's a spooky night, giving us a fright....everybody's petrified.....

Trip West Continued....

Our tip continued.....

One of Benjamin's favorite people, Uncle Tim.  Uncle Tim added to the spy theme by buying the kids spy glasses and hats.  Here he is reviewing Benjamin's lego guy book.  Ben spent most of the time in the car creating in his sticker book.

My in-laws have a cabin in the mountains.  The kids were enjoying the day at the cabin.  We spent most of the day at the lake on the paddleboats and on the slied and enjoyed dinner on the back porch.  It was 100+ degrees in Boise and the cabin was perfect, we wished we had more time to enjoy it.

Getting back from the lake, we were chasing a lizard under the woodpile. 

This picture was taken in Nauvoo Ill.  We toured the visitors center and spent a couple of days there enjoying the pageant and all that Nauvoo has to offer.

After a wagonride

Joseph on stilts

Benjamin trying to manuver stilts

heading to the Nauvoo pageant

At Liberty Jail

the kids at the visitors center

One of the best parts of the trip was to meet the rest of my family at Kenneths home in Kansas.  We were all together and had a great time.  We spent 4 days and got to see their home and just enjoy time together.



This is a picture of the family complete with spouses.



I sure love this group!

Trip West

This summer we decided to drive to Idaho. We had a bunch of fun and were so glad to have the chance to see several people we love and visit some fabulous places. Here are some of the highlights.

The kids were so excited.  I made bags that helped them have activities to do and things to color and explore.  They were so excited to open their bags that they were in the car way before it was officially loaded.

We stopped in Chicago at Legoland.  The kids loved all the exhibits and we were all facinated at the ingenuity of some very creative people.  We were glad after a full day of driving to have two nights at the hotel and be able to play in the pool.  Many thanks to the Hales for their travel tips.

There were several themed sections in Legoland.  The kids loved the stop.

Turbo

Lily loved the play center.  She looked so cute in her overall outfit.

This was Alec's favorite lego exhibit.  It was just his size.

We had to get one of Daddy. 

Lily had just lost a tooth.  She also was growing her hair our. 

I'm glad that this was the first stop.  We had a great time and it was super relaxing.  Because we were their on Saturday we were then able to spend Sunday doing a bulk of travel and stopping over at Winter Quarters.

One of the items in the kids bags were mustaches.  The kids put them on in Iowa and went into the convenience store as secret agents.  The cashiers and most of the customers loved it.

I hope that he never has a real one.

Did I mention secret agent?  They also got Daddy and Mommy to put on mustaches when we showed up at Grandma and Grandpa's house and hide claiming a secret agent mission.

I loved the red rocks.  The kids wanted to hike and by this time in our trip so excited to get out of the car.

What a cute bunch!