the school Fall Festival (I love their teachers)

I took the 4 kids to Noah and Isaac's class so they could go with the 2 year olds to the fall festival! 

 There's no PTA at this school, so this is one of the only ways I can be involved. 

I just love their teacher.  She was reading a book to the kids when we walked in.  She had one girl in time out and was sweetly ignoring her. That may not seem nice, but she really handles everything so well, and doesn't seem flustered ever. 

 After singing songs with the kids, she gives them each a small candy.  It's consistency that I love. 

 Then we went into the big lunch room where the parents volunteered at the little booths.  The kids got prizes that the parents had brought in. 

 Look at their teacher - with a camera and a smile! 

 Then we went outside to eat their morning snack. 

Next, I took these 4 to Home Goods where they were so silly and I got compliments on how well behaved all of my children were.  (Ok, so I also got the dirty nervous looks by people who seemed to think of the store as a museum where kids should NOT be.) 

Thanksgiving Tree

I had the kids cut out their own leafs.  Malia's are red, Dylan's are orange, Noah's are yellow (I had to hold my fingers out away from his quick siscors as I turned the yellow paper), and I cut Isaac's green ones while he cut confetti to make our trash can colorful. 

 They each yelled told me what they were thankful for and I wrote it down on their colored leaves. 

They placed their own leaves on the swirls of glue. Then we attempted a picture - but they were done with this craft.
P.S. I've done this in years past with leaf stickers and I wrote things down on them, then I saw a posterboard sized one on a blog this past week and I decided to do that - only to give the toddlers a lot more freedom b/c I'm really not controlling enough (should 2yr olds use siscors? when I really can only truely supervise one kid at a time? - for example)

AND it's on the back of an old Young Women's theme poster that I found when cleaning out our YW closet.  I'm the YW president, and that same blogger just became the YW president in her ward!  I'm going to be looking up to her even more now!  I'm a lot like her in that I'm no good at delegating (although I have been doing a lot more of that this year b/c I have HAD to) and I am quite content being the helping the one in charge.  I just went to a good presidency training meeting last night, and the song "I NEED the EVERY hour" keeps coming to mind.  It's not MY position that's called, I'm just the one helping Him.  It is extremely humbling - and causes tears - both kinds.

cool weather = sweater weather

The time changed, so I got up "early" (with 3 boys in my bed b/c the 2 little ones were cold) and made the smoke alarms go off pancakes.

The boys got dressed and had some time to kill before church. 

I'm happy when I round the corner to see this:

(Today they were back to their shorts and no shirts dress code - swinging in the back yard in the hot sunshine.)

li'l rock climber

I take my eye off of this kid for one minute -

     and look where I find him:

I couldn't be more happy:) 

I was taking pictures of Malia, and this is what Dylan was doing behind my back. 

He jumped up to that blue hand hold some how - confident and so strong!

And willing to take time out to pose for a photo for his mommy -

even when all of his weight is on one hand.

That's all - I just figured it deserved a post all to itself. 
I can do that - it's my blog (and soon to be blog book!)
Well, probably not that soon, It took me 3 years to get my 2007 one, but I LOVE it!  I have already been showing it off to everybody.  In fact, it's checked out of my library home to my mom's house right now.
THANK YOU KAT for my 30th birthday present!  I thought it might have been my best birthday gift yet, but I was going through my blog book and noticed that in 2007, for my 27th birthday, Steven flew my cousin Lacey into town as a big surprise.  I had no clue.  And she did a family photo session for us as her birthday present to me.  And Steven didn't complain as another birthday present to me.  I've had a lot of good birthday presents I guess - thanks to my big family.  It's not that I had forgotten that birthday, but it's so amazing to be able to read it, and to see pictures to refresh my memory all over again with my 2007 blog book from my sister, Kat. 
Another thing is that it's Chrissy's birthday today.  I have her blog up and am listening to the play list that Lacey and Grant put together.  2007 was the year that she passed away.  I like the simple fact that her death was documented in my blog too. 
Anyway, now that I have the first one - everybody sees the value in it.  It's like a scrap book w/o all of the scrap.  It's like a photo album w/o all of the loose photos.  It's like a calendar because all of the dates are right there.  It's like a journal b/c you know that I like to ramble!  And it's like a yearbook b/c of the hard boundedness of it - except that I cherish EVERY SINGLE PAGE instead of the 5 that I'm on and the 6 that Steven is on!  (We were in the same high school for one year and didn't know each other.)  So Steven sees that it is totally worth the investment b/c we bought year books each year w/o thinking and they're like $70 each or something.  And you know what - I can have people sign this book - ooh, good idea!  I can have my kids draw on the blank pages at the end - like their hand prints or something. 
K, Dylan is a monkey, and my sister knows how to make my day, my month, or even my year (and my posterity - you know Dylan and Isaac's wives will fight over these when I'm gone.)

Field Trip Friday ~ Lake Seminole Park

This is my favorite picture of my 4 kids. 

 I know, only two of them are really mine, but today, they were mine all mine, nose picking and all:)

 I took these two pictures to make the one below (and the b/w version)

The result:

This is for you Lacey, it reminds me of your story from yesterday. 

 And this would have been good for your "feet" photo-a-day.

Guess what they're looking at.

It's for Abbey - so she'll want to visit us . . . 

after your busy photography season. 

 Did you guess it?

Dylan caught a lizard. 

Right after Isaac stomped on one and right before that dead one's friend bit Isaac for revenge.  Isaac FREAKED out. 

These kids are dangerous, and they ran off AND are really fast now AND I thought I lost Noah (only for 5 seconds - he was behind a column).  But man did we have fun - they didn't even beg to go to the playground which was in plain sight. 

 In case you really read the words on my blog, I'll break the news.
There will be a 5th kid in these pictures in July! 
I'll have a baby newborn in a sling when we go on outings. 
Corrie is pregnant!  She just told me and I'm excited!

The real reason we went was for Malia's 5 year birthday picture.

Can you believe she's almost 5? 

That means that just 3 months later, MY baby will be 5 years old too. 

Halloween Party Animals

It started Friday evening.

Dylan dressed up as a soccer player.  He was so good! 

I tried out a new borrowed lens with a crazy good zoom.  

 Isaac watched, then he turned around to see the game behind us. 

 Dylan scored a hat trick - 3 goals! 

Then we drove home to change into the Halloween costumes for

Day 1, Party #1 - church fall festival

Don is Andre the Giant with the ugly good black eye.

 He was good at playing his part:)  The kids loved it, as they usually do.  He's fun "like an uncle."

 Um mom, pretty funny the way you're wearing that bunched up sweater as a fundamentalist "mormon" wife/mother:)

 Can you read this?  The new couple (and my new YW counselor) decked out their trunk for the "trunk-or-treating" after the party.  The bishop gives out candy to the kids after church when they tell him what they learned.  They had head stones for his counselors too. 

 My puppy doggie was looking in his candy bag to see his goodies on our way home (and back to the church b/c I had left my small camera.) 

 Here are our pumpkins, the kids told me what they wanted carved. 

Day 2, Party #1 - Amelia's 5th Birthday Hawaiian Party

When we rounded the corner and saw the decorations, Dylan asked "Is this Hawaii now?!"  Malia and Noah are going in December, so Dylan wants to go too.  So do I Dylan, so do I.

This was close though.  The pool wasn't heated, but I went in and it wasn't cold. 

I mean it, it was so awesome to be able to swim again.

 The birthday girl is in the middle.

They had a lady there who did hula dancing with the kids. 

First, Amalia placed a lei on each of her guests. 

 Dylan was having fun, but said that "pictures are boring." 

 He was a good sport.  He participated in wearing the lei for the dancing, ate the yummy food, and did the limbo. 

 Isaac walked right under it - lots of times.

 Amelia's mom made the cake, complete with a smoking volcano! 

Isaac and Dylan hit the pinata.

 and got the trinkets inside. 

On our way to Day 2, Party #2

(I forgot my purse at the first party so we had to drive all the way back, and I had to go back in costume - embarassing! yet fitting punnishment for me.  I'm always forgetting stuff. )

 Day 2, Party #2 - Cousins!!

 The cousins, missing baby Edison

 The hosts.  Such a thoughtful party!  Too bad we had to leave early when Isaac pinched his finger really bad in that little swing, then when I was trying to comfort him, he had an accident on my lap.  Check please!

Day 2, Party #3 - Dylan and Isaac's baby sitter's party

Their house was seriously like a haunted museum.  Every single part of it had Halloween scary stuff on and in it.  They go all out, but only every other year. 

 There was a skull in here. 

Day 2, Party #4 - Steven's office party (his previous job)

see Steven's teardrop tattoo?  He has had clients with many tear drops.  And it's filled in.  Do you know what that means?  It means that I caught him:)

 my fav couple - no clue who they are, but they acted the part and it was so funny. 

check out their french baguette:)

Day 3, church.

It's not fun that Halloween falls on a Sunday.  If you think about it, Christians shouldn't "celebrate" Halloween.  But since it's so fun to dress up and get together with friends and family, we do.  We sorta talked about it, and we're kinda playing ignorant.  The Fall Festival at the church was so that kids could still participate in something like their friends do, but so that the kids won't have to really go trick-or-treating or go to some scary place.  I'm sure a lot of families didn't go trick-or-treating, but we did.  We went to our neighbors that we know and a couple in between.  We were done in 20 minutes (walking at a slow puppy pace.)  Which brings me to

Day 3, final Halloween event (not a party) - trick-or-treating

 Dylan was skeptical.  He didn't want to go to any door that had a barking dog or that wasn't brightly lit.  Isaac walked right up while Dylan stayed back with us.  One house had a high doorbell, so Dylan finally went up to ring it, but ran back to us. 

 Isaac found another doggie!  When somebody would try to hand him candy, he would mumble as clearly as he could, "frick-or-freat, I uh doggie." 

 That was our last house.
Then we went home to do the fun part - passing out candy.  The boys each ate 1 or two pieces, but then they would tell me matter-of-factly, "when the frick-or-freaters knock on our door, I going to give them this candy."  And they would shove Steven out of the way to hand out their candy.  I tried keeping the good stuff, but they would want to give a couple of things at a time. 

 They liked candy, but they like the trinkets too!  They took turns scaring the kids with this set of vampire teeth.  Yes they shared.  Gross!

And I cleaned up today.  We had a busy fun weekend!

Oh, and I'm dropping out of the photo-a-day challenge Lacey.  I'll still try to post a photo-a-day, but on this blog, not on my fishy face photography one.  I did both for a week.  Steven pointed out that my business blog was becoming my family blog, and that's what I actually dislike about starting-out photogs.  When it looks like they can only take pics of their kids and don't have real clients.  Lacey is established and her daily photos are like art.  This is my first official year.  I wasn't even editing the photos, and I didn't even take the last one so I removed it.  If somebody stumbles upon my blog, I want it to be my work b/c we all know that not everybody reads the words, and even if they do, who knows if they read my initial post explaining it.  Steven didn't.  Or if he did, he didn't get it.  I want to still be able to take snap shots that aren't quality w/o the stress of worrying if i'm going to be judged on my work.  I love the challenge, but I'll be doing it here instead.  I have pleanty to post on there, and will include my family some.