Caroline's Baptism

Caroline's Bday was a special day. She was able to be baptized on her birthday which was special. She was the only one and that was nice and intimate. Both sets of grandparents came out for it and that was wonderful. So, we started off her birthday on a spiritual note. Caroline said she wanted to sing a song for the special musical number. I asked her if she wanted her siblings to sing with her and she said she wanted to do it by herself. She sang Gethsemane and did a beautiful job. It was such a sweet thing to hear. Grandma played the piano and Papa John gave a prayer.  Grandchud gave a talk on baptism and WeeMama gave a talk on the Holy Ghost. Both talks were great, of course. Brian baptized Caroline and when I took her in the back to help her change she just smiled from ear to ear and said, " I'm so happy". I was so glad that she was feeling so good inside. She was ready and so excited to be baptized.


The only other people Caroline invited to come, besides the Primary President (sister Ericcson ) and the 2nd counselor (Brother Hanzon) were the Skinners. They all came and it was nice to have someone else there to support her on her special day. Afterwards we came back to our house and had lunch. Caroline requested Maccaroni and Cheese, so we had some of that for the kids along with sandwiches for everyone else. We had a nice time visiting and the kids got to play a little bit.

We wanted to keep Caroline's bday focused on her baptism, so we didn't do a friend party. She said she was ok to just play games, but apparently that wasn't enough. After some attitude and frustrations, we decided to go see a movie. It was the Goons. It was a fun movie and I guess made Caroline feel like it was a little bit better of a day.

Of course we finished up the day with cake and presents. All in all I think she had a good day and I hope she remembers the way she felt and the special things that happened.

April

April was a fun month. There were many plays made:

Disasters to deal with (poked 21 holes in our leather bench) :

Dress up play:

TOO much more snow:

Cute faces:

There was also lots of family time, science projects, school career days, and lots of fun times to remember.

Brian took a weekend trip to Moab for a mountain biking adventure. I sent him with the camera and surprisingly he came back with a few pictures and a few gashes. Returned in one piece though.

I had a quick weekend trip out to Utah to photography my cousin Kaitlin's wedding. It was nice to be a little more free to run around doing a few things I wanted to do. I love my family and enjoy the time I get to spend with them. Being there for the wedding was fun and taking pictures is ALWAYS fun! (unless I"m taking our own family picture!) April was a pretty good month! This is probably my favorite temple shot that I've taken so far.

Soccer

I thought I took a lot more pictures for soccer, but I can't find anymore, so I guess not. Soccer this year was basically just a bunch of games. It snowed nearly every day there was supposed to be a practice, really! It was crazy.
Liz hadn't played in over a year and this was Cooper's first season. Elizabeth started a little shy, which was fine, she was the new girl after all. She slowly warmed up, but in the end I think she had a nice time.
Cooper got more and more aggressive as the season went on and ended up scoring several goals. It was fun to watch him understand the game more and put some good effort into it. We'll see where they go with it. Liz loves it, we would just love to see her get a little more fire in her and be more aggressive, but I think that will come with time.

Trip to Utah

We took another trip to Utah for spring break. Brian drove out with me this time and stayed the weekend, then flew home on Sunday to be back for work. We started off the trip heading down to Provo to see Jayde and Caroline (Kowallis). This was our first time meeting baby Evie. The girls were so excited to meet her. She is such a cute baby. So sweet and a little chubby. Love me some chubs! On babies of course.

 

We did a lot of fun things together. We went to Salt Lake one day to take the kids to the children's section at the church museum. We spent a couple hours there. It was fun and so well put together.

Another day we went to an arcade and did some mini golf, laser tag and bumper cars. After, Wee-Mama treated us all to a ride on the huge ferris wheel at Sheels sports store. I think all the kids enjoyed it. We also went bowling and all these things were done nearly free on the passes that Mom and Dad gave us for Christmas. Fun times!

 There were plenty of sleepover and we also took the older 2 girls to go see a BYU volleyball games. Brought back memories for Brian and I since he was a score keeper for the women and I went to several games. The girls seemed to really enjoy it. Everyone (except Mel and Greg) went and it was a lot of fun. After, we went to Caroline and Jayde's for dessert.

Then of course there's Easter. We did a quick photo shoot, of course, just before everyone showed up for the Easter egg hunt. Got some cute ones of Evie, Caroline and Jayde. I always love taking pictures of babies. It was a good trip and we had a lot of fun, as always. Brian had flown back out Thursday night to enjoy the weekend with us and drive back with me. We had the Easter dinner on Saturday since we were on the road on Sunday, so that was nice of the family to get together for us. Love family!

Disneyland

So we did the much anticipated trip to Disneyland. We kept it a surprise from the kids and that was so fun!  We haven't been since 2008 I think it was. So we woke the kids up early and of course I had a camera set up to record it all. I had made Mickey Mouse pancakes and made each of them a green shirt with either tinker bell or Mickey Mouse on it, partly to keep track of all of them and it turned out to be a great idea. We could spot them pretty quick if they drifted a little away from us. I packed 5 days worth of clothes, but they wore their shirt almost every day because they liked them so much. We also had a headbands game that had Mickey Mouse ears so we had them put them on and then asked them if they wanted to go to Disneyland. They were excited.

They did really well on the airplane. I hoped they would sleep some since we woke them up so early, but no luck. After we got off the airplane we still had to take a shuttle to our hotel, which wasn't too bad, it was about 45 minutes.

 

Our hotel was right across the street, so the walk only took a few minutes to get there, thank goodness. The breakfast was next door and it was a pretty good buffet breakfast. There was so much that happened I couldn't possibly remember it all or really want to take the time to remember it all, so a few points to note.....

1. The first night we made the mistake of staying until it closed and then trying to get dinner. I think by the time we sat down it was 9:00 (10:00 our time) and it took them 45 minutes to get our food. All the kids were asleep and half of them didn't even wake up to eat. 

2. Cooper got picked to be one of the participants in the Star Wars show and loved it! He wanted to try again the next day, and we did, and both he and Bella got picked. They had a lot of fun with that.

3. I can't believe I didn't get a picture of it, but we had the best corn dogs and they were filling and didn't cost us $100 to eat! Disney food is crazy expensive! But it's also really good.

4. The most ridden on ride was Pirates of the Caribbean, largely because of the lack of a line, the jungle cruise and the older kids loved Space Mountain. We hit Splash Mountain a few times as well. Another favorite was the Cars ride in California Adventure. Such an amazing and well put together ride!

5. The little girls had a wonderful time meeting the princesses. Took longer to get to them than most the rides!

6. The weather was perfect!!!

7. Only one major issue happened with bad behavior and that person had to sit out a ride and then was great the rest of the day!

 8. Along with all the fun, we did get some unhappy news that Brian's Grandpa Chudleigh passed away. No matter how prepared you think you are that it's going to happen, it's always a little of a shock and so very sad.

9. At the end of it, Brian swore off family vacations for the next 5 years. Ha! I will just swear off Disney for 5 years. :) It was a lot of work and very stressful and exhausting, but now that I'm several months away from it I can say that it was a lot of fun and the kids seem to only remember the good parts! :)

10. Everything was so fun, the shows, the characters, the rides and mostly watching the kids enjoy it so much! I wouldn't go as far as to say it's the "happiest place on earth", but it was a lot of fun.

Liz- 10 years old

I take forever to get around to Elizabeth's birthday pictures. It usually happens when I do Cooper's and I don't know why. Nothing else is going on in February! :) So here are a few of my faves and a bunch more of how she really is. She was doing something goofy with her smile and she got mad at me for saying that 'cause she really was trying to smile good, but not sure what it was. The collage is definitely more her personality anyway! Cute little stinker!

 

I get this face often and expect that it will only happen more frequently! 

And for the more real pictures...

Cooper's Bday

Well Cooper's Bday was a good way to start out March! We started off the morning with a basketball game, his last one of the season. He did really good. This was his first year playing and he definitely made some big improvements! I think he could do really well in it if he keeps playing and practicing. One day I took him to the park and he shot on a full size basket for about 20 minutes until he got one basket in there, so I think the determination is there.

For his party he wanted to invite a few friends and go to Chucky Cheese, so he had 4 friends, Cole Skinner, Temuu and Mason and James Carwin. We started out opening the presents and then headed over for the pizza and play time. It was a MAD house there! Should have known it would be on a Saturday night. Basically we just let the kids run wild and have fun and then rounded them back up in the end. I don't remember seeing Bella, which is probably why I don't have a picture of her. I basically stuck with Charlotte and then ran around to keep checking on each kid. Liz hit the jackpot in one game and won like 250 tickets. She was expecting to get a really good prize, but even with that many, the prizes are still junk!

After the playing, we headed back to the house and had some cake and called it a day. Coop was pretty happy. It was his first friend bday party. He didn't want to invite a bunch of friends, just his "besties" which worked out really well.

 Such a sweet kid and we love him so much. He has so much love to give, I hope he stays that way.

February

February is kind of a stepping stone to me. Nothing great happens in February, which is why I generally like to take a trip somewhere warm if I can. But since we did a trip in January, February had nothing to look forward too. I guess I should come up with some tradition that make February something worth looking forward to.  There were, of course, some photographic moments, like this cute one of Brian, Bella and Charlotte one Sunday morning. So cute.

Then there's Valentine's day. I wanted to get a picture of Cooper with the girls kisses on him before he got to old to really put up a fight about it. It was fun and they all cooperated which was nice. I think it turned out cute.

A few cute ones of Charlotte and Caroline

Not much happened worth reporting that I can remember. The only other notable thing was Elizabeth had a fun school concert. They went over all the time periods of music and Elizabeth's group was disco, so after several sewing disasters, we came up with an outfit from my closet and I think it turned out so cute. She looked adorable and the concert was a lot of fun. She looks way too grown up but totally adorable!

January 2013

Still trying to catch up and for some reason life keeps moving forward.... quickly! So, the quick recap on January....

First of all... best January ever! Brian took me on a much needed cruise. He surprised me one day saying he was taking the time off so we could go on a cruise. I was having a really hard "mommy" time so he took me for some good R&R and my Mom was so great to come out and watch the kids, which they were thrilled about. It was a great trip. We flew red eye to Miami, took a cab to the cruise then got on the boat and relaxed in the SUN until the ship took off. We had fun eating, swimming, walking, sleeping, going to the show and watching Brian win a song competition. It was so beautiful and this is how I will build my heaven someday. :) We went to Nassau and Cococay islands. We had fun snorkeling and saw a lot of fish and a few sting rays. We ate yummy food and enjoyed our new friends from our dinner table. It was just a lot of fun.

We came back from a nice sunny trip to a cold Colorado. We celebrated Elizabeth's 10th bday. She had a pretty special day, I think. My visiting teacher (Linda McDowell) watched the kids so I dcould go to lunch with Elizabeth. I took her favorite 5 layer burrito from Taco Bell. Then at night we went to Panera, her favorite place to eat as of late, and then she wanted to go ice skating. Quite a full day. The skating was different from a month ago. This time the skies were blue, it wasn't too cold and the ice on the rink was melting, but it was good fun. She wanted a friend party, so the next day, Saturday, we had one for friends.

 She has been really into Harry Potter at school and reading all the book and watching the movies, so she wanted her party to be Harry Potter themed. We made good invitations that we sealed with wax and she really had fun with it. We played who's who with Harry Potter characters, made homemade pizzas, made "wands" with pretzel sticks and chocolate, played pin the scar on Harry and then they played Harry Potter scene it. It was a fun night.

As for the rest of the month, there's been snow fun, dates with kiddos, swimming fun, tub time with goggles, movies,  game fun and game night with our dental friends. So, a pretty fun month over all!