Charlotte's 3 yr old pictures

Finally got around to taking Charlotte's 3 year old pictures a few weeks after her birthday. She's such a ham in front of the camera. Love this girl!

 

November

November started off with a bang! Brian's parents came into town to watch the kids so Brian and I could go on a trip to Mexico. We got to spend a couple of days with them. It's always nice to visit with family.

 I will be dedicating a whole book to the Mexico trip , so I won't post many details about it here except for the fact that it was wonderful! So much fun! And we went with our friends Brandon and Natalie Ford. A great trip planned by Brian!

On November 16th. we celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary. We went to a nice restaurant that a guy in our ward works at called Meritage. It was pretty good. Fancy stuff. Then I think we went to a movie but I can't remember. Haha. Might have just been dinner since we were counting our Mexico trip and concert later for our anniversary.

We also we to the Michael Buble concert. He was so much fun. Totally funny and of course a great singer. It was a lot of fun. Brian and I might be turning into concert junkies. :)

At the end of November, my parents, Nonnie (my grandma) and Maya coming out for Thanksgiving. That was a fun treat and the kids had no idea that Maya was coming. We had lots of fun with all of them here. Shopping, playing, watching movies, the kids made a fashion show, and then of course thanksgiving day. Lots of yummy food! Brian cooked the turkey and did a fabulous job. Everything was delicious!

The day after Thanksgiving we took a trip to the zoo. It was a beautiful day and since it was a little cooler, all the animals were out. It was a fun trip! At the very end of the hours, the Christmas lights turned on so we got to see a little of that. Fun weekend.

 The day that they were all leaving, the girls wanted to take some pictures together so they all threw on a white dress and we headed to a field down the street and took them super fast. They ended up leaving early because of a storm that was headed our way. We were sad to see them go early but enjoyed all the time we had with them! I'm glad these girls have such a fun bond!

November was a fun month! Lots of great memories with great people!

September-October

Since I'm trying to catch up with everything and am 6 months behind, I can't remember all the great things and I'm not posting anything new so I can catch up, so I'm going to summarize..... a lot!

 September-
 More soccer...
 
Fun FHE lessons and activities...

Finally cut Charlotte's hair 'cause it just wasn't working....

 October-
 Traditional Pumpkin waffles for General Conference...

 More plays...

(Thanks to Liz for all the creativity so that we have fun pictures like this. But then she's not in them. Gotta work on that. Look like punks don't they?!)

But they're not really......(although Cooper did get after school detention for getting in a fight!)

 

  

Charlotte turns 3!

 Cute faces I get to spend the morning with......

Bella lost 2 teeth.....

Creative play with home made play dough ...

A field trip with Bella (her first time on a school bus)...

Carving pumpkins (Caroline took hers very seriously and won at the ward party)...

My first attempt at a jig saw...

Frequent walk with this QT to our rock garden park behind our house....

  
Too many electronics in the house going at the same time!!!

Halloween...

with 3 Halloween occasions: church party, school party and the actual Halloween day!

Halloween night after trick-or-treating, I took a trip to Utah to see my new nephew and niece, and of course the rest of the fam. That wrapped up October. Of course we had to take some pictures as well...

Bruno Mars

So within the last year, one of our new favorite music artists has been Bruno Mars. He's come out with so many great fun and up beat songs. Well Brian bought us tickets to his concert and it was AMAZING!!! We went with Chuck and Lindsay and it was at the Red Rock Ampitheater and that was the coolest venue! It was fun to be in such a cool setting. Bruno's concert was so much fun and so much energy. He sang for a really long time, much longer than we anticipated. It started to rain before his act and rained for about 15 minutes but then it calmed and the rest was an amazing show! So fun! Of course they wouldn't let me take in my "good" camera, so I gave it a shot with my point and shoot and I was amazing at the quality! It did so good. It was fun to go through these pictures.
Great night with my man! (that would be Brian, not Bruno)

 

August

I can only remember a few things happening in August. If I didn't have pictures to go through to remind me, I'd probably forget. One thing is that Brian got called to be in the cub scouts with church and he took Cooper on one of the campouts. I sent my camera with him expecting him to return without any, but Brian surprised me and took a couple. It was great to have a few pictures to document this campout. Brian said Cooper was so well behaved and was better than a lot of the boys. He even went on the hike and it was like 10 miles and did it without complaining. Good boy!

We spent a bit of time at the pool and I was grateful we had it to help spend some of the summer active. I think I forgot to mention that  did a track program this summer as well. It kept them running and busy 3 days of the week.

  Cooper, Kiki and Liz started at the same time but Isabelle had to wait a few days for kindergarten to start. Bella was of course thrilled to start school. It was fun to watch her excitement. 

Cooper went from half day to full day school. I waited to watch him go in and he gave me a quick wave and smile on his way in. They do grow up but still melt your heart!

 

 We had a great summer and ready for a great school year......

July Part II- Reunions

The (extended) Porter Family Reunion...

So the weekend after Brian's bday, I drove the kids out to Utah. Brian stayed behind to spend another day with Julia and then of course he had work. The drive went so perfectly! It was amazing! No one fought and we sang songs and just actually had a good time together. It was amazing!

The day after we got there we had a Porter family reunion with all of my Dad's side of the family. It's usually down in Provo up the canyon, which is a really nice place to have it. My parents were in charge this year and did a great job!


We showed up to start off the fun with a hike. It was just our family (John and Lisa and kids) and Ed and Jeff that came to that part. It was a pretty decent hike and my Dad stopped us every so often for a little story. He really put some thought into it.

 They rented a cotton candy maker and brought this huge slip n' slide. Even the adults were involved with it. That was probably the best part. It was hilarious watching all the adults tandem ride down or just go crazy. There was also face painting, (swedish) fishing for the kids, volleyball and water volleyball. It was a really nice good summer family reunion. There wasn't any drama, just nice time together. We all had a blast.

Of course it's sad to not have Grandpa there. He was always big on the family reunions. We did a little tribute to both him and Diane since this was the first reunion we've had without them. Sad to have people so close to us passing away. Glad we had as many there with us as we did. It was a reunion I don't think we'll soon forget!

The Cousins....

 
 The whole crew....

 My favorite picture from the reunion! My sweet Nana.

The rest of the time that we were there we just did the usual. Hung out a lot, ate meals together and let the kids play. My parents had bought us these passes to a water park and to a place where we could play laser tag, bumper cars, water boats and more. That was a lot of fun for all of us!

We took a trip down to Provo to swim at Seven Peaks and stopped in on Nana. This a picture with all the great-grandkids on my Dad's side. (2 more on their way)

I was able to spend a little time with a few of my best friends from high school and college. It was good to see them and spend some time with them. I have so many great memories with them!

 

We even had a date night one night. My parents had bought us tickets to a BeeGees tribute band. They were really good and it was a perfect night. We went out to dinner first then to the concert. The night was beautiful and seeing the mountains all around us and the sunset made it such a great evening. I took so many pictures this trip, but these are the ones that made the cut. It was so much fun to be with family.