Photo shoot

About a month ago a friend of mine asked me if her cousin could use my baby for a free photo session to model some of her stuff, I of course agreed I mean who doesn't want their baby pictured right!?

Let me just tell ya though, this woman was AWESOME! She knew just what to do with babies and took the best shots! Isabelle is a baby that sleeps ALL night and is awake most of the day, so it was a very long session!:)

She maybe slept about 20 minutes out of the 3 1/2 hours we were shooting!! haha!

AND she had to eat every 20 minutes too! And not to mention you have to have it VERY warm to keep baby happy so it was like 90 degrees! It was so fun though!

Isabelle's appointment was yesterday and she gained a whole pound since she was born! The doctor could not believe she was breastfed! She will be a chunker! Anyway I hope you enjoy these pics, more to come later !

playin around

I just LOVE all my girls!

Havens bday and halloween

This is my first attempt to make a fun birthday cake and of course the teeth didnt stay on but it sure was yummy!!!
haven got this baby that you can take in the bath, which she HAS to take it with her every bath now!! haha! We took her to chuck o rama for her bday dinner and she tanked of course!

I wanted to share the halloween pictures that Matt took since I was in the hospital...i think he did a pretty good job at getting them ready...he even put the fake eyelashes on aubs!! lol!

sammy did not get to go trick or treating because she was really sick which later that night matt took her into insta care and turns out she had strep! poor girl!

haven only wanted to do 10 houses and was done.

Isabelle

our sweet baby GIRL arrived on October 30th weighing 7 pounds 7 ounces, 19 inches long!

she is the best eater in the world! she thinks i am her pacifier haha!

all the kids fight over who gets to hold her, they are all so good with her. I am really loving having 3 years between the two girls too, there is NO jealousy whatsoever:)

well here are a few pics, gotta go feed the babe!

Dont cry wolf

A lot of people know how much a 6 and 7 year old cry wolf... right?

Well MY 7 year old likes to do it ALL the time! Not a day goes by that she does not say something hurts or someone did something to her.

So about 2 weeks ago I came home from work late and she briefly told me that she was playing and her pinky finger got bent back and so know its sprang.. I looked at it quickly and gave her a kiss and told her to be careful.........well I did not think anything else about it and Matt or Annie did not tell me anything about what happened so I just went on with life:) We even went camping folks!

Anyway, this last Sunday I was painting my girls nails and noticed 2 knuckles were bruised and her finger was swollen...I asked her what happened and she informed me it was from the time her finger bent back!! I felt SOO bad! I was so upset that I had not noticed and now her finger was going to be retarded! well I took her into the Dr. and they told me it was broken and it should heal fine!! thank goodness!

I had a talk with her about telling me about things that REALLY hurt so I will know when to take her serious lol! She thinks it is so cool that she has a cast on though so she is doing great!

We finally went camping as a family this year!!!

Thursday afternoon we went up to Big Cottonwood and went camping in the Spruces, our most favorite place to go! This was our third attempt to go and finally was able to get a spot.

I woke up early to buy my sight Thursday morning so that when we drove up there at night they would not be all taken.

When we got up there it had just started trickling rain and by the time Matt got out to set up the tent it was POURING!! So the kids and I ate crackers in the van while watching him set it up:)

Well by the time it was up it was flooded with water, so luckily I had brought a few towels and we proceeded to mop the floor and ring out the gallons of water that were in there! By now it was thundering like crazy and the kids were DYING in the van because of the noise I had to whip out some licorice to calm them down.

Matt then got a great idea, instead of waiting for the dumb tent to dry we would just set up our other much smaller tent inside our big wet tent HAHA! It worked out great and we stayed dry and warm all night long! we might have to do that every time!

Needless to say we were able to roast our hotdogs and smores and had a wonderful fire that night.

We woke up to perfect mountain weather and the smell of wet pine. The kids were soooo excited to go and explore we barely saw them all day:) It was definitely different than what we are used to since we did not have a baby to take care of!!

Friday night it started raining about 6pm so we ate our tinfoil dinners in our tent inside a tent") it rained for about an hour and then we were out making smores and sitting by the fire again!

Saturday we took a walk to go find Annies campsite that she got with her extended family. They were infested with a family of moose! the kids thought that was pretty cool!

Saturday night we got in our tent about 10:30 to hit the hay when it started raining just as we hit our heads on our pillows!! I could not believe it was raining again!! especially when it was not suppose to rain at all this weekend!!

we were just laughing and were thankful that we were at least in our tent this time before it started raining! Anyway it rained ALL night long on and off again! We finally got out of our tent at about 7am to start a fire and it had just stopped!! We were able to have another fabulous breakfast and hung out until 1pm when we headed home! it was so much fun and the kids are so excited for next year to come so we can do it again!!

CARNIVAL

It is so nice being back in our old neighborhood, because the kids have so many little friends to play with! This is Sammys BFF brynlee they have had a few sleepovers already since we have been back. These girls can play FOREVER! so fun!
We had our stake carnival today so I wanted to share some of the fun that we had..this contraption was built by my old neighbor, it was so fun to watch all the kids get dunked lol!






LOL I LOVE THIS ONE OF HAVEN SHE IS SUCH A DAREDEVIL!

This is the OLD jeep.....




Matthew has been working on his jeep for a while now and has completely given it a makeover!

Its not completely done yet but almost there, a few more weeks... here is the NEW jeep!

A valuable lesson

so many things have been going on around our little house!

We have finally started my kids back on their regular cleaning schedule, we have read a book by the Boyacks who teach about child Independence...anyway it has done wonders for my children....

samm cleans the toilet and emptys the dishwasher each morning.

parker vaccums and empties the garbage cans.

aubrey cleans the bathroom sink and sanitizes all of the doorknobs.

and haven just has to make her bed and get dressed...the kids also have to make their beds, and brush their teeth....and they have to do all of this BEFORE school or before they play. they are awesome at it. They fought us for a few weeks when we started it about 5 months ago but are great now.

We also give them an allowance for just being part of the family. However old they are that is how much they get once a month and its on the first saturday of the month so they can pay their tithing on fast sunday..we dont attach it to chores or anything so its their money and we dont have to threaten...it has been great to teach them the importance of tithing and they are also learning what the heck state taxes are! lol!

We let them use their money on anything except for pounds of candy, or the icecream man or anything that will drive the spirit away from our home.

Sammy saves every penny, aubrey just recently saved for a new polly. and parker thinks he needs to spend at least 1 dollar every payday..or when he does extra chores!

The most recent thing that parker decided to use his money on was those machines that have the claw trying to get stuffed animals....I warned him that those machines were rigged by stuffing the animals sooo tight they would not budge so 99% of the time you will not get anything...well he decides he still wants to play so he puts his quarter in pushes the handle and then quickly pushes the red button it drops down and lo and behold he gets a stuffed pink dinosaur!! seriously!!! i was laughing so hard and told him it was not normal but of course he wanted to spend more money so the next time we went all 3 kids brought a couple of quarters and got nothing! HAHA! it was a very nice lesson on gambling! anyway I told them the machine was very happy that he did not have to do anything to earn their money! the kids were pretty upset SO I think they will not be playing that for a while:)!!