Happy birthday Calley! You are now 3 yrs old!

Who doesn’t love presents!

What a sweet girl!

She chose these lovely glasses for her party!

Abby

Emily

Bryson

Riley, Grandpa, Uncle Josh, Bryson, Calley, Emily Jaelyn, and Abby

Silly Grandpa!

Very cute Josh!

Happy Birthday to you!

Feeling so loved that everyone was singing to her!

She blew and blew and blew to get those candles out. She had a little help from her sister Emily (see in the right hand corner:)

Opening gifts!

Eating the cake! Notice the rings on her fingers? She had at least 4-5 on all day and all night for about a week after:)

Calley’s Preschool Halloween party! These were little spiders!

Halloween jello!

Fingers!

Smiling like a little angel!

Looking at her catch after she went “fishing”

A beautiful crown that she decorated!

I think it is getting close to nap time

Say Cheese!! Calley, Alli, Savannah, & Eva

Are we done yet?

Carving Pumpkins and Halloween

Hanging out with mom in his highchair, waiting for trick-or-treaters. He was having a sucker for the first time:)

Riley wouldn’t really cooperate for his costume. He was just being a cute little BABY!

Emily also as a witch!

Bryson as a Ninja!

Calley the princess fairy!

Abby with a fake blonde wig on and her cute little witch costume.

Aren’t they cute!

Abby’s and Bryson’s pumpkins.

Calley’s and Emily’s pumpkins

Abby was so excited to try and cut the top off of the pumpkin. This is as far as it went (she was aloud one stab in and she was done!)

Emily also showing off the squishy insides of the pumpkin.

Riley just crawling around looking for any pumpkin seeds that might drop!

Bryson showing me the insides of the pumpkin! The guts:)

Carving pumpkins. Calley loved to scoop it out, stick it back in, and scoop it out again.

Canning, Crazy Calley, and the Tooth Fairy!

Richard canning pears with me! It’s our first time ever canning anything:) Lucky guy got the job of cutting the peels off the pears.

Some of the set up!!

Aren’t they lovely :)

40 lbs of PEARS! Yummy!

Lots of big pots and lots of fun.

Had to add a picture of me too. Afterall, I was doing most of the work :)

The finished product! Beautiful isn’t it!

A few dolls that were having some sort of treat at the table with Calley.

Obviously, Snow White got the privilege to sit with Calley.

Just some more random pictures of Calley. She was so excited for me to take a picture of her first day of dance class. As promised, she got to go because she got potty trained and she turned 3.

Calleys dance move. Mmmm, I’d probably have to say that it is a creative dance move:)

Feeling so beautiful and proud in her new get-up!

Calley’s lovely attire for the night. First, the pink tights went on, next went her pajama shorts and then last her underwear.

Bryson’s letter to the tooth fairy. He seems like he really didn’t have a whole lot of faith in the tooth fairy seeing his tooth. She has forgotten a few times and came later. He was going to make sure that didn’t happen to him!! Ha,ha.

Our little fairy and Success!!

He took a few steps and then realized it was funner to play with the toys on the front.

Riley has been so crazy crawling and pulling himself up onto everything. He walks along the couch also, so we decided to get out a push toy.

Poor little guy! Emily decided to dress Riley up in fairy wings. He doesn’t seem to care does he?

Flying around. Boy was he having a good time!

Now taking a small break from flying. It must be hard work:)

All smiles! What a cute littled guy!

Success for potty training! She did such a good job! Now only 1 in diapers. She sure had a good time coloring on the paper–every time she went to the bathroom.

Potty training–again!

Well before our two week trip in June, Calley was potty trained.  But while on our trip, she regressed!  Oh well.  Here we go again!  This was our picture of another “Calley” that we colored.  We taped it up on the wall and when she goes to the bathroom, she gets to color on it.  So far it is working!

Haircuts, Teeth, and Camping

Emily excited because we just cut 10 inches of hair off! It bet it feels a lot lighter!

Just some of the hair we cut off!

Emily all ready for pictures, with a new haircut! Richard said he caught her flipping her hair around quite a bit! Funny girl.

Abby after finishing breakfast! It was picture day at school! She wanted curlers in her hair so that her hair would be nice and curly!

It rained a lot outside and we needed to try out the tent before we went on the ward campout. So I put the kitchen table and chairs to the side and set it up in the house. Calley and Riley had a blast in it.

I am such a freak planner, that I even put all of the blow up mattresses inside to decide how everyone would sleep:)

Right before camping on Friday, Abby had an emergency dental visit. She had damaged her two front teeth by hitting them on the concrete about a year ago. From the damage, the roots in her two teeth dissolved, We notice little bumps starting to form. They turned out to be two abscesses. The infection was so bad in there, that we had to have her front teeth pulled.

Abby didn’t mind one bit that she had to have her teeth pulled. Because that meant that the tooth fairy was going to be making a visit–the same night we were camping:)

While on the ward campout, Mr Bubbs, decided to wake up at midnight and scream. So I quickly got my shoes on and grabbed some blankets and we headed to sleep in the van the rest of the night. We didn’t want to wake up the whole ward! He usually wakes up every 2 hrs at night. This was taken at 5am!

The lovely play where Riley slept for the night!

Scary pic! Me and Riley in the van hanging out! Watching people walking to the bathroom we were parked right next to!

Eating breakfast Saturday morning! Mom, Calley and Abby!

Calley on an adventure for the day!

Emily and a bunch of other kids were finding wood and sticks and made quite the fort.

Abby had a ton of fun just running around with the rest of the kids. And waving her money around that she got from the tooth fairy!

Emily, Abby and Hannah playing on a huge rock right by our tent! That was fun to be right by it, with all the kids playing around it constantly:)

Bryson and a bunch of boys were running around fighting with “swords”.

Since we were already a good way up the mountain, we decided to stop by a little shop that made homemade cookies and pizza. We only got a cookie, but it was huge. Yummy!

The little place that had the yummy cookies.

All of the kids waiting in the van, while Dad got the cookie!

Calley looking through the binoculars, sort of:)

Let’s try that again. Oh wait, they are backwards!

The first week of school!

The kids all had a wonderful first week at school. 

We’ll start with Bryson first.  He has his best friend Mitchell in his class and also a girl from the neighborhood.  He had talked about this girl a little bit the first few days of school and just said that he had sat by her at lunch and played on the playground with her.   One afternoon, he came home and said that a few kids were teasing him about liking this girl as a girlfriend.  About 5 minutes later, he confessed to liking her as a girlfriend.  She is really into Pokemon, just like he is.  So I said, “It is okay to like her.  Just don’t hold hands or kiss her.”  He confessed also to already holding her hand, but promised that he wouldn’t do it again!  I didn’t think we would have to deal with this for a little while longer.  Oh well.  He seems to be thriving in school and enjoying 3rd grade. 

Emily is doing great as well!  She has a girl named Victoria that has been in her class ever since she was in kindergarten.  She is loving her teacher and enjoying being in 2nd grade.  She seems to want to be a friend to everyone.  She is our social and very expressionate one.  She started taking private art lessons from a lady in our ward.  She is having so much fun learning each week.

Abby is thriving in kindergarten!  She has made some new little friends and really was excited to have a little girl named Rylee sitting right next to her in class.  (Because she has a little brother named Riley.)  I was a little worried for her to go to her class, because she didn’t have anyone that she knew in her class.  But, she has proven to rise above and made some instant friends.  The good thing about kindergarten, is they are all so excited to be there, they want to be everyone’s friend.

A few random pictures, Abby’s birthday and the 1st day of school

Emily was so proud of herself for getting Riley to fall asleep, that she wanted me to get it on camera:)

Good job Emily!

Abby is 5! We went bowling the day before her birthday and had a good time.

Go Bryson! They think that they are very good bowlers after playing on the Wii!!!

Emily posing for the camera!

Calley was scared to walk to the where the bowling ball was. Silly girl.

Alseep for the first part of bowling!

Go DAD!

They all wanted to grab the balls, and push the reset button wayyyyy to often.

Finally awake!

At home after bowling, we had cupcakes and ice cream!

Abby’s lovely cupcake with 5 candles in it! I can’t believe she is that old!

The first day of school Aug 4th! And also Abby’s real birthday! Bryson now in 3rd grade! His best friend is in his class. What a lucky kid.

Abby was about to burst with so much excitement. Even at 6:30am she was ready to go! Happy Birthday Abby!

Emily looking so old at just 7! She is missing a few teeth, but look at that smile! She is very ready for 2nd grade.

Calley was disappointed to not get to go to school. But she was all smiles when the camera came out!

After everyone was gone and lunch time passed, it became very quiet. I found Calley on the floor in the family room with her pillow and blankets and the tv remote in her hand. She was fast alseep.

Happy late Anniversary!

Richard and I celebrated our 11th Anniversary on July 9th!  It really does fly by!  Poor Richard got a homemade book of coupons and a homemade card from me!  I got roses, dove chocolates for breakfast, a nice card, and a Wii.  It was fun!  And then we got to go see Wicked in Phoenix, while my sister watched all the kids!  It was awesome!

Major pictures and a long trip!

The beginning of our 2300 mile trip! Starting with a visit to our old ward in Flagstaff on June 21st. We ended up staying and talking to some old friends and didn’t get to Page until 11pm Sunday night. The next day, on to the Glen Canyon Dam! The kids loved had fun! We drove all the way to Salt Lake Monday.

We walked around Temple Square on Tuesday (my birthday) and then we toured the Conference Center and took a family picture on the top! And then ate lunch at Navoo cafe.

Then we went to Thanksgiving Point and went to the dinosaur museum there. The kids loved it. They especially loved playing in all the wet sand. We then met up with some old friends and had dinner and didn’t go to bed until midnight.

We then went to Garland to visit some family and had a fun time. We didn’t get to stay with Aunt Ann’s family, because some cousins had the swine flu! But we did meet up with them and had a fun time playing at the hot springs. Dad got a really bad burn going down one of the slides!

We then went to Yellowstone National Park. The were just a few things we saw on our way to see Old Faithful.

Finally at Old Faithful! Waiting, waiting…but the kids enjoyed it when it finally happened.

On to Thermopolis, Wyoming to visit Uncle David and his family. We had a good time just relaxing and visiting while the boys went fishing. But the night before we to leave to go to Grand Junction, CO–3 of us woke up with the stomache flu! Yuck. We stayed an extra night and then left on Tuesday June 30th.

We took a detour back through Salt Lake, Blanding, and then to Eagar for the 4th of July and fireworks! And Sunday July 6th–Home sweet Home!