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Monday, November 5, 2012

Welcome Emme Rose

I was going to wait until we met Emme in person but it just doesn't feel right waiting that long. 
You see, we won't actually meet her until Thanksgiving and so I just couldn't wait another day to introduce our little adorable niece...
daughter of Kenton and Brittney Anderson...


Emme Rose Anderson

She is so precious. Is really isn't fair that she lives so far away (Colorado).
We look forward to meeting her soon!

Thursday, November 1, 2012

The Magic of Halloween

 Kids love Halloween and for good reason! There's so many fun things to do for this holiday including carving pumpkins, dressing up in costumes, trick or treating, parties, decorating the house with scary spiders and bats, and of course candy, candy, candy.


 This was one of our first projects with a pumpkin -- we wanted to make them look like bats.
So the first step was to paint them black. Mason really thought it was exciting!
 For a girl who LOVES to paint, Elaina was pretty excited when I told her we were
going to paint some pumpkins. I almost feel like making the bat pumpkins all over again just
to watch her singing and painting.
 Here's the finished products - cute little bats. 
They didn't really last long - after the first rainstorm we had to retire them to the dumpster.
And it was a little spooky when it came to our ghosts. Three of them flew away and
we haven't heard from them since!
 Mason is a little bit obsessed with pumpkins. In fact, its a good thing that we can still decorate 
with pumpkins for Thanksgiving because I think he would be really sad to see them go.
He likes them so much that every time he sees one he stops, looks at it, and wants to hold it.  












He especially likes the little baby ones and has been known to carry one around with him all day, cry if he looses it, and sleep with it at night and of course call it his "baby." (he has done the same thing with tiny water balloons ... should I be worried?)
You can imagine how long it took at some houses trick or treating stopping to look at all the creative decorative pumpkins. Pretty funny little guy. I think he was a little disappointed to find out 
that pumpkins are full of yucky, gooey seeds!
 Its hard to really see the finished pumpkins but there's a rocket in the middle and two silly faces
on both sides. Ellie and Oscar drew the faces they wanted and Mike carved them out.









Here's a video of cleaning out the pumpkins...
Yikes! Grandma & Grandpa  Anderson gave the kids some Halloween treats & little toys.
Boy did they love the scarey vampire teeth!
Mason and Ellie would chase me around the house with these teeth in and 
I think they really thought I was terrified. (I'm a pretty good actress)

 I think Ellie was more excited about the broom than the witch costume. 
We ordered it online and so everyday she would ask me "Will my broom come today mom?"  I remember when it finally did come and the magic moment of getting it out of the box.  I think she thought it would really do magic or something.
 Here's a little information about six year old boys - at least this one- any costume 



that has a toy as an accessory is pretty much awesome. 
I remember when we first talked about what he wanted to be for Halloween he wanted something
scarey, had a weapon/toy to go with it, and the only thing he wanted people to see were his eyes. 
I think we did pretty well considering all the other options out there. 


 I think we counted down for two months before the day FINALLY came where it was time to 
trick or treat. Halloween and Christmas are the most exciting holidays for my kids.
 The lighting kinda makes it look like he has a mustache! 
I have to say the back view of this little spiderman as he was running from house to house 
was pretty cute too!







 Here are the kids with their cousins Carter & Bennett (Winnie the Pooh & Tigger) 
Carter looks adorable posing the picture and Bennett just looks mystified by the 
crazy angry ninja standing next to him!








Here's Mason talking about his fun time trick or treating...







Sunday, October 14, 2012

The beautiful colors of fall...


Its been a while since we've taken some good pictures of the kids. 
And what better time than in October with all the fall colors.  
We don't have a fancy camera and so these pictures are just simple shots to 
hopefully give you and idea of the beautiful day it was. 

 The kids were in heaven and had so much fun while we took the pictures!
 I think they were a little disappointed that we didn't do more hiking and exploring.
 We forgot to do up his zipper! Whoops!
 This one was a little less enthusiastic. It was a little tough to help Ellie realize we 
needed to keep her white shirt clean.

 Super happy kiddos

 Mike actually let me take some pictures... yippee
 Mason was loving the grass, the leaves, the trees, the dirt, pretty much everything!
 Ellie and Daddy
 Mason is really good at giving BIG JUICY kisses!
 And he always insists on getting one in return!


Saturday, September 22, 2012

The Power of Positive Thinking

I came across this video recently that I wanted to share. Shawn Anchor really says it well the way
positive thinking can bring happiness into our lives.... and its pretty funny too


Saturday, September 15, 2012

A special welcome to LUCY JAYNE, our new little neice

We had so much fun visiting my sister JaNae yesterday.  She introduced us to her little baby girl,

Lucy Jayne 

Here's some cute pictures to celebrate her arrival.
We are so happy for JaNae and Wayne and 
can't wait til we get to see Lucy again! 

You would never know this is JaNae's first baby. She is a total natural!

Look at that adorable face!

She has such a cute smile with those huge dimples





She weighed 7 lbs 11 oz. She is soo much fun to hold!

She is one seriously adorable baby! Congratulations JaNae & Wayne!




Monday, September 10, 2012

A look at August with pictures, stories, and video

The month of August was full of funny stories and good 
times at our house. Here's a few of the highlights ...


UPDATED PICTURES...
Since we are just returning to blogging I thought it would be fun to
just include lots of pictures of the kids. They are growing SOO fast! 











 
Mason loves his little balloon (the yellow water balloon pictured above). He calls it his "baby" and he carries it around everywhere! Its pretty cute. Although its a little messy when it breaks.  Since we have gone through all our balloons he now asks me everyday "Can we go to the store and get more babies?"








 Mason hasn't quite realized that girl things are for girls so 
we just let him enjoy all the same things Ellie does.
He likes to play dress up with her too. Pretty cute.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM OUR ONE DAY TRIP TO SALT LAKE...
When we realized that school was starting in a week and we hadn't really done anything for a family vacation we decided to plan some fun stuff in Salt Lake.
Our first stop was Hill Air Force Base - it was awesome! 
And totally free

The kids couldn't hardly contain their excitement at how HUGE these planes were



Our next activity was taking the kids to the movie theater.
This was their second time.  It had been over a year since we had been all together to a movie!
 They absolutely LOVED it!

Finally we went to JUNGLE JIM'S in Salt Lake 
It was probably the highlight of the day!
Lots of perfect little kid carnival rides all indoors
(that was a huge plus since it was over 90 degrees outside)

 Poor Mason. He loved the bumper cars at first! He thought it was the greatest and
was laughing and everything but then he had his first big bump. That wasn't fun at all!








KIDS and WATER BOTTLES ...
There is something about having your very own water bottle. For my kids the excitement is 
pretty awesome. We try to keep some water out in the garage for when we need it and Elaina 
and Mason found it all.  This is what I found one morning when the kids were being a little 
too quiet so I decided to check up on them.

Here's a little video of the explanation I got from Ellie when asking her what she was doing...
She starts by saying "If we drink the first one all gone, then the next one, and the next one...."


ENJOYING THE BENEFITS OF THE SUPER SMALL GARDEN WE PLANTED...
We grew a small garden in pots this year and boy was
it exciting for the kids to watch things grow.  I am a true
believer in the benefits of a garden! Oscar watered it almost everyday and
then I have never seen kids so excited to eat carrots before in my entire life!
They must have been under a spell of some sort cause when I tasted one of the
carrots I thought it was absolutely awful. But by that time the kids had already eaten two or three!

Here's what Oscar had to say about the excitement...


ATTENTION ALL MOTHERS ... never put Crayola Washable Paint on your cement fence! This didn't happen in August actually but earlier in the extreme heat of summer!
BAD IDEA!!
I was overly excited perhaps when I saw this product in the store and thought of the fun the kids could have painting all over the fence.  And then I would simply wash it all away when the painting was over. Afterall, it did say WASHABLE so what could go wrong, right?

Well, worse case scenario it could turn out to not work very well on cement fences....

We scrubbed and scrubbed and finally our fence was back to normal. Despite all the hard work it did turn out to be a family bonding experience. I heard several times from the kids "This is hard work mom but we are going to keep working til we get it clean." And we did!

CELEBRATING MIKE'S BIRTHDAY!

It was pretty low key this year which is how he prefers it to be...
Mason was singing the birthday song all week ... literally.
Here is a little bit from him:


 The kids working on Daddy's Happy Birthday Banner.
Ellie is really in her element when she has a crayon and paper in hand!