Adriann turned 7!!

Adriann turned 7 last week! I can't believe she is so old. Here is her cake that she got to decorate all by herself. She was so proud of it! I got this new big cupcake pan for Christmas and couldn't wait to put it to use.

She wanted pancakes for breakfast with candles in them so she could blow them out. I don't know why I didn't realize that if you put wax candles in HOT pancakes, they melt!! We had to make her new pancakes after that! Whoops!

She picked out the flavors for her cake, strawberry on top and chocolate on the bottom!

She got a new dress from Grandma and Grandpa! It's Roxy and she was so excited about it and kept telling me that she had a Roxy dress. I didn't even know that she knew what that meant, but apparently she does, so thanks Grandma and Grandpa, you made her day! She also got a McDonalds gift card from Gammie and Papa and can't wait to use it. She asks every day if she can go.

Adriann loves anything art related, so we got her an art set. She is getting some good miles out of it! She makes us pictures everyday!

Auntie Rachel sent her some money and so we took her to Ikea and got her the Art Easel that she has been wanting for a while. She has it up in her room and uses her art kit with it. She is just in heaven! Thanks Auntie!!

Happy Birthday to our little girl! WE love you and can't believe how grown up you are!!

Outdated Disneyland Post - Originally from in October

I forgot to post our pictures from Disneyland, and I just found the disc with all the pictures, so here they are. Disneyland was all decorated for Halloween, it was fun to see all the pumpkins and spooky things they had set up around the park.

Kenyon's gun that he got as his souvenir.

We only got to see 3 princesses, and this was by far the prettiest!!

After you meet with the princesses they have this gift shop that has all of their dresses!! It was a little girls heaven!!

The kids got to see Mickey in his house, they were surprised! They didn't know he would be in there.

Waiting in line for the Haunted House. It was all done up like the Nightmare before Christmas. I thought the original was better, guess I'll have to go back!!

Kenyon shooting guns.

After the Buzz Lightyear game, by far one of the best rides!

Testing our strength in Toon Town.

Such a cute picture!!

Kenyon wiped out by the end. We got their at opening and stayed until they kicked us out. It was such a fun day.

The day after Disneyland. It totally rained on us here. We were so lucky to have gone on the day we did. It rained the rest of the week.

Christmas Day

This is honestly the best picture I could get of all the kids Christmas Morning. They were too excited and Kamden just would not sit still. Santa gave them their new pajamas, and they each got a "If you give a Mouse a...." book with the matching stuffed animal. They were very excited.

Kamden had more fun with all the boxes than the actual presents. He had such an exhausting day, he took about 8 naps!

Adriann loved her princess figurines.

Kenyon with his annual jersey from Dad.

The kids big gift this year was a trampoline!! Akoni's boss gave us his old one since his kids are too old to use it anymore, and someone had given it to them, so they wanted to pass it on. It has no net and so there are lots of rules about jumping, but the kids love it!

We had such a fun Christmas with it being just our family. We would have loved to have been with extended family, but sometimes it nice to just have it be our own time. Hope you all had a good Christmas too!!

Kamden Walking

Here is Kamden showing off his stuff. He just turned 11 months this weekend! Wow how time has flown by.

Christmas Eve

We have a tradition that on Christmas Eve we open all of our presents from extended family so that Christmas is just about our family. The kids had a fun time opening gifts from cousins and Grandparents. Then we set out the cookies, carrots and milk for santa and his reindeer. While we were getting the older two ready for bed we heard a noise in the front room and Kamden was in eating all the cookies!! It was the classic, I thought that Akoni had the baby, he thought I did and he didn't know that we had set the cookies out already. I forgot to get a picture because there was milk spilt and I had to get it all cleaned up. It was funny but then santa got boring plain cookies with no frosting.....oh well.

Kamden on his new toy. He loves to ride it around, now that he has figured it out!!

Adriann with her new scarfs from her aunty Rachel!!

Kenyon with his tank that I swear he sleeps with he likes it so much!

The stockings and original cookies all layed out and ready for Santa!

More Pre-Christmas Fun

We lots of fun during Christmas Break. Here are the kids decorating Gingerbread houses. I honestly couldn't get a serious picture of them, so here's the best there is.

We also did the annual trip to Macy's to write our postcard to Santa. They have this table set up with postcards that you can fill out and then put in the mailbox. They love to do it every year.

Santa gave the option of getting a candy cane or reindeer antlers after you sat on his lap this year. I loved this option!! Aren't they the cutest? It's great because Kenyon hates candy canes, and so he is always sad afterwards because he doesn't get anything from santa. So he got these this year and was so excited!

We also battled some illnesses this break. Kenyon had a few days where he was breaking out in full body hives with fevers, and then after Christmas Adriann had fevers for about 5 days! Not fun, but I'm glad it was during the break and didn't take them away from school.

Fun things leading up to Christmas

I'm finally getting around to blogging about Christmas!! Now that we've switched to 1:00 church, I have plenty of time to waste time in the morning!!

Here is our house all decorated! It was so much fun to be able to put up lights this year.

We had to babygate off our tree so that we could put our presents under it. It was nice because it not only kept the baby out, but the other kids too. One time though, Kamden was standing on the couch and actually fell into the presents! It was kind of funny!

Here are our stockings. I love having a fireplace finally that we can hang stockings on!!

Adriann's school had a program at school and this is her after they got done singing about the Coffee harvest in Mexico! I miss the traditional "Christmas programs", but what can ya do!! She is going to a Dual Language program school where they learn Spanish and English, so they sang their song in Spanish. I'm amazed how much she is learning!

The kids with Santa at our mall. We didn't put Kamden in the picture because we were going to go back and get a nice one of them in nicer clothes all together, but I guess we forgot!

Thanksgiving

Well I can't believe that I don't have any pictures from Thanksgiving!! We ended up driving up to Oregon to spend Thanksgiving with family. It was a crazy week, but tons of fun. We had two Thanksgivings which is always filling!! Overall is was a great vacation, but a loooooong drive..

Thank you to my 6 year old!!

I know I have lots of other things to post about, but I had to send a quick thank you to my six year old for humbling me today. Her class had a gift exchange today on their last day of school. There was a $10 limit and while I struggled at the store to try and get the most for my dollar, I got a gift that I wouldn't mind if she was the one receiving it. At the party I saw all the gifts and knew that some of them were pretty nice, especially the one with the gold foil stickers from a delicious chocolate store!! So as they were all giving and getting their gifts, a boy stood up with a small flat package that I could tell was a book and being a horrible person I thought to myself, Oh please don't pick Adriann's name!! Well of course he picked her name. So when they all opened their presents, I was amazed at what some of the kids were opening (way over the $10 limit), and when Adriann opened up her (used) book about animals, I could not believe how excited she was! I felt so horrible for wishing that she would get one of the big gifts. She has been carrying the book around with her, she even took it into Target with her, and is so excited to read it to her brother when he gets home today.

So I had to just give my little girl some props for loving her gift and not even complaining (or crying like one little girl) because she didn't get one of the, what I thought, better gifts.

I love her with all my heart and she really humbled me today.

New Moon

After a full day of trying to see the movie........sopposed to see it at 2:30, but decided to take Kamden with us because the babysitter we were sharing would have had to watch 6 kids and I wanted to make it easier for her, ended up seeing 10 minutes of the movie because Kamden was sooooooo loud and I was getting shushed! So we took him out and had a fun 2 hours walking around the mall waiting for our friends to finish the movie. Finally at 8pm my very good friend Lisa came over and sat with the kids after they were asleep (yeah right) and we got to see the movie at 8:30. I LOVED IT!!!! I hated the first one, but I am so satisfied with this one. There were obvious things left out and things changed, but overall it was not bad. One that I would definitely rent and watch Jacob again!!

Seriously? What happened to Orange slices at Half Time?

Don't you think this is a big much? This was the snack bag that my kids brought home after Kenyon's soccer game last week. This was ONE SNACK BAG! I thought this was a little overboard.......These kids are 5 years old!!

Birthday cake

This was a cake that I made for my friend Ember's husband for his birthday. This was the Third attempt to make that golf ball. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. But I finally found an actual ball cake pan, and it worked!

These are some decorations that I made for our house. I was very proud of myself because I had all of this on hand! I guess that bag of bird seed finally came in handy!The kids helped me paint these bags for the pumpkins. They were so fun to make and can still stay up thru Thanksgiving!
These are my blocks that I FINALLY finished. I know they look plain, but if I try to do anything else to them, I will ruin them, so they are finished by my standards. And they match the frames around them. Someday when we get a mantle they will sit under that big picture behind them.

This was right after the Trunk or Treat at our church on Friday night. I am on the committee and so it was so busy and totally forgot to get a picture of them before, but they looked the same after.

Kenyon wore his Pirate costume that he wore when he was 2, I still can't believe that he fits in it. Adriann wore this awesome princess dress that I got on sale a few years ago for $3! She almost fits into it, but she wanted to wear it.
The kids with their loot!

This was lunch on Halloween before we went to the mall to go Trick or Treating. It was soooooo crowded and there were way to many adults dressed up Trick or Treating. And some were kind of creepy, and not in a Halloween kind of way!
This was Halloween night after the mall. Kenyon changed his costume again right before we went trick or treating around our neighborhood. He was so tired and had put on his pajamas, but really wanted to go, so he threw on his robe and said he was a couch potato! I gotta remember that for next year......a totally free costume!

WEll this year we didn't go to the pumpkin patch. The had pumpkins at our local Save Mart that were huge and only $3, so we just went ahead and bought them. I know, lame, but we just didn't have time, be only bought them a week ago, so bad planning on the parents part!

This year the kids actually stuck their hands into the pupkins, but again, the carving and everything else was left to mom and dad. So only 2 pumpkins got carved. And we tried to do cool designs, but next year, I think we will just do the typical pumpkin face. This was too much work.