IPhone Pics

These may not be the greatest quality, but here's a few pics from my phone.  

Our little BYU fairy.

 Evan at Scout Camp.  They do an egg drop the last day, and he decided to use a fishing net filled with toilet paper as his catcher.

He was very excited when it worked.

If you caught it unbroken you got a golden egg handkerchief slide (if it broke you got a broken egg slide).  

 Grace and I have done a lot of preschool projects.  This was part of G week.

Finished product - and her fingerprint flowers on the side.

L week involved lots of footprints

 C is for cloud

and candy corn.  There have been many more crafts, but these are the ones she's demanded photos of.

 Hamster races for family night one week.  What else do you do when you have four hamsters?

 Grace's dental appointment, complete with x-rays and foam flouride this time.  They were very impressed with her.

 Helping at the kindergarten pumpkin patch (can you tell Grace and I spend a lot of time together).

 Grace's first ever swimming lessons.  She spent the majority of the time underwater, but would bob up for a brief second to give us a thumbs up.

 Evan carved this polar bear out of soap for one of his Cub Scout things.  He managed to earn his Bear in a month.  Now we just get to work on extras until next September.

Modeling a new-to-her swimsuit and dog purse.  We get some great hand-me-downs and she loves it!

Halloween

This year Brandon did all of the carving, and I played with the camera.  Not a bad gig.  I did some crafts with the kids while he carved too - perhaps I will get some pictures of those too.

 Love the intense face.  We take our carving seriously around here.

 Evan took forever to decide on a design.  Apparently we have done too well with the carvings the past few years, and he thinks we can do just about anything.  Luckily we talked him down into this easier design.

 Brandon was away for work on Halloween, so I tried to get plenty of pictures of our trick-or-treaters.  Two power rangers (I had no idea these were popular again) and Rapunzel.

 Love how he chose to pose.  Such a funny kid.

 Grace loved her hair

 Just like her real hair, always in her eyes.

 The kids all came home with lots of candy following our two hours wandering the neighborhood.  They are slowly consuming it all, but its not gone yet.

The day after Halloween I bought a matching family set of aprons.  So funny.  We may need to do more family cooking now.

Fall Photo Shoot

We love the vibrant colors we are seeing this fall to we ran out to get some shots of the kids.  Our boys have gotten better at giving a more natural smile.  Or maybe we have gotten better at directing them to do it.

 Grace somehow has a knack for striking a pose.  Maybe she is just a big ham.

 This one she may be trying a bit too hard.

Tromping through the pumpkin patch

We have a tradition of going to a pumpkin patch to give the kids the experience.  But some years we go through the pumpkin patch and then head to Walmart for cheaper dryer pumpkins from Eastern WA.  This year, we managed to stay at the farm as Kyle and Grace sought pumpkins of a smaller variety.

We love our DSLR.  Still a lot to learn, but even for point and shoot, the quality is excellent.

 Pretty sure every pumpkin patch we have been to has a big tractor to sit on.

Evan Turns 9

We are a little late in posting, but 3 weeks ago Evan turned 9.  I still can't believe he is 9 already.

 He decided on a Skylanders theme for his party (a video game the kids have gotten into this year).  Brandon made another great cake, this one with one slice representing each of the 8 different elements.  Evan loved it. 

The kids colored a bunch of pictures of Skylanders characters and put all of theirs on the mantle to decorate.  So easy and fun.  We still have the coloring up 3 weeks later because the kids are still enjoying it.

Love his surprised look, especially after we found out afterwards Kyle had a hard time not telling what we bought him and had already spilled the beans.  Evan covered for him pretty well.

 He has finally learned to actually read the cards and not just shake for money and throw them to the side.  He still shakes, but then reads the cards.  Baby steps.

 An actual surprise. More Skylanders characters.  The kids play with them on the game, and then set them up and use them as action figures.  They see a significant amount of playtime every day I think.

 His own MP3 player and headphones.  So funny to see him walking around the house singing with his headphones in.

 He is looking older and older - still not sure I love that.  It's fun to see who he is growing up to be, and see his interests coming out more, but I still miss my baby boy.

 For his actual birthday I made cupcakes in the colors of the elements with simple printed toppers.  Much easier than Brandon's decorating job but still a crowd pleaser.

 All of the neighborhood kids and one of his buddies from school came over to eat cupcakes and sing to him.  My kind of kid party, and one very happy birthday boy.