Rachel and Lydia Turn 9!

Nine years?  Seriously?  I can't believe it's been nine years since we embarked into parenthood.  Lydia and Rachel had a great birthday.  They seemed to enjoy the extra attention they received.  Hyrum and I went and ate lunch with them at their school.  For their birthday cake, they wanted a giant brownie with strawberry frosting (decorated by them with candy) that was shaped like the #9....much easier than some of their other cake requests!  We went as a family to see the movie "Frozen" and enjoyed spending time together.  Happy birthday to my sweet girls!

 

They've grown up so fast!

 

 

Trick or Treat!

The kiddos had a great Halloween!  Kenny and I enjoyed helping out at two of the kids' class parties at school.  And of course, the kids favorite part was trick-or-treating!

Every year we go to the local pumpkin walk and see the scenes

created out of pumpkins and gourds.  I am always so

impressed at what creative people can do!

 Pumpkin carving

 We couldn't get Little Man to smile!

The Astronaut

The Native American

 The Witch

 The Leopard

Back to School!

Once again I have fallen way behind on my blogging!  Summer somehow slipped away from us and the kids are back in school!  I just wanted to post pics of them on the first day of school.

Charity the First Grader

 Lydia the Third Grader

 Rachel the Third Grader

 

 Hyrum the Preschooler

 I made some back-to-school cakes

and the kids loved them!

Family Trip to San Diego

We had so much fun spending a week in San Diego!  We saw so many great things and the kids did great with the long drive.  As a warning, there are a lot of pictures in this post!

We saw the infamous Wienermobile on the freeway!

Hunting for seashells at the beach

 

 Exploring some tidepools

 Lydia pointing to a sea urchin we found

San Diego Zoo

 This tiger wanted children for dinner....yikes!

Thank goodness for the glass!

Seaworld was our kids' favorite part of the trip. We spent a 

couple days there.  This picture is from the sea lion show.

Elmo's Flying Fish Ride

Shamu show

Touching bat rays-  they are pretty slimy

The dolphin show was our favorite part of Seaworld!

 We sat in the soak zone the first time we watched it.

Let's just say that we enjoyed it a lot more the second

time when we sat higher up.

San Diego Zoo Safari Park-  This is owned by the zoo but

has a safari feel to it.  A lot of the animals roam free and you

can ride a tram around to see them.

On the tram

Baby rhino with its mother

The San Diego LDS Temple is beautiful!

Charity's 6th Birthday

It's hard to believe Charity is now 6 years old!  On her birthday, Hyrum and I accompanied her kindergarten class on a field trip to a small local zoo.  She also got to be spotlighted in her school class that day.  She chose her favorite foods to eat for breakfast and dinner.  Unfortunately, the evening of her birthday she came down with an awful stomach bug so we had to reschedule her party that was supposed to occur the next day.  She was a great sport though and we had her party a couple weeks later (when we got home from our family trip to San Diego).  She had a lot of fun with her friends and didn't seem to mind celebrating late!

Here she is on her second birthday....

 

And now her sixth birthday!  She's grown so much!

She wanted a cake with the number 6 on it, and she

wanted to decorate it all by herself with candy.

 For her party she wanted me to make Oreo cupcakes.

We love Charity and we're so grateful that she is part of our family!

Cinderella Ballet

Lydia and Rachel auditioned to be in the local production of the Cinderella ballet.  They were cast as lightning bugs and danced so well.  They had a lot of fun rehearsing and performing!

The lightning bugs wore headlamps backwards around their 

waist under their costumes.  When they were onstage their 

little behinds were flashing....so, so cute!