Kyson vs Tigger

My little Kyson bouncing away with Tigger. This is how he dances all of the time now. He is so stinkin' funny!

Trysten Boo

I am so excited and giddy right now.  My sweet little Trysten knows how to read!!!  He never wants to read to me at home for some reason.  I think he gets a little embarrassed or something.  Last night he wanted to stay up late with us like always, so I told him that if he stayed up with me he had to read a book to me.  Holy crud he is awesome!!!  He was sounding out words and I didn't even have to help him.  Aaah I love it.  I probably am a total cheese ball for getting so excited about this but I can't help it! :)  It's so fun.   My big boy is growing up!  Good Job Trysten!  You are such a smart boy and a great joy in our lives!

Another Year Over (almost)

I am behind again.... surprise eh?  I am here to propose my new year's resolution:  I promise to update my blog at least once a week.  Even if I have to stay up in the wee hours of the night, I will get it done.  That seems to be the only time I can get stuff done anyway.  So why not forget about the dishes or the laundry and write in our family journal.  That is what a blog is right? So I think that if I lose a little sleep and slack on the housework and do something even more important like preserving our sweet memories then maybe the next day the kids will be especially good, and the housework will not seem so neverending and overwhelming, and maybe, just maybe the dinner might magically appear on the table.  I might be just dreaming here but it's worth a shot. 
So that's it.  We'll see how it goes.  Can you tell I have no motivation behind my typing?  It is 11pm at night, what do expect at this hour?
Oh and by the way, we had a wonderful Christmas... pictures to come....hopefully soon. :)
For now here is the picture we may have sent (or will be soon sending) to you this Holiday season.

A little behind again!

Oh my word, I'm so behind on this blog, it makes me sick.  I don't know where to start so I will just start with the latest; Halloween.  It is my favorite, you know, so why not post about that one first!!  We went to about 5,000 pumpkin patches this year.  (not that many but it was a lot!)  I could have gone to many more but there wasn't enough time!  I just love this season of the year.  The crisp air, apple pie, falling golden leaves, the excitement of all of the wonderful holidays coming up!  We had a kinda warm fall.  Which made it hard for me to really get in the mood for the season for some reason.  It was even a warm halloween night! But it has finally cooled down.  It might even snow this weekend! YAY!
Keith was gone a lot this fall which was hard, but thankfully he is done with his work trips for the rest of the year.  We had a lot of fun during October with all of the fun Halloween things we did.  We even took a trip to Boise to visit Kenji, Kaila, Kate, and Amaya for the girls' birthdays and went to a pumpkin patch there too!  Trysten could not figure out what the heck he wanted to be for Halloween.  He kept on changing his mind so I figured we could wait until the day of Halloween and get something on sale last minute if we needed to.  (they have a whole chest full of costumes too so I knew we'd figure something out)  He decided to be War Machine from Iron Man.  Gavin is really obesessed with The Lion King lately so I searched ebay and found a Simba costume for him.  I took a few pics of the kids in their costumes but they were not in the mood so they didn't turn out very good.  Anyhoo, I guess I should zip it and get to the pics.  Watch out, there are a ton.  Hey, my kids are freakin' cute, I can't help it!  Enjoy!

 It was raining, and the boys had to take their shoes off to go on the slide, thus the muddy socks. (my kids socks don't normally look like this, I promise)

                                                                           The Fam

On the cow train

                                                                       The mommies

 Trysten, Keilan and Gavin

 Aren't they the cutest boys ever?!



 David, Lani, and Keilan on the blow up slide

 Trysten, Gavin, and Kate having fun on the swings



Trysten loved the pony with the spots 

 There was a group of kids riding the ponies ahead of us and no one was riding this little white pony so Gavin said that he looked so sad and felt bad for him so he decided that he would ride him when it was his turn.  He was so happy and pet him the whole time to make him feel better. :)

 Gavin really wanted to go on the mechanical bull, but once he got on it he decided he didn't like it so much 

Our carved pumpkins!! 

 Trysten's kindergarten visit to the pumpkin patch

Trysten's Superhero Birthday Party

YAY! I'm finally posting Trysten's birthday party!  Only a month and a half late.  I had a ton of fun planning this thing.  I started months before because I knew it would take some time.  It's crazy how you work so hard and long on something and then when the day comes it's over within a couple hours.  It was so worth it though.

 The Slither scooter he wanted.

So since his birthday is in August (the hottest month of the summer) it's nice 'cause we can have the party outside and I don't have to worry about kids trashing the house.  We set up a pool with a slide and a bouncy house.  I had enough squirt guns for all of the kids so they could use them for the games I had planned.  The first game was called Vaporize a Villain.  I printed out a bunch of bad guys and laminated them so they could get wet then hung them up all over the yard so the kids could shoot them with their squirt guns. 

Vaporize a Villain

They look way bored but they were actually enjoying it!

The other game I thought of was to freeze superheroes and then the kids would have to use their squirt guns to melt the ice and free them.  This was actually a big hit!  They spent the whole first hour of the party just trying to melt those guys!  I never thought it was going to be so popular. 

They were so excited when they got those suckers out!

I was crazy and made capes for all of the kids.  I didn't want to have to sew 10 capes so I just made my own cape template, bought the cheapest black fabric I could find at JoAnn's, and cut them out with some pinking shears.   Then I found some sticky back felt and cut out their initials and cool superhero shapes to stick to their cape.  I found some plain white masks on Oriental Trading for way cheap for them to decorate too.  They had a ton of fun making their own capes.

 

And finally..................

is it over yet? :)  Sorry, I am posting a lot of pictures.

drumroll please.......

The cupcakes!

Just let me tell ya that I am soooo glad that my son would rather have cupcakes instead of cake!  I am not good at making cakes but I had a lot of fun making these!

So there ya go.  My oldest son's 6th birthday party.  So much fun.  Although, I don't know what I was thinking, I am probably going to have to go all out like this for all of my kids every year now.  Ugh.