Games and Fun

Here is Mason and Titan with Kiah. They have been her friends since birth and we hope they always will be.


I really hope my family will appreciate the photo below. When we were kids, this balloon relay was our favorite game to play at birthday parties and we hope to carry on the tradition. After dividing into 2 teams, each person races over to the chair with their balloon, puts it under their bottom and sits on it until it pops. They race back and the next person does the same. The first team to pop all their balloons will win. Poor Titan and Kiah tried so hard but they just weren't heavy enough to pop them without some intervention from Lou.
(Louis would like me to make it a point to mention the boys won).

The final event of the evening was Louis playing the role of Thunder Bolt...(Louis would like to add to the title "the great bucking bronco" to my sentence). He put the big ball under him and then bounced up and down while the kids tried to hang on for dear life. The kids were so tired out by the end of the evening, but it was a great party!

Happy BIrthday Kiah

Louis decorated the house while Kiah was at school and I got dinner started. We made
homemade spaghetti sauce with garlic bread and salad. We had some close friends come over for dinner. She was so excited to come home and see streamers all over and a big pink balloon bouquet. Amy and Jeremy Reynolds came with their son Titan and daughter Miley (sorry Amy about the spelling). Alissa and John came withe their son Mason and their friend Christy. The kids had lots of fun playing games and blowing lots of bubbles.

We got her a Dora birthday set to wear on her special evening.

I missed the actual "blowing out the candles" picture. I kept asking her to pretend to blow out the candles again so I could get a picture. She just looked at me and said "why would I do that? I already blew them out mom."

Dora the Explorer

Like most 4 year olds, Kiah was set on having a Dora birthday theme. When we were (regrettably and very mistakably) looking for fun ideas for a cake on the internet, Makiah decided that she wanted 2 cakes. She wanted one for herself and another for everyone else to eat. With my very very limited talent in the area of cake making, I set out to wow her. Dora had a bowl cake for a dress and then I made the scenery cake with candy corn pathways, a stream with goldfish and a popsicle stick bridge. These pictures were taken about an hour before Gabriel....our sweet little demon... snuck onto the counter top and ate the candy corn pathway and a few of the flowers off the cake. Needless to say, after half a day trying to be creative and make a masterpiece, it was far from it. Louis helped me piece it back together for the party.

Houston, we may have a problem

So, I am beginning to worry, after I confided in everyone that I let Gabe play in the snow in pink boots and gloves. For the last several days, he has found a new found interest in his sister's panties. They don't go on his legs, of course....instead he wears them around his neck like a collar. He has had over 5 pairs on at a time around his neck. I just feel that I failed him somehow on that dreadful snow day and it may come back to bite me in the butt. The girls think it is funny that now I have to go around smelling their panties to see what ones they forgot to put in the laundry and what ones Gabe has been wearing on his head. Do I dare ask if anyone has any advice for this situation?? :)

Our First Big Snow

Yesterday it started to snow...and snow and finally it started to stick. All last night the girls were begging to go play so I let them get up this morning and start finding snow clothes. Kenda had snow pants and boots that fit and a warm coat. Kiah wore a pair of snow pants that were a bit big but everything else was fine. Now, our poor boy on the other hand, wore adorable pink snow boots, a fuzzy pink pair of mittens and a pink and purple fleece hat with tassles. He stayed warm, which I know is most important....but I did kind of feel bad sending him out in all his sister's hand me downs. I think we will head to the store this week and see if we can find him a pair of boy boots and gloves.


Kenda was first out to the snow and took most advantage of the time...poor girl tried so hard to get a snow ball started for a snowman.

Here is our little snowman dressed up and no where to go. I think he spent most of the time just sitting in the snow looking around.

No snow time would be complete without making angels.

Kiah liked to be outside but was not nearly as excited as Kenda to get down and dirty in the snow.

Gabe the Babe

Gabe finally got a boy haircut this week. A wonderful lady came over and cut my hair and then took a shot at Gabe. He held really still on my lap while she zipped him. He looks so much more grown up without all that baby hair all over. It spikes up a bit on top with some gel, and of course even the cow lick in front cant be removed with a pair of clippers. We think he is a little stud now :)

Our Enchanted Princess

Kenda was certain she wanted to be a princess again. She had a school party the day before halloween and then a ward party. Both times she wore different hair and makeup with lots of glitter and glitz. On Halloween, she decided maybe she would tweek the idea and have butterfly wings and have me paint a butterfly across her face. Keep in mind that I am not an artist....so of course, 20 min before we were planning on leaving to trick or treat, she looked at my finished butterfly covering her face and said "mom, I think it is kind of ugly". It totally wrecked my self esteem but I kind of agreed so we soaped up her face and started over. this time she said "Can you draw stars good?" So she picked a few stars on one side and a moon on the other side. No glitz or glam but it made her feel pretty and that is what counted.

Our Little Bride

Makiah decided this year she wanted to get "married in the temple" for her costume and she found this bride costume at Walmart that fit the bill. We were so pleased that she even thought of the temple when picking out a halloween costume. What a strong spirit she is and can be through life. She insisted on a glitter heart on her cheek to complete the look but it really did turn out cute!!

Our Halloween Slugger

Poor kid. On Halloween Day, the piano bench fell over on Gabe's face during his attempt to get off it. He got his first black eye and it swelled up even bigger than these pictures. We are on day 2 and it is now black and blue all on top of his eye and still a bit puffy. We could not put face paint or a mask on him so we just called him "slugger" for his costume.

Pumpkins between Apples

As Louis said, we were canning for weeks. One night, for FHE we went to the local Super 1 store and bought the 2 biggest pumpkins they had. Kenda picked the first face....scary, and Kiah picked the 2nd face (the one with a heart for lips and stars for eyes). We carved it up and then made delicious pumpkin seeds to eat on the following week.

Gabe even enjoyed the festivities and tried to climb on top of the short fat pumpkin a few times.

120 Quarts of good times

We have been trying to finish our food storage and have really been focusing on our fruit this season. After we picked my Mom's apples and pears. I (Louis) had the genius idea of asking our neighbor if we could pick his too. It turned out to be a "success" depending upon who you ask. The good news is that we canned 120 quarts and completed our fruit storage... the bad news is that we did not sleep for almost two weeks while we canned every night after I came home from work. We ended up with Apple pie filling, peach pie filling, apple sauce, italian plums in honey and cinnamon, vanilla pears and just plain pears.

These are the girls helping us can the Italian plums from our neighbor.

Gabe did not help much, but he sure looks good wandering around. It's nice to have Gabe around to balace out the abundance of estrogen in our household:)

One of the crazy thing is that at the house we are renting out right now has a peach tree on the side of the yard which was able to give us 8 quarts of peach pie filling. Not the best peaches in the world, but its not exactly Florida weather here! Extra sugar in that recipe:)