I Love Candycorn.

With Halloween coming up, I wanted to make a festive outfit for Olivia. The fabric has candy corn on it. Troy spotted the tights and we thought it would go perfect with her little outfit.
Is she just the cutest thing ever?

Abququerque Balloon Fiesta 2010

We went to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta this year. This is what Ella wanted to do for her birthday. Anna had gone camping with a friend so it was just Logan, Ella, Soren and Olivia. We all got up a 4:00 am to catch the bus down to the balloon park.

The morning glow was beautiful.

Way to early for some of us. Olivia crashed right away. Soren ears were cold so he took Olivia's purple hat to wear under his cowboy hat. Goofy kid!

By the way, those are vampire bite tattoos on her cheek. How funny is that?
So this is what I ended up doing for most the morning. Carrying around 50 pounds of dead weight. Logan gave me his denim shirt so we could make a make-shift sling.
I am still hurting.

It was fun to watch the kids faces as the balloons went up. Troy and Soren were running all over the place trying to collect the cards from the balloonist.

Way to many people.
I don't do well with to many people.
We had to drag Soren away from the police horses.

Hopefully I will never have to do this again. Such the party pooper I am.

Anna's birthday!

Emerson and Ella hanging out at the Mall. We had just finished going to Claires. Can you tell by the colorful hair extensions.
How funny is that?

Olivia is sporting a lovely pink one.
Soren was miffed that he didn't get any.

We had asked Anna what she wanted to do for her birthday and she promptly told me the Mall.
Torture.
Anxiety.
Smelly.
Can you tell I hate to go to the Mall.
So she had her two best friends come with her. Sarah and Ami.

We had Lunch at Johny Rockets.

We had them sing Happy Birthday to her. She did NOT like that one bit. Anna is so shy. She was giggling/crying. We didn't know what she was doing.

Good thing Sarah was there!

Definitely cried.

Sarah saved me the hassle of making a birthday cake for Anna. She showed up at our house with a load of cupcakes that she had made. I love you Sarah!
I now have a teenage daughter!

Let's take some pictures. Ya sure!

As I was laying awake in the early morning hours waiting for sleep to come, I had a brilliant idea. I was going to take pictures of my kids. The thing is I don't take brilliant pictures.
I do have brilliant kids though.
This one has the biggest dimples of our bunch.

One of those brilliant ideas was to take some shots using a ladder and shooting down from the top. So all of us girls lay down on the grass, Troy climbed the ladder scaring us all.
The thing is.....when I lay down, my face does too.
I looked like something out of the movie Spy Kids.
All my "extra" face followed gravity.

So after coming home and looking at all the photos I had Troy take some more of just the girls. My face looks normal.
Relatively speaking.

I think I have the most beautiful girls. All of them so different.
One brown eyed.
One blue eyed.
One blueish gray.

I know this looks like she has a piece of grass up her nose.
She doesn't.
That would of been funny though.
We love our Little Miss Muffet.

This is another one of those shots that didn't turn out.
It was so funny to have all the kids laughing at us. Troy was making me giggle.
I love that Troy makes me giggle.
He looks so innocent in this whole thing.
He's not.
TROY IS A BIG OL' TROUBLE MAKER!

Hey, I tried.

Olivia, our youngest most spoiled daughter.

Ella, with the most incredible eyes in the world. She's the most giggly of them all.

Anna, our oldest daughter. Watch out boys.

Logan and Soren just hanging around.
Pretty pathetic.

One thing about our boys is that they have the biggest ego's in the world.

Can you tell?

Logan is still sporting the last remnants of the bruising from his broken nose.
If any picture can depict what Soren is, it's this.

This is Soren. Those dimples can kill.

The Outdoor Expo.

This last weekend was the Outdoor Expo out at the gun range. Troy had a booth there for the Emergency Scouter.
There are lots of things for the kids to do.
Soren loved learning how to ride a four-wheeler. The instructor was amazing at explaining things to the kids

The kids loaded the cartridges themselves for the gun they would be shooting. All of our children know gun safety. This was the first time for Olivia to be shooting something bigger than a BB gun.

It's a little disturbing to me that Soren knows how to shoot so well. He got this little sparkle in his eyes, creepy. Just joking.

Olivia was in heaven! She was so excited to be doing what the big kids do.

They all loved the rock wall. Soren took off like a rocket. I think I need to get him more involved with climbing. He definitely is a natural.

Ella going up, Anna coming down.

We all learned a little fly tying. The girl who was teaching us was only 11 years old. Amazing. Can you tell how hot and exausted the kids were?

Olivia climbed up on my lap and we tied a fly all by ourselves.
It was a LITTLE difficult doing it with two little hands in with mine.

Little Miss Muffet was so proud of herself.

It was a busy and fun filled day for us. Troy did awesome with his Emergency Scouter booth. I am so proud of him.
Logan helped Troy with the booth on Saturday, but by Sunday he was feeling yucky. The Thurday before he broke his nose and got whiplash from diving into a pool. So he stayed home and rested. I love watching the kids doing the things they love.
I loved watching Olivia shoot the gun for the first time. Although it was a little disturbing to hear her laugh while doing it. There is just something wrong with watching a 4 year old shooting a gun. Even though I ABSOLUTELY DETEST GUNS WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING, I think kids need to know gun safety.

This was the first time I had attended one of these. Troy would take the kids every year. Since he couldn't take the kids around I got stuck with the task. Troy found it very amusing to watch me there with all the hunting stuff around.
I am against hunting.
I don't eat any meat or fish.
I hate guns.
I LOATH camo.
So there I was surrounded by turkey calls, guns and hundreds of men in camo. That just goes to show how much I love my children and my wonderful husband.
(You owe me one Honey Lover)