Brynlie's Birthday!

I uploaded my pictures in the wrong order so I'll have to tell about Brynlie's birthday backwards. Brynlie turned 5 on Jan 4th. I can't believe it! She'll forever be three years old to me. With her birthday being so close to Christmas, I always end up planning her celebration at the last minute. She usually gets the short straw when it comes to her birthday and she has never had the huge celebrations like Rylie gets. I feel pretty bad about this and always think I'll do better. But this year came and she told me she wanted a Super Mario Brothers party. This was a few days before her birthday and I knew I wouldn't be able to find anything for a party like this without ordering online and there wasn't time for that. So once again I feel really bad and we try to make up for it. Her birthday was on a Tuesday so Monday we took her bowling in Preston at the good ole Pop n Pins.

Some of her cousins were able to make it to the bowling party. It was a open invitation type of thing since this was so last minute. We just told people we were going bowling and if they wanted to join us they could.

After bowling we all pitched in for pizza and went to Jordan and Suzanne's house. They were nice enough to let us do this at their house so we wouldn't have to go all the way to ours. The kids have tons of fun playing together and Brynlie got lots of presents. She ended up getting a nail polish kit so of course they had to try it out in the room that Suz has all her nail stuff set up. Here they are at the nail table painting Brynlie's nails

Seth had to get in on the action too and he did a good job.

The finished product.



Okay, so the day before the bowling party was the day we had her cupcakes. We weren't going to do anything on Sunday but then we didn't know if anyone could come bowling so on Saturday (again last minute) we decided to have people come up for some cupcakes and ice cream on Sunday. My parents couldn't make it and my sister Mindi lives an hour away so we knew she wouldn't be able to make it last minute. But a few people on Porter's side were able to come.

Brynlie got a lot of Liv doll stuff and I think she had a pretty good birthday. She was a really good sport, even though she didn't get her Mario party. She is not a complainer and we are very thankful to have Brynlie in our family and we love her very much.

Christmas

We had a good Christmas this year. Our Christmas Eve traditions include going to my mom and dad's house and eating a ton a good food and then exchanging gifts. Easton is crying in this picture because he did not want to be held down for the picture. After my parent's house, we go to Porter's parent's house and do more gift exchanges.




This is our house after Santa came. I think the kids got quite a bit of stuff even though Santa was broke this year. Yeah that is our tree with the two different colors of white lights. It bugged Porter but I wasn't about to do the tree all over again. I guess two sets were LED and the other two weren't. Oh well, it looked alright for a while but the cat kept jumping in the tree and knocking off ornaments and smashing branches so by Christmas eve the tree was pretty roughed up. As you can tell there aren't many ornaments left on the bottom half of the tree.

The kids Christmas morning. They got up their usual time between 7 and 7:30. The girls were just waiting in their room for us to get Easton and tell them it was o.k. to come out.

Easton wasn't really sure what was going on. He was just wandering around and would occasionally rip a little of his present. The girls were excited and were just ripping through presents. Easton got this little Buzz Lightyear car from the girls for Christmas and he loves it when the girls push him around the house . He also got a tool bench that plays music and does fun sounds, balls, a bedtime gloworm that sings lullaby's, and some clothes and football slippers.

Rylie got a Liv doll and Barbies and a bunch of earrings and clothes. She told me that this was the best Christmas ever, even though they didn't get as much as they usually do. She is turning out to be a grateful little girl.

Brynlie got Barbie stuff, puppy swim school set, pet shop and clothes. They both received playdoh, art stuff and a bead kits to make necklaces and bracelets. Porter also got them both pink camo play guns and Easton a play shotgun.

Porter got me some earrings, necklaces, perfumes, lotions, slippers and socks. Porter got shirts, hat, pajama pants and a new wallet. So, I think we had a pretty good Christmas. My parents came up on Christmas day to see what the girls got. Later Porter's parents came to see us. It is always fun to have family around to spend the holidays with.

Kids

On one of our photo sessions we went to we had to bring our kids, so after it was over we went ahead and got some pretty cute pictures of our little runts.
I have been having fun with photoshop and just learned how to enhance the eyes and make it look like there is lip gloss. I did it all myself without the aid of an action. For those who don't know what a photoshop action is, it is a thing you run in photoshop that does all the work for you to achieve a certain look. I had to figure it out step by step because our computer won't allow us to download actions. Rylie calls these her scary eyes. I'm just learning, so maybe I did make the outside of the iris a little too dark, but I can only get better at it.

Rylie finally decided to get her ears pierced. She is the one that I thought would never do it because she can't handle pain. She asked us one day at the mall after we looked at earrings and Grandma Judy was sweet enough to pay for it. It is so expensive to get ears pierced I couldn't believe it. Her ears aren't pierced in this picture, but this was the day she got it done.( I think)

Another thing that happened to Rylie recently was having a boy at school tell her Santa wasn't real. He told her to sleep by her parents bedroom door to prove it. I was so mad when she told me this. I can't believe that boys parents never told him to keep this information to himself and to not ruin other children's Christmas. I asked Rylie what she believed and she said she thought Santa was real. I told her that as long as she believed that was all that mattered and to not listen to what other kids tell her. I hope she really still does believe because I think 7 is way to young to stop believing. I think the eye enhancement on Brynlie worked out really good. Now I just need to post the pictures of our latest photo session. We took some of a family, a couple, and a single guy

Easton is getting big and is so much fun. He is running around and climbing on everything. He loves to be in the bathrooms. As soon as a bathroom door opens he is running for it. He loves to unroll toilet paper and likes to climb on top of the toilet and stand. He also loves to get into our shower and grab whatever he can off the bench in there (razors, shampoo, soap). Right now as I am typing this he is in my kitchen cabinet pulling out every single mixing bowl I have and hitting the cat with them. Yes, we now have an inside cat. I really don't know what I was thinking. We got some cats from my sister Mindi, for outside after our last cat got ran over. But this one was so cute and fluffy and we knew that with all the bur bushes all over the hillside it wouldn't stay cute and fluffy for long so we brought it in. It really is the most evil cat I have ever seen. It attacks our Christmas tree every few minutes, our children's faces daily, and pretty much anything else that can annoy me. I actually hate it but I can't really put it back out because the kids love it so much.

One last story to tell about my crazy little Brynlie. Notice the face she is making in the picture below. Well one day the kids asked me about the handicap parking spaces and the people that had handicap license plates. I was trying to tell them the different reasons a person would need a handicap license plate. You know like wheelchairs, heart conditions, etc. Another day we were at the mall and she made this face and started walking funny and said "Look mom, I'm a handicap". I have no idea how she got this from the conversation we had. I'm sure people will think I'm a horrible mother and must teach her awful things but I really don't know why she thinks this is a handicap. This is probably a story I should have kept locked in the closet but the face was so funny. The picture isn't quite the face she made that day but close. Later that day she told me she wanted to be a handicap for Halloween next year. I really have to wonder about that girl sometimes.

Photo Shoot

Porter and I have been wanting to get into photography for a while. I have been working hard on learning photoshop and he has been working on learning our camera. We finally came to a point where we thought we would give it a try as not only a hobby but as a side job. This was our first photo shoot for someone other than our kids. This was the cutest little boy. He was a lot of fun to take pictures of. There were so many cute pics it was hard to pick the ones I wanted to edit. I edited a lot more than I am showing here but it was hard to pick favorites. We are really excited about doing this and already have more appointments lined up.

Easton's First Birthday!

Look at this handsome boy! I can not believe he is one. He is so funny. He loves chickens and follows them around. He even got attacked by a rooster and still goes after them without fear. He loves our new kitties, and grabs at them any chance he can get. He loves to be outside and will say Bye-bye anytime he wants to go out. It's too bad it is getting so cold because he gets so sad when I won't let him outside. He is walking and has been for about a month. It seems like after I wrote my post about him at 11 months saying he wouldn't walk, he decided to prove me wrong and started standing and walking from couch to couch. A week later he started walking all over the place. He is really good at it now, but still wants to be held by me all the time. He weighs 22 lbs. and is 29 1/2 inches tall. So he is just a little guy, 38th percentile for weight and 39th percentile for height. At least he has grown some. We were so worried he hadn't grown at all. He is still not an easy baby but I wouldn't trade him for anything. He loves to give me hugs and kisses and sometimes gives kisses to others. He is a momma's boy all the way.

We had a fun birthday party for him. We had family come and we had snacks and cake and ice cream. He got a lot of really cute gifts. He had all of the old hand me down toys from the girls, so it was nice for him to get some toys of his own.

I was going to make him a cake but at the last minute decided to buy one instead. He does not like sweets very much so I was worried he wouldn't dig into his cake.

I love this face that he made after the first taste of cake. I had to scrape all of the icing off and try to feed him a few bites of cake.

He really liked to smear the cake around and would occasionally take a little bite. The kids came over and ate most of his cake for him.

He was a mess at the end but was excited to get in the bath and play with his new basketball hoop bath toy. He had a good day and was pretty tired by the end of it.

Halloween

Cute kids sitting by the pumpkins they carved. The girls picked out the designs and Rylie traced her spider onto the pumpkin and helped carve it until the little child safe pumpkin carver broke, then I had to finish it. Brynlie helped a little with her pumpkin. Easton sat on Porter's lap while Porter carved his giant pumpkin. We never did get a good shot of Easton in his costume. He was supposed to be a hunter. He was dressed all in camo and had an orange fleece on, but he wouldn't keep his hat on, he was also sick so I couldn't paint his face in camo like I had planned. No one could tell he was dressed up but we figured since it was his first halloween he wouldn't really care.
The cute kitty.

The beautiful witch.

Easton having a good time trick or treating. Even though he didn't go from door to door to get candy, he still had fun riding around in the stroller watching his sisters.

Jared and the girls before we went around the block at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

The kids and Grandpa trick or treating. They got more candy going door to door than when we went back home and went to our wards trunk or treat.

More crafts

I finally got my Happy Halloween blocks done on Halloween. Just in time to put them away. These were super easy and really cheap. I was going to wait and get vinyl letters for the blocks but then they would have never have gotten done. So I cut the letters out of black paper and mod podged them on and I think they look just like vinyl. No one has been able to tell a difference yet.

Here are my fall letters. This picture has really bad lighting so they don't look as good as they do in person. The leaf isn't done yet. I was going to try to make it look like it had veins in it and add more sparkle in a different color for dimension. That might have to wait until next year. I also wanted to do something for thanksgiving but I haven't had any ideas yet, so I guess I'll start on my Christmas ideas next.