Princesses

I think I need to make BOY dress-ups a priority on my list of things to sew...

These boys get the make-over treatment from...

...this little princess all too often...

(We found Jemma like this the other night when we were checkin' on the kids before we headed to bed. :) Too cute!)

Happenings...

Pop & Gram (Brandon's grandparents) came for a visit last week...And they got to meet Gavin! That boy is growin' like a weed, so we're glad they got to come up and see him before he got much bigger! (And that we got to see them again too!)

I updated the "Family" wall... Seriously, I didn't add one frame, but for some reason, it looks like there are more up there now to me... I thought you might like to see your handy work up there, Mel!
We took a trip to the zoo...

The polar bears are one of our favorites...they are MASSIVE.

The elephants are pretty sweet too...But this time, they had a dinosaur display that was STELLAR!

Gavin enjoyed the sights too!

So much, in fact, that he zonked on the couch as soon as we got home. :)

My children have discovered that there is no need to wait, let alone ask, for help if I am otherwise occupied and they want something...ESPECIALLY food. I guess they have decided to be a little more independent...(I'm blaming it on "3rd baby syndrome"...I blame A LOT of things on that these days...)

This morning, I came down from taking a quick shower to this...

Mind you, Carter had already had breakfast, Jemma had just rolled out of bed. Gavin had just gone down for a nap so I told Jemma I would take a quick shower and come down to get her breakfast...

I guess if I want to keep my house from getting completely thrashed, I could just stop showering...

Newport

On our drive back from Cali, Brandon and I thought it would be a good idea to take a couple days to break up the drive and to see a few things on the way back...think again...we seriously dealt with every bodily excretion possible, minus blood. Next time, I think we'll just b-line it home and save ourselves the drawn-out misery of being confined to a car and living out of a suitcase for DAYS instead of just 11 or 12 hours.

On a more positive note, we did get to see the Medford, Oregon temple...

the kids got to rough house and party in a hotel...

Gavin had his 1st bath-time mug shot...(he looks like such a little old man!)...

We got to play in the sand down on the Newport beach...







And we got to see LOTS of cool stuff at the Newport Aquarium...

Good Times.

Around the Cabin

Just a few more pics from our time in Tahoe. We did a lot of game playing, movie watching, and good food eating ...and the guys managed to play 18+ holes of golf and hold a few pool tounaments and the girls did a little crafting. And, did I mention that the kiddos did a darn good job of entertaining themselves?...for the most part...sometimes they recruited Aunt Emma, Aunt Mel and Jade for their outdoor excursions. :)

Here's Brandon's black eye...he got it rough housing with Jemma the day before we left for Tahoe...

Hayden and Carter checkin' out a bug...everytime it just moved an antenae, they would scream, "it moved, it moved!" When it started crawling toward them, they really freaked.

Jemma and Daphne.

Carter, headed out on a walk.

Carter building a fire...

Sean, Jemma, Daphne, Kyrie and Carter...working on their castle...

The kids put together a little show with the help of their Aunt Mel...they performed it for us on the back porch...it was quite entertaining.

We miss all you guys!

Family Pictures in Truckee

So, I'm pretty darn familiar with the saying, "More isn't always better, sometimes it's just more"...but, honestly, this is just a few of the pics my sister Melanie took for our family while we were in Tahoe.

I asked Melanie to take our family pics while in Tahoe and she had the brilliant idea of taking them in downtown Truckee, and I must say, she did a darn good job. The only issue we ran into, (other than Carter being a typical 2 year old and not wanting to smile at. all. ... was Brandon having a black eye...that's right, a pretty good one. Hopefully you can't tell ... I'll post a pic of it later, just so you can see how bad it really was, and I'll include the background for its occurrence...)

Moving on. Here's like A BILLION pics...don't think they'll all fit on my family picture wall, so if you've got a favorite, let me know. (It'll help me narrow it down...)