My Birthday!

Okay, so along with being the first day of school, it was also my birthday yesterday. I remember how much I hated it when my birthday would land on the first day of school when I was little. The teacher would never have any idea it was my birthday, because they were just trying to get through the day with all of the new students. Let alone pay attention to one of their birthdays! I always felt like no one cared about it being my "special day."

Well, this year was nothing like that! Thanks to my wonderful husband, family and friends! We celebrated all weekend long! Rich took me to dinner and a movie on Friday with a bunch of my long time friends. We had family over for cake and ice cream on Sunday evening. During which we announced to our families that we are going to have another baby!! (Yeah, you read that right, Baby #4 will be here on or before March 2!)

I woke up on my birthday and Rich gave me season tickets to one of my favorite theatres! The day was packed with voice mails, emails, text messages and facebook postings from friends and family (thanks, everyone!) My mom took me shopping and to lunch and then she watched our kids while Rich and I went to see James Blunt and Sheryl Crow in concert! Talk about the perfect birthday!!

The concert last night was awesome!! We had amazing seats (so of course I forgot my camera!!). James was so fun to watch he was jumping off of things, running around the audience, and climbing on the piano. Sheryl was so fun, too. She had the audience dancing and singing along all night long! We had so much fun!

Thanks, Rich. I love you!

Back to School!!

First day of school!! First day of school!!

Carter started his first day of second grade this week! I can't believe he's this old! He was so excited about going back.

My mom and I picked him up after school and took him (with his brothers in tow) to get an icecream cone to celebrate. He had such a good day. He put it this way, "It was fun actually, Mom!!"

Here is a picture of him with his new teacher...

Okay, so the sun was REALLY bright, and every time I asked him to smile this was the face I got... what do you do?

YoUth cOnFereNcE

A couple of tough guys.

Rich and I were in charge of our ward's Youth Conference this last weekend. We had such a great time.

The kids on the river.

CHEESE!!

The kids were awesome, and there were minimal catastrophes. (Which is pretty impressive when you take 18 teenagers camping!) The worst one was one of our Young Women falling into a bee's nest and being stung 10 times! Yikes!

Aftermath of the bee attack.

Rich tubing on a dinky green tube.

The Cook-off

We had the kids chopping and carrying wood for a service project, running relay races and egg tosses, pitching in on a cook off breakfast (young men against young women), tubing down a river, launching water balls, we watched a slide show of the weekend, filled a time capsule, had a testimony meeting and a great speaker, and so many other activities!

Discussing egg tossing strategy

Balance is everything.

Professional Water ball shooters. (They launched sooo far!)

We were exhausted when we got home and are still trying to recover, but I think it was worth it! The kids all seemed to enjoy it and they grew closer as friends.