Ears Pierced

Malia has been waiting for this day since McKenzie got her ears pierced.  Now that she is 8 she is finally able to get hers done too.  She has watched and waited for her turn for a long time and we told her that if she waited till we moved to Minnesota, we could get her ears pierced in the Mall of America (really we just wanted her to wait until we moved so we didn't have to worry about taking care of her ears in the middle of chaos).  So she waited even longer than she wanted, till November even (things were really nuts till after Halloween) and we finally went to the Mall and had them done.  She was a trooper.

 She didn't cry at all, although I do remember her getting a little light headed and need to sit down for a bit.  We gave her a lollipop to help perk her up.  Such an excited girl!!!

Fall 2015

 Moving into a new home right before the holiday's started proved to be difficult.  Not having a whole lot of help unpacking since kids were in school and a husband at work, left me with no time to decorate or even really do anything fun for Halloween.  We were lucky to find costumes for everyone.  Our ward had a trunk or treat a few days before Halloween and then we ventured out into our new neighborhood.

 Here's right before we left for a candy haul.

 We did carve pumpkins...

But only 2.  It was too much to handle.

We also were informed about this nursery that has a huge corn pit.  It was girnormous!  The hay stacks went up to about my waist and it had to have been about10-15 feet across and 20-30 feet long.  It was like a swimming pool of corn.  The kids loved it.

 Can you tell?

We also had a couple concerts in the fall.

Hopefully I'll get my act together soon and remember everything that happens.

Malia's 8!!!

When we were first married, I always would look to future milestones as something that would take so long to achieve.  Such as being married for 15+ years, having children in school, having children who were self sufficient, having teenagers...being in my 30's!  Well we have hit those milestones so fast and so many times that I can't even keep up, and here we are again at one of those BIG milestones.  Malia turned 8 before we could even blink and with that came a really big decision for her to make.  To be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.  It wasn't even hard for her to make that decision, she has known for a long time what the answer would be.  The hard part was the decision on when and where to be baptized.  You see, with the temple dedication so close to her birthday, we thought it would be a good idea to baptize her on her birthday so she could be apart of the dedication.  In the church, only baptized members are allowed to attend and even though should would be 8 by the dedication, we would have to hustle and get that ordinance done within 3 days of her birthday so she could go.  The problem was it wasn't convenient for any extended family to make that journey at that time but we were prepared for a small, intimate gathering for this special occasion.  That was until the news of the move came up. At that moment our plans were given a new possibility.  Lindsay, who has a son 5 days younger than Malia, decided to have her son, Bradley, baptized in the Sweet Water River in Martin's Cove, Wyoming where my parents are serving a mission over Labor Day weekend.  The same weekend we were heading out of Indy.  So we now had the option of joining her and share a baptism with lots of family or doing it on her birthday so she could go to the temple dedication.  It was a tough decision but Malia really wanted to be with her extended family on this special occasion so we decided to make the long trek out to Wyoming to see celebrate with everyone.  I will post separately on the baptism but in the meantime we celebrated her birthday and prepare for her upcoming baptism with some fun shots at the temple the week before the open house.  Bonnie Jean had come one more time to kill sometime while Andy was gone to hang out with us and take some cute shots of Malia in her baptism dress.  They turned out really cute!

And since it was her 8th birthday, it was party time.  She wanted to have makeup/dance party.  We invited friends from church, school and the neighborhood.  It was a fun/crazy time.

Kenz even helped with the makeup and nails.

 Even our neighbor Tracey who is pregnant with her 7th joined in the fashion fun.

 The girls had fun dancing!

 Masie couldn't get enough.

 Little Kay Kay joining in on the fun.

Aren't they beautiful!

Happy birthday sweetie!!! We sure are proud of all you have accomplished and the beautiful young lady you are becoming!!!

1st-First Day of School

So the next few posts are going to be out of order and for very good reason.  We had a very exciting end of summer and this was just a small piece of it, so I wanted to get this post out of the way.  We found out around the time that school was starting that Randy had been offered a promotion in Minneapolis, Minnesota that would start as soon as he could.  The only problem, Randy recently started having gallbladder attacks and the Dr. found a pretty large impassible stone in his gallbladder so he needed to get it removed soon.  This meant we were going to have to delay going to Minneapolis till he recovered.  School started on July 29th and we wanted to try to keep as much normalcy as possible till we were able to move.  Knowing that school wasn't going to start in Minneapolis till the end of August-early September depending on where we found a home, we decided it would be best just to have them start in Indy so they weren't bored while everyone else was in school. So with that, here is their 1st-First Day of School 2015!

Morgan the big 7th grader.  It was hard to imagine her going to middles school, and now we are in the middle of it. 

And just like that...we have a high schooler.  Not sure how I feel about this.  

Malia started 3rd grade

And Micah in 5th.  The big man on campus!

As much as I struggled with many things in Indy, I was grateful for the opportunity to live there, even it was only for 15 months.  

Last day of school 2015!!!

And just like that school is over!  The kids did great and even though I am not a fan of how the schools are run out here in Indy (I got spoiled in UT) they learned a lot and survived.  It's hard to believe I'm going to have a freshman!

 Morgan is going into 7th! She's growing up so fast.  I never have to worry about this one and her schoolwork.  She is on top of things and always does her best.

 It was Micah's teacher's first year of teaching and she was awesome.  She made sure Micah felt included and important.  He tends to hang back and try to go unnoticed sometimes.

 Malia's teacher was great at trying to keep her chatter to a minimum.  She is our social butterfly which is awesome, but sometimes she needs a little redirection and Mrs. Ramsey was awesome at it.

McKay is 1!!!!

It's been a whole year since this little guy joined our family and of course we couldn't break tradition by not making him a cake to destroy.  We decided to make him a sun cake and were hoping since he's a little more active and daring than the other kids were at this age that maybe we'd get a good cake destruction.

But after that initial touch, we quickly realized he wasn't going to destroy it.  

So we got him a fork to see if that would help.

He ate it and sure enjoyed it!

Then he just wanted to run away and try to get cake an frosting everywhere.

So we let the kids join in on the fun.

Don't get me wrong, he still made a mess.

But a cute mess.

We went out for the rest of the day and then for dinner we went to Culver's.

We are sure grateful for this kid.  He's kept us on our toes and there's never a dull moment with him around.  Love ya lil man!