fifteen

Happy 15th birthday to Tanner.

As we were celebrating, eating birthday cake Tanner and telling him what we loved about him, something dawned on us. In one short  year, Tanner will be able to drive. He will be able to date(double date). He will also need to have his Eagle Scout Award completed. We are seriously hoping that this is one of the longest year of our lives. We are not rushing any of those things except maybe the Eagle award!

 

Birthday highlights:

His bedroom door was decorated and filled with the things he loves. Okay, so maybe he did not love the new church socks... but they were needed.

 

He played some football at the park with friends and called it The Tanner Bowl.

 

We tried to tell him that we had bought him two 50 lb. puppies for is birthday and that was all he was getting. The puppies were actually on loan while we watched them for our friends.

 

Presents. I think his favorite was the gift card to Best Buy so he could get the headphones he wanted.

Dinner at Costa Vida...his pick. Someone told him to live outside the box and pick something different. I am glad he picks what he likes. After all, it is HIS day and not theirs!

 

 

  We ended the night with cake, ice cream and the Happy Birthday song! Super FUN!

New Year's Eve

I seriously can't believe that it is the last day of 2013. The year flew by!

One thing that has been very apparent, in my face if you will is that I do not have a lot of time left where I will have all of my children under my roof, all of the time. Tonight was just one more reminder. It is New Year's Eve and Tanner headed out with friends to have dinner and then went to a church dance. Carter went to a party with friends. That left John and I and the littles. While we had a great time, I missed Tanner and Carter and did not like not having them there! A little glimpse of the future and I am not ready for it!

 

I love to make a big deal out of the holidays. I like to make it fun and memorable for our children. I want our home to be a place that they want to be! In keeping up with traditions, I went to the party store and purchased helium balloons. As each balloon was filled, I tucked a piece of paper in each one. Each slip of paper had an activity to do each hour, on the hour, right up until midnight. We had our friends the Jones over. They have 4 boys too! They were also missing their older two!

 Helium balloons, ready and waiting to be popped!

 A token photo of all of our boys before they went in different directions.

 Carter stayed longed enough to pop the first balloon!

 The 6 p.m. activity was to bake cookies! Gotta have lots of treats.

Ready to pop another balloon.

 

 We played games.

 

We had a dance party with a little "running man."

 

The snake. I seriously think my kids could have been born in the 80's.

 My friend, Stephanie.

 Silly picture time. Another fun tradition..."2014 glasses."

 

 Banging pots and pans, blowing noise makers and popping poppers at midnight to ring in the new year! Don't worry, we aren't the hated neighbors. Most of our neighbors are out doing the same things. Traditions that I hope will live on forever! We had a great time and loved having the Jones family over to help us ring in the new year!

Happy New Year from our family to yours!

We are ready for the New Year. We all say "Bring it on!"

halloween 2013

This day could not get here fast enough. 6  p.m. could not get here fast enough...according to the littles. Carter had a basketball game and Tanner had a football game and John attended both It was just Garrett, Brody and I.

 

We had to get the traditional pictures on the porch.

 Garrett, the blue morph man.

 

 Brody went as Captain America.

  

 

 Garrett went trick or treating with some baseball buddies.

Brody and Sam ran from house to house. Those boys are speedy!

 

Brody was happy with his haul after an  hour. We headed home to light our pumpkins pass out candy.

 

Garrett came home for about 30 seconds to empty his pillowcase and then headed back out.

 

The older boys finally got home and went to a couple of houses for some treats. Brody was so happy to see them.

 We hope you and yours had a happy and safe Halloween!

carving jacks

 

We were on the ball this year. We carved our pumpkins a few days before the big night. There were lots of "eeewww this is so gross" and "eeewww this is so smelly." We had a great time. John and I love the fact that the boys are all old enough to help and that we aren't having to carve 6 pumpkins between us. Here is

We love our Fall traditions...even if we have to pull 3 of our 4 children out of school to make it happen! We timed it perfectly and ended up at the patch right around lunch time. All of the field trippers were heading home, leaving us lots of space to roam and play.

 

We have been coming to Bishop's Pumpkin farm for 10 years. We visited the very first fall we lived in Roseville and haven't missed a trip since.

 

Up first, a  hayride out to the field to pick our pumpkins...right off the vine!

 

Up next, a visit to see the farm animals. The boys were kind of bummed that you can no longer go in to feed and pet the goats. You have to stay outside of the pen.

 

 

We have entered a new era in life/parenting. Brody was the only one who wanted to ride the train this year. Say what??? The boys felt like they were too old to ride the train. Brody convinced Tanner to ride it with him. It was so cute to see our oldest and youngest, side by side ready to ride the train. As the train began to chug away, I become teary eyed. We won't have very many more years with our whole family together for family trips to the pumpkin farm.

 

After you ride the train, you have to get a treat. 4 of us had a slice of homemade apple pie with ice cream and two had ice cream cones. I am ready to go back just so I can have another slice of pie!

 

A few more tradition photos before we headed home! It was a beautiful day at the patch and we were super excited to keep the tradition alive for another year.