Channing's 7th Birthday!

Channing officially turned 7 yesterday. He had a low-key birthday but still plenty of fun. He got to eat Captain Crunch for breakfast (which he was very excited about because I never buy that stuff). When he went to school, his carpool gave him a little present and he was so excited about it! He came home from school and was just beaming because his class sang Happy Birthday to him.

We went to Chuck e Cheese for dinner (if you can call that pizza, dinner). The kids played as many games as possible. Channing is getting pretty good at skeeball. He just ran from game to game. They all burned through the tokens pretty quickly. Cason climbed into the playground and got scared and was screaming his head off. Some guy got him out for us. Silly Cason. At least the place wasn't crowded at all since it was a school night.

We came home and Channing was almost bouncing off the walls because he wanted to open his presents. He really wanted to open all the cards fast because he was excited to get dollars! Hahaha! He was excited to get a new leapster cartridge and clothes (especially the pjs - he really likes pjs). He also got a 3-D nemo puzzle with 500 pieces (I can see them scattered all over the floor already and we haven't even opened it yet)! Hahaha!

Channing's profound moment came when he said to us, "only 1 more year and I'll be baptized!" Ugh! Is he almost 8 already? Wow! Time does fly!

Happy Birthday Channing!

Fall Festival and Ward Halloween Party

We've had a fun weekend of celebrations and parties. The first was a fall festival at Channing's school. It was a fun carnival atmosphere and the kids had a great time playing games and going through their first haunted house. I forgot the camera, so no pics.

The next was the Ward Halloween Party. We always have a fun time at this event. This year we all dressed up in our karate uniforms. We won an award for having the most "kickin' costumes." Hahaha! The kids had a great time trick or treating to the classrooms. Cason was asleep through the first half of the party but I woke him up for trick-or-treats! He got that first piece of candy and he just dug in. He didnt' want to go get anymore. He just wanted to eat what he had, right there, right now. It was pretty funny. We had to drag him to the rest of the doors to get more. Thanks to Ashley Whipple who took these pics for us!

Camping - One Night of Adventure!

Camping is one of my favorite things to do. We rarely get to go, but when we do, we tend to go all out! (Hey, if you're going to do it, do it right )! So on Oct. 10th we packed up all our stuff and headed out. The first adventure was finding a place. All the places north of Phoenix were full. Suzie thankfully discovered a place to the east, near Globe. So we headed to Pioneer Pass. It wasn't too bad of a drive. Even the dirt road didn't seem to horrible (though a little steep at times).

We arrived in shifts. First Suzie and I and 6 little boys (can you hear the fun already)!? We were able to set up 3 tents before the Eyre's arrived. After they arrived we attempted to get dinner started. I got a little ambitious in the meal planning (too ambitious) – we had problems getting the charcoal to light. Lighter Fluid is a REALLY good thing (if you have some…which we didn’t)! Thank heavens for greasy McDonald's sacks - they burn really well!

So I think we ate dinner after Bob and Anthony arrived - it was after 8pm. Big Oops! Thanks for humoring me guys! Next time we'll try something easier than steak and dutch oven cooking! PB&J will be easy! Hahaha!

The kids had a wonderful time lighting....I mean "roasting" marshmallows over the fire. We had some gigantic ones from Ranch Market which was very fun! We also had fun watching the kids play with glow swords and wands (anything for entertainment).

After the kids went to bed, the adults had fun hanging out around the campfire, talking and watching Anthony blowup water bottles in the fire and launching glowsticks. Man those things can fly if you have a wrist rocket!

So, if all that wasn't enough adventure for a 1 night stay, there's more! It was a beautiful starry night when we went to bed. A little breezy, but not bad. Not even very cold. At about 3 or 4 am I awoke to what I thought was freeway traffic passing my tent (not anywhere near a freeway mind you). A few seconds later the wind just slammed our tent. It's amazing to see how far a tent can bend! Then the rain started!!! Uh oh! It really poured for a while, then let up and then started again. On and off the rest of the morning.

The morning breakfast was crazy as we tried to cook sausage, pancakes and eggs. As we got to the eggs, it started to pour again and it rained in the eggs! The kids had pretty much eaten by then, so we bagged breakfast until another break in the weather (about 45 min. later). We did finally get to eat, but we decided to pack it up and get out of there. The kids were wet and muddy. Actually, everything was wet! So we bailed and had a late lunch at our house.

After all that craziness, we had a BLAST and we'd do it again in a heartbeat......as long as we can stay for more than 1 night and we prepare for RAIN!

One other adventure...dead battery...saved by the cables!

Blog books!

Ok, I know you've all been waiting on pins and needles! LOL! The blog book arrived and it is fabulous! The quality is great and I think everything from the colors to the fonts turned out fantastic. There were a couple of darker pictures that I wish I had lightened a little bit, but they aren't too bad. The other mistake I made was not springing for the wrap-around cover. It was a only a few $ more. Having a book jacket is a nightmare when you have 3 kids that want to look at the book all the time! Anyway, I ordered my book from blurb.com. Anyone that wants to see it is welcome to come over and look so you can see if you like it enough to do one for yourself. This is the best & cheapest way to do a large book. Mine was 120 pages and I paid less than $50 for it.

Book #2 was totally unplanned but Shutterly sent me an email saying I could make a free 20 page book. It don't know why I got that email, but by the time I saw the email, I had exactly 1 day to complete it. So I threw it together in a day and made a Paxman ABC book. I think it turned out really nice as well. The quality of this book is just as good as blurb.com. The difference is the price. This book is regularly $30 (for 20 pages) + $1 extra per page, plus shipping. So if I had made this book the same as the other, it would have cost over $130. I love my book, just not the price. The free offer made this one easy to swallow though since I only had to pay for a few extra pages and shipping.

So print up your memories! Give blurb.com a try. I think you'll like it!

On another quick note. If you are worried about losing all the pictures and files on your computer, try Carbonite as a backup. It's an online backup. If your harddrive fails, you'll be able to restore everything. (This was a huge issue for me because I have all my kids pictures on my computer). It costs about $50 a year, less per year if you sign-up for 2 years. Worrying about losing my pictures would seriously keep me up at night! (not joking here). I sleep alot better now! If anyone is interested in trying it, let me know and I'll send you a referral and you'll get an extra month in your subscription. (there's a trial subscription you can try too - we did that first and then signed up).

I know all this sounds weird, but my cousins hard drive got fried by lightning a few months ago and she lost all her pictures. I've known of others that lost everything as well, so better safe than sorry!

Cameron is Officially 5 Years Old!

Monday, Sept. 29th was Cameron's actual birthday. He was so excited to be 5 finally! I asked him what he wanted to do for fun on his birthday and he after going through a few choices, he decided on IKEA. So why would a 5 year old want to go to IKEA? 2 words...Play Place! He just wanted to play in the ball pit and goof off. He had the place almost all to himself for over an hour. What a funny kid! (I was just glad he was doing something cheap/free)! Hahaha! So here are some pictures from his fun day. We gave him a box of Lucky Charms for breakfast (he was in heaven). The marshmallows were gone from the cereal within 2 hours. We ate at IKEA for lunch. Then he had Karate with Channing. For dinner he insisted on Mickey Mouse pancakes and bacon and eggs. We had some leftover R2-D2 cake and so we had that for dessert. He loved his presents and was very excited to get a leapster and a spiderman cartridge. He was equally excited to open birthday cards with 2 dollars and a gift certificate to Sees Candy. Oh to be a 5 year old... So much fun!