David turns 8!

Then Peter said unto them, Repent , and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. ~ Acts 2:38

In November David turned 8! Wow! I can't believe my little guy is growing up so fast. We are so blessed to have him as part of our family and were so happy he made the decision to be baptized as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It was such a great day and we are so happy that we were able to share it with our friends and family and especially Grandma & Grandpa Stringham before they left to Iowa!

After David's baptism, we all came back to our place and had a yummy lunch with aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, cousins... it was a fun time! To celebrate his birthday, his bestest cousins, Blake, spent the night. What a fun day!

Ethan...14!

In November, Ethan turned the ripe old age of fourteen. I now understand what the little old ladies mean when they say it goes by so fast! It truly, truly does. We are so happy that Ethan was the first to join our family. He was such a happy, agreeable little baby and at fourteen, he still is! I have decided, the older my kids get, the harder it is to take pictures and blog about them. They've become wise to my ways and everytime I go to take a picture, they say "you better not post this", so now I spend most of my blogging time typing up...then deleting things I know would embarrass them. haha! But we are so proud of him and love how kind and respectful he is to others. Love sitting and watching old comedies with him... he's got such a great sense of humor to appreciate some of my favorites!

Seems like just yesterday...

Audrey Lou is 11!

In April, Audrey turned eleven years old and we celebrated by spending the day getting pedicures and doing lunch with two of her good friends. We lucked out with beautiful warm flip flop weather and I enjoyed this birthday celebration just as much as the girls! All the ladies at the nail salon thought the girls were so cute (and they were!), and they spent a fair amount of time selecting and re-selecting what color nail polish. Each of the girls got a little flower embelishment on their toes as well. They turned out awesome!

Nothing better than a nice foot massage! I think I was in my late twenties before I had my first pedicure and Audrey has already had two!

After having our nails done, we headed to Red Robin for lunch where the girls ordered a huge lunch complete with yummy milkshakes.

It was a gorgeous day and the girls were so much fun. I can't believe next year Audrey will be going to middle school. She is the most cheerful, happiest person I know and I'm so lucky to be her mom.

David is SIX

Wow. David is SIX. Holy cow! We love this funny, quirky, cute, happy kid who is the happiest when he is outside playing with all of his neighborhood buddies. And he has a lot of them! He is so used to having someone to play with all the time, that he has no idea what to do with himself on those rare occasions that there is nobody to play with. He loves school, riding his bike, Legos, anything with wheels, and playing games.

When I asked David if I could snap a few pictures of him for his birthday, he decided he wanted to walk down to the park (in the freeeeeezing cold) and take a picture of how high he can now go on the swings and he can go pretty darn high!

David's birthday was on Thanksgiving this year so we decided to celebrate a few days early on one of the kid's early release days after school. I had my first (and only) birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese and it turned out to be great! Other school districts didn't have early release so there was nobody there and the kids had so much fun running all over the newly remodeled restaurant to play all the games. They loved it! And I loved being able to just hang out with my awesome friend, Melissa, and my sister, Maria, who were brave enough to come with me and eleven 5-6 year old kids. Phffew!

Audrey and Aubrey are obsessed with Brody. They loooooooove him. Love. Love. Love him. They smother him whenever he is around and had so much fun showing him all the fun games and "rides" to go on. They even helped him get tickets and a little prize.

So many games... how to choose?

Dana was the only girl invited to David's party and she was such a trooper hanging out with all these boys. I'm not even sure if she even realized this fact.

Posing for a Chuck E. Cheese portrait. Cute.

It's all about the tickets!

The only struggle of the evening was trying to round up eleven young kiddos all at the same time to come and eat and have some birthday cake.

I LOVE watching David open up his presents. It is the most thrilling moment of his entire year. He loves everything...down to the cool cards. He loved all his gifts and we are so grateful to have such amazing neighbors and friends!

Ethan | 12 years

Ethan turned the ripe old age of 12 years old on Friday. To celebrate, Jason took them to go see Puss in Boots and afterwoods they came back to our place to hang, eat pizza, and play darts and video games. This is an ideal day for any 12 year old boy.

On Tuesday, Ethan was ordained a deacon and we are so proud of what an amazing kid he is. He is honest, kind, loves his brother and sister, and has a great sense of humor. He likes to play basketball, baseball, and loves to go dirt bike riding with his dad. He still loves to hang out with the family and we hope it will always stay that way!

Ethan's traditional Krispy Kreme donuts in leiu of a birthday cake...

Audrey Lou turns 9

Last week was Audrey Lou's ninth birthday! She has been looking forward to this for quite a few weeks now trying so hard to decide how she wanted to celebrate. At first we considered going bowling or maybe a movie with some friends, but then we had a grand idea that it would be fun to spend the day shopping in Seattle with a few of her friends. What a fun idea! The girls had SO.MUCH.FUN and couldn't stop talking about how great it was.

Of course, on Audrey's actual birthday, I went and took some fun photos of her and her best buddy Aubrey. It's kind of become a little tradition to do a little photoshoot on her birthday since both the girls' birthdays are only eight days apart. We decided to just head up the street to the field underneath the powerlines and when we first got there it was raining a little. We weren't going to let that stop us! Not even the crazy wind could detour us from our goal. In fact, with these girls, I think it just added to the fun! There were so many super cute shots and I tried desperately to narrow down my selection of which to share...

After taking pictures we headed back home and then went out to dinner with Grandma and Grandpa at the restaurant of Audrey's choice and then back home again for ice cream cake and presents. She loved her new electronic diary that has a lock that is voice activated.

On Saturday we had her shopping day with a few of her friends! Aunt Maria was so awesome to join us for the day because Audrey felt like she needed a shopping day with the girls since she has a family of all boys! I loved having her there to keep my head on straight. We parked at the Seattle Center and road the monorail over to the mall and had lunch at the foodcourt.

We even took Jaylee's Flat Emma along for the day and made sure to get a picture of her first visit to Seattle!

With all of the yummy food coices, of course, they all still chose to get McDonald's.

After lunch we did a little shopping and they basically headed straight for the candy store and proceeded to spend all of their shopping money on candy and a little stuffy. The girls were estactic about it, so what could I say?

And still after all of my obsessive photo taking, the girls insisted on getting some pictures from the photo booth. One of the girls commented... "these are such good memories we're making." Ahhh... so sweet.

It was such a fun day and the weather couldn't have been more perfect! We are just so proud of Lou Lou and are so happy that she adds so much fun and excitement to our days. Life would be much more boring without her around!