Future Elder Lodge

The last several weeks when Sam gets ready for church, he always says that he wants to look like a missionary. So, when I got him new church clothes, he made sure that I got him dark pants and a long-sleeved white shirt and tie. Last Sunday, Joe pulled out one of his old missionary tags and Sam wore it to church. Doesn't he look handsome!

Ok, the smile is pretty goofy, but he is growing up so fast! I'm very proud of him and his desire to do what's right!

She's all fancy!

Abby is a true girl, she loves clothes and accessories! Every Sunday she LOVES to pick out her dress and then twirls around the house. Last Sunday I just had to get some pictures of her outfit, she looked adorable!

She didn't actually wear the hat or glasses to church, but she sure looked cute! Love it!

Guess who's 3 months old already!!

I can't believe that Lydia is already 3 months old!! 

She is such a good baby! She sleeps A LOT, including 10-12 hours each night. When she's awake, she loves to watch her big brothers and sister play. She tolerates all of the love that they give her really well :-) Everywhere we go she gets compliments on her chubby cheeks and her cute baby rolls. I love how when she gets smiling really big her beautiful blue eyes almost disappear behind her cheeks. So cute! We are so glad to have this sweet little girl in our family!

Happy Birthday Bat-boy!

Andrew is 5!!!

 He had a very fun batman themed birthday! At our house, we open presents starting in the morning and then throughout the day so that they have a chance to play with and enjoy each thing before digging into the next package, so here are some shots of his early morning gifts...

You'd never know it from this picture, but Andrew was sooooo excited about this set, he's been wanting it for months and G & G Lodge came through for him! That's his excited face...

 Another excited face...he really did like his presents, I promise!

For lunch he requested Dairy Queen because, in his expert opinion, they have the "best hot dogs in a bun." :-)

For dinner, he requested his favorite: grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup. I love easy birthday dinners, no complaints from this mom! After dinner we headed to Chuck E. Cheese where we would celebrate with family and Andrew's favorite friend from church. Always a fun time! Andrew found one game that he was really good at and came away with a record number of tickets that night, it was pretty exciting for him! Here's some shots of the cake and presents that we saved for the "party".

This huge Batman was from G&G Olson, it's about the same size as Abby!

Danny and Joe chatting...probably talking about Danny's first few days of Med School!

It was a great birthday. Since we only do friend parties on the even birthdays, this year was way less crazy and hectic!

Here are some tid-bits about Andrew at 5 years old:

• Favorite color is red (but he says he loves all the colors except GIRL colors like pink and purple)
• he loves to build legos and is very good at following instructions by himself
• he has taught himself to read and has a great headstart on kindergarten
• he loves science books, especially ones about dinosaurs and space
• when he grows up he wants to be a builder (he and Sam plan to go into business together), an artist, an astronaut, a scientist and a daddy.
• he has a great sense of humor and cracks us up with his silly jokes and cute laugh
• he loves to help me with things around the house, especially dishes and cooking

I am so grateful that we have Andrew in our family. Love you buddy!

And, just because I was pleased with how it turned out, here's a couple more shots of the cake I made...

...thanks for your help Breanna!

Family Camping Trip

This weekend we took a fun camping trip with Danny and Jessi and their family. The kids and I headed up earlier in the day on Thursday with D & J to claim a spot and Joe came up later after he got off work. It was quite a scene with two nursing babies, the boys riding their scooters around like madmen, Abby "practicing" on her little port-a-potty, Ollie walking around hitting trees with sticks and Danny trying to get two tents set up! Luckily, Danny enlisted Sam's help and was able to get the tents up while I got the fire started to cook dinner. Joe showed up just in time to cook a hot dog over the fire.

Here's a shot of the two newest little campers. They did pretty well out in the elements!

I think that Sam was showing us how strong he was to prove that he could help Danny with the tents :)

Believe it or not, this picture was taken in the first hour or so after we arrived, and Ollie was already covered in dirt!

 

Abby was so excited to make a smore with the humongous marshmallow...eating it turned out to be quite a trick!

 

Andrew didn't see the point of cooking the marshmallows, they are so much easier to eat straight out of the bag!

This baby moose made a couple of appearances throughout the weekend. Once it walked directly behind our tent while I was napping with the girls. It was so close! Joe never got to see it though, he was always in the wrong place at the wrong time!

Here's Abby's favorite picture face. Everytime I pulled out the camera, she automatically made this face!

Joe love playing with the fire!

Like father, like son!

 

This was the next morning, all bundled up before the sun was up enough to warm us up!

 On Friday we drove to a spot where we could hike to some waterfalls. We'd been there before but of course the kids didn't remember it so it was like a whole new adventure! Here we are setting out on the hike...

...On the trail.

Once we got to the first waterfall we stopped to play in the water for a few minutes.

 

 Here's a family shot

Danny and Jessi's family

It was a fun and very dirty camping trip. It's always amazing how dirty kids get when they are camping! Grandpa Olson came up on Friday evening and spent the second night with us. There's just something special about being out in nature with family. I love it. We get to find whole new ways of entertaining ourselves like poking the fire, throwing rocks in the river, hide and seek in the forest and just taking walks around the campground. I love being out there, but I also love coming home and taking a shower!