Family Pics-2010

I love getting family pics.....especially in the fall! My mother always does an amazing job for us! Thank you Mom! Here are a few of my favorites......if you want to see all of them, you can check them out on my FB page here.
This year I didn't try to match us all up. I let the kids pick out one of their favorite, nice outfit and we just went with it.

Aaawwww....Gary and I.....I sure love this man! He has a heart of gold and I wouldn't trade him for anything! I can't believe we've been married almost 13 years! My how time flies when you're having fun!
So when we walked by these bushes, I thought it would be so cute to have the kid's heads kinda of poking up above them.....but it didn't quite turn out how I imagined. The kids were seeing a completely different way.....like with the way they were squatting, Sierra kept saying they looked like they were trying to go to the bathroom. Ugh! But I do think this one is pretty funny and I love the expressions on each of their faces! Especially Grace....that is so a Grace face! And looking at Emma makes you want to laugh out loud too.
I like this one with Emma kinda sneaking a peek back at Grandma. Plus you can see the dog walking ahead of us.
This one is great too.....with the whole family. And yes, the dog is included in that as you will see in most of our family pics!
This was a great idea....we just really should have moved that stupid board!
Look how happy we are.....because this is one of the first set of pics! Hahahaaha! Emma was freezing the whole time, so she'd put her coat on every chance she got, then take it off and we'd hide it behind a tree or throw it off to the side so it was out of the picture.
I love us in the trees! We did a family pic like this one 2 years ago and I love it.....so we did it again!
A couple of my favorite Emma pics! She is just too cute!
I love her blue, blue eyes! She's so funny and smart. We are so blessed to have her in our family!
My Mr. Joe! He cracks me up. He was totally posing the whole time. He found all sorts of places and poses for himself that would make "awesome pictures". At least that is what he kept telling us! We had to tell him no a few times!
I love this one of him laughing! It just doesn't get better than that! It's just so Joe! Man I love this boy.....even if he does drive me crazy most days!
Miss Grace......she has some of the best posing for pics. She usually gets into a kind of dance pose when she's standing. She is growing up so much! She's such a good helper and sort of the leader of the pack around here in the neighborhood.....she's definitely a "take charge" kinda girl!
She is turning into such a beautiful young woman already. Geez, when did that start to happen?!
And Sierra.....It's still weird looking eye-to-eye with my 12 year old! She is sort of my "old soul". She's always been so mature for her age and she's so level headed and smart and such a fun person.
In just a few short months, she'll officially be a teenager. I can already tell, but luckily, so far, we get along so well. I think it's because we like to talk to each other. That helps a lot. I really want her to learn from my mistakes and live up to the potential that we both know she has, but without pushing her too hard. I'm sure you all feel the same way with your kids. I feel that with all of them.......
I just try to hold on tight and love them all with all of my might! I'm so grateful for my wonderful family! I'm a such a blessed person to have all of them in my life!
This is Gary's favorite. He insisted on this picture....he told the kids where to stand and everything. And then we had to take it with my camera because Mom's camera battery died. But it still turned out so nice.....even the dog sat and looked at the camera! The farm is such a labor of love for all of us. We couldn't think of a better place to spend our afternoon together!

My Amazing Ward and Husband!

Back on August 14th, a young man in our ward, Nick, was in a bad 4-wheeler accident. For that story go here. Nick happens to live just around the block from us and I'm really good friends with his sisters and I know Nick pretty well too. Anyway, it was a very sobering shock when I heard about it. He ended up breaking his back and is now paralyzed from the waist down. Well, our ward knew that they needed a lot of help to get their house handi-cappable for when Nick was able to come home. So off to work they went. They had a new porch engineered and a lot of supplies donated by Home Depot(Nick's dad works there) and by many other individuals. On top of that, they had to turn his sister Alison's bedroom and his dad's office into a bedroom and a bathroom for Nick so that it was on the main floor. There was a lot of work to be done, but as they say, many hands make for light work. As soon as my husband was asked, he was right there with his whole job trailer, sort of put in charge of the porch.
It was amazing how much they accomplished in a day!




I wish I had more pictures of the finished product, but I don't. I wish I had taken pics inside of the bedroom and bathroom before and after, but I didn't. Just take my word for it that it turned out amazing! Gary was there so many nights after work helping out with everything that he could. He really wanted to make sure it was all done before Nick came home.
Only 7 weeks after his accident, Nick was able to come home. What an amazing and emotional moment that was! We are all SO glad that he is doing well and able to recuperate at home surrounded by his family and friends.

Gettin' my craft on!

So thanks to my cousin Brandi and her amazing talent, I was able to get this little kit with the wood and the vinyl to do a cool, double-sided Halloween/Thanksgiving craft. If you want or need vinyl, she can do it. Check out her wonderful stuff here! So this is what I started with....
I painted the whole thing a nice orange........
.....and then I wanted to do a crackle on the Thanks side with the gold over the orange, but it didn't work as well as I would have liked....but still turned out okay.
And this is the end result.......
Not too bad.....
And I LOVE the fact that it is multi-purpose! I have it up for a month or so with Halloween, then flip it for Thanksgiving. Genius! Thanks Bran!

Grace turns 9!

September 18th, 2010.....my second child turns 9! Wow, has it really been that long already?! I swear I'm not that old! Oh well....I guess we both are! That day was a beautiful day!! Much to my husbands dismay, I decided that we were going over to Jackson to go swimming and do the cake and ice cream thing. When we got over there though, there was a high school swim meet going on for another hour, so, we decided to go to Gary's job site and check out the house he's been working on for 10 months. It's huge! With amazing views! I put pics up a few posts ago if you want to check it out here. After that we headed down to one of the local parks.
Joe had fun trying to take Rascal, Geena's dog, for a walk.......but I'm pretty sure it was more of Rascal taking Joe for a walk!
Grandma J. putting the candles on the cakes.
Catching up with the fam.
Hanging out.......we had so much time to waste before we could head back over to the pool...and let's face it....that is what we all really wanted to do!
Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear GRA-ACE, Happy Birthday to you!
The birthday buddies being sung to.
Noah loves ducks.....so naturally he got to eat the ducky cupcake.
The inside of Grace's cake. Not too bad for my first time using the checkerboard cake pan!
Grace sure enjoyed it! So did I.....I liked the vanilla and chocolate fudge cake together...with a little ice cream on top!
Getting ready to open presents....Yeah!
Grace's friend gave her a cute little purse, a necklace and some lip gloss.
Another Pet Shop....but this one she can color and decorate.
Hahahahaha.....I just love the look on her face for this one! It really says it all! Who really likes to get underwear for their birthday?! =)
Noah with the little Chuck the Tonka Truck toys that we gave him. They are so cute. We gave him the farm set and a semi with a 4-wheeler.
Grace and her new Sunday shoes. She wears them all the time.....mostly because she LOVES to dress up and will wear a dress to school most days.
A new Polly Pocket to play with.....our neighbor, shown kinda below in the pic with Grace, is ALWAYS bringing over her Pollys to play with....so now Grace has at least one of her own to join in the mix.
I love this pic of the 3 girls really checking out what all came with that Polly. I think they are excited to get to play with it.....what do you think?
After the park, we went back over to the pool and ended up having to wait another hour while they cleaned things up after the swim meet. They told us to come back at 4, but it was 5 before they actually let us in......I wish they could have told us that.....we could have stayed at the park and let the kids play longer. Oh well, it was still fun.....I love coming over here to swim. It's such a family friendly place and it's so clean and just nice to go to. I really wish we had a place closer to us to go to that was more like this. You can see a panoramic tour of it here. We ended up running into a family from our ward, our friends the Jensen's who had also come over with their family to go swimming. So we had plenty of people to talk to. We were all excited to finally get into the pool. Sierra had fun with Noah.....if you remember reading my post about Rigby Lake, you'll remember that Noah absolutely LOVES the water!
Emma loves the water too.....but under her terms! If she's in control of herself in the water, for instance she can touch the bottom and "swim" on her own, she loves it. If you try to take her to deep water, or have her go down the kid slide and don't quite catch her before she goes under(hhm, hhm...her dad!)then she doesn't like it so much.
Grace inbetween her girlfriends waiting to go down the big slide.
Sierra taking Noah down the little slide....the little slide was pretty fun too.....you could go pretty quickly on it.
Hahaha.....me shooting out of the big slide! It just never gets old!
Grace hanging out under the waterfall with her friends.
The fam hanging out in the shallows. Right there every once in awhile it will bubble up from the bottom of the pool.....it's fun to sit in the bubbles!
We had a great time, but it was a long day! We didn't get home till about 9:30 that night...but it was all worth it. Everyone had a smile on their face....what could be better?!