forgotten camera

in the last week i've forgotten to bring my camera to

• Becca and Cleave's wedding,
• that means i never got pictures of rayna in her pretty dress before it ripped
• it also means i don't have any good pictures of my family dressed up together at the temple
• the last day we saw our Chicago cousins, who were great fun to play with at Grandma's house,
• 2 class christmas parties (including having rayna and malachi partying with afton's class)
• a great park/playground day, complete with a giant leaf pile and friends and Seattle cousins
• dinner with the Seattle cousins
• Christmas caroling

i really need to keep better track of the fun things we do! i'm pretty sure for me that means i need to take more pictures, cause that's what i can remember to blog about...

camping

so a very long time ago (october 12-13) we went to a ward campout with some of our friends from church (there were actually quite a few people there, i was impressed with how many showed up! though i didn't get pictures of everyone). we were fortunate in our ability to take off pretty early friday afternoon right after school, so we were the first people there --you know, the ones that get to help everyone else set up ;)

clearly we're prepared to have a great time! (ps, note all that sand--there's a sand volleyball court right by the campsite, so the kids played in the sand for about 28 hours that evening)

officially dinner was bring your own, but it was really more of a pot-luck. we were happy to share our soup, and rayna (aka crusher--as in, bone crusher) was happy to share this joint of venison! (she LOVES 'chicken bones') and another shout-out to bro. kim palmer, the great hunter, who regularly supplies church events with meat!

roasting marshmallows



afton and her friend found this little fellow, and let him climb all over them. it also made a great hair accessory:

ps, none of the boys would play with it! but afton and her friend amelia (below) had it crawling all over them!

and i just love this one, why the boys are showing off their abs is anyone's guess!

happy camping! i wish we could go more often, we always have such a fun time, and we love having so many friends with us too!
ps, i think there are more pictures on FB, if anyone didn't see enough here :)

odds and ends

green masks--baby soft skin ;)

Rayna's class field trip to the arboretum/pumpkin patch

one day when i was out, one of the children captured a photo of my living room... no it's not always that bad, yes that is a mattrress in the stairwell... see why i don't often go running when my children are awake? (paul was home, but he was busy fixing the bed the mattress came from)

rayna and malachi could easily fit into this box, thanks again maggie! we did fold the lid down too, but they you couldn't see that they were in it

afton had 'plant a pretty pansy' day at her school --i love this school! they have so many fun things for the children, and everything is geared around learning.

rayna with her class, it was awards day, so i was there to watch her get her second 6-weeks perfect attendance award. she's the only blonde in her class ;)

one random day, blowing bubbles --just cause they're cute :)

and i think i may have posted this one before, but it still makes me smile, cause really, why would anyone sit on just one chair when he could sit on a tower of 6?! and just sit up there waiting for something to happen... cause it's not easy to get down once you've climbed in...

halloween

given my history, i know no one expects me to post pictures on time, but the really sad part is, i only have a picture of rayna in her halloween costume :( i'm horrible. that being said, i know my mom got some pictures of the other kids on her camera, so i'll get them relatively soon after she uploads them :). malachi went with the theme and was christopher robin, afton did her own thing and was a jelly fish. her own idea i feel obligated to point out, though i did make up the costume relatively on my own... maybe that was a good thing...

we did do a good job with our halloween fingernails though --aren't we cute!

afton had a ghost on one hand, and a mummy on the other



rayna had a pumpkin and a bat, the bat actually looked pretty good up close, it was just so tiny!



and i had a monster and spooky eyes :) and i did eventually clean off the part all over my fingers, evidentally i didn't try to take a picture after that though, just the messy beginning on, oh well!

on a slightly related note, we also had crazy hair day at both girls schools last month. we didn't get too crazy, though we had fun with coloring their hair:



i think rayna's looked pretty amazing, she had probably 20 different colors of curls, and that was enough to call her's crazy!



naturally if the girls are getting something crazy and fun, malachi should have it too! he picked orange--his current favorite color



i didn't get a picture of afton's before school, she was literally running ou tot he bus that day with her shoes in hand because we weren't quite ready yet, but it was pretty cute i think, 2 hair-'bows' and some stripes. only the brightest colors showed up in her hair because it's so much darker than raynas, but it was still lots of fun!

i sure love the girls' teachers and schools, they do lots of fun things, and i think they're learning a lot too :) happy october!

some more pictures

clearly i can only post things if i have pictures, so here are some more (from september):


afton's 'all about me' project for school, if you want to see it bigger, you can click on the picture



rayna cheesing it up for a quick photo before school



i think this was picture day at school, but here's a more normal smile, so sweet!



malachi wanted his picture taken too, gotta love that face! and yes, we do occasionally wash it ;)

  

i've mentioned before how much he loves the kitchen and cooking, he also loves bowls...

  

and now it's nap time-- g'night!

kung fu party

yeah, i know, i'm late for halloween... but i don't have those pictures yet, so here's a kung fu party we had back at the beginnning of september :). btw, my kids all love kung fu panda, and whenever they get to watch it together, something like this in fairly inevitable... but i still think it's pretty cute, so i still take pictures. especially because this time malachi was wearing his blanket as a toga... and that's just fun!
so some pictures:


!

he was actually doing a bunch of 'moves' but it's hard to tell in any of the pictures because the blanket is always in the way, but i love his smile just the same :)



at peace with the universe



high kick! (and she didn't even fall over!)

and for the fun of it, afton's been practicing with some of the editing software on the photo-program, and this is what she came up with for her picture: 



(just a little hard to see, but it's got at least 4 or 5 different effects so it's 'pretty cool')

afton's 6

i couldn't believe it when afton had her 6th birthday! i understood that it was coming, but i couldn't believe it just the same! i felt old, and she looked so big... weird... she had a great day, malt-o-meal for breakfast (yuck, but it's what she likes) and i had lunch with her at school, and we brought cookies to share with the kids at recess afterwards. her teacher makes a big deal out of birthday's for the kids in her class, so she had a crown, a certificate, a new pencil and some other little things, but afton loved the attention. i also picked her up from school to cut down on the hour bus-ride, and grandma and grandpa f came for pasta and meatballs, presents and cake. so i think that was about the best she could have hoped for ;).

afton's new 'reading nest' chair, and holding some of her school things



one of her birthday gifts, a croched my little pony, (unfortunately for my kids, my nerdiness comes through for their birthdays) it makes a nice sleeping-companion



maybe, just maybe the pez isn't the best present in the world, but it's close, and it's the best shot i have of afton's face

she also got some new clothes, some toys (polly pocket, barbie, puzzle-books, legos, etc), and her chair, seemed like a pretty good haul.

she requested an ice cream cake, and i didn't get any pictures of it except this one, but it was cute and very very tasty!

evidentally i also didn't get any pictures of her shirt, it's cute too,

reading 'birthday girl' in different color letters and sparkles

september pictures and update

it seemed like september flew past! i haven't even done a post about afton's birthday (though i do have pictures, so i guess these posts are just in the wrong order)... but here's some of the memories we captured from september:



rayna and malachi being cute... i have lots of pics of these two clowns!



paul took pictures of the kids sleeping one night, they sure are sweet when they're asleep!



i shouldn't have cropped this picture, you should see all of rayna's 'most important things' that sleep on her bed with her! it's phenomonal... and a real pain when we need to wash the sheets ;)



rayna and malachi playing at the playground one day before rayna's school started



all dressed up for hispanic day at school, ironically, she's the ONLY white kid in her class... and she was one of only a small handful of kids that dressed up... admittedly, we don't have the best costume, but it's adorable and we tried :)



how do you play trucks in the house? with beans of course! chi originally dumped the last of the beans out in the living room one day, but i thought limiting them to a cookie sheet was a better idea, turned out to be a great activity that kept the kids busy for the better part of a week!



this one is from a school project afton did, an 'all about me' poster that included a lot of her favorites, instead of just putting pictures of all her favorite foods, we managed to scrape them all out of the fridge on leftover night once, and she was in alt! sweet potatoes, tomatoes, meatballs, and apple juice!

it's been a little bit of a struggle for us to get back to a regular functioning schedule with school and everything, though we hit a rhythm pretty easily... there's just too many things that weren't getting done to my satisfaction *chores* but i think we're slowly working around to a better balance, despite some of pauls schedules and my projects and afton's homework...

in quick re-cap, paul's working like a crazy man finishing up all his application stuff for his internship, there are 28 sites he's applying for, so we can say we will definately live somewhere in the US next year, but that's about all we can narrow it down to (if anyone interested in knowing more about the sites, send paul or me an email or give us a call, and we'll tell you about the possibilities in your neck of the woods ;)

i'd been teaching piano lessons, but my piano broke and is not repairable so that's kind of on hold and i'm getting ready to run a half-marathon... i'm actually really proud of myself not just for running it, but for wanting to!

afton's reading like crazy, which i love!--i have a teacher-conference next week to see just what she's up to in school. she had the ITBS (i think) testing last week to see what grade-level she's currently working at, though i don't know when we get those results. she loves riding the bus to and from school, though she doesn't get home til 4, so it's a long day for us all. she loves her teacher and science class, but isn't so excited about spelling (who can blame her?!)

rayna's really sweet and happy unless she's tired. she LOVES her school teacher too, and frequently plays school with malachi. she now knows all her letters including most o fthe lower case ones. she's happiest playing by herself on her bed (did you see the note about all the toys up there? it's totally worth the pain of sheet-changing because she loves it so much!)

malachi's 2. enough said, right? very, very 2. he alternates back and forth from devil-child to sweetheart faster than anyone else i've ever met (or so it seems). he loves 'helping' in the kitchen, as long as it's doing what he wants to do. his favorite toy is an old frying pan i gave him when i got a new one for my birthday. and his favorite place to stand is in front of the open fridge door. such a boy ;).

first day of school

again, it just occurred to me that i never posted first day of school photos! i put them on facebook, so i imagine most of you have seen them, but for the rest of our adoring fans, here's to the first day of school!

afton, kindergarten, and full of spunk ;)



and the backpack shot



i wouldn't let her ride the bus on the first day of school... i'm old fashioned that way, but this is the second day, and she's been doing great ever since, though the ride home is L--O--N--G!!!



and rayna's first day of preK, she goes afternoons, so she wasn't quite ready yet when afton left to pose together.



and her backpack shot, she's such a sweet girl! love this one :)



and i have to include this one, because it always makes me laugh! i have no idea what she was doing or saying, but i love it just the same!



and one more, with malachi who had his backpack all ready to go, and was very upset when he realized he still had to come home with mom and take a nap.



and one of rayna at school with her new teacher in the background...

Rayna wasn't too sure she wanted to stay at school, and she still regularly insists that three hours is a LONG time to be away from home, she'd rather watch a show while malachi naps, but she loves it just the same. she comes home almost every day and proudly announces that she's green or purple (they use a color system for behavor, green is where you start and you can go down to yellow or red, but if you have an exceptional day you can go up to purple) and can sometimes talk for an hour about all the fun things they did that day. i think she'll get used to it soon.
Afton started out from day one excited for school, and it's only gotten better! she has an AMAZING teacher that i already love, and she's pushing at all her boundaries in reading and math! (though her favorite is science). i'm really excited for both girls this year, i think having a great teacher is the key to making great students, so my girls are in good hands.