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')