Happy Birthday America

Haylie woke up on the 4th of July so excited to celebrate America's birthday. She couldn't wait for the cupcakes and the presents and the party. We had to explain to her what America's birthday entailed which actually ended up being pretty close to what she had in mind. We headed out to the park for a local, Independence day celebration and the kids loved getting their face painted and trying out new rides...

The ponies are a must of course...

they are actually one of James' most favorite things now...

Haylie was so brave on the bungee jump:

I had to beat Raider in my favorite carnival game. I gave him the prize though :)

The Saga Continues

3 down, 1 more to go... It has been so fun getting together with girlfriends to attend the midnight premiers of the Twilight movies. We ventured out again at midnight to catch Eclipse, the 3rd movie in the series, and it was more fun than ever. There is never a lack of drama when you have hundreds of women tired women and teenage girls in one small area. At one point, before the movie started, but after we had been sitting in our seats well over an hour or two, some of the girls in our group got up to go to the restroom. When some women saw the seats blank they started complaining to the usher that we were saving seats. We tried to explain our friends had been sitting there for hours and had just gone to the restroom - he said he would give them 5 minutes to return or he would take the seats. We had to text them to get out of the bathroom quick!!

Other than that it was pretty tame, until Taylor Lautner came on the screen, but that's a different story...

SO glad you could make it Bran!! Love you!



This picture is missing 3 of our friends who came late - Jaime, Danielle and Tina - missing from the picture but not forgotten!! :)

Silly Boys

I really like these pictures from Chuck E Cheese for some reason - I have a ton of them stuffed in drawers around the house. I especially like this one of my silly boys though!

Blog Book

I am really committed to the blog book now - my scrapbooking efforts have floundered (as my blogging efforts lately have as well). However, it takes less time to come in and bring the blog up to speed, so my current means of recording our day to day has to be the blog. Long ago Micah thoughtfully made a book out of the blog and then many people told me about Blurb.com where you can purchase a book of your blog. Going forward I will be buying blog books as it was a very time consuming and still pretty expensive process to make it on our own.

I just found this special offer that I thought I would share. I haven't done it yet for last year but am planning on it (Micah was about halfway through building our 2009 book but we are going to jump ship to the easier method!). If you go to this link, there is a coupon code for $39.95 off of a blog book, until August 2010. I started to create our book from last year and based on the number of pages from my 2009 blog posts - it looked like the cost would be about $50 - if you take away this discount that seems like a pretty amazing deal!!

For all those looking to create a blog book to preserve their memories in hard copy - hope this helps!!!

Not Too Old To Dance!

To celebrate Rebekah's birthday, some of our girlfriends got together and went out dancing. It's pretty fun to go out and pretend like you're young again for a little bit :) I think we held our own against all the 20 year olds out there. Actually, I was the oldest in our dancing group. All the other girls are in their 20's still (approaching 30), while I am nearly 33!!

My cute sis:

At dinner:

Jaime and I - Jaime has little Naomi in her tummy - hanging out with the big girls:

The birthday girl:

Sitting by the fire at the club:

The whole gang:

Zoo

A few pics from a recent trip to our local zoo with baby Addison and her mommy Rebekah:

A Hard Knock Life

Lots of pictures in this post because I am such a proud Mommy. Haylie had her first big dance recital this year and all of her biggest fans came out to watch her. We had almost front row seats and were just bursting with excitement to watch her cute little performance. Funny enough, Haylie was an orphan and danced to the song "Hard Knock Life" from Annie. She was so beautiful and did such a wonderful job. I am the luckiest Mommy to get to watch her do things like this - I never want to miss any special moment in her precious life.

Here's James - a little bored watching all the other dancers before Haylie:

There's my cute little mad girl - this was part of their routine and she made the cutest little mad face:

Her cousins were very proud of her too:

Grandma and Grandpa couldn't miss Haylie's big day, even though Grandma had been to Haylie's dance class several times and watched her practice her routine:

Momo was proud of Haylie too:

Love you Haylie-girl!!

I feel like the luckiest Mom to have such a wonderful daughter:

The night before her recital, just after dress-rehearsal I took Haylie to a nature area for a few pics in her costume. After about 20 min and 100 or so pictures I had so many good ones. She is such a great little model: