Rachel's Birthday

Rachel's birthday was right in the middle of a crazy week, but we managed to squeeze it in one night after a soccer game. She chose an ice cream cake to celebrate with and since I didn't want to mess with making one this year we bought a blizzard cake from Dairy Queen.

It was a Nutter Butter blizzard cake with fudge and peanut butter layered in the middle. Yummy, yummy! (It's making my mouth water just typing it in.)

Great big smile. You can tell she's ready to chow down on her cake. ;-)

This is her friend, Hannah, from school. When Rachel started school last year she was so excited to learn she wasn't the shortest kid in her class. :-D I guess they decided to stick together because they've been great friends ever since!

Big, deep breath, and here we go...

Still going...

Still going...

She's out of air. (I think she started laughing at this point.)

The second breath did the trick. She finally got all the candles out.

For her present this year I checked her out of school a couple hours early and we went shopping at the mall. We bought her a necklace and she got to choose two charms that she could wear with it. She chose a kitty cat charm, and a charm of the Salt Lake Temple. She lucked out too, the JCPenney salon did a free glitter strand in her hair. We also did some window shopping and bought some dresses for all the girls, and some smaller trinkets. On the way home we stopped at Dairy Queen and had blizzards. It really was a lot of fun and she loved missing school to go shopping!



Rachel is growing so fast! I can't believe she is 10 already. I'm trying to brace myself because I know the next few years are going to bring about some major changes. She really likes to help me in the kitchen and has helped enough that there are a few meals she can actually fix with very minimal to no help at all. Its been great to be able to get her help on the evenings when things are especially crazy, and the fact that she likes it makes it even better. Rachel tries to be a good helper at home too. She often "forgets" to completely finish a task before getting distracted, but I am thankful for the help she gives, and for her willingness to help. She is getting old enough to tend the kids for short periods of time too. She loves this because she gets to be in charge for a time. ;-) We are all so thankful to have her in our family. She is a great help and is full of smiles. Thanks so much for being you Rachel!

2 Years
(Our digital pictures don't start till she is two and if I waited till I could find her baby pictures and get them on the computer then this post might not ever get finished. So we'll start from what we have on the computer already. :-)

3 Years

4 Years

5 Years

6 Years

7 Years

8 Years

9 Years

Now, 10 years

Summer Salsa

Once again we planted too many tomato plants over the summer and wound up with oodles of tomatoes. The plus side is that we got lots of salsa. Look at these beautiful tomatoes. I love having a garden!

All of these were from one picking in our garden.

Caleb once again proved his amazing culinary skills. He basically did everything for canning the salsa this time around. Literally, I think I helped cut the tomatoes.

Look at all that yummy goodness! Caleb also tried a black bean salsa this year (the small pot in the back). We had to buy a pressure canner because of the beans but it was well worth it. It turned out delicious. He also added cilantro to the big batch this year. (Not my favorite, but still really good.)

Most of the peppers in the salsa came from our garden too.

Look at that stack of canned jars!!! If I remember correctly we canned 1 flat of tomatoes, 1 flat of sweet chili sauce (Thanks Alexis!), 1 flat of tomato soup, and 3 flats of salsa. He was one busy man! We posted the recipes we used last year (2010) on our blog then, but I think Caleb made a few tweaks this year. When he has a minute to tell me what he tried differently I'll post the recipes from this time around. Thanks again Caleb!

Kaylee's Birthday

Kaylee's birthday was in June, but with the chaos of a new baby, her baptism, and the baby blessing I totally spaced blogging it. So, better late than never...

Her choice of cake this year was New York Cheesecake with strawberry or chocolate sauce. Yum! It's a favorite at our house. I loved that choice too because it meant no stress over decorating a cake this time. :-)

Here comes the cake... Can't you hear everyone singing "Happy Birthday?" The friend sitting beside Kaylee is Megan, who lives just down the street. She came over to celebrate Kaylee's special day with homemade pizza, and a late night with a movie.

Kaylee managed to blow out all the candles with one breath... Her wish will come true.

She lucked out with jewelry. This gift was jewelry from Rachel. Then, Aunt Michele made Kaylee some baptism jewelry and she also got some from Granny. She got to wear one at her baptism, and one the next day for Brooklyn's blessing. Lucky girl!

Ah yes, the new favorite toy at our house, Squinkies.

This was the big present from Mom and Dad...

Rollerblades! (Yes, the presents are starting to get more expensive. :-)

Yep, it's harder than it looks. She tried them out almost every day for the next several weeks and got the hang of them faster than I thought she would. Although we did have a few falls. Thank goodness for protective gear.




I still can't believe she turned 8 this year. Our kids are growing so fast! Kaylee loves to read, draw, and craft, and run. She is a great help with the little kids and babies and they absolutely love her! Sara almost always wants Kaylee to help her with things. Even instead of Mom sometimes. Kaylee likes to help fix dinners and organize things around the house. She beats all of us with memory match games and is awesome with math. We are so lucky to have her in our family. She really is such a blessing! We love you Kaylee! Keep being awesome!

birth

1 year

2 years

3 years

4 years

5 years

6 years

7 years

Now, 8 years old!

Candace's Baby Shower

In the middle of September we got together with some of my dad's side of the family for a baby shower for my cousin, Candace. It was also a birthday party for her son Alex. It is always fun to get together with family and of course the kids loved it!

Here's a shot of the hostess (my cousin Jayme) and her husband, Brandon, working hard to make sure everyone has a good time.

Candace got some great things to help get her started on the necessities of a baby girl. This is one of gifts we got her. It's a diaper changing pad with pockets for wipes and diapers attached off the sides. I absolutely love the one I have. ;-)

More gifts...

Here's Jayme, hard at work again, making preparations for one of the games.

The most hilarious game to me was mashed candy in a diaper and we all had to try and guess what kind of candy was in each diaper. Talk about black mail pictures, ha. Just kidding.

In this picture we have my Grandma Atwood (aka Grams), Brandon (with the compromising diaper :-), and my Aunt Landra.

I thought it was hilarious that throughout the course of the game Aunt Landra wound up with a huge pile of "messy" diapers in front of her.

Here's my cousin Tennasyn's boyfriend (now fiance), Josh taking a whiff from a diaper.

Looks like Candace is thinking about how many of these she's going to have to change in the next year. Jk, but Alex sure looks like he's enjoying the spectacle.

Here's Tennasyn holding our sweet little baby. Brooklyn was two and a half months in this picture. So cute!

Now it's Alex's turn to open presents.

He's about Bryant's age so we figured we couldn't go wrong with Star Wars Legos...

We were right! He went right to work putting it together.

Here's Brooklyn and Landra. I of course "had" to convince her to hold the baby so I could take pictures. ;-)

While the adults had fun with the baby shower the kids had a lot of fun playing...
Rachel and Kaylee blew up the punch balls in their goody bags and went straight to it.

Bryant of course found a video game and was very excited that there was another boy there to play with him.

I finally convinced him and Carson (Jayme's step son) to take a break from the video game long enough for a great picture. Look at the joy in those faces!

Sara was so excited to find a pair of wings at their house. "She ran up to show me, as soon as she found them and kept them on till we had to put her coat on to leave.
There's a story that goes with this, which makes it all the more fun when you understand the premise behind it. To tell it best I will quote a journal entry from August 7th,

"Yesterday while we were at IKEA eating dinner Sara and I had quite the funny conversation… She was showing me a picture of Tinker Bell that Kaylee colored for her, and put cool designs on the wings. The conversation went something like this: “I don’t have wings,” Sara said after getting a disappointed look on her face. After agreeing with her she stood in her seat and started flapping her arms saying, “See I can’t fly.” Trying not to laugh too hard I asked her, “Do you think you can get wings?” “Yep,” she said, “And Book-a-lynn (as she pronounces it) too.” “Oh,” I said,”You’ll both get wings?” She quickly answered, “Yep, and you and Dad too, and they go on my back.” I chuckled and asked, “Do you think you can fly when you get wings?” She of course got very animated and said, “Yep, and pixie dust… wings and pixie dust to fly like this,” as she stood and flapped her arms again. Caleb got to the table with the food then and she moved on to eating her food, but I couldn’t stop laughing for a few minutes she was so funny."

So, here's Sara with her wings. :-D

After all the guests left we stuck around for a little bit to visit with all the relatives there. Grams graciously held Brooklyn while I gathered the kids and stuff to head home. I don't know if you can tell in this picture or not but Brooklyn was screaming loudly to make sure everyone knew she was tired and ready to go home. Sorry Grams. ;-)