Happy Birthday Samuel!

Today is Sam's 10th birthday! It is hard to believe that 10 years have passed already.

He spent the morning going to church and participating in the annual primary program. He did a good job with his speaking part, and had to tell me that not only did he sing the required primary songs, but he sang all the hymns as well.

I couldn't decide what kind of cake to make for awhile, and Sundays generally don't leave a lot of time for leisure baking, so I came up with a Jack Skellington face. Sam really liked the Haunted House ride at Disneyland last week, and they had it all changed to "The Nightmare Before Christmas" story for Halloween, so the cake was a good fit for him.

He was happy with his presents: a pair of binoculors so he doesn't have to use Dad's anymore, a battling tops game (that they played with for literally hours this afternoon) and an airsoft rifle.

California Dreamin'

You guessed it! We just spent some quality time at Disneyland!

Since we had some days off of school, California was calling. We didn't stress much, and just had a relaxing time at Disneyland and California Adventure. Below are some random photos of the trip.
Aaron and I spent most of our time with the boys. Shenna and Kiera had a fun time running around together. Cell phones are a nice invention.


And on another note, just notice how tall the daughters are in this picture. Another year, and I think I might be feeling short!

Is there a 15 year old in the house?!?

For quite a few years now, I've been making really cool birthday cakes for the kids on their birthdays. They get to pick the flavor, but I get to pick the design. Because of that fact, I think I have some explaining to do about the next couple of pictures.

We've known since mid-summer that this year Shenna's birthday would be a bit abnormal. The biggest contributor to that was Shenna herself. She is a freshman. She is becoming involved with extracurricular things at school. She is in marching band. She loves marching band. Marching band had a big competition on her birthday.

So big, in fact, that she would be gone from early morning until everyone else was in bed that night.

On her birthday.

We decided that the best thing to do would be to celebrate at breakfast.

Problem solved.

Until the next contributing factors.

Turns out our ward was planning their annual father/son campout for that weekend. Aaron and the boys would be sleeping out under the stars hours away. They wouldn't make it home for birthday breakfast.

Okay, we will just have a girls party then. Shenna, Kiera and Mom. What fun!

The stars were not aligned. Kiera's friend invited her to a slumber party? Could she go? By now, Shenna could've cared less.

To ease the pain of father and sibling abandonment on her birthday, I took her out to her favorite restaurant for dinner and we watched a movie. In the morning, she ate her favorite breakfast and opened presents.

Off she went to band competition hours away. She had fun. All the band sang to her.

At home, I figured that the birthday was done.

Until 8 pm when I realized she may be 15, but she could still want candles and singing.

Quick looks in the cupboard and I whipped up some cupcakes, frosting and only 8 candles! Where are all the birthday candles?!

As I left to pick her up from the high school, I yelled to anyone who could hear, "hey, arrange those cupcakes into a fifteen!"

So glad we did....her first question when getting into the car was, "Are you guys going to sing to me and eat cake when I get home?"

She didn't seem to care that they were just cupcakes arranged in the shape of a 15. Nor did she notice that she only blew out 8 candles....7 purple and 1 yellow.

What did matter was that we all stayed up way past our normal bedtimes to sing and eat chocolate with her to celebrate her day......Happy 15th Shenna!

Mr. Toothless!

Enoch was so excited when he discovered that he had a loose tooth. He IS in second grade you know. Some of those kids have lost their two front teeth by now. He finally got brave enough to let Aaron pull it out and this smile is the result. Isn't he cute?