Back to School

Yay! My favorite time of year has arrived: the start of a new School  year! I wish I could be one of those Moms who love summer vacation. I don't! I like schedules and home work and regular routines (not to mention losing two of my four for a good portion of the day - unfortunately its the easy ones I lose).

The girls were so excited to chose their outfits and both wanted curly hair. Aliya loves curly hair, Tae not so much but she wanted it for the first day. We did learn that curly hair does not last long when its 110 degrees and 100% humidity. Yet another  lesson learned! Heres to a great school year!

 I cant believe my little Aliya is now in 1st grade. She's got a great teacher and a terrific class. She picked her outfit out all by herself. I tried to encourage something that matched, she thought this did, end of discussion. The 'arm warmers' are her favorite. They belong with a different shirt but she was most excited about this shirt with the gloves. I get a kick out of the clothing combinations she puts together. I swear it was only last year Tae stopped asking me to pick out her clothes. Aliya has NEVER let me pick them out. She has a style all on her own and she rocks it!

 Sassy-Miss-Sassy-Pants. Girl is a bundle of energy wrapped up in a lot of hair!

 Wow, a 4th grader. I cant believe it! She is so big and grows up before my eyes everyday. I love her fun, quirky personality. She too has an awesome teacher and has a couple good friends in her class. She's gotten to the age where she's all about what she wears. Most of the time I like the stuff she picks out ... her shoes are a different story. I'll have to find some pics of those!

I love this picture ... her body language says it all: "Mom, are we done yet?". Luckily she is a good sport and plays along with my million picture taking. I love you girls and cant believe you are both getting so old. I miss you while you are away but I love hearing about all the fun things you do each day. Thanks for being the best daughters a mom and dad could ever ask for!

Taeya's 9th Birthday Party

Taeya turned 9 while we were in Utah so her friend party was delayed by almost 2 months. When we finally were able to have the party, she had the details ALL planned out. She wanted to tie dye underwear ... luckily I couldn't find enough plain white underroos for 8 girls so we did tank tops and socks. I was surprised how well it went. I expected to have dye everywhere. Luckily we only had one spill and it was from my birthday girl so I couldn't get too mad. I sent the finished projects home with the girls to sit over night and then be washed later. Our stuff turned out great, I hope the others did too.

 Taeya then wanted to do friendship bracelets and boondoggle. For their party favors she wanted each girl to get her own box to hold all the necessary supplies. She had so much fun picking out the stuff to go in them and organizing it so each girl got the same amount of each color. Tae is definitely my child that wants to make everything fair. We decorated the boxes at first then after the tie dye project Tae set about teaching them all how to do it. I don't think all the girls got a good lesson but hopefully enough to continue on with it.

 Aliya was all about tie dye that day. She  was showing off her shirt from horse camp. I love this picture of her carrying all the bags. She thought she was so cool being at a 4th grade party. Not sure the older girls liked it but tough, she gets to be there!

 This is Emma from Tae's school class. She was pulled out half way through the school year to be home taught and the girls had recently reconnected at Girl Scout day camp.

 Tae and her BFF Kaylee. They have so much fun together. I love it when Kaylee comes over. The girls just disappear and have a blast!

 Tae and Abby ... they are in Husky Paws together this year so will get to do a lot of fun service projects together.

 Tae and Paulina, her school BFF

 Tae and Ashlan, friends from school!

 Thanks girls for making Tae's 9th b-day great!

CRAZY, crazy girls!

Cousins!

Our favorite part of our trips back to Utah is to spend time with family. My kids love all their Grandparents, Great Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins. On my side they have a whole slew of cousins ... I think the grand total is 20. Its always loud and chaotic when we are together but a ton of fun too! Tony's side finally has its first non-Tami&Tony grandchild - YAY! I'm glad that Reese and Kai are only 14 months apart. I feared that all my kids would be in school before the other grandkids were born. 

In typical Tami fashion I missed out on taking pictures at many fun events. No pictures of Lagoon or lunch with Grandma Debbie, no pictures at the dump with Grandpa Thompson (how sad is it that Blakes most vivid, and favorite, memory is when his Grandpa took him out to the dump to watch the Garbage trucks. Stinky, dirty and yucky but he loved it), no pictures of Uncle Jeff and Aunt Aurora's big preception (my kids looked darling and the event was AMAZING), no pictures playing at the park with second cousins, no pictures of taking Papa Bruce on a 4-wheel ride, no pictures of Grandma Closes back to school breakfast (held almost 2 months early just so my kids could be there) ... and that's just to name a few.  Ugh, when I think about all the fun things my kids did that I didn't preserve with pictures it makes me sad. Heaven knows I forget waaayyy too fast!

I do have a couple random pictures.  Here is Aliya with her favorite cousin Tanaeya. They are only four months apart and get along really well! I wish they lived closer. My oldest 3 each have a cousin from this family with in 6 months ... old Kai Kai threw us off schedule so he and their youngest are almost a year apart.

 L-R: Hannah, Cheltzie, Blake, Tanaeya, MaKelle, Taeya, Aliya, Brittlyn, Keon, Jaden, Jessie and Abby (Landon and Kai were there somewhere). We were missing Colton, Matthew, Tanner, Parker, Evan & Mason. Its crazy to me that the dark haired kids in the picture are mine. I always think they have light hair until I get around all these light blondes!

One night Nuncle Matt grabbed the kids and took them shopping. He SPOILS my kids rotten. He let them each pick out something. Blakers immediately knew he wanted a garbage truck, Kai picked a dump truck, Tae a walking cat and I don't remember what Aliya got ... make up I think. Blake keeps asking when Nuncle Matt is going to come visit us so he can go shopping again with him. Looks like he's got his favorite uncle picked out! Almost as exciting as getting to go shopping, the picked out fireworks. My kids LOVED it! Had I known that was the ONLY fireworks my kids would see in 2011 I would have taken pictures (due to our drought Texas banned all fireworks ... it was a quiet 4th of July).

Thanks everyone for making our trip so much fun!

Graduates!

One of the girls favorite part of being in Utah was getting to go to a horse camp. For 3 days they got to spend 4 hours doing nothing but horse stuff ... plus a few arts and crafts. Even more exciting they got to spend this time with their Grandma Nette. 

The first day of camp they got to make these shirts. My girls have been asking forever to tie dye shirts!

The entire crew of horse camp kids. It was fun because I knew a couple of these kids parents ... it also made me feel old!

 On the last day they played kickball where the bases were little pools. Aliya was diving in and got soaked!

 Tae was a little more timid but had a great time as well!

Nothing like relaxing and eating some watermelon! Tae was in heaven just chillin'!

At the end they were given out awards. This is how Aliya chose to accept her award ... you cant say anything about her not having her own sense of style!

Thanks so much Grandma Nette for putting up with them. They absolutely loved it! Thanks as well for the pictures. I did a pretty poor job of taking pictures this trip. There were so many fun things we did that I didn't get pictures of ... ugh!

Grandpa's farm

After we went to Park City Tony thought we should stop in and see his Grandpa Dickamore. Blake was so excited, he loves Great Grandpa Dickamore. Grandpa has all sorts of old farming equipment on his property and Blake loved each piece. The other highlight was getting to go help water the cows.

 Okay, so by help I meant Daddy doing all the work while the rest of us just sat and watched.

 One of Grandpa's bulls thought about eating our car ... he was HUGE!

 Always the poser! She is the first kid to smile when she sees a camera.

 When we got there Grandpa had a little fire truck he'd been saving for Blake. Blakers LOVED it. He had more fun playing with that!

Aliya was all about trying to pet a cow. She was not at all afraid of getting near them. I on the other hand wouldn't get within spitting distance of those things ... they are huge!

Park City

 One afternoon we wanted to take the kiddos up to Park City to let them see snow (yup, middle of June and they still had snow ... makes me even more excited that we don't live there) and to ride the Alpine Slide. We figured it'd be a good chance to let our kids try something new. They loved it! As soon as we pulled into where the Alpine Slide is, Tony saw the snow mound and asked the kiddos what they thought it was. Someone replied 'sand' and this dumb girl said 'salt'. Yup, should have known better! 

 Our little guys had never had the experience of blowing dandelions. Kai though it was a sucker and got a mouthful. Poor kid kept sticking out his tongue and would say "yucky".

 Blake is a dandelion blowing champ!

 Finally Daddy taught Kai and he liked it ... who knew blowing dandelions required such determination!

 This is what little boys are supposed to do. Hike mountains and wander . Blake loved getting to run wild! In the distance you can see the snow. The kids warily walked towards it and touched it. I had just said "Lets not get wet, we've got a long day ahead of us". When I look up to see my hubby walking to the top of the mound carrying Kai. So, all the others quickly follow!

 Once at the top, Tony instigated a snow ball fight. He didn't realize that they'd throw them when they are two feet from each other and that at this point, its not soft, fluffy snow but  hard, crunchy ice. Aliya immediately got an ice ball to the eye ... Thanks for the good aim Tae!

 Blakers of course loved it! When it was time to go, again I had just barely said "Come down carefully so you don't get wet" when Tony tells the kids to ski down on their feet. Um dear, our kids can ski! Tae immediately does it and ends up on her butt halfway down. Unfortunately she continued to slide down into the mud.

 Blakers sees Tae start off and immediately joins in. He too slides into the mud! Aliya fared a little better but not much!

 Tony was the only one to successfully navigate the skiing down. Once he hit the grass I thought he and Kai were goners for sure but he saved them both!

 Ah, my cute family!

 This is why I love little boys! He can pee anywhere (and typically does). Its so much more convenient! And can I tell you how much I love his skinny little bum!

 What a good daddy Tony is!

 We made it to the Alpine Slide and we're at the top ready to go! The kids were super excited!

Kai was a little confused how to go down! We had a ton of fun and cant wait to go again. Mountains are definitely something we miss here in Texas.

Sand Dunes

 One day on our Utah trip, we went out to the Sand Dunes with Tony's cousin Amy and her family. It was a BLAST. I'd never been there before, and was a little worried beforehand, but loved it. It was the perfect place to let the kids get some freedom and experience with the 4-wheelers.

Tony is by far the biggest kid I have. He's always the first one "testing" the gear to make sure its safe! (No, he's not that big, the 4-wheeler is just that little)

 Blake was a 4-wheelin machine. He loved the little 4 wheelers and LOVED getting to drive it all by himself. He was probably on that thing a good 3 hours straight. It was so cute to see this tiny body with a huge helmet head bobbin through the sand. At one point he decided to go off a little jump, he ended up crashing and got a big ole chunk of sand stuck to his helmet. That thing stayed on the entire trip!

 Kai had fun getting to ride. His favorite part was playing cars/trucks in the sand. Its like one ginormous sandbox!

 Aliya was definitely our hot dogger. Needless to say she got put in time out a couple times for driving reckless. She has no fear and a love of speed!

 Jed and Amy have this awesome vehicle they've tripped out so 2 people can ride in front and 2 kids can fit in back. Kai loved it ... once his helmet was on he looked like a bobble head doll back there! The thing goes super fast. Tae thought she was pretty cool cuz she got to drive it!

Here come Aliya and Blake! It was an awesome day with even better friends. Thanks for letting my kids experience "the coolest thing ever"!