Elle's Birthday

Elle officially turned 1 on Thursday (the 17th). We ended up celebrating twice. Since we were going to be gone to Colorado on her birthday and Grandma and Grandpa didn't want to miss out.


My mom has a tradition of making a blanket for the babies in our family for their first birthday. Elle's turned out super cute!

On Thursday we went out for pizza ( one of Elle's favorites) and then went back to the hotel for birthday cupcakes.

Elle's first year seems to have gone by SO fast. She is such a cute girl. Oh, and for the record she officially started walking before she turned 1. She's been trying for a while now, but is a little chicken. On Tuesday she just kind of started walking everywhere. Especially to Grandpa. So we are counting it as walking before her first birthday. After all she was only 11 months and 29 days.


Happy Birthday Little One....here's some pictures of the 1st year of in the book of Elle...

Beck's 2nd Birthday

Beck turned two on May 8th. He's our lucky guy that will always have a birthday on Mother's Day weekend or there abouts. (Elle's will always coincide with Father's Day, go figure). We took him and the kiddos to Chuck E Cheese on Friday. Surprisingly enough he wasn't all that spooked by the Cheese. Most kids are terrified.



On his actual birthday (saturday) we had the traditional birthday pancakes. We kept calling them number two pancakes, but Cambelle thought it sounded gross. (She's seven, can you tell).


Later that day we opened presents and had a little family party with our family here in the house. You can see my poor dads legs in the background. He pulled his back doing yardwork that afternoon, poor guy.




On Sunday (mothers day) we had some extended family over for some cake and a little mothers day celebration too. Beck is REALLY into "nandy" (candy). So I decided to make his a candy cake. I went all out and he absolutely loved it. The suckers on the top were so heavy they actually made the cake start to lean and it just about fell over. Ha!

April Fools!

I love and hate April Fool's Day. I love to play the jokes and tricks on other people, but hate being the one to be duped. This year I got Cambelle. I told her I had made her a really special breakfast. She was so excited. I brought over her plate and drink and set them in front of her. When she opened her eyes to see this she was like " umm ... thanks?" " Mom, this is dinner."

I called out "April Fools" and she giggled and thought it was funny. It gets even better. She grabs a spoon to actually eat her dinner/breakfast. The food is not what it appears to be. The "veggies" are made from tootsie rolls that I shaped to look like real peas, carrots and corn. And the fish sticks are vanilla wafer cookies covered in peanut butter and dipped in crushed corn flakes. Her drink of Kool-aid was actually Jell-o too. When she popped a spoonful of "veggies" in her mouth and the taste was completely off she spit them all back out onto her plate and yelled " Mom what is this?" Beck scoops up his "veggies" and immediately shouts out "Nandy" (his word for candy). She hurried and grabbed the "fish stick" and bit in and couldn't stop laughing when she figured out that her breakfast was all messed up and that she was getting cookies, candy and jello for breakfast.

I think Becks confused face when I gave hime dinner for breakfast is my favorite. Even a 2 year old knows this is not breakfast food.

Too funny.

What shall I do next year ?...

Big Helper

Beck is our big helper these days. The more he learns to do, the more he wants to help. He has a special fettish with brooms & vacuums. I think he cleans the kitchen floor more than I do. He loves to get out the swivel sweeper and clean up anything and everything on the floor. Even things he shouldn't. Flipping through my photos on the laptop today I realized, Beck likes to help with a lot of things for instance ...

He loves to help Cody with his tools...





He likes to help give himself baths...



He loves to help me in the kitchen...

and, he absolutely loves to hep baby Elle...

He sure is a cute little guy.

Creative Juices

Something about the long awaited coming of spring seems to get my creative juices flowing. I love to decorate sugar cookies, scrapbook and do all sorts of crafty things. Here is my latest project.

It was kind of out of neccesity. OK, not actually necessity, but for an LDS girl you must have a cute sunday bag. I got called to the Primary Secretary in our ward and have to have a cute bag to carry all my stuff right? I think I'm justifying this to myself. Anyway, it turned out fabulous! I love it. Now I'm trying to come up with an excuse to make another. The pattern I bought has 3 others, so if anyone wants to get some fabric, I'll make ya a bag. Cause I'm in the crafty mood.

I even got Cambelle in a crafty mood. She made this cute little flower all by herself. Way to go sister!

Happy Birthday Cambelle

She's 7!



Cambelle's birthdays are always fun. At least the last couple years have been. I love to see how exciting it is to have a birthday. I wish my birthday was that exciting. We had our traditional birthday pancakes, and a little get together that ended up being not so little. It started out as just our family. Then it was our family, my parents and my sister. By the time we were all together there were about 21 of us. We had cake (decorated exactly as Cambelle asked) and ice cream and an all around good time.

For her birthday she asked for 3 dresses. Dress up dresses. Not just any dress up dresses, but exact duplicates of the "Barbie and the 3 Musketeers" dresses. I started back in early December and I hemmed the final dress while she was at school on her birthday. All my hard work payed off though, she loved them!

It was so fun to see all of our family and friends show Cambelle how much they love her. She truly is a special girl!!

Christmas

This was Elle's first christmas and Beck's first christmas that he "gets it". We had a lot of fun this christmas. Cody's sister Norma was down from Alaska so we spent Christmas Eve at his Dad's house and celebrated a little early with them. We played in the snow and built a snowman, had a fantastic dinner and opened a few presents. Santa even made a surprise visit, which Beck did not appreciate. Even Cambelle was a little worried when the big guy himself showed up on Grandpa Sampsons doorstep. We had a fun filled, exhausting day.

Christmas day was no different. Fun filled and exhausting. The hour and a half drive home christmas eve gave all the kids a great nap at 9:00 on christmas eve so no one was tired at bed time. I think we finally got to bed around 1:00. Elle was the first one up (she doesn't even know about Santa yet, why was she so excited?) at 5:30. The other two kids got up around 7. Cambelle could hardly contain herself when she realized that it was Christmas morning. By the time we got around to opening presents ( we had to wait for Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Ray) Elle was fast asleep again and Cambelle had rifled through every present under the tree to see which boxes belonged to her. The rest of my family showed up aroun noon for the traditional christmas dinner at my parents house and we played games and the kiddies opened even more presents. Then it was off to Grandma Lola's for even more presents. I think our kids are totally spoiled by their grandparents and aunts and uncles. It was a typical Christmas for us and thats just how I like it.

Temple Square

We finally made it up to temple square in Salt Lake this year. I think I have been trying to get our family up there for years. My best friend growing up lives up in Salt Lake so we used her as an excuse to get up there. Emily is so much fun with the kids. We planned our trip before we knew the weather report though and it turned out to be freezing. Actually colder than freezing, it was about 20 degrees. Plus it had snowed earlier in the day. It was beautiful! Seeing all the christmas lights somehow really gets me into the christmas mood. It makes me feel like a kid again.


I am so glad Cody is in a christmasy mood this year and lets me drag him around to these things. Cody has been so good this year. Usually he barely tolerates the whole christmas thing, but this year I think I'm finally gettin' to him. He listens to christmas music in the car with us, he has been to two different "light shows", and he was actually willing to help me get out the christmas decorations. Lucky for him this years decorations consist of stockings and garland and thats it. My parents took care of all the other decorating. I just love this time of year. Merry Christmas All!

For Halloween this year we went with the Star Wars theme. My sisters kids dressed up with us and I think we had just about everyone covered. It was a lot of fun making these costumes.


Beck as an Ewok


Elle as Yoda

Jacob-The Sith Lord, Jared-Obi Wan, Kaley-R2D2, Karey-Padame, Cambelle-Princess Leah, McKenna-C3PO, Beck-Ewok, and Elle-Yoda.

Fall Hike

It's been our family tradition since Cody and I were first married to take a fall hike. The hike gets shorter and shorter every year, as the kids legs are shorter and shorter every year. They just don't make it quite as far. It seems like fall came really fast this year and we didn't get out on the trails until the first week of October and all the leaves had already fallen off. It was still a great time to get out.

Cambelle was helping Beck across this little bridge after this picture was taken and he started to lose his balance. She tried to save him and fell in herself. Cody ended up catching Beck before she took him down with her. What a great big sister.

Camping Adventures

Whoever it was that decided camping was a vacation was obviously not the one in charge of planning and carrying out the "vacation". It is so much work to go camping. Enough of my whining here is a picture journal of our camping trip...

Do you see anything missing? Like maybe a gas pedal? Beck somehow broke off the gas pedal while we were down at the reservoir. Cody ended up driving the scout back to the campsite with a pair of pliers attached to the throttle. We had to send Grandpa into town (2 hrs away) to het the pieces welded back together. All I can say is thank heavens Lance brought his tool set...

Cambelle did NOT want to go on the boat, but as soon as we were out on the water she was just fine.

All in all it was a good time, but it is always so nice to come home. And to shower. Thanks to Grandpa for the good times and our good friends Lance and Ryan for coming along and making our trip so much fun.