Happy, happy!

Happy Birthday Reagan! What a wonderful year of discoveries. . . roller coasters, underwear, High School Musical and Taylor Swift songs, dancing, Maddie's ipod, tricycles and so much more. She brings us so much joy with her sweet and excited ways.

Reagan had been planning on having a Minnie Mouse cake for months, but we decided to make these Minnie cupcakes too because, well, just look at 'em, so easy and so cute (just like Reagan).

Frost with chocolate, push in Oreo cookie ears and top with fruit-roll bow. Ta-Da!

All Dressed Up

. . . with lots of places to go!

Maddie doll- Grandma shared pieces of her costume from about 35 years ago.

Gotta love that trunk!

Sydney as Hermione from Harry Potter. She is almost done with the fifth book.

Brenna as a funky little Halloween Fairy

Obi Cameronobi

and Her Highness, Princess Reagan.

Our Spooky Saturday

We loved having Halloween on a Saturday. It left us plenty of time for all our Halloween fun.

We invited the missionaries over for dinner and this is what we fed them. Footloaf, Jack's guts, bugs and bones bread, fried batwings, and fishbowl water to wash it all down with. Yum, yum. I wonder if they'll ever come back.
Obviously we had all morning to work on our pumpkins. Above is Sydney's Spider-spooked specimen and Reagan's Minnie. (Isn't she talented?)
. . . and Roy's tribute to the Phillies next to Brenna's little spider
and Cameron's traditional Jack-o-lantern (which he actually did carve all by himself) and Maddie's puppy (hint, hint, Mom and Dad).
Of course the night ended with the big candy sort and trade. We have some very generous neighbors. Good stuff, a little fancier than the peppermints, butterscotch discs, tootsie rolls and DumDums of days long, long ago. Even Smarties were curiously underrepresented. I think the FDA is looking into that.

Being the only boy has its perks!

Roy took Cameron to the BYU-Oklahoma football game in the HUGE Dallas Cowboys stadium. Here's the lucky boy's account of the day in his own words (and his own spelling. He learned to "sound spell" in kindergarten and he had only just started first grade when he wrote this so it should be fun to decipher!)

We got to arizona reilly cwieck. It was reilly fast like 1o minitss! Wow that was reilly reilly cieck. At the airport will I soa a gumball mshein. Will I had fun on the airplane. Dad let me set by the woindo and we where reilly hi up, 6 miulls up. Will it was reilly fun!

Today I am goien home and on the airplane me and dad are getien sodu and appil juoos. It taste like appil sidre. Will airplanes are reilly fun.

At the football game cogrs wone over thair. Cogrs ceb on throwien it ovre thair and this gie gkipt on cechien it. But he omste got it and it's reilly fun on a airplane and the weigs on the airplan is reilly cool and when I was cameien home on the airplane I was rite by it the wieng.

And there you have it. Great game and airplanes are awesome.

Brenna's Baptism

Brenna was baptized as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on August 29, 2009 by her Daddy. Watching a child sit, all dressed in white, eager to be baptized is such a good reminder that we are all children of a Heavenly Father who loves each one of us dearly.

And here she is all perfectly clean. We asked her throughout the day, "Are you still perfect?" and she would confidently respond, "yup," and I'm pretty sure she was right. By the next day the answer turned into "I think so." We love our Brenna. It is a joy to watch her grow up and learn to choose what's right.