Family Pictures 2017

A few weeks ago we went for an adventure as a family.  We borrowed a canoe from my FIL, picked up some fountain drinks from the local Giant and headed out on a dirt road to a pond at the base of our mountain.  It turned out to be a little more exciting of an adventure than we meant it to be - Marcus stepped on a cactus that stabbed through his shoe and into his foot :( Maelee and Madi both let go of the rope swing too late and landed in shallow water, thereby effectively damaging various joints in their legs, and I... well... I have no upper body strength which, when mixed with trying to support my ghetto booty and thunder thighs on a rope swing... let's just say everyone fishing on the other side of the pond got quite a chuckle.  And Clint caught it on video.  Which needs to be destroyed.

ANYway, on our way back home, we stopped at the ranger station so the kids could show me where they saw a deer on their last visit and we were met with the most GORGEOUS dry grass meadow and MASSIVE cottonwood tree.  The photographer in me got all kinds of googly eyed over this somehow forgotten treasure and vowed this was where we would take our family photos this year!!

Hmmph.  Fast forward a month or so and it's now the day we have a chance to do our pics... and it's windy as all get out... and I somehow have 2 evening church meetings I have to go to :(  -SO- change of plans and pics on our bed it is!!!  Because evidently, that's how we roll lol!

And Clint was SO excited to be taking them, can't you tell?

We did get ONE good family photo...

And a few crazies...

Marcus has this thing lately where if Clint kisses me, HE has to kiss me.  Twice.  If Clint compliments me, HE gushes on the charm.  And so on... I think it's hilarious personally!  I mean, who WOULDN'T want 2 handsome fellas fawning all over them??

As you can see from the photo above, Clint doesn't always think it's as cute as I do haha!!  And a disclaimer from here on out, not all the photos are edited... I've been working non-stop on pictures for other people for about 4 weeks and I'm kinda done lol 



I was so excited for pictures in that meadow, I got mine and the girls' dresses from my friend Taytum who was a JUNIEblake consultant and I had all these pictures in my mind involving these dresses... none of which involved laying down hahahahaha!!!  My dress does good things for me and my hair has finally grown back out which was going to make for pretty great pictures... ah well.  This bed has hosted numerous family wrestling matches on Sunday afternoons, so these are pretty great for sentimental reasons I suppose ;)

Oh, my Madi.  These pictures are pretty much her at 11 1/2.  A spunky, beautiful, curly-frizzy, warmhearted tween.  I love that she's one of my friends, and that I'm one of hers :)

This boy.  He is 100% boy.  And I freaking LOVE him to pieces!  I didn't know when I fell in love at 19 that I would fall in love again at 27.  Dad GUM he makes me so happy!!!

And then there's Miss Maelee!!  Our aspiring comedian/cosmotologist :)  She keeps us on our toes by bouncing back and forth between stirring the pot and making sure everyone has a smile on their face.  Babies LOVE our sweet little coconut, which she loves lol

I've been telling these two turkeys to pretend that the other one is her best friend.  Give each other the benefit of the doubt like they do their best friends.  Be compassionate and loving like they are to their best friends.  It's helping, some days ;)

Watch Marcus' dart...

 

We're a mess.  But it's a good mess and I'll take it <3 br="">

Halloween 2017

This year All Hallow's Eve could have very easily been a total failure.  We had all 3 kids sick with a ridiculous virus that acts like strep but can't be killed with a pill (what the crap??!?  As if regular strep isn't bad enough??  Ugh.), and up until about a week before, Clint and I had NO IDEA what we were going to be.  I know, that's not really "failure" material, but the few years we've dressed up with the kids have been really fun (we really are just big kids you guys)(and I just realized I used the word "really" 3 times in that sentence... mmmmmkay.  Shows you just how tired I am!).  I'm still a little unsure as to why Clint wasn't on board with my Miranda Sings costume idea, I do a "real gooood" impression (insert pervy eyebrow raise and head tilt) and I thought he'd be one lucky guy to have her on his arm all night.  Weird.  Luckily, we found some pretty fantastic costumes on Amazon and with our handy-dandy free 2 day shipping they were here in time for the big day!

Actually, Amazon came through for a good chunk of our costumes this year - we got the inspiration for Madi's dragon costume from there, and both Maelee and Marcus' costumes found their way to us through our Amazon shopping cart.  But that's actually totally irrelevant haha!!  Back to Halloween!!!!

One of these years we are totally going to have a family theme and all dress coordinating - like the emotions from InsideOut, or cave people, or hill billies, or LOTR characters... or something.  But not this year!!  This year we had:

A very beautiful yet scary dragon

Our very own Moana

and the most adorably fierce pirate on the 7 seas (who refused to wear his eye patch, bandana or hat)

 

AND...

Let's not forget the biggest and the best...

A pair of sparring SUMO WRESTLERS!!!  Bahahahahaha!!

Aren't we beautiful??

 

The girls were SO EMBARRASSED by us and insisted on going off with their friends and avoiding us at the school's Halloween Carnival, which in my book is a total parenting win.  Go us!

It was a pretty chill evening, a regular bedtime and since everyone was either still sick or recovering we all (minus Dad, sorry Clint!!) slept in the next morning and got to school late.  Worth it.  Totally worth it!