8 is great!

Wow! I feel old! My oldest has just turned 8 years old! What an adorable little man he is turning out to be! I remember when he was born - he was so tiny, and just such a happy baby. I would lie awake at night going over everything I knew about baby first aid and baby CPR, and worrying about how I could become a good mom. Well, I think maybe something went right along the way, because he is such an awesome kid. I love his personality and I love watching how excited he gets about everything in his life (sports, friends, school, games, toys, books, drawings, hunting, camping, and even the occasional girl!). He is such a huge help to me with his younger brothers and his sister. I never expected him to become sucha great babysitter, but it has been such a nice suprise!
On his birthday, Oct. 16, I had a session scheduled down in Salt Lake that morning. So, I got a babysitter for the other kids, and I had him come with me. He was so cute and quiet, but he really helped with the little kids towards the end of the session when my "funniness" was starting to get old for them. He made some funny faces and had the kids laughing again for me! I should train him to be my assistant pretty soon!

After pictures, we went out to lunch at the super-fine establishment of Wendy's (it's all about the frosty). Then we went over to Target to let him pick out a few toys with some of his birthday money. He was so excited when he found out that he could buy multiple sets of the decked-out army guys and army camps. When we got home it was almost evening! We were having so much fun just taking it easy, that we lost track of time! I have to say, Colten is a fun kids to be with. I love him so much.

This is the crazy looking giant cupcake that our little family celebrated with that night.

He got a real guitar, and can't wait to start taking lessons from Uncle Billy!

At the big-family party, Chloe and cousin Jack got to play again! They are just cutest together!
This is the first fondant cake I ever made, but for some reason, I thought you had to brush water on the back of the fondant stars to get them to stick. Oooops! Lesson learned - it drips!

I made a birthday banner, too! Now I have something really big and cute to hang for all the boy birthdays!

For the friend party (yes - party #3!), I just went with cupcakes. I was burnt out on making cakes! I don't think the kids cared anyway.
They played a huge championship football game with about 18 kids! Our backyard was barely big enough, but the kids played hard and everyone had fun. Thank goodness our friend, Rusty, stayed to help Joe and coach the opposite team (wait, I think we did this last year, too!). I've never seen Colten happier than when he's playing football with his friends. I'm so happy the weather was warm!

Sam even got to have a couple friends over. Here's his best bud, Branson.
And here's his best girl, Kaitlyn, our next-door-neighbor.
Chloe even got to have her bast friend over - Amanda.

For his 3 time blowing out candles, I decided to try something new and put sparkler candles on his cake. They were packaged to look like candles, but they were really just expensive sparklers. Blowing them out was an impossible task . . .
and sometimes it scared Cole to blow on them, but . . . .

in the end, everyone helped to blow them out with no luck, and they finally just fizzled out on their own. Pretty sure he still gets his wish.He had a lot of fun. We just love all of his friends - what good kids! I'm so happy he'll be surrounded by such good kids while he's growing up.
and Sam will be with him every step of the way!