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!

Let's not forget soccer!

My sweet little Sam. I just love watching him play soccer! It may be because he weighs almost nothing, but that kid can run! He is so fast! With football happening every single day of our lives this fall, I was worried about Sam feeling a little left out, but I never heard him complain once. He was having his own fun with his soccer team - the "Cheetah-butts." Their team name was supposed to be the Cheetahs, but to a 5-year-old, adding "butts" to the end of any word makes it so much more exciting and hilarious. Of course. Least year, Sam needed to have a fruit snack inserted into his mouth in order to keep him out of the field and making goals, but he has really grown up since then! We are so proud of him!

Whoa! Football is nuts!

So, Colten has been in love with football since he was a baby. He got his first football helmet when his little brother, Sam, was born, and ever since then he hasn't been afraid to tackle the guts out of anyone. When we noticed that since he was in 2nd grade and was now eligible to play tackle football on the Morgan team, we were a little nervous. We just don't want him to get burnt out from the 2 hour practices they hold 5 days a week, and the 2-hour games every Saturday. So we tried to paint a gruesome picture for him about how hard you have to work to be on the football team (in hopes that he might want to just wait a couple of years), but in the end, he was signed up and DYING to start playing! I never heard one complaint out of his mouth throughout the whole 2 months of this insane schedule. To him, nothing else mattered but football. It was a great experience, and I really enjoyed watching him do what he loves most!


Here's Cole with his friend, Trey.
They won 5 out of 7 games!!!! Pretty good for a group of "first years"!
Here's Cole with his buddy, Bowen.
Dad was right there with him every step of the way for all his games. I think he enjoyed it as much as Colten did!

My little man is always good for a wave when he's playing!


Grandma Kat and Grandpa Art came up from Sandy to watch one of his games!
Colten was really fun to watch!

I've been . . . what?

Apparently, there's a few games floating around the blog community, and I just got "tagged" by Laurel! I feel so privileged to be a part of a "picture tag." So . . . I was supposed to go to my personal pictures file, and grab the 3rd picture out of the 3rd folder . . . I think?!? The 3rd one was actually already on my blog - so I grabbed the next one, and I got this picture. It's Chloe in her natural state - wearing her famous yellow polk-a-dot bikini under a dress that's 2 sizes too big (but that she thinks is just fabulous), and covered in some sort of cookie-residue. I usually try to only show the "perfect-Chloe" pictures so that nobody will know what we're really like, but here you go! We are a mess over here, and this picture illustrates that perfectly!

So, I tag Alysha, Jen, and Melissa!

Oh, my heck! High school was a blast!

A few weeks ago, I went out with my best friends from high school (minus one adorable friend - Christy. Guess we'll just have to do another GNO very soon!). I don't know why it's so hard for us to get together more than once every other year! We had so much fun catching up. So much has changed since high school!

First thing I saw was Melissa's belly! Congratulations, Melissa! After 2 darling little girls, you'll like having a little mama's boy/rebel running around!
After dinner, we decided to all go out like old times. Melissa H. asked if the BAY was still open, and I had to giggle! We settled on visiting a "dueling piano bar" called KEYS ON MAIN (because now that we're older, we need to frequent more mature places). Alysha couldn't find her keys, of course!
Luckily, Jen (like always) was ready to offer a helping hand.

We even got a surprise guest! Spencer joined in on the fun! I really don't think I've seen him for almost 10 years! How did time go by so fast? He looked like he was a very popular "ladies man." It was so great to see him - the nicest guy ever!

Since most of us have been married for most of the past 10 years, we really didn't know what to do with ourselves. So we just sat on the couches and unsuccessfully tried to have a conversation. We tried to dance, but being the only sober ones there, it felt a little forced!

Alysha and I tried to summon the courage to put in a request (from Spencer) for the Sesame Street theme song for the piano players, but in the end, Spence was the only one with the guts to do it. Such a brave guy!
I know Michelle is going to kill me for this picture, but I just love her so much and I just know that she is going to laugh just as hard as I did at this picture! Honestly, staying up super/crazy late was all worth it - just for this one shot!
Melissa consoled Michelle saying, "Don't worry, Michelle. Funny faces happen to all of us at some time in our lives."
I thought I'd throw these in. Just in case something special gets rekindled!!!! We're all hoping it does!




Nearing the end of the night, I started in on my "deep thoughts," and I asked myself, "McKenzie . . . how did you get so lucky to have such wonderful friends in high school? How can it be so easy to just pick up where we left off, just like high school never ended? Is it possible that some friends come into our lives for certain reasons, and they affect your life so profoundly that no matter how many years go by without seeing them, you still love them as much as you did when you were all together everyday?" I'm so DEEP late at night!

Alysha checked her clock, and realized that we were out way past curfew, and we weren't going to be functioning mothers if we didn't get our butts to bed! So we said our goodbyes, and promised to call and keep in touch. I hope we do this again soon. Thanks, you guys! I really love all of you!