We found this video on the camera when we took some pictures off the other day. Near as I can tell, it's Arwen teaching Noah "Arwenese." I really loved the part at the end where she says something that she made up...not knowing that it is a very popular word amongst other crowds!

You will all think I am absolutely crazy, but really, I'm not! The day after the kids and I got back from our summer vacation, July 5th, Aaron caught the kids a really cool...kinda creepy spider. The reason we liked him was because he had a smiley face on his back. Noah named him Lenny. Well, we have been caring for Lenny ever since...some of you have probably seen Lenny's little home at our house and think we are crazy. It started out that Aaron would catch lots of garden spiders for him to eat every day, but soon all of the neighborhood kids heard about Lenny and took an interest and started to catch him food and bring it to me every day. (I have to interject...we once put an ant in his home for Lenny to eat, but the ant was a beast and even ate one of Lenny's legs off before we got him out of there!!) Everybody loved Lenny...Noah would even sleep with Lenny's little home by him in bed. After a while, Lenny made a crazy little sac in the corner that he lived in and hardly ever came out of, except to eat. Aaron destroyed it one day to see what Lenny would do. Well, he built another one. We noticed that Lenny looked really skinny one day and we got worried that he wasn't eating enough or that his diet wasn't adequate for him. But then, today, we saw that Lenny was extra fat...and all the spiders in his home were eaten. Yea!! But here is where our cute little story ends. In my haste to clean the kitchen counters, I accidentally knocked Lenny's home onto the ground...which has happened a lot...the kids used to take him with them everywhere. But we think that since Lenny was so fat from having eaten so much, that he just kinda exploded. I shouted, "Oh my gosh...I killed Lenny!!" in jest, but really it was true. I feel soooo soooo soooo soooo bad! The kids were really upset and Arwen even cried. After the kids went to bed I noticed Lenny still on the counter and told Aaron to dispose of him. As Aaron was opening him up and poking at Lenny's home, we noticed LOTS of tiny little Lenny babies, alive and walking around. Lenny was a GIRL! I still feel so horrible about killing the family "pet," but maybe, just maybe we can make a few new pets. The only problem is that they have to eat food that is as small as them. Petco sells wingless fruit flies and so, we will try that! (Don't even ask how much 50-100 fruit flies costs...) Here's a picture of what Lenny looked like.

So this is my ode to Lenny. "You were a good, happy spider. All the kids around loved you. I'm sorry I killed you. We will try and keep your babies alive." Sniff, sniff.
(You know what? Last night I totally had a dream that Lenny had babies and then somehow five of them got loose and were crawling in my house and one was even in my bed. I DID NOT like Lenny much in my dream! Prophetic dream though, huh...too bad I can't have them about my babies!!)

Here are a few pictures from our Sunday morning. The kids had fun doing "pull-ups" while I was hurrying to get myself ready!
This girl is the sweetest, naughtiest thing ever! I just can't get enough of her...unless it's time to get her dressed or changed!

It's the strongest boy in the universe!!
And the craziest boy in the universe!!

We all got the opportunity to go to Arwen's back to school night last week. It was fun to see where Arwen sits and meet all her friends...all of which are still nameless to Arwen. I ask her everyday if she asked their names...and still no names!!

Check out the name written on the box that holds the crayons at Arwen's table. Charming! And the purple scrawl below her name...I caught NOAH doing that. Watch out...we've got some graffiti artists emerging!

We went to the park yesterday and I let Larkin play in the sand for the first time ever. She of course put LOTS of sand in her mouth. It was pretty silly to watch. She had so much fun, though. Lots of parents were really concerned...Oh well! She's still alive...

Here's my go at my first video...nothing too exciting, but now that I have a camera that can take movies, I wanted to try it out!!

Here's an update on "Chlocate Chip." For the last two weeks he has not let us call him Chlocate Chip OR Joshua. He would say, "Name 's Chlocate Factory." Well, yesterday he informed me, "Names not Chlocate Factory, names Chlocate Cake!"

Here's "Chlocate Cake" swining at our favorite park in Portland, by the zoo!

The weather in Portland has been amazing lately! We had a day up near 90 degrees today! After picking Arwen up from school, we got some lunch and brought it to eat at the zoo. We have been wanting to go ever since the new baby elephant was born! We were so excited to see it! After standing in line for 20 minutes and getting lectured over and OVER again about how we needed to be quiet...and no flash photography...we were very excited when it was our turn! The baby is sooooo cute! The kids loved it! As I was trying to take a picture, Josh and Noah slipped under the tape that I guess was to keep us away from the glass so we wouldn't knock on it. They weren't touching the glass, they just wanted to be close so they could actually see since they are so little. One of the zoo ladies came over real quick and demanded they get back. Noe immediately did and before I could quietly help Josh back the lady told him to move again and tried to move him herself. Josh became his defiant little 2 year old self and told her, "NO!" She started to argue with him...yeah,who argues with a 2 year old?? I politely told her that I would get him and then had to drag him out of there before he started a tantrum. I think she felt dumb at this point was like, "But you haven't even seen the elephant. Why don't you come back and look?" Duh! Because my 2 year old will scream and scare your elephant! So, no pictures, but we had lots of fun. I got some cute pictures of Larkin!Here she is munching on her french fry...you know, the lunch of champions!
I loved this one...she likes how the grass is tickling her toes.
So contemplative...
Larkin is the sweetest, cutest baby ever!

The kids have been having lots of fun taking pictures with our new camera. They are pretty artsy! Here are a few of my favorites...pretty bad quality because we still haven't gotten a bigger memory card and are still using the tiny one it came with and all the pictures are small to fit more than 4 on the card at a time!
They use their crayons for probably two hours a day, most days. Definitely a favorite of theirs!

How could you not want to take a picture of Larkin's bum? (She crawls now, by the way!!)
Noah does have pretty cute feet...

The kids LOVE their rope swing that Aaron built for them. They play on it every day! They like to stand on the trampoline and jump off onto it...what daredevils!!

Joshua out playing with a bus...which he calls his "train!!"

There were A LOT of crazy pictures like this...and even a close-up of JUST Arwen's teeth, that I spared you all from looking at!
I love this one...Good job Noah!!
Here are me and Lark getting ready for church!
Here are the kids and Aaron walking to church. Nice shot Ar!

What silly sisters, who are the best of friends!

Now, if you had a shirt this cool, wouldn't you want a picture of it too?? Hope you enjoyed a day in the life of my kids!

Ahhh! Last Saturday was Aaron's birthday. We had a super busy week last week...got home from camping, cleaned everything up, and then got Arwen ready for Kindergarten and sent her off. The kids and I decided (on Thursday, I think) to throw Aaron a little surprise birthday party on Friday night, when he got home from work. We went shopping on Thursday and got helium balloons, plates, cups, napkins, decorations, and TONS of lollipops to decorate with. Then we went to Best Buy to get him a new camera. It was crazy with all 4 kids! I got home and hid the stuff in the bathtub...the one place we knew Aaron wouldn't find everything! So...Aaron walked in and I was busy helping Larkin with something and Noah led Aaron upstairs and said, "Dad, look in the bathtub." What a punk! This was after I told him a million times that we were going to surprise Daddy so don't say anything! So much for the surprise!


On Friday, Bethany, cake builder extrordinaire, came over to teach me how to make a fondant cake. It was really fun, but A LOT of work!!

Here it is...lots of food coloring later!!

The thing on top is Aaron's hanko...if you look closely, you can see that it says AARON. Aaron designed this himself a few years ago. Matthew made that part of the cake.
It kinda looks like a space ship...which is cool...since I didn't really have an idea of something specific that I wanted! Thanks Matthew and Bethany for helping with it! It is definitely the coolest looking birthday cake I have ever made!


We had Matthew and Bethany over for dinner and cake. They got him a really fun game that we played that night! The lamest part of the whole day is that I never did light those fancy candles and we didn't sing to him. And, these are the ONLY pictures that got taken. Sorry Aaron!

Here is a sad little story for you :( (Well, part is sad, the other is pretty clever!) Arwen and Noah were playing with their "clippers" (scissors) yesterday doing some crafts. Joshua grabbed a pair of the scissors, which are just little kid scissors. No one was watching him very closely and he decided that cutting paper wasn't too much fun and decided to try cutting a different medium...his Larkily. He cut a big slice down her thumb. She started screaming and Aaron figured out what happened and fixed Larkin and put Josh on a time out. I was upstairs getting ready for the day when Aaron told me what happened. I asked Josh to come to me so I could talk to him. I asked him what he did and he said, " I cut Larky's finger." I asked him what he needed to say to his Larky and he said, "Sorry Larky," and then ran away happy-go-lucky. Then I overheard Noah talking to Aaron about what happended. He said, " Dad, Josh definitley has Lamanite Power." (Lamenites, for those who don't know are the really bad, naughty guys in the Book of Mormon.) Then Noah came upstairs and told me something about Josh. He said, "Mom, Joshua is really a monster. He is a monster who is wearing a mask. He never takes that mask off, but he is really a monster under that mask."

We got Aaron a small, pocket sized camera for his birthday yesterday and here is picture one of the kids took of beautiful Larkily. Poor little Larkily!

We had a really fun Labor day weekend. We decided to go camping with Matthew and Bethany and their kids! We went to the Mount Hood area. It was great...just a cold weekend! We enjoyed camp fires, smore's, delicious food, hikes, swimming, geocaching, stories around the fire, and sleeping in the tent!
Poor Arnie tripped first thing and gained the first scrape of the trip!

Camp all set up and the kiddos enjoying the fire! (Which I thought for sure we were going to lose Noe to a million times that weekend. He has no fear and thinks he can do what he wants around it...whether that be jump around it, throw things into it, or push kids by it!
Aaron and Matthew had fun playing with the camera at night.

We woke up Saturday morning and saw that Dallin had a really swollen eye. (It ended up being a mosquito bite...Poor Dallin reacts really badly to them.) Matthew and Bethany took him to the store to get some Benedryl and we took Evan to go on some adventures. We did some geocaching and off-roading!

Here's Arnie driving on a dirt road. It was pretty crazy...she ran into a sharp stick and put a nice scratch ALL the way down the passenger side of the van! Crazy little girl drivers!

Here are some sweet glasses Aaron found on the road. The kids had fun with them the rest of the weekend. Wonder what happened to them??

Here's Larkin enjoying a moment of not being held...I didn't want to put her down because she puts EVERYTHING in her mouth!!Those aren't scrapes on Noah's face...It's chocolate. We had lots of fun roasting marshmallows that night!

We woke up on Sunday and Bethany and Matthew took Dallin home to decide if they needed to bring him to the ER to check on his swollen eye! We took Evan with us and ventured a few miles from out camp to check out some hot springs. They were really nice, if you didn't look at all the garbage all over the ground...when did camping and such become such a white trash activity??
These silly cousins sure do love each other!

Here's a group shot of us all enjoying our warm "bath." This was the only time the whole weeked that I wasn't freezing!


Here's Daddy and Arnie enjoying the water...Josh looked at this picture and said, "Daddy naked. Daddy naughty!"
What a pretty Sparkly Larkily! I had a hard time keeping her from trying to drink the water! (Her and Joshua!!)
Best Friends...when they aren't ripping each others hair out!
We did a little geocaching after the hot springs. It was lots of fun! The kids LOVE the junky treasures we found!
We had a yummy Apple Carmel Crisp for dessert that we cooked in the dutch oven. It was so warm and yuumy on a RAINY night!

After a night of LOTS of rain, we had to close down camp...and boy was it wet! Nothing like packing up a wet tent, with damp sleeping bags and soggy kids! Larkin helped out and sat in her chair and munched a pop-tart! Thanks Aunt Bethany, for the delicious breakfast!
And I was so successful of keeping her off the ground and keeping her clean...

I love this picture of Josh! He looks like a little trucker with his sweater, (which is Noe's by the way...it took me a while to decide why Noah looked silly that morning!) Carhartt's and his cup of hot chocolate! We had lots of wet fun camping!!

Noahism: Before I tell my story, I need to preface it with a funny thing Noah says that cracks me up. The other day, he fixed his own hair and Joshua's while they were in the bath. They both had crazy mohawks. When I walked in, he said, "Mom, isn't our hair totally delicate?" I said, "Totally!" Then I asked him what delicate meant and he said it means, "Awesome!"

Noah was playing with his Buzz Lightyear cell phone a minute ago. He started getting all sassy and said this, "Stop calling me Buzz Likeyear. This is ridiulous." Then he covered the mouth piece and told me that Buzz "Likeyear" was being so retarded. (OOPS!) Then I said Buzz was totally not delicate and Noah said, "Oh no, he's delicate. He's just being ridiculous... calling me so much!"

Arwen started her first day of school today...Kindergarten!! I have been so anxious the last couple of days for her! She, of course, was not nervous at all, and was so excited when we dropped her off this morning!
Here she is sporting one of her new "school outfits." Doesn't she look so cute!



She insisted on wearing braids to her first day of school. Check out all of her big snaggle-teeth growing in! Arwen and Larkin look pretty similar lately...they are both getting new front teeth at the same time!
Here she is in front of her new school. We got to go and meet her teacher yesterday. Arwen will love her, I'm sure. I think Arwen's biggest problem at school will be that she is a little too helpful with others...just her being the mom, you know! I will let you later what she thought of everything!