The night Noah wore his wolf suit

and made mischief of one kind

and another

his mother called him "WILD THING!"

and Noah said "I'LL EAT YOU UP!"

so he went to bed without eating anything...

like he does 6 out of 7 nights of the week on his own accord.

Happy 5th birthday my wildest thing!

I'll eat you up, I love you so!!

What do I do???  This little "princess" is so stinking naughty!!  She had me laughing hysterically this morning...at all the inappropriate times!  We were reading scriptures and Larkin decided that was a great time to start dancing.  If you've never seen Larkin dance, you're totally missing out.  She's got sweet little moves.  Then she started rolling on the ground and squealing like a pig!  She was distracting ALL of us and poor Aaron just kept trying to keep us under control.  He finally used Larkin as an example and explained that she was doing an interpretive dance of Wicked King Noah's Priests and the dancing Lamanite daughters.  It worked!  But the clencher... EVERY TIME we kneel down to say family prayer....morning and night, she starts playing duck duck goose and slaps our heads as hard as she can while we are trying to be reverent and say a prayer.  Such a naughty, silly little girl!

I had to miss Arwen's soccer game on Saturday :( but Aaron and the kids went and cheered her on.  Apparently this was so not the game to miss!  Arwen totally schooled the other team! She scored 3 of her teams 5 points.  The other team only scored 3 times!  Aaron said she looked professional...like she knew what she was doing ;)  Way to go Arwen.  A few games ago, she was getting so frustrated and shared with me that she didn't think soccer was the sport for her because she just wasn't any good at it.  When you're 6 it's all about how many goals you can make and poor Arwen is a much better defender than she is offender.  I just wasn't able to to get her to understand that she really is amazing and that I don't care if she is the worst player out there, I just wanted her to have fun and make new friends.  After the coach put Arwen back in, I whispered a little prayer and asked Heavenly Father to give Arwen a little confidence.  It wasn't but a few minutes later and Arwen made a goal!  You should have seen her face.  She was delighted!  I almost cried.  What a huge change that little goal made in her little life.  Since then, she LOVES soccer...even if she doesn't make any goals.  She is super fast and really is an amazing little defender.  She isn't as hard on herself and doesn't get as discouraged as she used to!
I sure do love that girl!!

Aaron found a site where you can enter in all the text from your blog (or any word document) and it will take the words you use most and make them the biggest. It was fun to see the things I type most about. Obviously Arwen and Noah are the biggest. Poor little Larkin is tiny :(
Check out Aaron's post if you want to build one.

pdf version

pdf_version

Here's another one of my favorite pictures of Lu lately! She just walked in and I asked her who this was a picture of. She said, "Baby." I asked her what the babies name is and she said, "ME!!" I asked if she was a naughty baby and she said, "No." I asked if she was a good baby and she said, "No!" Ha! What a goof.

(I don't think I am allowed to post this picture yet...as it's not quite finished...but I can't resist. I get to look at it all day as the back ground on my computer and wanted to share it with all of you.) Larkin was so stinking cute on Sunday! Her hair turned out so cute, her dress was darling (thanks Wendy...it is one of Madelyn's old dresses!) and she kept her bow in all Sunday! I just love that little pixie so much!

I told Joshua that his super hero name should be "Train Tracks." But he doesn't agree. He likes Chocolate Factory Jelly Bean Gum Train Tracks. Okay...but it's kind of a mouthful!!

Kawai

Ha! I am finally up to blogging about our trip to Hawaii. It was FABULOUS! We had so much fun! The best part was doing it all with the person I love the most.

Kiss at sunset...

There were LOTS of chickens on the island! Thanks again for the hat mom, I LOVE it!

Warm ocean water...how do we get that here??

Gorgeous views...

Lots of fishies...

Adventures...

Boat rides...

Dolphins!

More adventures...

Fun old men who keep the chicken population thriving by loading their bikes with old bread.

Camouflage looking trees...

Togetherness...

Rental cars...

And the Napali coast. Everything was so beautiful!! We had the best time ever and can't wait to do it again!!

We drove up to Washington one day to the Mount Saint Helen's area. We went to the Ape Caves. We have been there one other time and had a great time and wanted to go again. The problem was we forgot how COLD it is in the cave...pretty much we froze. The kids were done with it in about 7 minutes!

Here's the only shot we got right before the kids whined that we go back outside.

Arwen and Aaron went back after I got the little kids out and explored some without us wimps! They had fun with flash lights and glow bracelets...at least I didn't forget the bracelets ;)

Best Buddies!

Aaron gave me a day off from the kidlets and took the 3 big kids to the gorge to do some exploring and have REAL fun...you know the kind you can only have when nagging, worrying mom is not around! They braved Oneonta Falls even though it was kind of chilly outside.

They all hiked in the stream to get to the waterfall.

Such happy kids. They had fun and were gone ALL day! I got the house pretty darn clean...too bad it never lasts! Thanks for the day off and being the greatest dad ever, Aaron! Love you :)

After baths lately, the boys have really been into styling their own hair. I's always funny to see what they will come up with. Joshua likes to comb his all straight down and looks pretty nerdy. Noah has gotten pretty good at adding waves and a part. Well, his hair is pretty long right now...as you'll see. Aaron offered to help him one night and this is what they came up with.

Boy in mirror with brush=HAPPINESS

Just a peek to see how it's coming.

Adding the finishing touches.

Pretty much it's FABULOUS!!! Don't you just wanna kiss those lips??

We found a pretty fun "swimming hole" on the way to the coast one time and decided to go and spend the day there. We had doubly fun because the cousins came too!!

Arwen climbed up as high as Aaron is in this picture and jumped in. Yea!

Arwen's real good at making friends...and convincing them to let her steal their fun :)

Matthew and Aaron thought it would be fun to jump off this REALLY high bridge. (To be fair to them, they waited until after a super drunk lady jumped off first to make sure they wouldn't die.)

Larkin spent most of her time here...staying far away from the water. She was still scared to death of it at this point in our vacation!

We've lived in Oregon 8 years now and have never been to see Crater Lake. So we planned a trip to do so! It was about a 6 hour trip down there and the kids did pretty good...except I bought Gatorade to drink in the car. That was so STUPID! You can only imagine how many times we had to stop to let the kids pee. Ahhh! Never again!

Uh Oh! Another crazy wooden bridge. It took Lu FOREVER to walk the whole thing! This was actually a look out platform that we hiked up to to get an awesome view of the Crater Lake area. I was scared to take the kids on it because we saw a bunch of people hiking down from it with walking sticks and pretty hard core hiking equipment. It wasn't too bad though!

Here was the view from the top. It was really pretty.

Noah decided to hike barefoot (unbeknownst to me) on the hike back down. I for sure would have said no, but it kept him happy and the dirt DID wash off!

What a silly boy! Good thing he has a good daddy who understands what little kids need to do sometimes!

Joshua just couldn't make it and made himself comfortable on the trip back down. He made me sing him songs from Willy Wonka the whole way down.

Here's Noah with his thistle...you know like the one Horton has that has the Who's on it!

We stopped by Pumice Lake in the area and the kids collected lots of cool pumice stones.

Here's Josh, lost out in the Pumice Desert! We had a fun time, but Klamath Falls (which is the city that we stayed in) was NOT kid friendly. It was full of old grouchy people who told me every change I got how bad my kids were. Seriously. Both nights at dinner the old folks had some nasty comments and one group even asked to be moved FAR from us. (It wasn't our fault the dumb servers forgot they never came and took out order and we sat there 45 minutes till we got our food. We never even got all 6 of the waters we ordered! It was ridiculous!) Anyways, it was fun trip, but maybe we should wait till we're old, since it seems to be an old people vacation!