American Girl Doll!!

Ashlynn so badly wanted an American Girl Doll for her birthday.

We decided to one-up her, and give her a whole American Girl Doll DAY for her birthday!

Lucky us, Denver has a GREAT American Girl Doll Store

and

the store just happened to be doing a Braids and Bows class the day we were planning on taking Ash, & her BFF and cousin Brooklyn, for her birthday!!

PERFECT!!

(thank you so much Grandma Anne for my class and doll)

 We started with Ashlynn picking out her doll and naming her Alyssa! Then we went to our Braids and Bows Class, which was so fun!

The Girl's each got a goody bag of hair pretties and learned how to do lots of cool things with their dolls hair and all about proper care.

Then Alyssa got her ears pierced!

After that we went to a 'doll friendly' restaurant right next door for lunch, where they had seats for Brookyln and Ashlynn's dolls to sit in and the girl's got a free dessert!
It was a really fun day....

seriously, can I be 6 again- I want one of these dolls?!

Happy Birthday Ashlynn!!

I love this picture from the morning of her birthday!

Blowing out her Birthday Pancake Stack...

a tradition our little family loves!

Happy Halloween

It's funny how many times I've suggested a theme, 

just to have someone decide last minute that they wanted to be something completely different. (Case and point; Ashlynn deciding to be Belle the year we were doing peter pan, 

so we had a pirate a mermaid.....and Belle).

I think it's great that they have ideas for what they want to be every year. But this year, they organized themselves into a 'creepy theme'. We had our mummy, vampire, witch, and ghost :) 

they all looked so festive!!

That said....

Happy Halloween from our cute'n creepy family!

Here's some fun moments from our Halloween

Ashlynn had a costume party for her birthday, best costume definitely goes to my parents top left!
We had so much fun trick or treating in our neighborhood! We hit the jackpot, seriously handful's of candy at each house. The cute pumpkin bouquet is from Ashlynn's school party, don't you love the banana ghost's?! Taidan loved his preschool Halloween party, I got this pic of most of the group. We had a pumpkin dart contest at Ashlynn's birthday party, if you hit a balloon- out popped some candy!! We started our trick or treating early with some friends, here's Ashlynn and Kennedy (who also dressed up their AG Dolls for Halloween; Alyssa was a Rockstar and Kennedy's doll is a Genie I think).
We also lit up our front path with these festive lanterns.
It was a very easy going, enjoyable Halloween!

Private things Private

Hey friends!!! I am going Private. can you tell I'm posting this from my phone ;) sorry! Wanted to give everyone a week or so to get me your emails :) post it in the comments, text it to me, email, fb.......thanks guys!!! I want to keep the creepers out and friends in!

SNOW DAY!! In October????

We had a MASSIVE snowfall Oct. 26th. Lots of people lost trees and power! Including Amber, so she came to our house with her kiddos to stay warm. District 6 called our first official 

SNOW DAY!!!!

It. Was. Awesome.

We loved our (trucker) snowman!

We decked him out in Immota Wear ;)

After playing in the snow the kids striped down (cause that's what kids do?)

and had some hot chocolate....

and I firmly believe that kids especially need 

whipped cream sprinkled with cinnamon on their hot chocolate!

 Lol, I loved Weston and Taidan's whipped cream faces!!

ah.....perfect snow day!

Go for the Goal!!

Ashlynn and Taidan had their first soccer seasons this year!!!

Man, it was way more work than I anticipated, especially since we became coaches of Taidan's team a couple practices in.

Now that it's over (and we survived it), I feel like I can say

it was a lot of fun!

TaIdAn!

aShLyNn!

I can't believe how much they improved in just one season!! Can't wait to see if they want to do it next year ;)

Boy; a noise with dirt on it (verb)

A friend of mine from college, Chelsea Ellingson, did a photo shoot of Taidan for her blog

and I got to keep the pics! I love how they turned out!

I think these are my 3 favorites...

or maybe it's one of these 3...

man, I can't decide-

maybe it's one of these ones....

you can see my dilemma, they are all so good!

She makes hats too!

Here's her link if your looking for someone to do your family pics.

Chelsea's Attic

School Days!

tHe kIDs fIrsT dAyS Of sChoOl!

I decided to try something new this year, the picture from the first day with all their fun facts. Next year I'll have to included height and weight.

Sorry about the HORRIBLE quality, camera broke a few months ago and I've been taking all our pics on my phone since ;) so much more convenient, when they don't turn out so poorly.

It's that time again...my favorite time

I had to make a little banner honoring the poem 

that runs through my head over, and over, and over during this season. 

It's beautiful....just like fall.

Ashlynn and Taidan created some fall artwork that I was really impressed with!
  Ash made this tree at school out of paper that she ripped herself and then glued to create her fall tree.

Taidan painted this pumpkin patch. It's amazing! I did the sun and a couple of the pumpkins on the bottom. I love how he even had rain coming out of one of the clouds.

My little Brynlee and Kimbree are also quite the artists.
I'll put pics up when I take some of theirs.

I've been looking forward to redecorating my mantel for fall since we moved in last year.
Here's how it turned out ;)

the side alcoves aren't really that big, I just blew them up a bit so the detail would be more clear.
I like how it turned out, and it made me that much more excited to decorate for Christmas!