Madi Program

Madi had her Kindergarten program on Tuesday. The girls were pilgrims and the boys were Indians. The program was really well done. With lots of singing and dancing both on the stage and off. There were only about 50 kids doing the program (just afternoon kindergarten) so it was a big change from what we were used to. I loved it. Here is a clip of her. She actually sang, smiled, and danced. Madi looked very cute as a pilgrim and did a great job! (Scroll down and pause the music on the right hand of your screen to hear her sing)

Leaf Fort

When we were up at my parents a few weeks ago the kids had fun raking leaves. Isaah, the great engineer designed this fort and had the girls be his leaf haulers. Talli would fill up two sand buckets with leaves from one side of the house and haul them to the big pile. I watched her do about 10-12 trips. Isaah would do the same but with just large armfulls of leaves. They tried to convince grandpa to let them leave it up for when it snowed so they could have a snow fort. But grandpa wouldn't go for that.

We are counting down the days to the big rodeo in Vegas, 10 days to go. We are all excited to get to go and see Shawn in action. Isaah thinks it is just amazing and can't wait. Here is a link to a article that was wrote about him in my hometown. By the way you can watch him on ESPN starting the 5th I believe.

Article

Colby and Shawn enjoying the rodeo life:)

Playdough

The twins received play dough for their birthday and love it. We haven't had it for awhile because it had all dried out. So their marvelous Aunt Jody got them some. Chad was so excited.:) They love it and are finally old enough to leave alone while playing with it. Here are some pictures from when we were at Aunt Jody's house a few months ago. She brought out her play dough to entertain the kids. Who knew it was such dangerous work?

NFR Here We Come!

I imagine my brother's smile is about twice as big as this right now!

Tonight we found out some very exciting news. After winning 1st in the Wilderness Circuit Finals in Ogden, UT Shawn traveled to Dallas to the Dodge ProRodeo Circuit finals. He went into the finals 22nd in the ratings and needing about $9000 to make it to the finals in Las Vegas. This was his last big chance to make it to the finals, the big one, the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. The first two days he made about $10,000, tieing for 1st one day. Then in the semi-finals he placed 1st $$$. Which after this we knew he was going to Vegas. In the finals he made a good effort but only made it to 7.86 seconds, just 0.24 shy. So he is bringing home about $17,500. (I'm hoping for a really good Christmas present this year!). He will be going into the finals as number #11 in the ratings. We are so excited and proud of him. He has worked hard to make it here and has loved doing it. Way to live out your dream!!! If you go to this site you can see a great picture of him and see an article about him. Article
This Shawn with his saddle and buckles that he won in Ogden.
here is a video that Jody and Colby took of him in Ogden href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQcl7H7a_KQ">

Madi

I had this cute picture of Madi from the twin's birthday party. She is dressed up like a cat and is holding Blackie the kitten that came for the party too! Madi is my helper that does all of her chores happily (usually). She loves homework, this morning she did 8 pages of it,(This is homework I give her to keep her where she was at in Texas). She is a super fast bike rider now and can even keep up with Chad. What she lives for though is friends. Before school, after school, during school she wants to play with friends. She makes them so easily and loves them all dearly. Her favorite color is now purple so I have two rooms in my house that are covered in pink and purple. Total girl colors, you should see my shopping cart when shopping for cloths. She loves the movie Princess Bride, I don't know how many times she has watched it in the last week.
The most exciting this is she has lost 3 teeth in the past month and one more is almost out. Pretty soon she's not going to be able to eat.

Isaah

At the school yesterday one of Isaah's classmates stopped me and said Isaah had won an award for reading the most passages on a reading website. Well come to find out Ticket to Read sent his class a poster and Isaah an award letter and some tattoo's for reaching 1000 points. He is the only one in the class who had done this. For a kid who doesn't like reading that's awesome! Chad and I were pretty proud of him. While on the subject of Isaah he has found a new love...kickball. They play it at recess here. He is enjoying school here and I think he is enjoying it here. He still loves lego's and building things. He is very close to finishing his wolf badge in scouts. Probably about another month and he should be done. He has been doing much better with his siblings and though he has his days (what kid doesn't) we are doing well. This halloween we took him and a friend to a haunted corn maze. They loved it. It was just scarey enough for them but not to much. He loves the thrill of being scared just alittle. We finish soccer a few weeks ago and we will start flag football in a few weeks. Isaah did really well and Chad and I enjoyed watching him play.

Halloween pumpkins

They loved their pumpkins!

Halloween

Halloween night finally arrived after Isaah woke up all the kids at 6am because it was Halloween. You'd think it was Christmas. We started off the evening having a potluck dinner at our friends Stacey and Sams and then moved on to a trunk or treat at the church and then a few streets in our neighborhood. The kids won 9 little fish at the trunk or treat and were very excited. They had about 8 different fun games for them plus 2 cake walks and way to much candy. They had alot of fun there. The best was Chad finally dressed up, I don't think in the 11 yrs I have known him that he has ever dressed up. Chad was a vampire, I was a kitty, Isaah was the headless horseman from Ichabod Crane, Madi was a witch (this was the costume I made, that she loved), Talli ended up being a princess, (she had been a dinosaur, supertalli, and a ballerina at all other halloween festives we attended) and Paige at last minute decided to be a bunny, where that one came from I don't know she had been Barbie Fairytopia all other times. We definetly got more candy than we needed but we all had alot of fun.

Twins 4th Birthday

Talli and Paige's birthday finally arrived. They had been counting down the days. Packages were coming in the mail for them and they were having such a hard time waiting to open them. They had two friends over, Danny and Emma plus Danny's older sisters Patty and Kelsy. Isaah planned a few games for them and I planned a treasure hunt for the younger kids and a different one for the older kids. They loved it. Then we celebrated with pink barbie cake and opening presents. They loved everything they recieved. Each package was so exciting to them and they had to show everyone. I can't believe my babies are so big now.

Carving Pumpkins

Wednesday night we took the evening and carved pumpkins with the kids. They were so excited and had been wanting to do it for two weeks now. They each had their own idea of what they wanted it to look like of course. We sat out on our driveway enjoy the 75 degree weather with no mosquito to bite us and cleaned and carved all night long.

Here are the end Results. Can you guess who's pumpkin is who's??? I will post the answers in a day or so. Let's hear those guesses! 1. Scary Guy 2. Pirate 3. Kitty Cat 4. Happy One