Halloween

Just a few misc. Halloween pictures. I haven't downloaded the rest of them.

Gideon just having a fun time with his dad.
The kids pumpkins. They all turned out great. I love all the unique designs each year.

Football

Hunter just finished his first season of football and loved it. It took me a bit by surprise because he never really showed an interest before. He did great!!

Gideon

So it has been forever since I posted last but hopefully I will do a little better over the next few months. Here are some picts of Gideon. We think the way he drinks from his cup is funny. He grips it by the lid rather then holding it with two hands. As soon as he's done he throws it.

Going for a ride on the vacuum cleaner. He loves the vacuum and always chases it around when I'm vacuuming.

Difference in size

Ok, so I have pictures on the camera that I need to download onto the computer but just haven't taken the time to do it yet so found this picture and thought it would be a fun one. These are two eggs that were collected the same day.

Killen Creek

Our 2010 Family camp up in the Mt. Adams wilderness. We had a blast. It was dry and very dusty but that didn't seem to bother anyone. We brought the motorcycles and they were in use by one of the boys all day.

We also managed to get in a hike. Wasn't the most popular activity we did. Looks like we will need to do a bit more hiking. We haven't hiked as much as we used to. You can see the dust we kicked up behind us.
We got this picture right after swimming in horseshoe lake.
We had a lot of fun with all the frogs that were up there. These were a couple of the smaller ones we found.
This is one of the bigger ones. We found a lot in between these two sizes as well. Gideon thought they were pretty neat until one, that we were holding in front of him so he could look at it, jumped on his face.
We had a lot of fun and look forward to spending time camping again.

Shirts family reunion

We had a shirts reunion on Saturday and had a great time. Todd and the boys left early which is why they are not in any of the pictures. They had a scout thing. Here is Alaina and her cousin Kala practicing for the three legged race. They were doing pretty good here.

This is at the start of the race notice they're still together. About 7 feet later they let go of each other and fell down.
This however didn't stop Alaina. She was going to make it to the finish line even if she had to drag her cousin behind. Grandpa came to the rescue and lifted them both up.
This is at the end of the mummy wrap when Alaina got to break out. She had a lot of fun.
Kala did a great job of wrapping her up.
Oh a funny story to tell as well. A boy about her age called Noah decided he liked to push Alaina around. She came and told me and I told her to push him back. I was standing with a group at that time and after Alaina ran off we started paying attention to what was going on and sure enough Noah came behind her and pushed her three times in a row. She pushed him back but he just pushed her harder. She took one look at him and ran a ways to where Gavin was playing and Gavin immediately turned and chased Noah off with a great big stick. Us adults were laughing pretty hard. Somebody said that was standing by me. "Don't mess with her she has a bunch of older brothers."

Don't forget to look at the pictures below they're new as well.

Summer Moments

I like Kline line and took an opportunity on Wednesday to go, even though it was not a very warm day. The kids thought it was plenty warm enough and had a great time. Nathan Martinson was spending the night so he got to hang out there with us. This year there are no lifeguards on duty supposedly due to budget cuts. The boys seem to like it better that way. The city moved the dock as well you can see it in the background to the right.

Gideon absolutely loves the sand and water. I had to keep him from crawling in deeper.

Dance Festival

June 24th thru the 26th Dallin and Hunter participated in a six stake Dance Festival. There were over 2,000 youth participating. It turned out to be an incredible performance and the boys loved it. Even Hunter who doesn't like to dance. Below is the Dance Dallin participated in. If you enlarge it you can find him toward the back on the 40 yd line.

All of the youth together at the beginning.
This was Hunter's dance he is just left of the 50 yd line near the blue line in the middle.

More dance festival

Dallin and Hunter really enjoyed the dance festival. The last day of the dance festival, which was the day this picture was taken, was Hunter's birthday. In his own words. "Ok so this was a really cool birthday."

Dallin showing us how he flipped Savannah. He did a great job and each group only had one guy and girl do the flip so he thought it was pretty cool that he got to do it.
Hunter and Nicklas posing for a picture. This was one of the moves in their dance. The very first time Hunter went to practice he accidentally punched his partner because he didn't move to the right side like they were supposed to.
Dallin with his dance partner on the left and another girl in the ward that was in their group.

Early July

It has been a busy couple of weeks and here are just a few things that have happened. I will hopefully post pictures of the dance festival and other things in the future.

Dallin hiked to the top of Mt. St. Helen's on Wednesday and had a great experience. He took it slow but made it to the top. He was one of 3 that made it. Five boys quit and didn't make it.

Dallin took a picture of Spirit Lake from the top of the mt.

On the 4th of July we headed to Fort Vancouver to watch the fireworks. Alaina packed her backpack and when she had carried it a couple of blocks from the car she complained that it was too heavy so her dad was kind enough to carry it for her. When we got to the fort they checked everyone's bags and guess what we found in Alaina's backpack. Notice the pink 3lb weight.
When Todd asked her why she brought it, she replied, "to work out dad."

Todd participated in a 3 on 3 tournament last Saturday and afterwards we went to Multnomah falls. It was so busy we decided not to hike to the top but we did fight the crowds to the first bridge.

Cub Scout Advancement

Thursday was pack meeting and Mason earned his Arrow of light and Aiden earned his wolf. Dallin helped out with the ceremony and did a great job acting as the great chief Akela. No picture of him only video. Here is Alaina wearing the chiefs hat after it started falling apart.

Junior rose parade

Alaina, Gideon and I got to go to the junior rose parade today. We even managed to stay dry. I thought Covington did an amazing job they were one of the best bands there.

If you click on the picture to make it bigger you can see Hunter he is in the middle in the second row.

I also got to see my nephew Nicklas play the trumpet as well he is the second trumpet from the end behind the drums.

A day at Sandy's

It was a beautiful day on Saturday and we headed up to La Center to clean out her car, cut some grass and have some fun. Here is Andreas Martinson on Todd's bike.

Nathan Martinson with Todd.
And Gideon who by the way loves the grass.

Truly Puzzled

I finally got Gideon to go 6 to 8 hours without eating at night and For about 4 days I was finally getting about 4 to 6 hours of sleep in a row. The last two days he has foiled my plans of getting good rest by not going to bed until 3 am. I can not figure this kid out. Last night at 2:30 I was trying to get him to go to sleep and something I did made him laugh and he spent the next 5 minutes giggling. That was more laughing then he ever does during the day.

Of course because of my lack of sleep Todd has been a saint and lets me sleep in in the morning by getting the boys off to school. This morning Alaina woke up and came in and told me to get up at 10:50. I jumped out of bed and started running around like crazy. I had on my calendar that two of the boys had a dentist apt. at 11:00. I called the dentist and asked if it was still ok if I bring the boys in only to discover I had it on the calendar wrong. There appointments aren't till next week. whew.

I think since it is Friday and his crying won't mess with Todd and work, my cute little baby boy is going to go to bed at midnight. I know he will be most unhappy about it but Mom needs to get to sleep earlier.

This is why I laugh when people say "I bet you have it all figured out," after hearing how many children I have. I always respond, "Well I would if they all came the same."

Gideon has me stumped!!

Memorial Day

I have been really behind in posting lately so I have a whole bunch of posts. I hope you enjoy them. Monday we went and cleaned and visited the graves of our relatives. This has been a tradition I have done since I was a kid and love it. We spent four hours traveling around to the different grave yards. The group is getting bigger. There were 30 of us this year traveling from grave to grave.