Caroline's b-day party

Happy Birthday sweet Caroline!

My baby is seven today. Seven years have gone by like a blink of the eye. Each day I am constantly asking myself...am I making the right choices- am I giving her all she needs? Caroline has been such a light to our family life since the 9lbs. 4 oz. baby was put in our arms 7 years ago. She is like a whirl wind bossing her siblings, Papa and uncles around. She loves so rough but at the same time she loves so deep! What I mean by this is-she really loves people rough. She hugs them so tight and gets so excited to be with people that she hurts them. Her friends fear her. She is such a girl of her own time and thing. If she is not in the mood-you can't push her to do it! She is so much like her Nana. She plays so hard. Everything she touches is all the sudden alive and talking. Her imagination runs wild and crazy all the time. It is not unusual to find her in the most beautiful dress she owns with a pair of my high heels in the garden talking to the plants digging in the dirt. She fascinates us every day she comes out with full make up and beautiful clothes but she'll be playing in the mud! She is always full of excitement and funny things to say. We are all always laughing at the way she can wrap us all around her finger especially her daddy. She begs to stay up late but hates to get up in the mornings. If you give her some space in the mornings though she'll eventually turn into the funniest little girl. She is our only child that has been threatened to be sent to the principle's office by the teacher and gets marks for talking too much every report card! Steve and I always said she was different than the others! I am so blessed and I thank God everyday for her health and her life and the joy she brings to our family. Today we will celebrate a wonderful seven years! You have given my life a whole new meaning. I am so grateful to be your mommy! We love you our sweet Caroline.

Biker Babe!

My girl finally did it. Her cousin Wesley told her Sunday that he learned how to ride his bike without training wheels and that was enough to motivate her. All the other kids took off on their bikes when they were 4 or 5 but not C. Which surprised me because she usually does whatever she wants to do-once she sets her mind to something. Like potty training at 20 months-she just decided one morning she hated diapers and that was the end of that! Well thanks to Wesley for putting the fire in her pants-Monday morning we were out early working on her new adventure! She was determined to accomplish what her cousins had already learned to too!

Auction Questions

For the scripture auction the way I am keeping up with it is pretty simple. If they are ready to tell me a scripture or article of faith or song they bring me the note cards. After they repeat it to me I sign their initials and pay them their play money. They each have a plastic jar labeled auction that they store their money in. I do room checks any time during the day and if there rooms are dirty or beds unmade they don't get their dollar for that day. If it's clean they get an easy dollar. The scriptures and prayers are just the honor system if they do it they go get a dollar.

This has worked for 4 days. It may very well fall apart by day 30! I am a little more easy on c than the others...she's still learning to read. Although there is a place on lds.org that repeats the scripture and songs back to them.

Let the auction begin!

I got this idea from Lori's/ mom. She is the seminary teacher in their town. They came to have Will's 9 month pictures made and she was telling me of this neat idea to get the seminary kids to memorize scriptures. I decided to adapt it to my own family and add and take away some things. Here's what we came up with.

I printed the scripture mastery scriptures from the new testament http://lds.org/ off and cut them out-put them on index cards and priced them

I printed the articles of faith out and did the same thing. The hard ones were worth more money.

We have some homemade play money all $1 bills.

If any of us memorize one of the scriptures we get the money for that index card. For example if we memorize Article of Faith #1 we get $1.

Also I do room checks and there room is clean they can earn $1-they don't know when room checks will be

If they read their scriptures daily=$1

and if they say their personal prayers=$1

I bought up a few prizes and made some coupons at the end of the month we are going to have an auction. They can bid on the prizes with their play money. We did a pretend auction to make sure they all understood.

Some of the prizes are your fav. breakfast, rent a movie, ice cream at baskin robbins, invite a friend to go the movies, build a bear, we got some gift cards to sonic and good places they like. And of course some CANDY!

Steve and I are adding a challenge with the boys. If I ask them or they ask us to repeat the scripture at any time in the month that they have already signed off...if they can't repeat it they have to give back their money.

Of course they have already made tons more money than me. I haven't gotten any scriptures memorized yet. We started Sept. 1 and they are whipping them out left and right. I am excited to see how it transpires.

Thanks Sis. Moffitt for the great idea. My kids are so excited.

Go Blake Go!

Getting ready to kick it in for the last few yards!

Powering up!!!! GO BLAKE!
And he's gone!
Proud cheerleaders on the side lines. Cousins and friends! Aunt Brandi, Andrew, Mitchell and mom not pictured!

Blake loves to try different sports. He seems to enjoy everything he tries! Steve and I get so excited as he takes on each new adventure! He has been training with our schools cross country team since July. He would have morning cross country practice and afternoon wrestling practice. I wish I had his self motivation! I keep telling him his hard work will pay off! Last week his team had a competition to see who got to be the varsity team and run for this past Sat. meet. They were only taking the top 10! Blake was number 10! Thank goodness- He got to go. He came in 6th place for our team Sat. and number 33 out of all 200 runners. We were so excited for this being his first ever run! Tonight he did it again. It is amazing to see him come out of all those big cluster of kid and kick it in! It is so fun to watch. My little guy is getting some muscles-he starting to kinda get some buff going on! It almost makes me emotional to watch. I was one proud mama! I know this sounded bragging but I had to do it!!! Way to go Blake. He finished #21 out of 200 today and number #5 for our school team. I can't wait to see how he does Sat. again! He's trying to talk our friend that is pregnant with her 6th baby to run with him on his off Sat. in Sept. Too bad his mama's not in good enough shape to kick some bootie!!!Proud Daddy and sisters!