Spring is here!

Soooo happy about this! We went on a nice walk yesterday around the neighborhood. Then Camille was able to work in the flower gardens, yippee! Then for dinner we made dutch oven potatoes and chicken mmmmm. What a great and sunshiny day. Zippitee doo da, hahaha

Family dinner date

We went on a family date night to sizzlers a few weeks ago and our sister Tami came and said hi. That was a great surprise. She was there with her sisters and her twins birthmom. It was wonderful seeing them and getting to meet the birthmom, whom is planning on blessing them with another baby :), she is very nice and happy. We love birthmoms' they are blessings from Heaven.
Adoption has brought many miracles to our family. We think often of Max's birthmom, whom we are in contact with, she has blessed our lives greatly with the gift of our son. He is our sunshine and a great joy to us.
We have heard of a birthmom who is thinking about us....and we thank you for that. We pray for you daily and hope that you are doing well.

Max turns 7

So, these pictures are a bit late....he turned 7 in January. I know I am a big slacker. Anyway we had a party for him, with some of his friends. For the past few years he has really wanted to have a pinata but alas January is usually too wet and cold....but this year he got his wish! They had a great time smashing up a fire truck. He also got to invite his crush to his party, last year was an all boy one and he was greatly upset that she could not be there. Max got a huge cuddly dinosaur and of course transformers. He wanted to eat a cupcake at his party so we saved his cake for the next day. He had the choice of eating out or at home. Of course he chose eating out and Wingers was where he wanted to go. When it came to cake time we sang and he blew out the candles. He was very carefully eating his cake....so mom just had to help him a little ;)

Max was Mr. Incredible for Halloween.....he was cool and tough. He made quite the mess with the finger-painting on the table and then grandpa gave him the idea of putting hand-marks on the window....that was fine until he started to splat on the window and the paint got all over the walls and ceiling and some on the curtains. It took some scrubbing to get it all off, Max did not enjoy that part so much. Christmas came and we all had a great time. Dinner and parties at families' houses and of course Santa came to visit. At the ward party Max got to sit on his lap and Max was astounded at how soft his beard was! He stared at him for quite some time. Max loves his legos that he got, he and Camille build lots of houses and trucks with them. Brandon got a fireman figure that was a surprise for him, he is happy to have it. Camille got lots of chocolate....of course it did not last long :)

Found some more fun pictures of things that we did in 2010. Sadie enjoying the few leaves that were on the ground after Brandon raked them up. Max and Sadie played in the sprinklers a few times and that was fun. Max took a picture of Brandon up at camp bartlett by the lake and he looks handsome. Camille and Max went to the fair, Brandon was working this day, and they got to ride on the merry go round. Max also got to go down the slippy slide on a potato bag he thought that was a blast.

On this day we visited Brandon at the fire station. We played badminton in their indoor court, that was certainly a lot of fun. Max and Camille went on a call with the firemen and Brandon drove the fire engine. When Max was about 3 he was very scared to ride in the engine going lights and sirens but this time he really enjoyed it. Max took pictures of us sitting on the back of the fire engine, of course the only one that was not blurry was the goofy one :) Also Max sat in the back driving section of the tiller truck and pretended to drive. What a great little firefighter!

Just for fun. And no he will not be dressing up as frankenstein......

Pumpkins

For family home evening we carved ourselves some pumpkins. Max was super excited to get started but once he put his hand in the big orange ball for those seeds he was not as excited anymore. It seems like we forget all the fun details of carving pumpkins. He drew the face he wanted on it and with the help of mom and dad he cut out the pieces. He also wanted it to have a super hero mask!

Brandon did a thunder cats emblem on his. It turned out looking awesome!

Camille did a silly face and the dad of the group thought she had messed up and felt bad for her until she let him know that it was on purpose :-)

We did have a good time. The first thing Max said the next morning was "The pumpkins are all ready for Halloween!" He must have dreamed about them all night.

Summer Fun

Summer time is over but we had a great one. We went camping, swimming, horse-back riding, parade watching, we had water balloon fights and ran through the sprinklers. We also spent lots of time with friends and family. There were many family reunions and bbq's with friends.

This is a snake that was painted onto Max's face when we were at family camp this year. He thought it was so cool. We had a fun time camping. Brandon went river rafting, repelling, and enjoyed other fun activities. Camille hung out with the 3 and 4 year olds and got to make lots of crafts, nature walks, blow bubbles, play on the slides, and went to the nature lodge where they got to pet a bunny. Max learned all kinds of new things like swordplay with wooden swords, made a rocket and got to blast it off, learned about the food pyramid and first aid stuff, he also got to go swimming and went in a row boat. Lots of great fun.