Thanksgiving Day!

We had a full house for thanksgiving! We had Bret's dad andtwo of Bret's sisters and his brother and all of their families come for a great visit. We were so glad they stayed for a couple of days. Here is a collage of a few of the events that took place. oh, and...yes! I am cutting granpas hair soon!

Here is a picture of Cory's now famous ham. Yum!

Later that night the kids made a big fort downstairs and watched Kung Fu Panda, they all wore each other out!

Here is Liz at 5 months pregnant, that's right 5 months, sickening...I only wished I looked that good all the time!

We even had time for a little haircolor....

And a little photoshoot, this is Ian looking GQ.

It was slightly crazy, but all worth it...we had a lot of fun and made a lot of memories.

Mom's uh...big helper?

The other day I was again complaining loudly that I get no help around the house and that I'm the only one that ever cleans anything. I guess my ranting did not fall on deaf ears because Dawson took pity on me and decided he would "help" out. He came out and asked where the toilet brush was, and just assuming he wanted to use it as a weapon on one of his brothers, I told him it was under the sink. Moments later he returned and asked where the "cleaning powder" was... again I told him where it was. Without thinking much about it I suddenly stopped and thought...could my child actually be cleaning??? What a proud moment for a mother, especially from a child that young. Just give me my "mother of year" award now. As I rounded the corner of the bathroom, you can imagine my suprise when I found Dawson and his definition of clean. Yep, that's what I found and the saddest part about it...... it stayed that way for a week and half!

Aaron Lange turns 15 or should I say Aaron Jonas?

Aaron turned 15 last month and I just had to share how his day went...As many of you know there is a band out there called the Jonas brothers. All the girls his age love the Jonas brothers, they all think they are so cute and many of them have pictures of them hung up in their lockers. Let's just say Aaron feels differently about the Jonas brothers, they drive him crazy and he can't stand their music...He finds them highly annoying. Anytime their song comes on the radio I hurry and turn it up and tell him how much I love the Jonas brothers...he just rolls his eyes and fights me to change the station. So for his birthday I decided I needed to do something to really embarrass him. So I found a picture of the Jonas brothers and I photo shopped Aaron's head onto the middle guy and added the word bubbles. I then called the principal at the school and got permission to hang over 75 fliers throughout the school. We got the combination to his locker and I covered his locker inside and out with fliers. Needless to say, he was just slightly embarrassed, but he is a good sport and he thought it was pretty funny. To make up for it I took donuts and chocolate milk to his seminary class. Here is the flyer that started it all...

What do you like doing with your family??

So last week we had our primary program and I was so excited because I was finally going to be sitting kid-less with the exception of Aaron for a whole hour! It was going great and Alec and Cade did a great job on their parts. Toward the end of program they brought all the little sunbeams up the microphone and asked them "What do you like to do with your family?" (Keep in mind Dawson is the youngest child in the whole primary, so I was pretty proud of him getting up in front of everyone.) One by one each sunbeam got up and spouted answers like, "I love scripture study", "I love family prayer", "I love singing hymns", at this point I started to sweat, "what would he say?" We're not that perfect. "Does he even know what a hymn is?" "What if he says his favorite thing to do with is famiy is drink diet coke??" "Ok, here he goes please, please, say something good." So he gets up really close the mic and does a big loud sigh into the mic, you know the kind I'm talking about. Then he does another sigh, long and loud into the mic. Then he loudly says, "I LIKE TO MAKE PANCAKES." The whole congregation cracked up and started laughing, what a way to finish the program! It might not have been the spiritual answer I was looking for, but I was so relieved he didn't reveal anything worse. So here are a couple of pictures of him making pancakes on Sunday morning.

Calories don't count on Sunday!

Every Sunday afternoon we make brownies. Sunday wouldn't be complete with out a pan of brownies. We always buy betty crocker or western family which ever one is on sale. Well, I decided to splurge and buy a big box of ghirardelli brownies from sam's club. In my hurry to make the brownies I poured in one pouch and all the other ingredients, well come to find out I poured in all the ingredients for the entire box. We have been on brownie overload today with four very large pans of brownies. We did give some away, but are down to about 1/2 pan left. That's right we ate over three pans of brownies in one day! One can never have enough chocolate!

My newest creation...

I was looking for a cute way to give my clients their cd's of pictures. This is what I came up with. These little boxes will hold up to four cd's. They may be a little too cutesy for my senior boy pictures, but I'm sure I can work on some more masculine looking ones. It's been a fun break from all that editing!

Halloween

What a fun halloween we had. Aaron had to work at the corn maze so he decided not to dress up this year, even though he wanted to dress up as a hotdog??? I'm not sure if we are the only family on the planet that scrambles around the night before halloween, going from store to store, looking for last minute costumes. Every year I tell the kids "you will decide in August what you want to be, and no changing your minds!" But I'm a sucker and give in and let them change their minds countless times until the night before. Cade wanted to be cheerleader (should I worry?) which was awesome because I just pulled out the old standby; my highschool cheerleading uniform. Totally depressing because it fits him and I think it might fit around one of my thighs. Alec ended up being a hippie which was so funny, check out the hair on his chest. Dawson was a bee and he looked pretty awesome. Bret was out of town for work and he kept calling to say how sad he was that he was missing halloween, but we took lots of pictures for him. It was also the warmest halloween we have ever had. I walked around with the kids in a short sleeve shirt, it was so nice. In our old neighborhood I would give out around 600 pieces of candy, so without even thinking I bought 800 pieces of candy. Since our subdivision is so new, we had a total of four trick or treaters , let's just say those four kids made out very well.