Rachel's 7th birthday and bug party

Rachel is 7 years old! This little girl is so spunky and adds tons of fun to our family. So glad she's ours! Love you Rachey!

Rachel and I decided to have a "cute as a bug" party for her birthday because she loves bugs and anything little and cute--like her!

Rachel helped me make these cute bug jar invitations.

Rachel made this sign for the front door so everyone would now this is where the party is!

Goodie bags all ready for our guests!

Everyone practiced their bug drawing skills as we waited for all the guests to arrive.The birthday girl turned out to be quite the bug artist.

Look at all those cute bugs!

Had fun playing Cootie.We also had a bug hunt, decorated bug catchers and ate pudding cups with gummy worms for a treat. Lots of fun!

We visited Rachel at school on her actual birthday and brought her this birthday balloon.

Brigham and Hazel had fun eating lunch in the cafeteria with their big sister.Rachel got a special gift from her favorite primary teacher, Nikki Effros. She LOVES her pink unicorn.

Books, of course. This girl is an amazing reader.

I made her this cape and crown. She got all dressed in purple and called herself the "purple princess".

POLLY POCKETS!!!

Christmas recital

Emma and Eliza have actually had several recitals in the past few months, but I finally remembered to take my camera to this one! (Of course, I really only got pictures of their backs, but you get the idea.) They had a fun come-and-go Christmas recital at Richards Music in Safford that we managed to squeeze in-between Rachel's birthday festivities, activity days and a Messiah rehearsal. Such a busy time of year, but so much fun! They are both becoming such good little pianists and they did a wonderful job!

Making snowmen

We haven't seen any snow in Safford yet, but that didn't stop the kids from making snowmen on a Sunday afternoon. They had fun making these cute play dough snowmen while Ben and I got our Sunday naps;) They even took their own pictures. Can ya tell?

Christmas is here!

For me, putting the Christmas tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving always marks the official start of the Christmas season. The kids start to get excited and they love looking through all the ornaments and remembering when they made them or which Christmas they received them. It's especially nice now that we have a pre-lit tree that Ben puts up in about 10 minutes and then we just let the kids go to town putting all the ornaments on. It's not much to look at, but all those cute kid-made ornaments add up to lots of fun Christmas memories!

Christmas came early!!!

My super awesome sister and her husband had us for Christmas this year and brought our Christmas present when they came to AZ for Thanksgiving. They bought and refinished this table for our entryway and I absolutely love it! Thanks Jenny and Matthew! Love you guys!!!

Merry Main Street in Safford

Family pictures

Yesterday we had our family picture taken! We actually hired a real photographer and dressed all matchy, matchy and I am so excited to see how they turned out! It had been over two years since we had a family picture so it was long overdue and even though I always get a little stressed out at family picture time, it was kind of fun to dress everybody and get to do all sorts of poses and stuff. There are a few of the pictures on the photographer's blog if you want to check it out. Go to: http://eloisesmithphotography.blogspot.com/