The rest of Jacob's birthday

We opened all the family presents after dinner. This is what Maddy and Ally gave Jacob.

Bryson got him a new Lego Star Wars ship.

My mom gives the kids scriptures when they turn 8. Jacob thought his were cool because they have "gold" pages! (Maddy's are silver and for some reason he thinks gold is way better.)

He loves his shirts from Travis's parents!

He loves his Hot Wheels track too. What could be better than crashing cars?!
He's really wanted an MP3 player and has been using Maddy's old pink MP3 player that is broken. It would only play through the list of songs, you couldn't skip through or pick songs and then when it played through the list you had to remove the songs and reload them - plus it was pink! He is soooooo excited to have his own new RED MP3 player. This boy LOVES music!
Here is Ally getting ready to play dart tag. Silly girl!
Jacob also got to have his special bath in our bath tub. The kids think it's great how deep it is and love all the bubbles!
All in all it was a really fun birthday! We love you Jacob and hope you had as much fun as we did celebrating with you!

Jacob's birthday

It was Jacob's birthday last month and I'm finally getting the pictures up. He wanted to have an "army" party. It was definitely a boy party! First we painted everyone's faces camouflage and gave them dog tags.

Maddy just wanted a little face paint.
Next we had a basic training obstacle course. Everyone loved it so much that we did it again later. Here are the obstacles they had to do.

High knees through the circles ...
Crawl through the tunnel ...
Across the balance beam ...

Across the monkey bars ... Then they had to go up the stairs and down the slide. Jacob is so fast that he beat everyone both times - but at least we warned him ahead of time that he didn't get to get any prizes.


Next we played "Hot Grenade" w/ a grenade water balloon.

We played Drill Sergeant Says.

And we had target practice trying to see who could land the most grenades in the hula hoop. It was more difficult than the boys thought it would be.

After lunch, presents, cake / pie and ice cream, they had a water war. They all had a really good time!

My kids are not big cake eaters. This is ironic because my mom makes the BEST cakes and I've tried to pick up cake decorating as well. Jacob just wanted a pie for his birthday. I convinced him to let me bake cupcakes too since not everyone likes pie. We put tank and star candles on the pie and army men on the cupcakes. The only problem was that I thought I'd just buy a pie to save time and the pie I bought w/a "cherry pie" sticker on it turned out to be apple. At least Jacob likes apple and he wasn't too disappointed. Happy birthday Jacob! I can't believe that you're 8 already!

Just a note to any parents who want to do any kind of armed forces party. If you go to your armed forces recruitment center, they'll give you a ton of free stuff! From the Marines we got 4 posters and some really cool foil stickers. From the Army we got bracelets, lanyards, pens, pencils folders, pins, little American flags, and carabiners. All I did was go in and tell them that my son was have a army birthday party and asked if they had anything that they give out to little kids. I didn't go into the navy or air force because Jacob really just wanted every thing camouflage, but I'm sure they would have had great stuff too.

1st day of school

We've been in school for quite a while, but being the slacker that I am, I never got the pictures up. So here's my effort to get all caught up.

Here's Maddy on the 1st day. Do you think she likes monkeys?

Here are the boys showing off their new shirts.
Jacob was bound and determined to find a camouflage backpack. He is thrilled with his "army" backpack! Can't you just see the pride in his face!
Bryson was the easiest to buy a backpack for. We found this holographic Mario Kart backpack at the 1st store we went to and he was set!
I drove the kids to school the 1st day to help them carry all the supplies and donations and to meet their teachers, well Maddy's anyway - I already knew the boys teachers. If you look closely, you'll notice that even the Kleenex Maddy donated have monkey's on the boxes.

Bryson was soooooo excited to Finally start school! After we had dropped Maddy, Jacob and Bryson off in their classes, Ally asked me where her class was. I told her that she got to go home with mommy. She was a little disappointed, but I don't think she really wanted to stay. She seemed to enjoy having mom all to herself for a little while.

When I told Bryson that I was driving them on the 1st day of school he said, "Ah, come on!" He has been waiting FOREVER to be able to ride the bus with the big kids. At least it was some consolation that he got to ride the bus home. Here are the kids walking to the bus stop on the 2nd day of school. Ally had to have a backpack just like the rest of them.

Bryson was so excited!

Now the problem is that Ally keeps wanting to ride the bus. She wants to walk the kids to the bus stop everyday wearing her backpack. I guess she'll have to wait FOREVER too.

Crazy bungee tramp!

Here are the pictures from the bungee tramp. It was a full size trampoline that had poles up the side with bungee cords attached. They hooked several bungee cords to your harness according to your weight. After the cords were tightened up so that you were several feet off the trampoline, the worker would jump up and pull down on the cords to launch you super high!

Maddy was super brave and went first. They eased the kids into it and didn't shoot them the full height at first. They made sure they were able to handle the gradual increases.

She was even brave enough to do a few flips!!!

Jacob was smiling the whole time. He always looked like an X because he kept his legs out. Bryson loved it too, but he didn't go quite as high as the others. He wanted to do it again though. Too bad you only get one turn w/the passes or you have to pay extra. It was A LOT higher than I thought! I kept laughing and screaming at the same time and kept begging the guy not to launch me so high, but everyone else was telling him "higher, higher!". So of course he kept launching me HIGH! I would totally do it again though! I think I could have handled it better if he had eased me into like the kids - I'm just not as brave as I used to be!
I didn't do any flips. I was actually trying really hard to stay up right! Travis is much braver than I am! He was doing flips the whole time! It's pretty safe to say that the bungee tramp was super fun and we'd all do it again given the chance!

Family Reunion

The last part of our vacation in July was a family reunion for Travis's family. We were up in the mountains of CO. Their family used to have a cabin up there and this river was right by their old cabin. The kids had fun playing where dad played when he was a kid.

Ally loved watching the rocks splash in the water! She would squeal in delight every time!

What could be more fun than throwing big rocks in the river?
Especially so that Jacob gets splashed! ;) He was wet from the waist down before we left!

Maddy loved the walking stick she found - so of course everyone else to find one too.

We stayed at a hotel that had great amenities! We got to do some really fun activities! Bryson and I were riding the chairlift up to ride the Alpine slide. Even the ride up was fun!

Looks like Jacob was beating Bryson and I. He is a speed demon!

Maddy and her cousin Jenna rode the Alpine slide more than anyone else. They really packed it in!

There was a rock climbing wall. Bryson wasn't so sure about climbing high. He did get a few feet off the ground though.

Jacob and Maddy both reached the top!

We lucked out and it was one of 2 special "family days" there so the kids got to get their faces painted, got balloon animals and saw a magic show!

Bryson asked for a mad face. He was pleased with the result!

Jacob wanted fire!

Here are the boys panning for "gold". Jacob found some cool rocks and crystals and Bryson found some cool arrowheads.

Ally mainly loved the jumping castle.

The most unique activity was a bungee tramp. I'll post those pics next.

Here's our whole group at the end. What a fun reunion and what a great family!