Happy Birthday Sydnie!!!

Well as usual I am behind on my posts. But this very long post will officially catch me up. Starting with most recent first. My little Sydnie turned 4! I can't believe my little baby is already 4.

Sydnie has been such a fun little girl that I get to call mine. She is so loving and full of smiles and laughter. Even when she gets in trouble, which she does her fair share of the time, she tries to soften things by laughing or smiling, truth is sometimes it works, certainly better than crying and throwing a fit would. She is so generous with her hugs and compliments. Of course I have to laugh when she tells me I look beautiful when I am dressed up in one of my crazy outfits for contest photos, but I'll take it anyway. When I brought the balloons home for her birthday party she ran up to me and said "Thanks Mom! You are the BEST" then she grabs my hand and and yanks on it and says "Mom, I need to give you a hug" It's times like that I wonder where this little girl comes from.

Some fun things about Sydnie at 4 years old is: She loves penguins, she has penguin stuffed animals penguin books, penguin figures, penguin movies and even has a special penguin walk she does. She wants to be a penguin for Halloween but I am trying to talk her out of it because I already bought a Rapunzel outfit. She also loves Rapunzel but not quite as much as penguins so we will see if I can change her mind. Sydnie also loves the color orange, she always has since the time she was little, she even had a special name for the color, wish I could remember it, I think I wrote it down somewhere but I can't find it. Anyway she loves anything orange and if she had her way she would wear the color orange everyday.

We had a family birthday party and went to Artic Circle to celebrate and play on the toys. When we got home we opened presents and she blew the candles out on her Penguin birthday cake.

Sydnie opening her presents

Yay! a Rapunzel doll

And a cute little dog from Grandma:

A few days earlier we had a friends birthday party for her. She invited 3 of her cute friends and we went to a place called Kangaroo Zoo. They have a bunch of blow up slides and bounce houses the girls had a great time running around for an hour.

When we got home we had pizza and blew out the candles on a donut cake made with Orange donuts.


Sydnie with her cute friends and two sisters


Josh and Jenny come to visit

We had a surprise visit from Shaun's brother Josh and his family. And as always we had a great time with them. We drove to Strawberry reservoir to take them cray fishing. The trout were biting that afternoon, each of the girls had a chance to reel one in.

The girls checking out their catch:

Sydnies turn to reel one in:

Thanksgiving Point

We have had some really pleasant weekend and have taken advantage of them by doing some fun things with the girls. One weekend we went to Thanksgiving points petting zoo.

Riding the horse drawn wagon:

Feeding the goats:

And of course riding the horses, here is Kaylee she chose the largest horse:

And Brianne, she might have chosen this one because his bridal matches her shirt:

And Sydnie chose the littlest horse and had a great time!

State Fair

The weekend before that we went to Utah's state fair. The girls had fun riding a ride and looking at the animals. One of the highlights was a mother pig that had just had babies. There is nothing cuter than a baby pig, and nothing uglier than a mother pig:

The girls at the fair they each got to chose one ride Sydnie chose the merry go round.

Sydnie Starts Preschool

I am still behind on posts. Sydnie actually started preschool a couple weeks ago, but I am still playing catch up. This is Sydnies first year of preschool. She is almost 4 but since she has a September birthday and won't go to kindergarten for 2 years I decided not to send her last year. So far she is loving preschool, she is learning to write her name and learning her numbers and ABC's.

Here is Sydnie all dressed up for her first day.

And a close-up of this cute face

Here she is with her friend Tia that goes to preschool with her. By this time they were pretty much done with posing and I couldn't get a cute one of them together. So this will have to do.

Wedding Visitors

My Nephew Sean got married a few weeks ago and we had family come in town for the reception. The reception was Friday night at my brother Mikes house. We had fun seeing everyone. My Mom and Dad and sisters Nancy and Laura were there and even my brother Greg and his family were there from Colorado. It was fun to visit everyone at the reception.

I had fun taking some pictures of my nephew and his wife during the reception, but before the reception started I practiced by taking some of my own kids. My brother Mikes fountain is always a temptation for the kids. My girls managed to stay dry for a little while. But once the rest of the cousins got there they gave up trying to stay dry and managed to get completely soaked.

Sydnie testing the waters, it all starts with just a toe right?

I just thought this was cute of Sydnie, even though she has purple lollipop all over her face:

Brianne getting a bit more daring in the water fall


I just loved this side view of Brianne.

Ah ha! That is where the purple stains all over her face came from!

Kaylee on Mike's swing set

And the happy couple:

My sister Nancy and her family stayed the weekend at our house. Saturday was a beautiful day. We got up and decided to do a little hike on a path by our neighborhood.

Shaun found a Horny Toad, he always manages to find things like this when we are hiking. Kaylee is the brave one that held him first

Then Hayden gave it a try:

Even Sydnie decided to hold it:

At first Brianne didn't want to hold him so we let him go. Then she decided she really did want to hold it so Shaun caught it again and I snapped a picture of her holding it.

Later that day we headed out to Strawberry Reservoir. Nancy and her family had never been crayfishing with us before so we thought it would be fun for her kids to try.

When Chloe saw the water she had to get right in. She spent most of her time at Strawberry in her diaper


Hayden and Kaylee looking for the crayfish

Brianne and Sydnie throwing their lines in:

Sydnie got daring toward the end and started trying to pick them up.

Hannah loved crayfishing, both her and Hayden wouldn't stop even after it started raining.

Back to School

The girls started school almost two weeks ago, I'm just a little slow getting these photos posted. In fact I'm really behind again on my posts. But first things first. Kaylee is starting 5th grade this year and Brianne is in 2nd. I don't know why but I am having a hard time believing that they are that old. They sure looked cute all dressed up in their new outfits.


Brianne the second grader

Kaylee the fifth grader:

Brianne and her cute friend Avery, they got matching shirts and both chose to wear them on the first day of school. I'm not sure if this was planned or not. I kind of think it was.

The whole group of kids from our street ready to head to school on their scooters. Turquoise must be the color this year. Everyone but Kaylee was wearing it. Kaylee actually has a couple of new turquoise shirts but she wanted to wear her skirt the first day.

A Fun Summer

I have been a slacker and I have not been updating this blog like I should. I think part of the problem is I take all of my Photos in RAW format now and they have to be converted to JPEG before I can put them on here. It's just one more step I have to do before posting so it slows me down a bit. I forced myself to sit down today and get everything since the last time I posted. Get ready for a whole bunch of photos. I decided to start with the most recent first and work my way backwards.

Granite (Thornton Family Reunion 2011)

We had a lot of fun this year at Granite. Greg and his family came and we haven't seen them for a couple years so it was good to catch up with them and for the cousins to get reacquainted. These first pictures are of some of the younger cousins, we walked down to Granite Creek so the kids could look for snail shells and to find branches for Grandpa to make willow whistles. Usually you can wade in the creek some but this year the water was so high the kids just had fun throwing rocks in.

Hannah, Haden, Kaylee, Brianne, Sydnie, Izzy, and Trinity. At Granite Creek posing in front of the open door rock structure.

One more in front of the creek

Busy at work collecting rocks

On the last day some of us had the great idea to go on a hike. I must say most of us were ill prepared for the type of hike this was. It was a bit of a mix of mountain climbing and the rest was very steep and slippery with no trail to follow. At one point I thought, "I really don't want to go any further, but at the same time I don't want to go back the way I came either." So I pressed on hoping that we would find an easier way down. Luckily we did, but it wasn't without its hazards, between loose rocks and branches I managed to scrape and bruise my legs up pretty well.

We finally managed to make it to the top. I have to say the view was pretty amazing and there is nothing quite like accomplishing something like that.

Here is the whole hiking group minus myself, from left to right: C.J. , Mike, Sean, Whitney, Brad, Nick, and if you look in the upper right corner of the picture you will see Shaun risking his life trying to get back to a more safe spot on the mountain.

I took this one right after we reached the top, my nephew Sean and I were the first ones up.

This is of Whitney and Nick on our way down from the Arch

We always have a lot of fun at the pool "Granite Hot Springs" This year we got to swim two of the days we were there.
Sydnie with her cousin Katie:

Kaylee doing back flips in the pool:

Brianne just chilin' in the pool:

Sydnie with her Grandma and Grandpa Thornton:

About a week before we went to Granite Shaun and I took the girls up to strawberry reservoir to do some cray fishing. Shaun always tries to catch a few trout while we are there too. Here is Kaylee holding his catch:

Kaylee found a big hook and decided to see if she could snag any crayfish with out any bait. She actually managed to catch quite a few with it. She was pretty proud of herself:

We also took the girls one night to the lake by our house, we don't really have any areas with sandy beaches but they still had fun throwing rocks in the water and swimming a bit.

Brianne and Lu lu:

Sydnie carefully walking through the rocks:

I am the activity day leader for Kaylees age. We took a Field trip to the temple. I took pictures of all the girls. Here is me and Kaylee:

For the fourth we went to Idaho Falls for the first time in several years. We had fun seeing family and going to the parade. We were sad not to be able to stay for the fireworks but Shaun had to work early the next morning so we went and watched fireworks near our home instead.

We sat with the Jacksons and My mom and dad at the parade:

I had to throw these in. Kaylee gets pretty creative sometimes and she decided to make costumes out of construction paper for everyone. Sydnies favorite animal is a penguin so of course she made a penguin costume for sydnie:

Here is all three of them Kaylee is an elephant, and Brianne made her own. I think she was a dog.

For the Huls family reunion we decided to visit Shauns sister Katie in San Diego. The whole family(minus Shaun's two Brothers) Rented a beach house just a couple blocks from the beach in La Jolla. The kids had fun playing in the Ocean, going to San Diego Zoo, Sea World, a Padres Baseball Game and swimming in the pool at Katies apartment. We also stopped at some friends house who live near L.A. and it was fun to see their house and have a swimming and BBQ party.

On the way to San Fransisco we stopped in Las Vegas to spend a night and break up the drive. The girls had fun touring Las Vegas and riding a few rides:

I had to include this one:

We had fun at the M&M factory:

One of the first days we were there we went to San Diego zoo. It was fun it was just our family plus Natalies little boy Kegan. My girls were happy to have one of their cousins come along with them. We were amazed at this peacock who was more than happy to show off his feathers and let everyone come up really close to him.

More goofy photos at the zoo:

while we were in San Diego we celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary. Katie insisted on taking some photos of us before we left. We had a good time eating at a local Italian restaurant and getting some cheesecake to go at the cheesecake factory.

And finally Way back in May Sydnie had her first dance recital. Here is the whole class:

Sydnie was rotten at the dance recital she just laid on the floor during the whole dance and wouldn't do anything. I was worried she would do the same at the recital. But just before the dance started I figured out why she was acting so silly. She wanted to be under the orange light on the stage (it's her favorite color) so I switched some girls around and let her be under the orange light. It worked! She danced her little heart out and even started laughing in the middle of the dance.

Sydnie positioned herself front and center and I couldn't help laughing a little bit at my little show off:

The end hopefully I won't let myself get so far behind again.