Catching up....

Wow- 2 months of nothing on here:/  Well time to catch up and try to start back at being a good little blogger:) As always, we have been crazy busy but are enjoying this season in life- crazy and all! The kids are growing way too fast- we are really just becoming such an older-kid family- it's fun to watch but also makes you realize how fast life goes! I've missed documenting 2 of their birthdays so we'll start with that shall we?

 Chandler turned FOURTEEN at the end of August! We had her party in the school gym- invited all the girls in the 8th grade class, laid out the cheer mats and let them run wild for 3 hours. It was easy and a GREAT party!

Parker turned EIGHT! He ans Sie had their 7th annual joint birthday party! So sweet! We had it at an indoor trampoline park- they had a blast!

Friday night lights have been in full swing- and so have the pep rallies! I love this group of girls I'm coaching!

Patton played tackle football for the first time. They didn't have the best record:) but he LOVED it!! I see much more of this in our future! They had the best fans! Bev and Laura were so sweet to come to a COLD game! (they saw 4 games in 3 days!)

 And these precious girls drove a long way to cheer on their friends- such a sweet group of girls!

 (he's #12)

We got to go for a weekend to the Owen Ranch- LOVE that home and LOVE the memories we always make there! The kids got to fish and Chandler got some driving lessons!!! Scary! Actually she is a really good driver!

 (not sure she actually caught this...;)

We turned the living room into a giant volleyball court (why wouldn't we??) and the adults played the 8th grade girls! Only catch was- we had to play on our knees! Still beat them pretty bad:)

We decided to start a "14 year old" tradition and take the said 14 year old to an away Ranger game! Chandler just really wanted to go to one and we had miles and hotel points about to expire so we thought it was a great new tradition to start! We flew to Cali to watch the Rangers vs. the Angels. We had a wonderful time!! Even got to do a half a day at disneyland and go to the beach for about 10 minutes!:)

Ok I know I'm leaving out about a million things but this will have to do for a while! In other news, we are SO excited to be going back to Africa in just 2 weeks!! Well just Jeff and I:) the kids are so jealous- love that they love that place as much as we do! I'll definitely  be posting from there! And say a prayer for my mom who will have the kids for the entire 2 weeks!:) love her!!
We'll finish this post off with a pic of the cutest little dogs and cats you'll ever see! This was the 2nd grade play at school-

Homecoming 2012- Bring HOME the Gold!

Well we have been BUSY around here! Lots to catch up on but I had to do a quick post of homecoming! The Lord truly blessed us this week by providing energy and stamina to get through this week and we are thankful!!! Our theme this year for homecoming was the olympics- and we had a BLAST coming up with ideas to decorate and incorporate into the pep rally!

 We tried to capture a little olympics, a little London, a little USA, and a lot of sports!

 We had an awesome speaker- 2 time olympian Scott Frew!

We had the teams walk in as if in the opening ceremonies with country names like United States of VARSITY, JV REDwanda (you know I had to get Rwanda in there:) JV BLACKistan, and MexiCOACHES:)

 We had a special moment to honor Connor Gage and pray for the Gage family- his older brother Riley carried in the torch to begin the pep rally and others read verses, poems, and prayed. It has been amazing to see this school family come together through this tragedy and it makes me so proud to be a cardinal!

 I cannot tell you how proud I was of these girls- they have been through a LOT and they still did their best performance ever tonight! Loved seeing it all come together!

 Jeff literally took TWO pictures of Chandler's squad:( but they also did AMAZING!!!

 The Cardinalettes were funnier than ever- and pretty talented too!;)

 Right before the pep rally is the parade- I never get to watch it because I'm inside the gym getting ready for the pep rally but my kids were in it and they loved it and I heard it was awesome! Someone else thankfully got some pics of it!

The night ended with PERFECT weather for a football game!! We got horribly defeated by the Chargers:( but it was still such a fun night!