I have been behind on my blog and forget some of the things I want to blog about. So once again this will be a short post.

Some highlights from the week include playing Alhambra Friday night with friends and finally finishing Wall-E after three or so tries. Our DVD player and computer are on the fritz and are deciding on their own when to work and not to work. Good thing we'll be out of debt soon! Yes, we could live without a computer, but we don't have to, so that will be a sooner-than-later purchase.

Yesterday we watched our friends' kids while they went to a Dave Ramsey seminar. During that time Lee took the two older kids and Clark and Cal to a kid party thing at the Pippin Youth Center on base. They had a great time, and I was able to keep plugging away at the laundry.











Jennie pointed out to me that some of my photos are cut off--and I've since noticed too (thanks Jennie!). I re-uploaded some pictures as a smaller size, but that didn't help. I am going to have to try the smallest upload size next time.

And some Elden news, he had his 6 month check up on September 11th. We weighed 12 pounds 2 ounces! He also got his 6 month shots. (Hmmm...I am wondering if I already put this in a previous post.)

For Lee's birthday his co-workers at the 43rd gave him a gift certificate to a local Mexican restaurant, El Jimador. It was really good!



Tomorrow is our 7 year anniversary! It seems like we've been married for awhile, and 7 years is a good chunk of time. But it still seems that we haven't been married that long. And we haven't. With seven moves, a couple of flat tires, five kids, and finishing "school", it's been quite the adventure! Happy Anniversary Lee!

Saturday the 12th, we enjoyed going to our ward's Fall Festival. There was a pie eating and pie judging contest, bobbing for apples, a get-to-know-you game, a playground for the kids to play on (imagine that), pie for eating and great company. We enjoyed having our friend Kari and two of her kids come.


My friend Kristi and I before the contest.


Kristi won!


The kids got in on the action too.







I didn't win the pie eating contest or the pie contest, but I did win a fun goodie basket for finishing the get-to-know-you game first!


I have a couple of random kid stories.A few days ago the girls took turns trying to make night life loud. The worst was last Sunday night. Shanna had still not fallen asleep after being in her room for 2 hours. I finally went into her room and laid on a mattress on the floor, and she sort of calmed down but she was still "tossing and turning" and FINALLY fell completely asleep at 3am. Then the next night Haley had fallen asleep on the floor (like she does quite often) and I put her in her bed. She was MAD! At least she calmed down after about 5 minutes.

Finally, a few comments on my kids and cleaning. My kids like to play in the nursery at church, and a few weeks ago Lee had choir practice after church, so it worked out nicely. Shanna had a bag of puzzle pieces, dumped it on the ground and played/looked at them. After she was done she put them all back into the bag. The other day Cal and Shanna were playing with some Legos. Cal was singing the words Clean Up to the tune of the Bob the Builder theme song and Shanna was putting the Legos in a bag. It was too cute. And a few times Clark has made his bed in the morning with no promptings from mom.

It's great seeing my kids clean up after themselves once in a great while without having to ask them or sit and wait for them to do so. There are still plenty of messes at my house though! The fridge pirates have disbanded for the time being. Hopefully they will never join forces again. (Though I think that is wishful thinking.) Two things that have helped to stop the raids are: 1. hiding the sour cream and 2. not buying yogurt. Those two things are hot commodities for Cal, Shanna and Haley.

I ran into some problems with this post last week. I have been using Blogger to upload and store my photos online. Blogger holds the pictures in Picasa. Anyway, I found out that I am allowed only 1G of storage on Picasa. I'm not too surprised that I've met my limit as I've been using my blog for almost 2 years, and you all know how many pictures I like to put up! Thanks to my friend Shannon for telling me about flikr. I am now using them to host my photos online. I have used photobucket before, but what is nice about flikr is that I have only a monthly upload limit, as opposed to a total upload limit. So potentially, I should be able to use flikr forever and ever. Make sense? Good!

Back on the farm, we had a great Labor Day Weekend. Lee had a four-day weekend, so we headed on up to St. Louis that Friday.

We met up with our friends the Taylors and the Stouts and swapped babysitting at the temple.


Our family headed to the free St. Louis zoo afterward.





Yeah, Lee pretty much took an amazing photo of this animal. I should submit it to National Geographic!



I didn't know that someone took this photo of me. Too funny!

The WHOLE family!



We fueled up our van on the way home. I wish gas was only this much! If you look at the smaller sign it was only 2.19, which we thought was amazing as it is 2.39 here.

It was a very peaceful ride to Rolla...all kids sleeping.

On the way home we made our traditional stop at Little Caesar's and Aldi. We then headed to the Lykins for a game night. We never did play games, but we had a fun time talking and eating snacks. The weather was crazy that night. It was raining really hard and it was foggy; an un-peaceful ride home. I was very grateful we got home safely that night. It was a good, long day.

Over Labor Day weekend someone took pictures of the house where our friends Kelly and Chris lived. The housing company is remodeling it now. Gotta love the toilets outside!



That Saturday I took the girls to a birthday party at our friend's house, and later we went back again to their house so Lee could watch the BYU game. They made us a yummy dinner. The guys enjoyed the game and I had fun visiting with my friend.

Cal has been wanting pictures with Elden lately. It's very cute.


We honored Labor Day by laboring. We had a fun weekend, so we didn't mind the day off to prepare for the week.


I did Tae Bo that morning and Clark and two of his friends did it with me for a little bit.

Hope you all had a great Labor Day too!

My wonderful husband is 29! I think he had a great birthday--I enjoyed it anyway. Next year we'll have to remember to have him take leave on his birthday! That morning I got up early and made cupcakes for Lee and his co-workers. Clark's school started late so we all went over to Lee's work and said happy birthday. After working out I decorated the dining area for Lee's birthday. While Lee was at work after lunch, I finally got to his cake. It was really easy, but it just took some time cutting out the letters.

We had a fun little family party and after the kids were in bed we watched Song of the Thin Man.

Here is Clark with Cal's good friend.


Lee being the always wonderful husband, even on his birthday


The oh-so-fitting cake









Looks pretty uncomfortable...







Thanks Charles and Sam for being friends so that Lee and I could meet! It's been a great 6 years of marriage and I am excited about the rest of our journey together. HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEE!