Birthday Girl Olivia!

Mom kind of failed as birthday planner this year . . . We blame our new baby girl.  

Luckily Dad bought donuts for birthday breakfast . . . 

She had 2 birthday wishes . . . one was an American Girl Doll bed.

Her bestie, Addy, came over to go to Nickelcade (Liv's pick) that day and brought her the Best Friends necklace they've been talking about for months.  

Dinner at Los Hermanos with Banna and Branda (and their shirts). 

And birthday wish #2 . . . a new gumball machine . . . Aunt Jackie came through on that one.  

We celebrated later with Lisa with hot dogs, S'mores, cake (made by Olivia) and games at the park.  

We sure love our Livy-Lou-Who (and our Michael Ann).   

Seriously?! So surprised!

The Dr's office will not let the kids come to the ultrasound so we decided to go to fetal fotos so the kids could see the baby and we could find out - boy or girl!

Turns out it was hard to schedule a time that we could all go!
Everything is sooo different this time around.  

We all threw out our guess and we were all guessing - boy.

And Boy were we wrong!

Baby GIRL . . . and we're so, so, so excited!

Shrapnel

Drew and Eden . . . they're the mostest, bestest friends.  

Don came over to pick up Eden and wondered where all the Shrapnel came from all over my drive way . . . what Shrapnel?

Apparently there was a praying mantis . . . and it needed to have all the debris left over from the construction thrown at it . . . regardless of my car being RIGHT there.  

When I backed my car out, he was still there - alive - despite the war declared on him. 

Unfortunately, that was not their worst to date.  I just didn't have the mind to take a picture when they flooded my bathroom and made a potion of my face cream, tanning lotion and face soap . . . that they poured into my carpet.  

Not a good day.  

Eight is Great!

Olivia was baptized the beginning of September.  We waited a bit assuming we'd be in our house, in our new ward and situated . . . but that wasn't the case.  We did go to the ward before we moved in so the primary would know here a little, but we moved in the week before so it was a little choas - but we might thrive in choas - I'm not sure. 

We went on a pre-baptism date night with Liv up the the Garden restaurant.
It's hard to believe she's 8!

Kate was here for school already so she got to come. 

I never went on a mission, but I consider Motherhood my mission and I've now converted two - at least to baptism.  We're still working towards true conversion. 

And some pictures of our Best Friends Forever and Ever.