Pictures and Parties!

Each day when the kids get home from school we go through the same routine. . .
-park bikes in garage
-do chores
-eat snack
-get our pencil and homework
-give mom all papers from school and start homework

Maybe it's just me or just Crestview (our elementary school) but it seems like there are a ton of papers for me every single day. Okay, that was an exageration, on average there are 2 or 3 from each kid a day. To me, that seems like a lot. Especially for someone who is unorganized, like me.

Anyway, to finally get where I'm going, my kids brought home school picture order forms. If I was to get the cheapest packets it would have cost us $180 for pictures and there wouldn't have even been enough to send to all the grandparents! No thank you! So instead of forking over a ton of dough that I don't have we had a little photo shoot. It turned out pretty succesful considering the budget I had ($0).

Apparently just walking outside gets Beckham completely dirty. So just this short venture to our fence left Beckhams face all mucked up, I have no idea how it happened. It's a good thing he's even cute when he's dirty.

Beckham decided that he wanted to go all out so he started posing and improvising all on his own. It was pretty funny.

He was even saying cheese here.

Parker is too cute for her own good if you ask me. I can't believe she's in third grade!!

The only way I could get Easton to pose for the camera was to let him have goofy pictures throughout. This is his impression of smashing into a glass door.

Having adult size teeth in these little kids mouths really changes their looks. Yeah it's a little goofy but it's like getting a glimps of their teenage years and it scares the heck out of me!

Poor Creed has no idea how to "smile naturally." Plus he has allergies so being out in the brush really made it hard to get a normal picture of him. I have more pictures of him with his eyes closed or making a weird face then I have of decent ones. The funny thing is that most of the goofy ones are truer to who he really is.

Makay loves being in front of the camera! The only hard part about her shoot was picking which picture to use.

Ryan and I just finished reading "The Hunger Games" (thanks Melinda!). One night while I was reading to Ryan, Meatball came in and wanted some attention from Ryan. Once he figured out that that wasn't going to happen he made himself comfortable at the foot of our bed. I thought it was adorable but I had to hurry and take the picture before Ryan kicked him off the bed (literally). Our little Meatball is a funny character but may not be with us for too much longer. I love the little guy but why do pets insist on being so needy? Can't they figure out that they have to be low maintenence or they'll get the boot? We shall see.

The kids ran in and asked if they could go inside our neighbors house to play with their friends. I said no, we only play outside with our friends. This is how they thought outside the box. I walked outside and found them watching a movie with their friends not inside their house.

Parker had her 9th birthday party on the 24th! It was a butterfly theme, very girly and fun. She had five friends over so of course we turned them all into butterflys.

Thanks to Orientel Trader we had butterfly things coming out of our ears! Heaven for Parker.

I found face painting things at Michaels so a few days before the party I did some practicing. The kids loved it and want it every day now. I would but by the end of the day it's a pretty big mess, yikes!

Beckham takes his super heroing very seriously.

Makay was born to be a butterfly

Creed got all the way into character and had his cape on

Easton later added his cape as well (thank you grandma button for providing super hero attire)

Parker was pretty excited about her transformation. She said she really did want to take Meatball for a walk (she usually complains) and had him out walking around the neighborhood for almost 40 minutes.

One of the guys that works with Ryan was transferred on Monday so we had a little going away party for him the week after Parkers party. We played some minute to win it games and it turned out really fun!

This is Master Sargent Knight and civilian Amy playing the "chocolate unicorn" minute to win it game.

This game was my favorite just because I can actually do it. You have to stack three chap sticks on top of each other using only chop sticks to touch them. Ryan and I stayed up the night before trying out the games and seeing if they were possible to play without prior practice. I had some very strange muscles that were sore the next day.

This is Chris, the one who's moving to Colorado to be with his new wife and soon-to-be born baby. It was really fun getting together with everyone that Ryan works with. He talks about them when he gets home but I hardly ever get to see them myself.

Overall, September was a pretty big party month for us, yee-haw!!