This weekend was my grandmothers birthday and she had recently told me she wanted some pictures of the kids. Saturday morning Jared and I thought it would be fun to hold a "photo shoot" in the backyard. It was actually really fun and after promising Blake he would get a star if he participated everything went smoothly. We even got a few smiles from Zander, of course those were usually in the same pictures Blake had his eyes closed! We were able to get a few pictures made for my grandma and were able to have a nice visit with her. It was also a nice surprise when we got to her house only to have the door be opened by my brother Richard! It was great to be able to see his family and see how big Kenton and Wesley are getting.









I think my favorite is the one with all four of them laying on the grass. What do you think? Anyways we had a great time as a family this weekend. After our mock photo shoot we went to the music store to get new strings for my/Elizabeth's violin and a new piano book for Kayla. Jared was inspired while we were there and has been getting out his old trumpet the last few days (even at 9pm when all the kids were asleep!) and yes he did wake up Zander and no he did not go right back to sleep!

So after not posting awhile I was asked to put up some pictures of my little ones. Sometimes I find blogging is like a chore for me,( if you have ever been to my house before you would see how much I hate doing chores.:)) probably why I don't blog very often. So anywho here are a few pictures of the family over the last month. The first few are of Zander who is still not sleeping well in the middle of the night and who at this very moment is screaming at the top of his lungs. I still think he is pretty cute though. :)







Here is a few random pictures of Jared getting a pressure washer for Christmas. I accidentally added these pictures to the blog and thought oh well might as well keep them up. As I am sure most of you already know Jared was really sick this month. Within a few days of the new year Jared ended up getting the flu 10 days later he still was not better and having a fever of 104 we thought hey maybe we should go to the ER. Well a few hours later and and x-ray revealed the problem. Pneumonia in 2/3 of his right lung. He was admitted to the hospital and was released 5 days later! Luckily he is doing much better and is looking forward to his strength coming back.

This past weekend with Jared feeling a lot better he took our three oldest children to the Monster Truck Rally. The kids had a great time! They got to go down in to the pit before the show and meet a few of the drivers and Jared even won T-shirts and hats for the kids by winning a contest of taking out spark plugs the fastest. ( He even did it with his eyes closed! No joke)

Jared is a little obsessed with having us take pictures with duck faces. Here is Blake and Elizabeth satisfying his love of water fowl. :)


Blake is in his super hero phase and is obsessed with all things super hero. His absolute favorite is Batman. Everyday I am instructed to be Robin while he is Batman and we fight bad guys together. I knew there was going to be a Batman truck so I had Blake wear his Batman shirt, he was really excited to go and me the driver until he got there and realized the driver was real, he is really shy.

It sounded like they had a ton of fun and I can't wait to go another time when Zander is a bit older.

So we decided to get a new camera a month ago (thanks Blake for breaking our last two cameras). These pictures were taken the day we got it. It is hard to believe we were still swimming only a few weeks ago. I just really liked how these pictures turned out and thought I would post them. I also realized that I need to take some pictures of my new baby! He has gone over a week without a new picture.
A little update on Zander and his two week appointment. He weighed 9.2lbs and was 22" long, he is doing good. Now he just needs to learn how to sleep longer than an hour during the night! He knows how to sleep for long periods in the day you would think he would know how to do it at night time! :)

pumpkin carving

This year we bought 6 pumpkins to carve for Halloween! Jared's family was down visiting to see Zander and were able to hang out with us as we carved pumpkins. Grandma was a ton of help carving the pumpkins with me having to take care of the new baby.

Blake was pretty sure he could carve all by himself. He drew the design on his pumpkin but ended up in the end needing some help from his dad.

This is Jared's pumpkin, he saw a bunch of different designs online and thought he might give it a shot. I think it turned out really cool, so did some of the trick or treaters that came to the house, there were lots of comments on it.

Weird to see another person in our family pictures. :) Glad Zander is finally here! You must check out Jareds blog on the side. He turned one of our pumpkins into a "scary" pumpkin that honked at you after you pushed a button on its nose. It was hillarious hearing the trick or treaters scream from being caught off guard. I even had adults tell me it really scared them. :)

Introducing

Zander Kenneth Dutton was born on Monday October 25th 2010 at 4:53pm. He weighed a healthy 8lbs.15oz. and was 21.5" long. The kids were super excited to come and see their new brother. When they arrived Jared asked them to guess how long it took me to push out Zander, the closest to the correct number got to hold him first. Kayla guessed 13 minutes which was the closest to the real 8 minute time. I like Elizabeths 2 minute guess though, wish she would have been right. :)

Elizabeth has been taking violin lessons this year and her teacher told her she need to start using a full size violin. So lucky girl has started to use my old violin. Well last night Jared was digging through boxes in the garage and found a bunch of my old violin books so I thought this morning I might go through them and play a few songs. I think I was on my third song or so when I heard the garage door close. Hrm, wonder what Blake is doing? Well when I finish up with the third song I turn around to find Blake on the recliner with a pair of Jared's shooting ear muffs on. Come on Blake I wasn't that bad!

Kayla turns 7

Last Saturday was Kayla's birthday. Since her birthday was on a Saturday we decided she could open her presents in the morning instead of waiting until dad got home from work. We put out her presents in the family room so that she would see them when she came downstairs in the morning. She was super excited, but she still had to wait a little while to open her presents because we had to go and borrow the Owensby's camera because ours broke again. Jared took Kayla to pick up the camera and get doughnuts for breakfast. Once they were back Kayla with a little help from Blake opened her presents.

Thank goodness Target had Barbie baby newborns. I had been hearing for a month about this toy! Kayla was really excited that I got them for her. After presents we decided to take the kids to Despicable Me. Blake actually sat through the whole movie, a first for him. The kids liked it but Jared and I thought it could have been better. When we got home we went swimming and then later in the day we went to Ponchos for dinner. I swear Kayla only likes that place because of the desert bar. The kids had ice cream, churros, jello, and sopapillas. Obviously when we got home no one was in the mood for birthday cake. No big deal we just did the birthday cake the next day.

Here are a few pictures of Blake in his homemade robot suit. He had me cut out holes in a paper sack for his body, but we couldn't figure out what to do for his helmet. I told him to go ask his dad and this is what they came up with.