Carina's 13 B-Day Bash!

Well. Its official. Our Little Girl has grown up and now a teenager. I mean we all know that she has acted 13 for about the last 5 years (or her whole life..but who's counting) but this party made it official. She wore her first grown up costume and had some friends sleepover and of course..played truth or dare...non G rated! Ugh! Who knew this would be so hard for me...

Either way I am glad that we are still very much a big part of her life and that she runs so much through us and still looks for maybe not our entire approval but at least a glistening hope of approval. This birthday was also the first birthday she asked for donations to her NY Trip as opposed to fancy gifts that she would soon forget about. Its been hard for her and will continue to be hard for her but so far she is doing extremely well.

My pics came out sort of blurry all together but you can look at them in mini view and they will look less blurry! Thanks to all of you who came out and spent some time with us (especially the Snook Fam who had about a BILLION things going on that same day).

I think out of everything I had the most fun with the decorations but thats probably because I had been asking for a Halloween Party for many many years!!!

Happy Birthday (party) Carina..I hope it was all you could have hoped for!!!

Well you saw the people now here are just a couple pics of decor...thank you Pinterest!

Strickland Family Visit!

Well it was almost a year since we last saw my sis in law and her fambam and man did we miss them. Its funny how you miss people and don't realize how much until you see them again. They are one of those fams that helps us to feel normal and like we don't need a big production to have fun. Sometimes you just want a fam that doesn't care if you show up in your PJ's with pizza and you just want to have fun and lounge around while your kids run amuck together and you as the grown-ups just catch up and breathe...with no concern as to what you look like or how fab the food was or even if you have a reason to do so...sometimes you just want to BE and with the Stricklands...that is what we have. I sure wish they would move back!!!! Hint Hint Wink Wink Dusty!!!

Either way, when they were here we had a BLAST!! We totally crammed in as much stuff as humanly possible. Literally. We had bday parties and dinners, Fleet Week in SF, visits to Apple Hill, pumpkin picking/carvin and Family Pics and well I am sure way more that I am forgetting. I wasn't around for Apple Hill so I didn't get any pics of that as the hubs left the cam in the car but I did get pics of everything else. We caught up with one another, we blabbed and shared stories of our kids growing up, talked about things we miss out on and more than all of that...we just enjoyed their company! It was soo nice to have them back, even if only for a short while.

I took lots of pics and its always hard to choose but I will keep it under 100 this time! Haha.

and a peek at the family pics taken by www.kristinamadsen.com..I will upload the rest when we get our final CD!