Happy Halloween

This Halloween marks the one year anniversary of our house being painted 

and I absolutely love it!

                      Thank goodness our kids will still humor me with the picture on the porch!
                                  Spencer is a wizard, Benjamin is a zombie football player,
                                       Levi is a hacker and Andrew is Danny from Grease.

                                We love how creative our neighbors are with their decorations!

                 Benjamin's goal is to get enough candy to last him until Easter.  I think he did it!
                                 

                    I love that Sarah even got dressed up for the party she and her friends went to. 
                                   I think she's so creative being The Greatest Showman!

                                                                    Cute friends!!

                           We had a family group chat going on last night so we even got to see
                                    Alexa as Kanye West and her roommate as Taylor Swift.

                 Jayna sent us this picture of her cute kids in celebrating their first Halloween in
                                      New Mexico.  We sure do miss having cousins close!

Jon sent us this picture of him as Hagrid.  He got to pass out candy at his library.

                     
                           Andrew sent this picture of him and Lily at a party they went to.
                                                     (Sandy and Danny from Grease.)

Spencer had a party with his friends at our house.  They ate pizza, played games and watched Coco.

(Picture coming soon!)

September

We got up early Saturday morning so we could see the balloons at the Spirit of Boise.  

Then, we drove to Sun Valley to spend the weekend enjoying the beautiful weather and being outside.
                     I absolutely love Sun Valley!  I truly can't get enough of the beauty of it!

 Cool new haircut for Levi!!

We got all of Nonnie's boxes out of her U-Haul and into her new garage.  We'll fully move her in after new carpet is installed.  Yay!!

Levi lives for the school carnival and this year was just as great!!

Sarah surprised us with coming home one weekend.  It was super fun to see her!  She's loving college!

Andrew asked Lily to Homecoming.  Nonnie and I had to be a little sneaky to get it all set up without being seen.

Nathan, Spencer, Benjamin and I went to the Hyde Park Street Fair.  We had some yummy food and saw very interesting booths.  I sent this picture to Sarah and she knew immediately where I was.  

Doing a little scripture reading together.  Love these boys!

We got up early one Saturday morning and drove to Logan to see Sarah for the weekend.  It was so fun to spend time with her, meet her roommates, walk around on campus, go to a football game and go to church with her.  She's doing fabulous as a college student!  In fact, she makes college life look so good, all of the boys are ready to go!

Levi found the world's longest corn dog and was pretty pleased about his find!

I think we both can't believe we have a daughter attending college....we definitely don't feel old enough! 

This was the first time our youngest boys have gone to a college football game.  It was a fun game to watch and I loved being all together!

                                                                Benjamin got braces!!!

                                         Let's take a closer look at this handsome boy!!

For our birthdays, Kerri and I spent a whole day together eating breakfast, laughing, shopping, talking, going for a long walk at Quinn's Pond, laughing and eating out for lunch.  Such a fun day with such a fun friend!!!

     
                                                           Such handsome, silly boys!       

 Such a fun, BIG group!!!  Some of these friends, Andrew has gone to school with since kindergarten.

                                                                  Andrew and Lily

 Nathan took this picture of Spencer speaking in church.  He did a fabulous job talking about preparing himself for General Conference.  

June

We began our summer with taking a trip to Bend to see Sophie graduate. We love that she's coming to Idaho to play basketball and thought it would be fun to add an "Idaho" theme to her graduation party. Sarah made a fun video of celebrating Sophie!!

sophie's graduation from sarah smith on Vimeo.

We attended a fun Smith family reunion.  This year Aunt Debbie and Uncle Laurence were in charge and they chose to have it at Ball Manor.  We were happy to be able to sleep in our own beds and enjoy all the activities that had been planned.  We ate lots of yummy food, visited with lots of family and loved all the fun games!

Benjamin made a pretty cool creation at the Eagle library!  He loves to create!

Sarah and Andrew were invited to go boating with the Woodard's.  They always have so much fun!

Nathan and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary with going out to dinner at Ruth Chris' Steak House.  Everything was delicious and had beautiful presentations.  I feel pretty lucky to be married to Nathan! 

We met Jayna and her family at a Hawk's baseball game.  It was a fun evening with cousins and sometimes watching the game.

Levi and his friend Conner got to go to Kid Planet one morning.  So much fun!!

Nathan took the three oldest kids on a long weekend trip to Banff, Canada.  They all absolutely loved the beautiful scenery, enjoyed many hikes and adventures in canoeing and maybe did a little shopping in town.

Benjamin and I went to Webelos camp and had a really great time!  We did BB shooting, archery, crafting, learning about rockets and loved every minute!

Benjamin got to meet a rubix cube champ.  He's from the Ukraine and was in town visiting some friends.  He gave Benjamin some good advice and showed us his impressive skills.

So, so grateful for long summer days, no schedules and making fun memories with family and friends!