Happy Birthday Grandma Hale

We had the wonderful pleasure of celebrating Grandma Hale's 90th birthday recently. As many of the family as could come joined together for food and fun. We took plenty of pictures of the family with Grandma and mingling with each other. You can see the entire album here. It was so good to see everyone that was able to be there. Happy birthday Grandma. You are a wonderful special lady and we love you very much.

Sugar Rush

Kendra, the kids checked out your blog recently as they like to do from time to time. Carter saw the picture of the boys eating fun dip. He got so excited because he got some fun dip from a little friend at school at their Valentines Day party. He was so excited to eat it, and he wanted your boys to see his green tongue too!

Funniest Home Videos

So, this is what happens when Carter gets a hold of the digital camera...

Caison's Special Day

Caison was blessed earlier this month. He looked so handsome in his little white outfit. He truly is an angel. We are so glad to have him in our home. We met at the house after church for dinner and some cousin fun. We really missed the "far away" family and friends that couldn't make it. We wish you could all be here!

Connor's Cub Cake

Every year the Cub Scouts have a cake auction to raise money for camps and activities. This year it was a Father-Son cake activity with a "games" theme. Connor was bouncing around the idea of either a cake that looked like a baseball field or a cake that looked like a Twister mat. He settled on Twister. He did such a great job decorating his cake with a little help from dad! It sold for nearly $30 dollars if I remember correctly. He loves Scouts. Mom is learning how the whole Scouting thing works as we go along.

Hooray for Sibling Day!

Every year at Little Stars Preschool they have Sibling Day when the little kids get to bring their siblings to school. Since Lauryn, Karley, and Connor are all Little Stars alumni, we've done this a time or two. Needless to say, Carter was VERY excited to have his siblings go to school with him for the day. He waited for it for weeks. You would have thought it was Christmas morning with the way he talked about it. Lauryn decided she was a little "old" to attend sibling day, but Karley and Connor tagged along. Carter had a great time. He even decided not to take anything for "show and share" that morning because he said, "Karley and Connor are my show and share today!"

Rockin' New Year's Eve

We had a great time with the Carter family ringing in the new year at a pajama party at the Weeks' house, playing games, feeding our faces, and jamming out to Rock Band! Everybody had a lot of fun! Thanks Aunt Raelene and Uncle Ryan!

Happy Birthday Lauryn!!!

Lauryn became a big teenager in December! She thinks that is pretty cool! We love you Lauryn. Thanks for being soooo awesome. We are so glad you are a part of our family.

Christmas 2008

Our most memorable Christmas present for 2008 came a little earlier in the month when Caison joined the family. Here are a few pictures of the kids on Christmas morning....

The kids waiting patiently (not) at the top of the stairs for permission to come down and see what Santa brought and open presents from under the tree

Baby Caison's first Christmas morning with the cool Christmas stocking Grandma Carter made

According to Lauryn, EVERYBODY should have a pair of

Chuck Taylor All Star Converse....even Caison

Connor + Starwars Legos = one happy boy!

As always, they all got just what they wanted. But dad got a little creative when he disguised Lauryn's most sought after Nike's in a shirt box. Sly move. She was quite excited.

Second from the top of Karley's list this year was a color coordinated pink bean bag (minus the beans in this picture) for her very pink bedroom. That will no doubt provide a cozy corner for curling up with a good book or two...or playing the new pink Nintendo DS!

Batman never looked so cute. Watch out bad guys!!

This blankey Grandma Robinson made for me is so cozy!

Winter Wonder Land

We had a lot more snow than usual this winter. These pictures taken in mid-December are just the beginning of it. We're not complaining though, because we saw Ryan and Val's pictures of Spokane! Yikes!




All the kids (including the tallest one named Dad) had fun playing outside in the snow.

Now....we're ready for summer!!

Close your eyes

Carter is four. We've been trying to work with him lately to help him be more reverent during family prayers. Sometimes he still struggles with that. One of the things he struggles with the most is keeping his eyes closed during prayer. After family prayer lately, he likes to tattle tell on whoever opened their eyes during prayer. The older kids, tired of getting busted, started asking him, "How do you know who had their eyes open during prayer?" Because he is only 4, he still willingly tattles on himself as well, so he'll usually say, "Because I opened my eyes and saw you!" He's also now realized that this means he is busted too. So tonight he came up with a smarter reply.

Lauryn: "Carter, who opened their eyes tonight during family prayer?"

Carter: "Nobody."

Lauryn: "How do you know that nobody opened their eyes?"

Carter: "Because I have a sensor in my forehead that can see you and it tells me!"

He thinks he's got it all figured out.

It's......... a Boy!!!

So as I mentioned before, we are way behind on updating our blog, but slooooooowwwwwly catching up. We had a very wonderful early Christmas present when on December 10th we welcomed a beautiful, healthy baby brother named Caison Daniel Robinson into our family. He may have been early as far as Christmas presents go, but he was a WEEK LATE according to his due date. But based on experience, we expected that. Mom and dad and the older four siblings were all very excited, and he has received no shortage of love and attention. Grandma Carter and Aunt Kerianne were at the hospital to help welcome Caison to the world. Caison weighed in at 1/2 an ounce shy of 9 pounds and over 21 inches long.

Mom wanted to be surprised, while dad and the kids all wanted to find out what we were having. Needless to say, mom got her way. We thought for sure we would have a baby girl. When we left the clinic after the ultrasound and got in the car, the first thing Brendan said was, "I think we'd better start thinking of some boy names." Obviously he thought he saw something I didn't see.

We already had a cute family name picked out for a girl, but were coming up empty handed on the boy names. Many people have asked where we came up with the name Caison. Is it a family name? Does it hold some sort of significance? Is there a deep history to its origin? The answer to all of these questions is simply no. While his middle and last names do have important significance, his first name came to us while laying in bed watching high school football highlights on the 11 o'clock news. That's right. Some unsuspecting teenage boy on a local football team is the source and inspiration for Caison's first given name. We did a little research and found that while it was not on the list of 100 most popular over-used boy names, it is legit and gaining in popularity. Even though we liked the name, it still took us over a week after bringing him home to officially commit and settle on his name. (Mom was sold, she just had to do a little selling to convince dad) As soon as we settled on a name, we knew it fit him perfectly and was meant to be.

Caison is growing very well and is a very happy, content, patient little boy. He must have known before joining our crazy family that those would be requirements for a 5th child in our house! His older brothers and sisters adore him and are a big help. Here are some pictures of Caison's first few days.

"Give Thanks in All Things"

For Thanksgiving this past November, we decided to stray from the norm and have our own little Thanksgiving dinner at our house by ourselves. Being due in a matter of days and not sure how I would feel, we decided to play it safe. We had a wonderful time and enjoyed being together and laughing together. We are so blessed and have so much to be thankful for. It would make for a very long list. May we never take for granted the blessings of life.

To be a kid again....

You know, it is a statistically proven fact that if you wear your Super Carter cape that your Aunt Carleen made you while playing Lego Starwars on PS2, you'll score WAY more points.

"Your powers are weak, old man"

In case this pose is ever struck on you while visiting our house and you're not sure how you are supposed to respond, the proper action to take is to grab your throat with both hands, make a gurgling choking noise, and throw yourself against the nearest wall and then fall to the floor as if you are dead.

SIDE OUT!!

Lauryn had a blast this year playing 7th grade volleyball. She had a fantastic coach, and she learned a lot about the game. Here is a shot of her at team picture time and one of her returning a serve.

Annual Pilgrimage to the Pumkin Patch

So every year we make a trip to the pumpkin patch. This past October was no exception. The kids have fun picking out a few pumpkins to carve, picking out the design of choice, and helping dad make a really big mess of mommy's kitchen.

Is Brendan's head really stuck in this pumpkin? Pull hard kids! Get it off!

Livin' It Up at 5th Grade Camp

So being in the 5th grade, that means Karley is one of the big kids on campus at Jefferson Elementary this year. One if the fun things about being in 5th grade is spending 3 days at 5th grade camp with your buds. Karley especially had fun because mom got to chaperone (7 months pregnant and all!). Fun times! Dad even managed to keep the wheels on back at home while mom was gone.

Being 8 is Great!

Connor had a fun birthday party....four months after the fact, with his buddies. Here they are at Dig It sifting through the sand looking for fossils and rocks...It doesn't get any better than this when you are an 8-year old boy!

Last Glimpses of Summer

It seems like we had a pretty lousy Summer as far as getting much warm weather is concerned. We did manage to squeeze a few extra days of warm weather play time in toward the end. Here are a few pictures of us at the resort with Grandma and Granmpa Carter and at Silver Lake park by our house...including a more mild example of what happens when Lauryn and Karley get a hold of the camera....yikes.