Happy Halloween!!

We had a great Halloween this year, the weather was AWESOME!!  The kids got to dress up for my parent's ward Halloween party one night (that's why some of the kids are wearing different costumes) and then of course they all got dressed up again for school and Halloween night.  I could NOT get Scarlett to put on a costume, in fact it's pretty rare that she will even wear shoes and a coat, so I was beginning to think she would be the first kid who would not get dressed up for Halloween!  She still wanted to be part of the pictures though, ha ha! But somehow her Daddy has a special way with her and he managed to convince her to do it.  She was absolutely adorable Trick-or-Treating too!  She memorized very quickly the whole routine of saying "Trick or Treat", holding out her bag, and then saying "Thank you".  Of course in her speech, only I could tell that was what she was saying, but it was pretty darn cute.  Dakota left us to trick or treat with Laura, I couldn't say no to those cuties.  So we just took the boys and Scarlett.  We went and did the lake homes to get full sized chocolate bars and pops - the boys were pretty thrilled about that, and it was fun to see half the ward doing the same thing, walking by each other!  I only went out a little while with them, and then I figured I should be at home handing out candy!  They all got a haul as usual, and Scarlett was NOT about to let go of her bag!  So funny.  I let them all pig out for a couple days, and then I actually got them to sell me their bags of candy for $10 each!  I was sick of hearing them fight over candies, and ask me constantly if they could eat some more!  Good deal for all!

 

 

 

Dakota's Baptism

On October 12th, Dakota was baptized!  She was so thrilled to take this step in her life, and we were so excited for her.  We decided to do a combined baptism with her 2nd cousins?!  Not sure exactly what they are to her, but they are my cousin, and my cousins son!  Anyway, she was baptized with Blake and Sawyer!  It was so nice to be able to do it all together since my Grandma and Grandpa Cooper only had to make one trip to Calgary to see them all.  He was very happy to be able to feel healthy enough to be at this family gathering, and thinks it might be one of his last.  We were happy to have my Grandma and Grandpa Nielson make the trip as well.  We even had representatives from Lee's family in Edmonton here as well (Cody and Kim and Karin all made it!) Dakota sure felt special!  The baptism was a wonderful experience.  We had a nice program with 3 talks.  My mom spoke on Choosing the Right and did a fabulous job.  We had some nice musical numbers as well.  Scarlett surprisingly fell asleep in Melanie's arms, don't know how that happened!  One minute she was watching the baptism and wanting to get her swimsuit on and join Dakota in the water ,and the next, she was sleeping! We also had Dakota's best friend Laura there, and also Pam and Quasie and Yasmine (our friends who aren't members of the church) were there to support her as well!  After the baptism we had a big Luncheon with around 80 people representing all 3 familes.  We had soups, buns and desserts.  It was nice to be able to visit with everyone.  What a special experience as a mother to watch your children get baptized!

 

Dakota's 8th Birthday!

It may or may not have been a couple months ago, but at least I'm finally get around to posting it!  My darling daughter Dakota turned 8 this year!  She's getting so big, and thankfully is still maintaining her sweetness!  I don't know what we would do without this angel in our household, she is so patient with her siblings (including a baby sister who loves to drag her around and tell her what to do), she's so happy and grateful for everything in life, is very obedient, is always so positive and always trying to be her best.  We just love her to bits.  Couldn't ask for a better daughter.  Seriously.  We had a very small get together on her actual birthday, and then a week or so later she had a "Zumba" birthday party!  It's sort of a latin dance fitness class, and this instructor came to our house and entertained these girls for an hour!  She said we could invite however many kids we wanted, so I kind of let Dakota ask whoever, but it turned out that all of them came, so we had 17 girls!  Yikes!  The dancing part was totally fine, but I hadn't thought through the chaos of dinner and the overload of presents!!  Oops!!  (as you can tell from the photos, the singing of Happy Birthday got a little loud, ha ha),   Oh well, it actually went by very quickly and wasn't too bad!  Dakota had a blast and so did all the girls!  The instructor (Tamara was her name!) was SOO good with the girls, and had so much energy.  It was a great party.  And I'm so glad Dakota has so many great girls her age.