Family Pictures....always an adventure!!!

You can imagine how much my family loves taking pictures. Considering that fact that I always am having Cierra pose for me, or yelling at Kenny to stop the truck, "I need that shot!"....they do whatever they can to get out of taking our yearly Christmas card photo. I give them at least a week notice, with reminders every morning until the day of. I tell them that they have it good, and that as soon as we get one good one we'll quit. This could only take a minute, or it could take hours......its up to them. I'm not very picky, I just want one picture with all of our eyes open & for us to have somewhat pleasant expressions:)
Usually I just set up the tripod and we're good to go. This year my mom was on hand to do the honors. My dad and brother decided to come to watch. I'm sure they made a mental note to never do that again. Evil Karla came out for a bit while trying to rally my little family.
Despite the wind (oh did I mention we were having hurricane winds??? & the whines.....we did succeed to get that photograph for our Christmas card. So thank you mom for braving this photo shoot.....thank you Kenny & Cierra for bearing with me one more season!!!!

My little hippie!!

Cierra was devastated when I went down the list of candy she could not eat on Halloween because of her braces!! I think she seemed to think it would be okay to "take a break" from eating chewy foods for just this one day:) Nopes!
Since it took us nearly 4 hours to get home from Guemes Island we had just a little over 2 hours to shower, get ready, dye my hair, & make a pie. Cierra begged me the whole way home to "PLEASE....plllleeeeeeeaseee" dress up. So out came the hair dye...and wa la, I transformed into a somewhat conservative rocker gal! Cierra was the cutest hippie I ever did see!! We sure missed Kenny being with us.....although he had a wonderful time up in Alaska with our cutie pie nephews!

BRACES!!!!

So evidently it is super cool to have braces when you are 9. When Cierra found out last summer that she needed braces, she hounded Kenny & I every day....begging to get them on. The big day happened last Wednesday. She woke up at 4:30a.m. that morning with an upset belly.....and couldn't fall back to sleep. I think she had worked herself up so much over the past few days with excitement that she just couldn't contain herself anymore.
The dentists at the office are so nice, and really were great with Cierra. I wish I could tell you about the process of getting them on & what happened.....but my big girl had a talk with me before we went to the dentist office.
"now mama, I really want to go in there by myself and surprise you afterwards. I'm big now ya know?"
Well she sure is....and she did surprise us! It took all I had to refrain myself from peeking in to see how it was going, but I did.
So when there was a break from the rain we went outside to take a few pictures of those gorgeous teeth!!!

Mama-Daughter date day!!!

After the downpour on Saturday, we were blessed with sunshine on Sunday! Kenny went with his buddies to the Seahawk game so I felt it would be the perfect day to take Cierra on our weekly mama/daughter date! We drove to Carnation (Remlinger Farms) and spent 6 hours going on rides, petting the animals, & eating some yummy food! Cierra loved climbing on the pumpkins....which we did in three rounds. (she probably spent 2 hours climbing) We spent the rest of time though just walking around....talking....and laughing. What a little character she is!!! We even ran into the Costas:) It was a very memorable day....LOVE my little girl!!

Tree Planting along the Tolt River

On Saturday, Cierra's Girl Scout troop volunteered to help plant trees along the Tolt River. What started as a blustery, very very rainy day had a mild break in the weather once we started. About an hour in, the rain crept back up on us as did the thunder!!! We had such fun, the girls did wonderful.......even Kenny came to lend a hand! Kenny was prepared, in full rain gear. Cierra & I had our rain jackets & boots on.....but were hoping our jeans wouldn't get too wet...which of course they did!! I've always loved being in the rain....We helped plant about 600 trees in all. We've decided that next year we'll go back to this area and see how big our trees have grown!