Gemma is 5!!!

It is so fun , yet kind of hard to believe that my baby is 5.
Some fun facts about Gemma are:
She LOVES, LOVES, LOVES Panda's
Her hair is gold and she wants it to be long like Rapunzel.
Gemma is very artsy, she draws, and colors and creates all day long.
She has quite a way with words and really is fun to listen to when she is describing things.
She is left handed,
Scorpio
Girly, very girly. She wears a skirt or dress every day.
She loves Monster High
She wants to tell time really bad and works at it every day.
Her favorite time of day is when Jade gets home from school.
I can take this kid-let any where and she is so good.
Very Sweet
Very Stubborn
Excellent sharer
Organized, likes things to be where they go
loves shoes and dresses
loves vegetables, artichokes in particular
Favorite color is gold
favorite food is Hot Dogs and Spaghetti
Loves her Uncle John-Paul, Says he is hers and Jade can have Uncle Markie
Gets so excited when we go With Grandma Rory
can ride a two-wheeler and scooter
She enjoys seeing movies in the theater
She is the boss and knows it
Going to the Library and reading
Fun friend to all
Great helper, so much so that if I am not careful she will do the laundry herself.
She always has a kind word for everybody, and I mean everybody, in the store she will compliment random people on their hair, jewelery, shoes, clothes..... everything.
Very observant she notices everything! Not sure if this is because for the majority of the time she is essentially an only child...
Great Horned toad catcher
Appreciates all the animals
Loves her dog Sampson
loves her Dad
Awesome Little sister to Cisco and Jade
My Best Buddy

Kangaroo Zoo

We had sandwiches and Gemma chose Pumpkin Pie for her cake.
Gemma decided she wanted a birthday party this year. So after much thought we decided on Kangaroo Zoo. It ended up being quite a large party we reserved the Flora party room and had our friends and family come. The Kangaroo Zoo mascot even came. If you aren't familiar with Kangaroo Zoo it is a huge indoor bounce house play zone. Very much a kid fun place.

party

Grandma Rory and Aunt Cerissa
Tinnielle

Uncle Lamar, Bridget and her dad James Fisher, Dad.

gemma's party

Jade and our cute friend Bridget
At the top of one of the blow ups.


Carolyn and another cute friend Savanah.

Gemma's 5 th Birthday party

Family Pics

We went up to Temple Quarry on 10/01/2011. I had never been there before it was very pretty. The whole thing with Family Pictures started with my mom-in-law. She wanted to do pictures, and she hired Photogenix to do hers, so being the buggy daughter in law I asked my mom if we could meet up there earlier the same day to do just my family, plus I wanted to have Sampson be in them too so this way I took Samps and then my mom took him to her house while we did the other pics. The pictures turned out great and what follows are a few.
my poor kids/family ended up being there for half the day since we did ours then my in-laws came and we did theirs. On the plus side it was a beautiful day and we didn't have to go twice :-)

(side note: I wasn't able to publish any of the vertical pictures because I am doing this with a CD and it wouldn't allow me to rotate the pics, Most of my favorites are vertical. oh well)

Gemma ~ 4

Jade ~ 10

Cisco 19

Family pictures

5th grade

Well this one is growing up too! 5th grade this year! Her teacher is Mr. Aders and it's the first time she has had a male teacher. I think she will have a great time. Her best friend is even in her class again so she's pretty excited!

Air Force

Well what can I say the boy is growing up!
He is now a member of the United States Air Force.
He will be leaving for Basic training on March 20th 2012.
For those of you that know this has been in progress for well over a year. The USAF is very picky, they have high standards and are selective with whom they are willing to accept into their ranks. Lets just say there is no way anyone "accidentally" ends up in the USAF.
He will come out of basic as an E-3 which is awesome! and he passed all tests with FLYING colors! Way to Go Cisco! Thus far this hasn't been particularly hard for me but He hasn't actually left yet so....

Random...June pics

Joey had an "incident" with a Jumbo marshmallow, when he, Cerissa, Charly and Max came out for a BBQ.
OK funny story during the BBQ there was this large Stinkbug crawling across the grass. I didn't want one of the kids to scare it and make it stink, so I scooped him up and tried to throw him over the fence.... Well when I turned around this was what I saw.... Fail...LOL
We had a load of sand delivered for the kids to play in.
These are wild horses that we see when we go out geode hunting, this time we stopped so I could get some pictures. there were two baby's.

Random... July

Cactus Flower
Fun Hair do on Gemma
An emergency bath was required while we were at the Property... So Gemma got to squish into the sink.

On our way home we saw a Female Moose eating watercress in this bog just off of the Highway coming down the canyon by Strawberry. James was kind enough to stop so I could get a picture.

4th of July at the Property

Jade and Gemma enjoying a picnic. We all went on a lovely ride.
Jade, Tinnielle, Gemma and Dalton
All of the cactus were in bloom it has been such a wet year. Cactus Flowers are one of my very favorite ;-)

Hens and Chicks

(the bigger one)



So I ADORE Hens and chicks plants, and Joey just bought a new house that came with the neatest planter full of them... Needless to say I am extremely jealous and am considering stealing them...
However a few years ago I planted two that were about the size of my palm, and then ya know life gets in the way and I kind of forgot about them so they got a little overgrown and I hated the rocks that were surrounding the bed they are planted in. So I just spent the last two days digging a new flower bed and removing about .25 tons of rock out of the flower bed and elongating it to put in some new day lillies that I was given
close up of one of the Hen and chick plants


On a side note it is not fun to dig out grass.... and then I kicked up a garden spider that was carrying it's egg sack and I accidentally squished her eggs and her! so I felt bad. I know most people hate spiders but I am one of the few who lets them go and lets face it in the outside they aren't hurting anybody...