Piano Recital

Makenna had her Christmas piano recital on Monday night. She did such a great job and we are so proud of her and all she has learned in piano this year. "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" was Makenna's recital piece. This is her practicing at home right before the recital...

Halloween!

It's about time I posted some Halloween pictures! Makenna decided to be a fairy for Halloween this year...

We went to a Halloween Party at Grandma Ballard's house. Here is a picture of Makenna and her cousins.

This is Frankenstein's laboratory. The kids had to feel what body part was in the bag, they were pretty discusted, but had a fun time.

Stiring the brew.

The finished product! How gross!

Here is some of the spooky food we had for dinner.

Here is Makenna carving her pumpkin on Halloween.

Of course it had to rain on Halloween night. But Makenna was a trooper and didn't seem to care. I think she got way too much candy!

Makenna's 5th Birthday!

On October 12th my baby girl turned 5! Wow, I can't believe how fast time is going and how big she is getting. She is a fun, smart, happy little girl and I can't imagine life without her. I am so blessed to have her in my life.

Makenna got a scooter and jewelry box with beads to make necklaces for her birthday from me and Dallin.

Makenna was so excited for her birthday this year. She wanted a ballerina birthday party. So I was busy making tutu's for all of her guests.

The birthday girl!

Her is Makenna's ballet birthday cake!

Blowing out her 5 candles

Opening presents at her party.

Makenna has been begging for about the last 6 months to go to Chucky Cheese's. We decided to surprise her and take her there for her birthday. We took her cousin Kailey with us. She was so excited when we got there. I think it was a great birthday surprise!

We had a little party at Grandma Ballard's house. She got a Fancy Nancy doll and book from her!

At Makenna's birthday party we had all the girls wearing their tutu's and they each got a turn to perform for all of us...

Honey, Honey, and more Honey...

Our bees worked hard for us this year! We ended up getting 4 gallons of honey! We weren't really expecting to get much. They say usually your first year you don't get anything. You have to leave the bottom two boxes full of honey for the bees to survive over the winter and the rest is ours! We actually got about 8 gallons of honey, but our deal was to split our honey with the guy helping to take care of our hive. It is super yummy!

Here are some of the peaches from our tree this year. They were so much bigger than in years past, I think the bees may have had something to do with that!

We were busy one Saturday bottling peaches. I am hoping we get more grapes this year so we can bottle more grape juice!

Preschool

It has been well over a month now but I thought I would post pictures of Makenna on her first day of preschool and a few of her preschool field trips. We are doing the neighborhood/joy school thing again this year. There are six kids in the group and we each take a turn having preschool at our house. We also go on a field trip about once a month. The kids have a lot of fun together!

This was our field trip to Kneaders.

They went on a tour of the Bakery and then got frost cookies afterwards!!

This was our field trip to Wheeler farm. Here they are feeding the ducks.

Makenna and her friend Haylee on the tractor.

Herriman Fire

On Sunday night as we were driving home we noticed the mountain right in the backyard of our home was just glowing with fire. As we got closer to home we could actually see the flames and smell the smoke. It was scary not knowing what would happen. They evacuated over1200 homes in the area. We were only a few blocks away from the nearest evacuation point. Luckily we never had to evacuate. What a crazy night. We were outside in the backyard with our neighbors just watching the fire burn until 1:00 in the morning. Amazingly, only 3 homes were destroyed. I thought it would have been much more. The firefighters did an awesome job! These pictures were taken right from our backyard...

Dallin took this footage from the front yard of our backyard neighbors. We thought this home would have been destroyed for sure. Luckily the fire fighters showed up just in time and saved it.

I took this footage from our backyard right when we got home so the fire looked a lot worse later into the night, but I wanted to post it because if you listen carefully you can hear Makenna narrating and she was just cracking me up.

My little fluff ball...

So about a year ago I tried straitening Makenna's hair and we just got a good laugh out of it. Well I thought maybe I would try again and here are the results...

This is what her hair looked like after I blow dried it. Holy Cow it looks just like mine! She looked at herself and said, "I look sassy!"

This is after I straitened it. Still it looked a little silly. Makenna looked in the mirror and said, "I don't look like Makenna." I just had to laugh!

It looked a lot better after I put it in pig tails. At least she's cute with curls!!

Meet my new niece, Kaylee!

On July 23, 2010 my cute little sister had her baby girl. Kaylee Violet Bingham was 9 lbs. and 20 1/2 inches long. On our way up to Idaho we were able to stop in and meet her! Isn't she so adorable!!

Makenna loved holding her! She said to me, "I only got to hold her a little, daddy held her medium, and you are holding her way too long." So I had to give her up and let Makenna have another long turn!

She has been such a good little baby, Congrats Alise!!