Pinkalicous

Karly had a pinkalicious weekend . It was inspired from a book she got from her school book fair last week. It's a story of a girl who eats too many pink cupcakes and ends up turning pink. At first she's thrilled because she loves the color pink but eventually can't wait to be herself again. This book "celebrates all things pink while at the same time showing that being yourself is best of all". At least that's what the book summary said. :)
Although I haven't always been a fan of the color pink, I try to support Kar in her pursuits. :)

Kar looking pinkalicious.

Kar making a pinkalicious play-do treat. Are you sick of the word "pinkalicious" yet?!

And Kar's Pinkalicious drawing.

To our special Uncle

If I may just reminisce for a moment. When ever my kids play with boxes it tends to remind me of a brother of mine. I have a little brother (you know who you are) who was a lover of boxes as a kid. Mikey (oops I mean he) would hang onto boxes for months. Especially the ones that were big enough for him to sleep in.

I remember one Friday night while watching a movie in our home with a date, him slowing creeping into the room while still inside the box. I was just hoping some how my date wouldn't notice the 5 foot box with my 6 year old brother inside sitting next to us. It was pretty funny. The guy finally asked why my little brother was inside a box. I just told him that my little brother liked boxes. :) My family sure got a kick out of it. The teenager that I was I was sooooo embarrassed. Some how I got over it and so did he. Mike lost the boxes and some how turned out okay. In fact he's getting married to the sweetest girl, Angela next month. So, Angela you might want to watch out. I might stick to plastic boxes if I were you.

Happy Grandparents Day!

Happy Grandparents Day Grandma & Grandpa Thomas & Haroldsen. We just wanted you to know we are thinking of you on this special day to celebrate you. Although we don't get to see you as often as we would like you are always in our thoughts. We love you!

Kar colored this picture for you. I'm sure you all get just as excited when we call don't ya?! :)

This was Spencer's card he made for you all. He loves you all lots!

We love you Grandpa Thomas. Thanks for reading to us when you come to visit, and thank you for raising our Daddy to be the great Daddy he is today.
Thank you Grandma Thomas for always being so much fun and spoiling us rotten when ever we see you. We love you.

Sorry Grandma & Grandpa Haroldsen. I just realized I didn't have any pictures of you with the kids. How did that happen?! We sure love you all too and appreciate all you do. Happy Grandparents Day!

Nine years and look where we are.

Around nine and a half years ago my heart was taken by this exciting, kind, spiritual, smart, kind of kooky, down to earth, and may I also add good looking guy. Oh was I smitten. :) It didn't take me long to hope he would be the one. After a surprise proposal I knew my life would never be the same again. Luke was everything and more then I had hoped for in a husband. I couldn't wait to see what the future would bring us.

So, on Sept.4, 1999 I had one of the best days of my life. We were married in the Portland Oregon Temple. I remember having a slumber party with my sisters the night before and not believing how quickly the morning came. I believe we were married at 10:00 in the morning. It was one of the first sealings of the day. We were sealed by the Temple President of the time, President Sellers. (Who also was a past Mission President of my Mission, weird huh??) I remember him speaking a lot about our children and how they would be our greatest source of joy. It really was a beautiful ceremony.

Like I said earlier I feel blessed to be able to say our wedding day was one of the best days of my life.
I feel like our life together has already in just 9 years been full of many different seasons. Our first few years together (which were childless) were spent traveling, traveling, and traveling some more. We just had a BLAST! Life was blissful.

Then we were blessed with Kar and our life got even better. She was an easy baby and we were able to basically continue with our travels and blissful life.

Luke graduated from college and we headed off to Flight School were our life started to experience a few changes. I guess you could say reality finally made it's way to our simple life together. There is so much I could say about this time, but I'll spare you the details. I will say this though. Now after the fact I can actually say I can see the blessings that came from that time. One that stands out to me in regards to Luke is being able to see attributes in Luke that I'm not sure I would of ever seen if we hadn't gone through our rough times together. Such as, learning that Luke has got some major endurance, not to mention a very strong work ethic. Excuse my language but Luke works his BUTT off to provide for our family. Sometimes taking on two extra jobs on the side of his flying job. There has been two different times in our life when Luke held three jobs and barley found time to sleep, just so I could stay at home with the kids. I'm grateful he has always recognized the importance of having me at home.

I also was able to see as our children entered our lives what an incredible Dad he is. I know I've said this before , but Luke is a hands on kind of Dad. I think he learned it from his own Father. He is also ALWAYS more then willing to take the kids when ever I need to get away or have some time to myself. I'm so grateful for that. Even after pulling almost an all nighter at work he comes home and will eat breakfast with kids and read scriptures and say family prayer with them before Kar is off to school.


So, nine years, four kids, a lot of good times, and a lot of challenging times later. Here we are. I've gained so much respect and adoration for Luke through the years. I've always told Luke when it comes to me being a good wife, "I'm a work in progress". What can I say, some of us are just more flawed then others. But I can honestly say I try harder every day to be a better me. Thanks for loving me regardless, most of the time. (Just kidding) Love you lots honey bunny! Here's to many more life experiences together. Happy Anniversary!

Labor Day

Although Luke ended up working Labor Day the kids and I went with some friends to the Atlanta Zoo. It was great. The friends we went with have kids all three ages of ours. The kids all love each other too. It's was a lot of fun.
Here's some of the pictures from our Zoo trip.

Kar's photo shoot

I took some pictures of Kar because she put in her very first pony tail all by herself (which you can't really see in this picture) and she got a hair cut too. After I was finished with her photo shoot she decided she needed to take some of her own pictures. I thought they turned out pretty funny. So here they are.

Kar with her hair cut ( Which was accidental by the way. The boys were all getting their normal cuts and Kar was dieing to be in on the action. She asked for just a slight trim because she was trying to grow her hair out to her bum. Well, after about a half hour and three inches later I finally decided I just had to stop. It wasn't going to be perfect. I think it turned out okay if you just don't look too closely. :) She did say after the fact she wouldn't be getting any more trims from me. Oops.)

Anyways, if you look on the top of her head you can kind of see her pony tail that she did completely by herself. It was her first time. I thought she did a good job. The problem came when we tried to remove the elastic. It was kind of stuck in there. :)

See I tried to do an A line after the mess up. Again just don't look too closely.

So, here's Kar's photo shoot. Kar and I were laughing pretty hard when we looked threw her pictures. Check out this one of Spence.

I thought this picture of Spence's eye was pretty cool.

Kar taking a picture of herself. Kar and I both got a kick out of this one. What a nut.

Yes, Kar did take a picture of her pig's bum on purpose. She's silly. Call me weird, but I thought it was hilarious.

I was happy to see Kar even got a picture of Luke's great vacuum job. Look at those lines. Now that's my kind of clean. :)

I think Kar's budding into quite the photographer. :) That silly girl.

Our sillly Spence

Since I devoted a post about Noah and all his most recent happenings and hang outs, I thought I would go ahead and do one for Spence.
Our Spence is a complete crack up. The more his little personality starts to shine threw the more silly we realize he is. Luke's always saying that Spence gets his silliness from my side of the family. Although I beg to differ. The Thomas' can get pretty silly too. So I'm thinking it's the combo of both sides that has created such a goofball. I must admit though, it sure is nice to have someone in the house who appreciates my sense of humor. I can always count on Spence to laugh with me. What a fun kid.

Here Spence is putting his cars to sleep. He asked me to be quiet right after I took this picture so I wouldn't wake them up. :)

On a side note Spence and his cars are pretty inseparable around the house. They tend to follow him around the house. I probably pick these babies up at least half a dozen times a day.


I'm just realizing Spence doesn't have pants on in this picture. Oh well, here's Spence with his (what he called ) his cowboy boots (a.k.a. Kar's boots). Once again I just have to say our kid is quite comfortable with his feminine side.



I don't know why but, I get a kick out of this picture. It's probably inappropriate to have on a blog, but since we turn our posts into books I just had to post it. There are two things I love about this picture.

A. Spence is sitting while going pee pee. Believe it or not I had nothing to do with him sitting rather then standing. He preferred it over standing until just a few days ago and oh how our toilets have payed the price since. Lets just say I will be mopping our bathroom floors and cleaning our toilets a lot more then I used to.

B. He's wearing his favorite hat. He wears it everywhere. He likes to "wear it back words like Daddy".

Spence sporting the hat right before bed. Like I said Spence would wear his hat to bad if I would let him. Cute kid.
This last picture is Spence with his best buddy Cade at the Atlanta Zoo. If you can't tell from the picture Spence just LOVES Cade. They are pretty funny together. I peeked in on them last Sunday during Nursery (church class) and they were wrestling each other to the ground and taking the rest of the class with them. Those wild boys. Of course it was quickly broken up, but the boys just couldn't keep their hands off each other after that one. They're funny.
So, there you have it. Just a few of the fun things in Spencer's life. He sure adds life and color to mine. I love that kid.