Lauren Lu Photography

My little sister Lauren does photography. She brought some of her lighting and backdrops to Utah so we did a little photo shoot of our sweet little Sutton button.

Isn't she a beauty!

Family Photos

My friend Janelle Evans has been taking our family photos for several years now. The boys are at a challenging age for pictures so this year it was a little more difficult. Here are some of my favorites.

This one makes me laugh because Rick and I are looking somewhat normal while our kids are grabbing on to our legs.

Athen was the most challenging of the bunch. This is a cute one of him not making a crazy face or acting silly.

 Love those big brown eyes. She got a lot of cute pictures of Crew. He seemed to do better this year than Athen.

This one is my favorite pictures. This little guy melts my heart. This is such a typical look for Crew. Love this kid.

Love my little Sutton button.

Here is another family photo where no one is making a funny face.

Another normal shot. This is the one we used for our Christmas card but we used the black and white version of it.

I love my cute little family. I am such a blessed girl!

Sutton Ann Bingham

Isn't she adorable? Love this happy little girl. My sister Mariah took this picture of her.

Halloween time

I know it has been a very long time since I have blogged but I do have a good excuse. We moved which has obviously kept me busy and I lost the cord to my camera so I couldn't download all my pictures. I am hoping to get caught up soon because this year is the year for me to print out my blog and I don't want to skip over anything for the year.

The Binghams came to visit us a few days after we closed on the house. We were hoping to close earlier so we could take advantage of them being here and put them to work. However, the drywallers were not done with all the walls on time so there wasn't much for us to do while they were here. We did get the upstairs painted and a few other things.

Anyway, we kept with our Halloween tradition and headed to the pumpkin patch in Livermore. This year we went with Grandma and Grandpa Bingham instead of Grandma Sanders. It was a fun and hot day. The kids played in the corn pit, went through the hay maze and of course gathered just about every pumpkin there and loaded them all in and out of their wagons.

 Loading and stacking pumpkins. The kids were loving it.

We also blessed Sutton that weekend. We decided to bless her in Oakland instead of our new ward since all our friends were in Oakland and we didn't know any one yet in our new ward. It was a wonderful day. We had all 5 of the grandparents there and the three dads in the circle.

Finally

Well we are almost there. It has been about 15 months now since they excepted our offer on our home and we finally have the keys. I pushed everyone for about a week to get things done and signed and I finally made it happen. We signed the papers on a Wednesday and then had to wait another week for the seller to sign. Again I spent the next week pushing them to get it signed. Then we had drywallers in working on all the walls to smooth out the ugly texture. What a big dirty job that is. I am so glad we spent a small fortune for someone else to do it. I drove up the the house the other day to check on it and I saw all this white dust coming out of the top of the house. I thought there was a fire in the back yard. Then I opened the front door and walked right in to a cloud of white dust. I couldn't even see the wall in front of me. I quickly shut the door and was so thankful I did not take on this big project by myself. With the two week long delay in getting the papers signed and the keys in hand the drywallers didn't have much time before the painting and moving in. The drywallers should be finishing up today, painting will happen in the next few days and then we move in on Saturday. I am not sure if all the painting will get done before we move in but we are moving any way.

Here are a few before and during pictures of the house. I will post some after pictures once it is painted. The house had about 5 or 6 different textures on the walls and ceilings, all of which were thick and ugly.

Ugly walls and ugly colors.

Yes, those are orange sponged on stripes going down the hallway - hideous.

Here we are in progress. The whole house is taped up and looks like this. It is hard to believe in just a few days it is going to have paint on it and look 100 times better.

Up to

It has been a busy month for us. Here are a few pictures from our month.

My dad's ward had a family campout at Mt. Madonna which is in the Santa Cruz mountains and I place I grew up going. I love it there. Rick and my dad took the boys on the campout while Sutton and I stayed home to enjoy a nice relaxing girls night alone. I was hoping to just lay around in bed and catch up on some hulu but I fell asleep around 9:30ish. I was able to pack up a lot of stuff the next day while the boys were gone.

Camping at Mt. Madonna.

 My best friend Toni came in to town for a day from the east coast. She was having a French reunion and came out a day early to spend with me. She has been my best friend for over 25 years. Our families were great friends when they lived in California. Then they moved to the east coast and I followed. In high school I lived with her and her family for about 8 months. They are like my second family and they mean the world to me. We have been to the junior and senior prom together, been college roommates, been to each others wedding, and have spent time together with our families over the years. Can't ask for a better friend in life. She has 5 kids, the oldest is 15 and the youngest is 1. Doesn't she look amazing!

 This is my sweet Sutton Button. Doesn't she look adorable. She is getting so big. I think she looks like me in this picture. She is such a good baby. She never cries and just lays around all day happy as can be. She smiles and coos and just recently started laughing out loud. It is so precious. She goes to bed between 6 and 7, I wake her up between 9 and 10 to give her a quick dream feed and then she sleeps through most of the night until about 4:30 or 5:30. I feed her again and she goes back until 7 or 8. When she wakes up she doesn't even cry she just makes a few little sounds and waits for me to feed her. Can't get better then that at 2 months. Athen was like this as well. I am happy she is a good and easy baby. I need that right now in my life with these wild boys I have and all the stress of this house we have been trying to buy for the last year and a half.

For my birthday my dad took the boys for a slumber party so Rick and I could have a nice night to ourselves. He gave us some money for dinner and sent us on our way. We enjoyed this lovely dinner with lobster, steak veggies and potatoes. We also had three kinds of shrimp. It was all delicious. The lobster tail was so beautiful I had to take a picture of it. However, you can't really see its beautiful colors in this picture (camera phone). After dinner Rick, Sutton and I headed over to the mall to do some shopping. It was nice to be able to shop with out the boys running all about. Little Sutton slept through the dinner as well as the stroller ride through the mall. It was so nice to have a date night with out the kids. It has been awhile. I bought a new outfit for my birthday and then we headed home to enjoy a quiet night by ourselves. It was great!

Sweet Sutton Button

Loving this little lady!