Birthday #7

 We had another birthday around these parts recently.  Madelyn hit the ripe old age of 7.  Man, does time ever fly.  I know  I pretty much say that every time we celebrate a birthday....but, seriously, I feel like I'm living life in warp speed!!

 It was a little early in the morning for Claire.  Luckily I stalled Madelyn by having her take a bath, that girl got up at 5:30 A.M. that morning.  She always has been my little early riser!

 The first gift she chose to open was the tiniest one, I think it was intriguing.  I had to have my camera ready for this because it was a little box with several sets of earrings.  I told her a long while back that she could get her ears pierced at 8 years old....but then I thought I would rather save the anticipation of turning that age for baptism, so this was a complete surprise to her....

 She was a little confused.  And when I told her I had changed my mind about getting her ears pierced, she was pretty excited!!

 Lily didn't have as hard of a time on Madelyn's birthday as Hannah's a couple weeks earlier.  Phew.

 Madelyn loved all of her presents, it made it so much fun to give them to her!!  She was so thrilled about every single one and praised us with thanks without being reminded once.  It was very sweet.

 I thought it was so cute that Drew wanted to help her put her necklace on....

 All ready for school with her show and tell bag.......We ate german pancakes and then she was off.  Part of the specialness that morning was being up early enough to do her hair "fancy."  She loves that.

 Lily was pretending it was her birthday too after they went to school...

 Little ham....

 These girls were way excited to help me make their sisters special cake...

 Madelyn had planned this cake out weeks in advance.  (In fact we're planned in the cake department up to Drew's birthday).  I love making their birthday cakes, even though I'm no pro.  I just love to surprise them!  Just one of my favorite things about their birthdays.  The cake was completed just in time for Madelyn to come home from school and see it....

 Her reaction made my day!  I opened up the fridge and brought it out....she just gasped and said "Mom!  It's beautiful!  I didn't think it was going to turn out that good!!"  It doesn't get much better....  :)

 Drew grilled us up some awesome burgers, which happened to pass of a scout requirement and help his mom out big time at the same time.  ;)

 Madelyn wanted a picture of this heart basket she got from her grandma.

 Placing those candles in her cake...

 She had her grandparents join us for birthday cake that night.

 

 I like to swipe my kids from school to take them out for lunch.  This time we had to wait until the day after her birthday because I was teaching preschool on her birthday at her lunch time.  So we had a "girls lunch" all together at the fancy dancy Fiesta Ole.  :)

 They sure love those bean burritos.  Crisp for them, but those delicious soft cheesy ones for me!

 I sure love doing lunch with my birthday kids.  Me (not flattering) and my birthday girl!

Then on Saturday, I took all of the kids with me to get some things done in town.  One of those things was get Madelyn's ears pierced at the mall.  Boy was she ever brave!  I squeezed her hands and my little girl didn't even shed a tear!
She loves having her ears pierced and showing them off to everyone we meet!

Seven things I love about Madelyn:
1.  She has a caring heart and always has.  She loves to write me love notes and I love that! 
2.  She is so helpful with her sisters.
3.  She is brave.  She doesn't mind public speaking one bit.  She will try new things.
4.  She is a friend to all.  She is such a social little bug, and has so many friends.
5.  She loves to do things with me from making food together to making lists of things to do together that day.
6.  She is smart as a whip.  She can check out any book she wants from her school library.  Her school teacher loves her.  And she absolutely loves to read.
7.  She is a missionary.  She has invited friends to come to church, shared the gospel with strangers, and has the book of mormon scripture story book in her backpack ready to read to a friend of hers whenever she gets a chance.
I love you Madelyn!

The ride home...

I really need to wrap up my posts from the trip!!  On the last day we spent pretty much all day in the car, minus one stop in the mountains to swim in some hot springs. 

One thing I learned about myself on this trip:

I love to drive.....more accurately I like to ride.

I do not get sick of driving.  I love to see all of Heavenly Father's creations and discover new things. 

Maybe when we get older Jed can be a trucker and I will be his sidekick.

Yep, I love it all right.

I'm so glad we went on this road trip in the fall, such a gorgeous time to take a loooong drive.

As much as we loved it, it sure is nice to come home and sleep in your own bed.

It was a great trip that I'm so grateful we took!

Haun's Mill/Adam Ondhi Ahman

On the road again.  After spending a few nights in one place, we hit the road again.  Off to see the last of the church history stops before we headed home. 

Claire played with tons of granola bars, they kept her occupied for a little while.  Drew was such a great helper with Claire. 

Notice how this road was carved out of the trees.

We entered Caldwell county--which was named after my great-great-great-maybe another great-grandpa Mathew Caldwell.  So naturally we had to get a picture of that.

On to Farr West.  I really loved that stop.  There are some neat church history stories connected with that place.  The area is beautiful as well. 

The cornerstones for the temple are enclosed in glass.

The monument there has snippets of the revelations received there.

ClaireBear....she was a pretty good trooper the whole trip.  She did come down with a fever, and this day was probably her roughest. 

Getting some wiggles out.

Here we are on our way to see the site of the Haun's Mill Massacre.

This was a neat place and you can definitely feel that it is.

a beautiful woodsy area.

Jed and I stopped for a moment and read an account of a family on his side of the family whose father died in the blacksmith shop at Haun's Mill.  It resonated with us, since our circumstances were somewhat similar.  We are nearly the same age as the couple, we have 5 children while they had 6, and have similarly aged children.  I really admire the pioneers.  I hope my faith can be a fraction as strong as theirs.

Little baby feet, oh I love them.......

In the creek, Grandpa Jody found giant clam shells.  We all had to go and see them for ourselves.  There were so many!  And we found the cutest little frogs.

An actual millstone fron Haun's Mill is in a nearby town.

In order to find the mill stone, we had to drive through a ghost town.  You can't really tell by the picture, but it was crazy.  Practicallly nothing left but a one gas pump gas station.

We found this beautiful little serene looking spot as we were driving around....lost....and I loved it. 

We found a large snake on the side of the road too.  Jed went out to investigate.

We wanted to go see the Amish village, and it was one of my favorite parts of the trip.

It was so amazing to see their culture.

Horses and buggies, humongous gardens, the clothes, and just the overall feel of the town were so interesting and neat.

I didn't get great pictures, because they don't like their pictures taken.  So I didn't take many.

We stopped and talked with a man for quite awhile and were able to ask him some questions and get to know him and their culture a little bit.

Very nice man, we bought some mums from him.

We stopped at a little cafe, the owners were Menanite and that was such a fun stop too.  We had to partake of the famous Amish cuisine.

Poor Claire was getting quite cranky by this point...

Here we are trying to soak in the history and the future events that will take place here at Adam-Ondhi-Ahman.  We really didn't have a whole lot of time to spend there, I wish we would have.

It was huge, and we found you can hear people from really far away. 

This is preacher rock, where I think Joseph Smith delivered some sermons.  Sorry, the details get foggy when I don't record things as immediately as I should....

We bought these mums from an Amish fellow, they were really beautiful and full...until they got sat on....  :)