Devin turns 31

Happy Birthday D-man.

Peanut butter pie

Home made Burgers and fries.

BYU basketball stadium panorma for is office.

Hour long Tahitian oil (manoi oil) massage for his tired hands and muscles that work so hard for our family. From me ;)

As tradition since moving to here, we will have a belated Tucanos birthday dinner with all the winter adult birthdays on the Orton side.

Pretty simple. That's what he likes. 

We love this happy birthday guy. One day a year doesn't seem enough to celebrate him.

Merry Christmas Wishes

 Merry Christmas Eve. We are ready for Christmas and for Santa! I might be more excited than anyone else in the house! I'm also excited for Gage to not ask 100 times an hour all day if TODAY is Christmas Eve.  He can hardly stand the presents under the tree that he can't open. It has been so funny to watch him attack whoever the new person is that walks into our house with: "HEY (insert name of whoever just walked in) is today Christmas eve?" Even after you say 'NO' he will just keep asking as if the act of asking again might magically change the day to Christmas eve. Our children got to meet Santa last night for the first time.  He did not dissapoint.  Santa asked why they took so long to come meet him and immediatly a vision popped into my mind of the 2 hour wait in the cold and all the barking dogs that were also in line to see Santa with their childless owners along with Gage throwing up all over Devin.  But I just replied.. "Man I don't know!" haha.  He was a sweet Santa though. The kids really liked him, but were too excited/scared to mumble a word. Afterwards they just were really concerned about his belly not being as round as they thought it should be!  We've also had a secret Santa drop off a Manger on our doorstep  about 10 days ago and every morning since we have a wrapped piece of the manger and a touching Christmas story to go along with it. Tomorrow morning I am expecting baby Jesus on our door step since it is the only missing piece. I want to kiss our babysitter (who Devin and I sneekily figured out is the gifter hehe) This little act has added so much excitement and 'specialness' to our Christmas season this year. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas rejoicing in the gift of our Savior.

M e r r y  C h r i s t m a s !

Thanksgiving 2013

 Our First year hosting.

 

 We puppy sat Daisy the dog. Our kids were in heaven.

• We also tried out black Friday for the first time. Pretty fun.  Although we avoided most all crowds so we probably missed the real sales. I guess I just don't love a bargain!   It was just nice to shop knowing the kids were at home sleeping, so I didn't worry about getting home to them.
• New Disney Movie Frozen with the whole fam! Love that movie!!

  Thanksgiving according my phone:

 Waiting for to be seated for our movie...

This new theatre has leather seats. Shmancy! 

Gage didn't move the whole time...he was "frozen" I guess.

 Cache and Naomi think its such a treat to have a baby in the house.

 Downtown Boise after the Stampede basketball game.

 Devin's the new doc for the team so we get season tickets. Pretty fun!

 

We did a dip night the evening before Thanksgiving.  

We usually do pie, but my family couldn't stand the thought of not having it on Thanksgiving... so dip it is.

 Thanksgiving morning.
 Macy's day parade, jammies and cereal. I look forward to this morning all year!

 And that's about how Black Friday went: No stamina.

 IT was a Happy Thanksgiving!!!

November 2013

F A L L * 2 0 1 3 

Our attempt at some family pictures this year. Self timer again. We weren't lucky enough to run into a professional photographer while we were out like last year! So funny how I thought these pictures were disasters, but now looking at them, I'm glad I saved a few. 

BYU vs. BSU

We watch the BYU vs BSU game every fall. Usually at Wingers.

This year we decided to be there in person as a gift for Cache's 8th birthday.

Utah in the fall is spectacular and just one of my favorite things. Oh I love it!

Then we found out that Devin's sis Julie was being inducted to the BYU hall of fame (Cross country National Champions) and they were doing it AT the BYU/BSU game.

Uum no way Devin was missing that.

*Julie and Matt (and Devin)with 3 and 1/2 of their soon to be 6 children. She is awesome!

  We all stayed with Devin's sister Karli in Lehi. Full house = Such a fun weekend!

***

 

How did two Cougars produce a Bronco?

Our children with Cache as their leader have become die-hard Bronco Fans. 

I guess you could call them independent.  Their favorite thing to do is get up in the mornings without waking us up, they feed themselves and the baby, sneak and turn cartoons on and pray we don't wake up.

Funny.

That's exactly what Devin and I do every night.

Back to the game. Cougars won.

 

 All the little cousins stayed with Uncle Pat and Aunt Karli during the game. 

And they took them all to a chile feed and trunk or treating! I thought was really brave of them. 

But so nice to enjoy the game with just Cache.

Cousins Cache and Kyle.

 Kendra, Kyle and Cache with their 3 foot "Cougar tail." aka the best maple bar ever. Truly.

 

We tore my sister Ash from her studies at the 

Tanner business building long enough to go to the game with us.

 Post game shakes at the old shake shack.

  

Saturday at a cool new park with the family:

Dustin and Devin at the tippy top.

 Family soccer game:

Next we met up with a few of our St. Louis school family at another park.

Fun to see these friends again.

These 3 boys sat by eachother for 3.5 years...

 In St. Louis we each had a toddler boy and a baby. Things have multiplied..

It took a minute but then they all warmed up just like old cousins.

 Ash and I also got in a sisters date in that night.

• Sushi @ happy sumo
• hot chocolate at the rocky mountain chocolate factory
• Haunted ski lift at Sundace

Oh we had fun. And the ride was so scary!  Funniest memory of the weekend for me: Our feet were frozen solid by the end of the ride.   But we didn't know it until were forced to jump off and landed on them. The lift operator was yelling: "Hurry go get out of the way!"  All we could do was waddle very quickly and scream in pain. Haven't laughed that hard in too long.

Its fun to have a sister at my alma mater to introduce her to all my old favorite places. :)

Fall is FUUUUN.

Ghosts with gas

In the wee hours of the night Naomi came into our room crying that she was scared.
I sent to her back to bed and assured her all people and ghosts are scared of Dad so we are all safe.
She showed up again crying:
"Mom I heard someone tooted in my room and it wasn't me!"
We let her stay.

Cache's 8th birthday!

Our boy Cache was baptized on his 8th birthday.

  What a sweet special day.

• He started his day with opening presents. New underwear! I knew it would crack Cache up. 
• Devin and I took him to pick out a Lego set. And it was a big decision.

• Then he went to his very first basketball game and made a basket!  
• Rode his bike with his Dad to Subway, his favorite lunch place.
• Came home so we could all get ready for the most important part of his day: His baptism.

The Primary president gave him a new white towel to dry off after his baptism. And his Grandma and Grandpa Orton got him his first set of scriptures and scripture case.  Devin and I got him a journal,

which he was really excited about after reading the books: "Diary of a Wimpy kid."

 The only time our miss Nay gets her hair curled is by aunts and cousins.  

Someone needs to give me a lesson.

And then it was time!

Cache chose his Dad to baptize him.

 I just love this picture of Cache and Devin by the Savior. 

Having your oldest be baptized was a different experience than I had anticipated.

I guess when it's your own you think about things more.  

In short it was a very sweet experience for me to prepare my son to take his first step in following in the footsteps of the Savior.  I saved more details of that for my actual journal.  If future Cache is reading this and wants to read more, you have permission to read my journal. :)  We just love this boy and although very much an obnoxious 8 year old boy, he has taken it upon himself to raise the bar in his own life, telling us: "I haven't told one single lie since I've been baptized." And "Now that I'm baptized I will try to be nicer." :) I need to make sure he knows it's okay to mess up, but I'm proud of him.

We know as parents that following the Saviors example with be most sure way of leading the happiest life, despite all that comes our way in life. As the Nephites in the book of Mormon stated: "And we lived after the manner of happiness." Meaning they followed the teachings and example of Jesus Christ. And though simple, it brings peace in our hearts and in our homes,  keeps us from addiction and helps us forgive and maybe the biggest blessing of all, it gives us HOPE. Hope that you are never too far gone.  Hope that we can always be better, hope that good will over come bad in this world, and hope to know that this life is not the end! We will see the people we love again. They are still living as spirits and growing and love us just as we still love them.  It is only a temporary separation.  And on top of that  we have access to truth and the blessings of simple quiet happiness go on and on. This is why we want our children to follow in our footsteps and why we try to follow in the Saviors. Or at least why I do. I guess I can only speak for myself.

 Cache doesn't understand all of that, but I am surprised how much an 8 year old does understand. 

 And sometimes he gets it more than I do. 

Thanks Julie for capturing these "off camera" shots. 

 Grandma Colette and Grandpa Dave with their oldest grandchild.

My sis with her baby girl. I love this picture.

We all gathered back at our house for meatball sandwich supper and his party.

 We didn't get many pics of the guests. 

But The Barrett's are always  camera hogs and end up on the camera. Nate and April have been to more of our children's births, birthdays, blessings and now baptisms etc. than any actual member of our family. Plus, they know things about us that no one else in the world does, so we keep them close. ;)

And that was the day.  Makes me heart warm to remember it.

 Here are a few hundred pics I took to document 

our Cache David Orton as a strapping eight year old boy: 

Cache had a few good ideas for his 8 year old pictures too:

 And that's our boy!

Happy Birthday Cache. We love you so very much.