Happy (Early) Birthday to Lukie!!

 Luke's 3rd birthday is October 16th, but we won't be able to see him then, so we had an early birthday celebration for him at Chuck E. Cheese last week before they headed back to Washington. The kids were so excited to get to celebrate with him!

He and Cady had a good time in the climbing contraption:

What a cutie!

 (He had already tested his cake out - can you see the missing frosting? :-) )

 Colton helped light his candles:

 He blew them out before we even started singing "Happy Birthday" which Colton thought was very funny:

 Present time!

 Baby Tripp loved big brother's new Aggie football:

 He also enjoyed being held and entertained by his Uncle Colin:

 It was a great time and we were very sad to have to tell the boys and Auntie goodbye when they left for home on Thursday.   Can't wait to see them again!

Scrapbooks Complete!

 Colton and Cady have been scrapbooking for 4 years now and they really enjoy it. Even when they are rushed to finish before fairtime! Colton is actually taking Scrapbooking as a 4-H project this year and gave a demonstration to his class at school about a month ago.  I was there to take pictures and he did a great job!

They both completed their 2011 scrapbooks (we are always a year behind, but that's ok) two weeks ago.  Here is Colton hard at work:

This is the first year that they each scrapbooked the entire year, from January to December - that was a lot of pages!!  Colton did a 12X12 for the first time and it turned out great!

 

Cady's is another 8X8 and she did a wonderful job:

 We are all so glad they are finished and can't wait to enter them in our fair tomorrow and see how they do!

Big, Big News for the McVaugh Family!!

 I think this is the most exciting blog post I have done since beginning our blog about 4 years ago!  Our family has a major announcement to make, something we have wanted to talk about for a few months, but wanted to wait 'til we were closer...

...We are building our house!!!!  We purchased our "little piece of heaven" in the south valley 3 years ago and building on it has been a big dream of ours, even before we found where we wanted to build! Colin and I have known all year that we were going to get started on it in 2012.  He worked every night on the plans because it was important to us that he design it himself, with my input here and there, of course! The kids didn't know about it until a beautiful summer day in June, after he had gotten the preliminary plans back from the drafter.  We wanted to make it a very special announcement, so we drove them out to our land and Daddy showed them the plans:

 Then, pulled out some sparkling lemonade and we told them we were going to get started on it late summer or early fall and made a family toast! 

 They were so excited!!  We also celebrated with ice cream!

 Colton took this picture of Colin and I with our view of the Organ Mountains we will have from our backyard behind us:

Here's a smiley and very happy Cady:

 Colin studying the plans:

 Love this picture - you can just see our excitement:

It was a fun night, and I managed to keep these pics a secret until I got the ok from Colin that I could share!  We should be breaking ground in October and you know I will document and share every step!

Time with Baby Tripp and Luke

We have really enjoyed having Leigh Anne and the boys here visiting for the past couple of weeks.  Our family has been busy with our usuals, so we haven't gotten to spend near as much time with them as we would have liked, but the times we did, we enjoyed every minute.  We went over for tacos on Sunday and spent a few hours.  Tripp was in a great mood and smiled for lots of pictures for me:

 Cady had fun playing with him too:

 Here he is with Uncle Colin and Aunt Tammy:

 Colton and Luke played some football on the front lawn:

 

 Luke is almost 3 and at that age that makes it very hard to capture pictures! I tried, though, and got a couple good ones:

 We took them out to the footbridge over the irrigation ditch to try and get some good cousin pics.  Here is Baby Tripp with Colton and Cady:

 Here are the best ones I could get of the 4 of them together:

 When it was time to get home later that evening, Luke was sad.  He always got very sad when Colton and Cady had to leave.  Poor little guy!

 The kids are blessed to have such wonderful cousins!  I am thankful for every moment they get to spend together.