Kinzie-Doodle

  She might be starting to grow out of all of her nicknames I guess...

Luckily she's still such a sweet girl (for the most part :) sometimes those random "pre-teen" emotional episodes take us all by surprise).

 This little thing managed to photo bomb everyone else's photo session.  I LOVE how much Makinzie lights up when Evaleigh comes into the picture; her smile becomes so much more genuine...

 

 She is looking a bit too grown up to me these days.  It's amazing the amount of changes that seem to take place during 5th grade...

 There's a bit of that "pre-teen" attitude poking through.  Yikes!

 

We love this beautiful girl! I have to admit that this next stage of life scares me out of my mind...I don't think my babies should grow up this fast...

Super-Duper

 Ally-Ooper!

 This girl is very smiley, SUPER bouncy, and full of attitude... 

 She also would LOVE to be a STAR!  So she was VERY invested in getting the perfect pose and the perfect smile--not a whole lot of her alter personalities showed through this time around...

  

 Her eyes are beautiful and always shining!

We love our Addellyn! She adds energy and spark to our lives and spreads a few sparks everywhere else she goes too!  

Mr Coleson

 Such a handsome 6 year old...and boy did he have fun showing me his MANY different emotions during his special photo shoot!

(this one kind of creeps me out, and he knows it, so he did it often because he thinks it's funny to make me cringe)

This little man is pretty amazing.  And we love EVERY bit of him!

Halloween

 the tight rope walker:

the clown:

the fierce lion (you know, the one that the lion tamer has to face and stick her head in it's open mouth):

(with her daddy's kitty pumpkin that he made especially for her!)

the stunt man:

(see that BIGger, adorable lion in the background that is handing out the candy??  Look how happy Coleson is about the cannon his daddy made for him...)

  that actually shoots out of the cannon:

 (You can almost see all of our decorated pumpkins on the porch behind him.  Addellyn's is the witch, Makinzie's spider is to the left of the witch and Evaleigh's self portrait pumpkin is to the witch's right--the stem was her funny ponytail :), and Coleson's is a one eyed monster on the ground)

 Ready to trick-or-treat through the neighborhood with the Wallins! 

Evaleigh rode in the stroller for about 2 minutes until she discovered the joy of trick-or-treating.  Surprisingly, she didn't love it for the candy, she LOVED the attention.  She wanted to go to every door and hear all about how cute she was! Funny girl! 

Family Fun

For her birthday party she wanted to just take one friend to the corn maze and hay ride place outside of town, rather than invite lots of friends to the house for a traditional party.  BUT, on the day of the "party" it was FREEZING cold and it was raining.  So we took her friend to a movie and pizza instead.
THEN, the next time Tyler had a day off from work, we headed to the maze and pumpkin patch--it was much sunnier and well worth the wait!

The hay ride went around a beautiful farm and creek.

Then it dropped us off in front of the corn maze:

A woman that had been on the ride with us offered to take our picture, and I am so grateful to her for being so kind. 

(I am grateful for snapshots like these, all of us in one picture together--at this point in my life I have a REALLY hard time taking official "family" pictures.  We know we want to look back at snapshots of our kids at these moments in their lives because they are changing soooo quickly, and a day may come that we will pay for a photo shoot, but because it's not our WHOLE family, it just feels so wrong and painful to pose for the camera on purpose and call it a family portrait.  

But, it is nice to have moments captured of all of us and the time we do spend together, enjoying our moments here on earth recognizing the beauty of the world around us and how lucky we are to have and love each other.  And, perhaps, that little ray of sunshine shooting down through the photo is a reminder of our special boy that is smiling down from heaven, happy that we are spending time together and warming our hearts with more compassion and appreciation for each other.)

Evaleigh really wanted to keep up with the big kids.  They were all so happy and excited to be wandering through the corn--they were NOT very good at having a sense of direction though--haha, we were in the maze for quite a while!

And then we each picked a pumpkin to bring home and decorate.

Though the decorating had to wait for another day because we had to build a cannon and make muffins for the party:

We had fun bringing our family circus to the ward trunk-or-treat.  And thanks to a sweet sister in the ward, whom had her husband hurriedly pull over in the parking lot so she could jump out and grab the camera from Tyler, we were able to get a picture of the entire crew together!

It was a pretty great family day!

Makinzie is 10

She's so grown up.  It makes me a little bit sad (and it makes me feel like I'm getting old), but we are sooo happy that she is such an awesome little lady!  She really is beautiful and smart and creative and constantly helping and worrying about what she can do to help and be a friend to others, she's such a blessing in our lives!

She was beyond excited to get this watch!  It was (and is) PERFECT!

There are actually several pictures from the past several months where Evaleigh runs and says "I see" while I am taking the picture...so they look like this; it's kind of the ultimate photo bomb because you can't even see what the original picture was intended to be.

Kinzie got lots of clothes and books and jewelry (per her request).  She also got some body spray--which, don't tell her, but I admittedly divided it in half and then watered it down, so it was pretty much a 2 for 1 deal and now the smell doesn't completely devour the house--and she got some lip gloss (these have both been HUGE hits).

I also made lime-coconut bars for my first time.  Which I will alter a little bit next time to have a bit less crust  to filling ratio, but otherwise SHE thought they were a huge success and that is what matters!  Happy 10th Birthday Makinzie!