Bilquist Bazaar and Other Stuff in November

Okay where did November just go. Turned around and it is gone. I looked at my side bar on my blog and it said the last time that I posted on my Happiness blog was 4 weeks ago. So I got busy and updated tonight so go check it out. It is hard to get to it when you don't have the internet. But I will do better. I promise, but enjoy HERE, just think five more weeks and this year will be up.

During November we came up to Portland every weekend. The first weekend I did a bazaar at my BF Heidi kids school. There wasn't much traffic, it was their first year doing it. But it was fun to hang out with Heidi, Melissa, Becka, and Hannah. Kallie had also broke her flipper and so we had to see the dentist up in Portland. Luckily we got it fixed and it looks great. And were able to have a fun lunch with Pa2 in Portland.

The kids had their conferences for school and they are doing so good in school and loving their teachers and making lots of friends. Here are their school pictures sorry they are fuzzy.

My brother Scotty and his family got a new assignment in CO. I am so happy and excited they are back in the states. They had been in Japan for the past 3 years. We headed up to Portland to visit them, and have my side of the family Thanksgiving dinner since everyone was in town except for John, we missed him. It was fun to see everybody.

My table at the Bilquist Bazaar

I came up with a bag that I wanted to sale at the Bilquist Bazaar that Heidi and I have been doing for 8 years. So for a week I worked really hard on making 10 bags. And I finished them. we headed up on Thursday so Kyle could be there to help his mom when she had surgery. It went well and she is doing much better. Saturday I did the bazaar, my cousins Lisa shared a table with me and my sister Serena was on one side of me and Heidi on the other side me with Hannah bug and Melissa next to her. We are taking over the corner, just kidding. But it was a lot fun to have everyone there. I did better then I have done in the past, but I was sad that no one wanted the bags.

The following weekend was Thanksgiving and I was able to go to the Forgotten Carols with my sister Serena up in Seattle, it was awesome. We had Thanksgiving dinner with the Kenners and Dessert over at my parents. I hope that you all had a Happy Thanksgiving. I can't believe how fast the month went by. I am glad that we live closer to family that we can come up that often. I am sure grateful for all of you in my life. Thank you for all you do for me and my family. We sure do love you.

I think I am going to head to bed now it is 2 in the morning. But I just wanted to say hi and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!

Pumpkin Party

We went to the pumpkin patch to find pumpkins. The kids found the wagon and had fun giving each other rides.

We found some pumpkins.

We didn't know if the patch would be muddy since it had just rained earlier in the week. So we wore our never fail plastic bags. Pumpkin patches and Christmas tree farms are the only sightings of these fashionable boot bags.

We checked out some of the animals that they had at the farm. Kind of looks like my kids are the one in the cages.

Home to carve our pumpkins. Karlee really got into hers. Jaron really got into the craving part. He ended up craving his, Kelsie's and Karlee's. He did a really great job.

We made caramel apples and roasted the pumpkin seeds. YUM!!

We played the doughnut game. I think, Karlee is thinking the one in Ma 2's hand is easier to get then the one on the string.

Karlee was so excited about the whole pumpkin experience that she wanted sit on the porch with her pumpkin and eat doughnuts, I guess the pumpkin didn't like the doughnut.

All the kids with all the finished pumpkins.

Then we dressed up in our costumes so all we could go visit the grandma's. Kallie is Elphba from Wicked. Karlee is Dorthy from the Wizard of Oz. Jaron is Harry Potter, first year. Kelsie is Elousie.

Family Yard Work

We made a quick trip Micheals and got each kid a pair of work gloves for 30 cents and headed home and put our shoulder to wheel. i was very impressed in how positive the kids were being in doing the yard work. Here they are all busy working. Notice their gloves.

Jaron was the crusher of the leaves in the big can. I love his face in this picture, he was jumping and was losing his boots in the leaves. Karlee wanted to jump in the big can too- but we didn't think that was a good idea so we put her in the smaller one. She had fun with that.

Kelsie is raking up the leaves, they made piles and jumped on them. I think they will be able to do that for awhile the leaves are still falling. But they did a great job today.

Guptill Family Reunion 2010

It was a great reunion and I had a whole thing typed on this and then my computer stop working and I lost it. But here are some fun pictures from it. Thank you for everyone who help me to be able to pull this off. I loved seeing family and making memories, I can't wait till the next one.

Summer in a Blink of an Eye

Say what? Where did summer go? I can't believe how fast it went by. I will give you a quick sum up of our summer through pictures so I can kind of make my blog current. Well I will try, it is kind of hard when you have to go some place to get the internet. But here we go....

This is the first view of our summer vacation. We packed up our house and moved it into storage and stayed with family for the summer. THANK YOU FAMILY!!! We love spending time with you. Another huge THANK YOU goes out my sister Alycia who came up from Utah and took the three older kids for a week so Kyle and I could pack up and move, it helped out so much.

When we got up there we did a lot of swimming, playing, riding bikes, berry pickin. All the fun stuff that you do during the summer. Here the kids are with the yummy strawberries they just picked. Karlee was so funny she had a bucket but I don't think many made it there. Most of them she ate. She would hover around my bucket and take them out and put them in her bucket and then eat them. we finally had to just hold her so she wouldn't anymore. But who could blame her, those are some good berries YUM!

What would be our summer without a trip to the ER. On 6/28, Kallie was riding her bike with Jaron at grandmas house she was riding pretty fast and turned her handle bars to soon and flew over the handle bars. She knocked her mouth really good, to the point that she knocked out 2/3 of her front tooth. We took her to the ER at one hospital and then after five hours of being there the doctors decided that she need to go up to the children hospital on the other side of town. There they took out the rest of her front tooth and stitch up her lip and checked out her hip (luckily, that is where her hip doctor works.) After they had bandages her up, she had to stay the day (they had finished working on her at 6am) and be observed in the hospital for the meds they gave her. She did a great job and healed up great!!!

My mom, sister and I put on a baby shower for my sister Alycia. It turned out great, it was a cute theme of "tweet baby girl" (a little birdie told me that Alycia is having a baby girl). It was a lot of fun to put together and we had a good turn out. The day before this Kallie had her bike crash and so she was really sad that she didn't get to go, but the pain kind of won out on this one.

Both of my parents sides of their family had reunions this summer. Here is a group shot of my mom's side. It was up in Wentanchee, WA. We went hiking, swimming, boating, playing in the sand, and visiting Levansworth, WA (a cute little German town) and camping. Other family members went water skiing, cannoning, tubing, rafting all the fun water stuff that freaks me out. But it was a really fun reunion- Thank you Anne Gene and family for putting it together.

My dads side also had one. I was in charge of this one. I had a lot of fun planning and was grateful for all those that came out to it and help me do it. My next post will have the fun stuff we did at it. Here is a group shot of everyone that came, actually I take that back this is a shot of the grandkids and great grandkids with G3 that came. I love being with family they are all so awesome.

We were able to grab a quick family photo of our little family at the reunion.

The following Monday, my sister, cousins, and our kids went to the spray park by G3 house. They were playing and having a great time when Jaron ran into a pole. The pole was still standing in the end, Jaron not so much. He had cut his forehead open and banged his nose up pretty good. So we took another trip to the ER. He got stitches and some x-rays to make sure that there was not anymore damage then what we could see. He now has a scar right above his eye. But it works out well for his Halloween costume he is going to be Harry Potter.

We made our trip to Utah to visit with Alycia. It was fun, we love spending time with Alycia- even though she had to be on bed rest. But it didn't last long because three days after we left she had her baby. Lulu came YAY! what a cutie she is. While in Utah we were able to go to my cousin Aaron wedding and got to spend the day with my cousin Elizabeth who I have not seen in awhile (above picture).

Kallie got her new tooth and it looks amazing. She will now have to wear a flipper until she is out of high school or when her mouth if full grown and she can get an implant. But she looks great.

Uncle Russell took all the grandkids to the fair again this year and i got to tag along. It always reminds me of Charlotte Web and the fun you can have at the fair.

On Labor day we took another quick trip to Utah to see Olivia get blessed. It was a lot of fun to be there and to be able meet Lulu. Such a sweetie Alycia and Cody.

And the kids are headed back to school. They are loving school and are excited for it everyday. I am glad. I hope that you all had a great summer too. I can't believe how fast it went by.

School is OUT!!

I can't believe that the school year has come to a close. Kyle finished his Junior year at OIT and now ready to move to his Senior year at Good Samaritan Hospital. Kallie finished 4th grade and had a blast. Took a two day overnight field trip up to Portland and spent the night at the Zoo. Learn about the Oregon Trail and became a pioneer for a month. Learn to play chess and the recorder. Jaron finished 1st grade and had a blast - Learning to read and doing math. He also learn to play chess. And last but not least Kelsie - she loved preschool and made great friends. She is so ready for kindergarten.

Here Jaron is with his 1st grade teacher. They had some rocky points but he really loved his teacher. As he was saying goodbye to he started to cry. And I can tell you that she did not see that coming. But Jaron loves school and learning and really is going to miss 1st grade. (That is what he told me as we left school.)

Here Kallie is with her teacher, he is such an awesome teacher. She had so much in his class and enjoyed going everyday.

* Side note this should have been written right when school got out but, I never got around to it. But it was a awesome school year and had to share- their last day photos.

Pinkalicious Party

For Kelsie 5th birthday, she chose a Pinkalicious party this year. We (or should I say) I had so much putting it together. For the invites we came up this cute invite and made pink jumbo cupcakes to hand to the girls when we gave them their invitations. We asked the girls to dress in all pink for the party.

On the day of the party we all dressed in Pink and decorated the house in pink. I went on a hunt for all the pink food I could find. Came up with PINK whoppers, yogurt, jelly belly's, cupcakes, applesauce, wafer cookies, starbursts, read grapes, and watermelon. Here Kelsie is showing off all the yummy food, (if you can believe it, this is Kelsie giving me her best smile not quite looking at the camera).

As the guest arrived we colored cupcakes. Look at all the pink in that picture. So cute.

Kelsie wanted to make bracelets for her craft, and a found some fun beads of all colors. Even Karlee got into making one.

We had two games; one was pin the cherry on the cupcake. Kelsie got really excited and was trying to tell everyone where to put their cherries to be the winners. The other game we played- I read the book Pinkalicious, we had put copies of cupcakes on the floor in a circle and while listening to the story the girls walked in a circle and then when they heard the word cupcake they had to stop. And who ever didn't get on a cupcake was out. (It was kinda like musical chairs and a cake walk mixed together.)

Then we sang "HAPPY BIRTHDAY to KELSIE" and the girls all got to eat all the pink food they wanted. But don't worry I had a table full of green food to also eat, so that if they PINK they had a way to turn back to normal before their parents got there.

Make a Wish Kelsie

Here are some of the girls after the party with their aprons. I was going to have them decorate cupcakes while at the party but I ran out of time. But I think all the girls had fun. I know Kelsie loved it and was glad all her friends could make it.

a WICKED trip

This happen in the first weekend in June, but I never got around to blogging about it. But I had to share with you this fun trip that I took with some friends from Klamath Falls. I had mention to a friend at book club that I would love to go see the play WICKED, she said that she would too. By chance it was playing down in San Fransisco. The ball got rolling...and ended up with six women headed to SF to the play WICKED, but it turned out to be so much fun. I am also so grateful for Kyle who let me go and took care of the kids while I was gone. We left Friday morning in a minivan. Along the way we stopped at In and Out Burgers for lunch and then headed to the Oakland Temple. We were able to do a session and have dinner at the temple (it reminded me of the food that was at the MTC).

Here is a picture of all six of us at the Oakland Temple after our session. We walked the grounds and saw the beautiful grounds and view from the temple. Another fun thing is that you can walk on the top of the temple and get a greater view of the area. After we changed back into our street clothes we headed into SF. We walked the pier, stopped at this yummy bread shop-enjoyed some bread with dip, met some inserting people, and yes we stop at Ghirardelli to get yummy sundaes.

Cathy and I are sharing such a YUMMY treat.

It was so good.

We had ours down before everyone else had gotten theirs.

Here Amy and I are taking a ride on a trolley, just kidding it was a parked one-I don't think I could of hung off it like that if it was moving. I would of probably knocked into a car passing by.

The next day we went back to SF to have day checking out the sites. Here we are checking out the Golden Gate Bridge-yeah you can't really see the bridge because of the fog, but it was still cool to be there. Then we went down Lombard street you know the real winding street. Then headed into China Town, the time really went by quick in there. We had dinner at a REAL china restaurant-there was nothing american about this place. Took in some more China town. Met back together, changed and then had dinner at this nice restaurant. And then on to the play. I was so excited...

As you can see in this picture. The play was so much fun. Right after it was over I wanted to go see it again. I would love to take my girls to it, they would be singing right along with it. They know all the songs as we listen to the soundtrack all summer long.

On Sunday we drove home. But along the coast for awhile, we stop in Santa Cruz to check out that town- there is a lot of history there. Saw a lot of Light houses along the way home.

Here we are at the end of the trip.

Thanks girls for such a fun trip.

It will be one I never forget.

You are great friends.