I took some pictures of my boys tonight at the park. I've been wanting to do this for awhile now and the stars finally aligned and I was able to get some kickin good pictures of my kids. We had some fun outtakes and some really great pictures. The boys were very good sports about it all and had some beautiful smiles for their mom. Enjoy the preview... there will be more coming.

On Friday night we went to Johnathan's baseball practice. I didn't get a great picture of Johnathan but I did get a cool one of Zach and one of Darrel and Alex. I'll just have to keep taking my camera to practice and games until I get a winning picture of Johnathan. Johnathan has decided that he likes baseball the best. Alex has dubbed soccer his favorite sport. I am very glad that my boys enjoy playing sports and I hope they continue at least into high school.

Adams Family Pictures

The other weekend when I visited Elise in Colorado I was able to take some family pictures while Les was home. The kids were so cute and we got some really fun pictures of the kids and the family together. Thanks Elise for being so good to work with, I had a great time taking these pictures.

Savior of the World

This past weekend it was my extreme pleasure to go to Colorado and see my sister, Elise, in the production, "Savior of the World". She did SUCH a fabulous job - I was SO proud of her. These are just a few pictures I was able to take of her during the dress rehearsal of the show. I also was able to have a really fun weekend with my mom, dad, brother Ben, and Elise's in laws, and of course, Les, Elise's husband who was home on leave from Iraq.

more pictures

I thought I would get on here and share a few more pictures from the other day. We are having a little bit of a "cold snap" this weekend so I like looking at these pictures of my boys having so much fun playing outside. For the most part my boys play really well together and I love to watch them interact with each other. These photos are just a few more of my favorites.

Alex's first soccer game of spring season

Alex played in his first soccer game of the spring season today. He played goalie for the first half, but I didn't happen to get any pictures of him doing that - I will on the next game. It was sooooo cold this morning too...the wind was merciless. Zach complained the entire game, even though we had blankets and he had a sweatshirt on. Alex's team was down a player so all the kids played the whole game. They lost 0-2 but they played their little hearts out. Hopefully the next couple of games will go better for them.

playing outside in the water

a new day, a new picture

This morning I cut Zach's hair and this afternoon he wanted to play in the bubbles. I turned the bubbles on for him and then I took a picture of his rockin new do. It's not really fixed but I thought I did a pretty good job. Isn't he a cutie?!!

Happy Birthday Zach

OK - I have to say that looking through these pictures to share with you Zach's journey in life so far has made me really, really baby hungry. I was watching little videos of him learning to crawl and learning to walk and it about made me cry. Where did my baby boy go? He was such a cute little baby. I love babies. I don't always love the time and effort they take but when they're your own it's not so bad. I never thought he would be my last. I still don't know, but that's not up to me at this point. I miss my baby Zach. He is such a fun kid now, though. He and I get to spend a lot of time together because he is my straggler and as the boys are at school we get a lot of quality time together. He makes me laugh and he makes me a better mom. Yesterday we celebrated his fourth birthday. I can't believe my baby is four years old. We went to Chuck -E - Cheese and he got to play all the games he wanted. We also went over to Erin's house afterwards to play in her bounce house (thanks Erin). I had Joy's kids in the morning so she could get ready to leave. She picked her kids up from Erin's house and left. Her driving away left a big, huge hole in my heart. I can't believe she is really gone. I did try and hold it together yesterday as best I could for Zachary's sake. I didn't want his birthday to be one of sadness. He has already asked for Daniel a bunch today and yesterday. It's going to take some getting used to on all our parts. We wish them all the best in their new journey in life. We will miss them a ton.

Anyway - Zach's birthday turned out to be a pretty fun day. When Darrel got home from work, he brought pizza and we took the boys to the park to play. I'm so grateful for my boys. They bring me joy every day of my life. Right now, they are playing outside with the water. They are having a great time. I really should go and take some pictures. Enjoy the pictures I posted of Zach - he sure is a cutie - if I do say so myself.

New Header

OK - I changed my header...what do you think?? I want HONEST opinions!!

Hello everyone! We are in the middle of watching Go Diego Go - Caitlin's current t.v. favorite. Daniel, Caitlin, Jake(friend) and Zachary are sitting at the preschool table snacks and watching the tv. Seriously, does it get much better that this??..I think not. Today is a beautiful day. It's hovering around 68 degrees with just a slight breeze. I love having my door open to the outside. I have to enjoy every second of this weather because all too quickly it will get WAY TOO hot around here and I'll have to close all the doors and windows and run the air-conditioning around the clock. This is the perfect time to live in a climate like this. I will miss this in a couple of months - so I am trying to take full advantage of it now.

Joy and her kids have officially come to stay with us until they leave on Monday. Her house is empty. The big truck came yesterday and the movers worked for 4 hours to get everthing in. There is still just a few things to get into the truck, but I think they'll be fine with everything fitting in. "The Happy Movers" did a great job stacking everything floor to ceiling to maximize the space in the truck. It is weird to see their house empty. Her renters are moving in on Saturday so there won't be much time to see an empty house. I told her that I would go over and take pictures when she was done cleaning. It really is a nice house and I know that she's going to miss it.

On Tuesday night Joy went with me to take pictures of two basketball teams. I will miss her a LOT when she is no longer able to help me with pictures. It makes such a huge difference when I have someone with me taking care of the business side so I can just take pictures of the kids. I shudder at the thought of doing it by myself. She said I should find someone to go with me, I really should, I'll have to think about that one. I don't have a lot of options, but I'll keep it in the back of my head.

Tonight some friends are getting together for a final time with Joy. There are quite a few people who will miss Joy almost as much as I will. Not as much, though! It will be fun to get together in a relaxed atmosphere and really just chat without worrying about a ton of other things. I am looking forward to tonight, although, it's going to take some serious caffeine to keep me awake.

Well, I better go, all the kids just got home from school. See ya!

so that last post I started almost a week ago. Lame, I know...but at least I finished it finally. We've had another week of hectic, crazy times topped with sick children. It's been a blast - ok not really, but it hasn't been THAT bad. We're trying to soak up as much Layton family time as we can. We are going to miss them like crazy when they finally drive out of here, but we will saturate our lives with them until then and maybe that will make it a little easier when they actually go. We are officially on the countdown. They are leaving one week from today. It's totally scary and SO NOT okay with me, but I'll manage.

Last week I bought myself a navigation device from woot.com (one day, one deal). It was a really good price and I figured I better purchase it now because my built in map is leaving. Joy is amazing with directions, roads, etc. I am directionally challenged. I have needed help from the minute I started driving. Joy has always been a good resource for me, especially here, she had all of Las Vegas in her head before we moved here so my map was never more than a phone call away.

A couple of days ago I had the day from you know where and I was telling Erin about it. As only a true blogger would she says, "Hey Ang, you should blog that". So here goes. The day was Friday and it started out good enough. Elise was getting ready to go back home and I was getting ready to take her to the airport. Joy had asked me previously if I would be willing to watch some of her extended family's children after a family wedding so the parents could go enjoy Vegas. I had watched about 14 kids on the two previous days and was kind of in kid-watching mode so I agreed. Plus, as a bonus, these parents were going to pay me, so I was pretty happy about that. Anyway, we're getting all ready to leave, and Joy calls. She says that they accidentally took Jacob's car seat to the wedding and we would need to come get it before I took Elise to the airport. I called Elise and she said that she would get in high gear so we could leave a little early, giving us plenty of time to get the car seat and get back to the airport. Well, as you well know, it's hard to get two small children ready really fast. Needless to say, we were on our way to get the car seat just about the time we had previously said we would be on our way to the airport. The wedding that Steve and Joy were attending was down on the strip across from Mandalay Bay. So, Elise and I are finally on our way to the wedding and Joy calls. She wants to know if while I am there picking up the car seat I just want to take the two little girls I am going to watch, saving their parents a trip back to my house to drop them off. I told her that would be fine. We are already running late by the time we get to the wedding so we grab the car seat and the two little girls (ages three and four) and we head out. Now, here comes the hairy part. Here are these two sweet little girls that have been put in a car with a complete stranger (me) and they are supposed to be okay with this. Unfortunately the little one wasn't. The little three year old starts crying before we even leave the parking lot. I felt horrible for her. I don't know if there was any prep done - if she as warned at all - and she is not a happy camper. Despite all our efforts to get her calmed down she continues to cry. I drive Elise to the airport, which is packed to the rafters, I don't know what was going on this past weekend, but holy cow, the airport was a mess. We finally find a place to park and we proceed to unload her baggage onto the curb to be checked. After I finish unloading everything that was in my van she tells me that she is missing a bag. I thought she was kidding. Oh, she's not, she left Emily's bag at the top of Joy's stairs. I finally remember that I am going to Colorado in a couple of weeks so I told her that I would use Emily's bag as one of my bags of luggage and that solved that crisis. The next crisis came when the sky cap people told Elise that she could only have two bags per checked passenger. On the way here she got three checked bags per person so they called over a manager and after much stressing they decided to let her take the bags she had. Now, keep in mind that this whole time I have been parked on the curb trying to duck the security guy and the sweet three year old that I picked up at the wedding is STILL crying. So, we finally get Elise figured out and I leave the airport. About 5 minutes into my drive I turn around to try and console the little one yet again and I see Emily's blanket on the floor behind me. Now, I know that only some of you even appreciate this but Elise would not even be able to leave Las vegas without this blanket. Emily is SO attatched to this blanket, especially since her daddy has been in Iraq. Now I am in a panic. I'm trying to call Elise to tell her that I have the blanket and going through all sorts of senerios in my head of how I'm going to get this blanket back to her, none of which are appealing to me if I can't get a hold of her on the phone. I get off the freeway to turn around and blessed day, she calls. She has realized that she doesn't have the blanket and she has come back outside of the airport so I can drop it off. With the little one still crying in the back seat I turn the car around to return the beloved blanket. After that is finished I realize that I should get these girls (and everyone else in my car) some lunch. We drive through McDonalds and get happy meals for everyone, by this time it is 2:00pm so I decide to go and sit in front of the school to wait for the big kids and these little ones can eat their lunch. Now, keep in mind that I left the house to get the car seat at 12:30pm. We have been in the car for quite some time. Right before we got to McDonalds the little one in the back seat decides that she is now good and stops crying. Halleluiah!! This day is beginning to look up. Right when we pull in front of the school and I have handed out all the lunch stuff, my previously crying three year old decides that she has to go potty NOW! I rush everyone out of the car, including Zachary who doesn't even have shoes on, and into the school so we can all use the potty. After we get back to the car I am chatting with my friend Susie in the parking lot and I hear..."Uh oh, we have an emergency. " The four year old sister has spilled her BBQ sauce all over her pants and her lunch. I race over to her side of the van and I am trying to wipe her up and cursing under my breath that I didn't ever put the seat covers back on the van. I get that as cleaned up as I can and I turn around to see that Zach has spilled his entire container of chocolate milk all over the middle seat. I am just about losing it now as I try to mop up chocolate milk with tissues as best as I can. I am pouring water and mopping up handful after handful of soggy, brown tissue from my seat. Finally the kids emerge from school and we are able to get home. Thankfully after that, apart from some serious messes we made with the preschool toys and upstairs in the boys room we had no other serious injury or crying episode. I was so ready to go to bed that night...the kids parent's finally came at about 10:30pm. They were very generous and paid me for my time. I was so glad when that day was over...so glad.

I'm impressed if you made it all the way through that story. I know that if I was a better storyteller it would be even more impressive, but oh well. At least I blogged about it, right Erin??!! Until next time....see ya!