Sugar & Spice...

... and everything NiCe!

That's what little girls are made of!

Snips and Snails

and Puppy Dog Tails...

That's what little boys are made of!

These pictures were taken on the same day. Yesterday- Gabriella's 5th birthday!

Birthday pictures soon to follow. :)

WoRdS

Remember this cute kid?

He says some pretty funny and off the wall things every once in a while...

Yesterday on the drive to school the children were talking about where they were born. I told them they were all born in Colorado.

Hunter pipes up, "but not River. He was born in Hawaii...

... he's brown."

Hahahahahaha! So there you have it. Evidently, little River is now Polynesian b/c he was born here in Hawaii. If only it worked that way. Once a Haole (how-lee) always a Haole. In other words- if you be white. They ain't no changin the fact. You cain't be bon in Hawaii and call yo-self a Hawaiian. Nuf said.

Hunter said something else today.

Only this time it wasn't so funny.

He learned the "F" word.

"The queen mother of dirty words. The F, dash, dash, dash word..." as he says on A Christmas Story.

Hunter learned it from his friend, although he didn't know it was such a bad word.

Well, now he knows.

Kids!

SEVEN? WhAt??

Hunter is SEVEN!

Today is his birthday. Seven years ago today I gave birth to my first child. And he was perfect in every way!

Hunter is a special spirit and always has been. He is super fun-loving! Also, caring and creative. He's smart and funny and competitive and silly and goofy and a friend to EVERYBODY!

Hunter is like his dad- very talkative and a friend to all. Everyone LOVES Hunter! Especially us!

Hunter likes to get on our computer and play with the Photo Booth and take random pics of himself. Here is crazy one!

This was taken on Dec. 1st. I gave him the mohawk earlier that day at his request. Did I mention he LOVES having his picture taken? He will pose for anyone, anytime! :)

Remember the part where I said he was "special" ?? Haha!

We celebrated Hunter's birthday yesterday on the 4th. I told him he could chose six friends to come over for cake and ice cream and then we'd take them all to see a movie. Five were able to come (although we are missing two in this pic!)
Hunter is the cutest thing ever and I want to cry just thinking about him. I love him dearly- as a mother would!! He was so excited to have us sing "Happy Birthday" to him!
He is hilarious too- he wanted a Red Velvet cake for his birthday!! What 7 yr old asks for that? But works for us :) We LOVED it!

First cake, second presents!!!!

What happened to Hunter? Where'd he go?? We're all looking for him...
Ahhh of course. There isn't enough room on the table. Must open presents!! That present is wrapped so cute! I love how they did his name on it and I'm glad I snapped a photo before it all got ripped to shreds!
A happy bunch and a fun time with the gifts. Soon after this we all piled in a couple of cars and went to see "Tangled!" I know, I know, a very girlie type movie. But they are SEVEN! And two of them had already seen it. :) They all LOVED it. Although, I did hear a couple of little snickers now and then... It was classic boy behavior and so much fun!

We're still missing one other little boy in this pic- he met us at the theater. Where I TOTALLY forgot to pull out my camera and take more pictures of the group! But I guess we were having too much fun. Hunter had a wonderful birthday chillin with his buddies: Jason, Jeron, Carson, Mahonri, and Tosi. They were all so cute!

Hunter you are SO wonderful and such a blessing to our family!

We think you are hilarious that you are SO competitive in everything you do and that you are a little "parent!" Typical first child! But we love it and wouldn't trade YOU for anything.

You are a good little boy who is growing so fast and you strive to do what's right... now if only we can get your sisters to that point. Ha!

You are smart and have a thirst for knowledge. I love that I don't have to bug you every day about doing your homework- you just do it. You help your sisters when they are in need. You are also the first to tell someone when they are doing something wrong. :) You LOVE being the BOSS!

We didn't even take any pictures today on your actual birthday! We were too busy playing with all of your presents. That's kind of the way to go... celebrate the day before or at least EARLY in the day so you can actually PLAY with your gifts on your birthday. It's handy.

Love you Hunter.

River's Blessing

My little angel...

We have blessed all of our children at home. I can't really tell you the reasoning behind it. It just felt right for us. And River was no different.

Tia Lexie helped Gabriella get ready and straightened her hair for fun! She looked very pretty :)
We were fortunate to have Ryan's parents come for Thanksgiving this year so we chose to bless River while they were here. River was blessed on Friday, November 19, 2010. When he was just over two months old. G'ma Ginger is enjoying a quick cuddle before the blessing!
I wanted a picture of all four kids together on this special day- I do have a couple of crappy ones and then Kolea took off. She's quite the two year old these days!!

So while Hunter and Gabriella are the perfect picture-taking subjects...

... this is Kolea!

Can you tell he's beginning to get a bit sleepy? Yes, he cried through the blessing!
Some of the wonderful friends and family that had gathered for the occasion.
Most of our group. It was an evening that was kind of thrown together at the last minute. We had planned a different day, but due to the Temple rededication that also happened that same weekend we ended up with the blessing on a Friday night. It was fine, but we were sad to have forgotten a few friends in the craziness that we would've loved to have there.
A big thank you to all who came and made the evening a special one for the Hitz Family!

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Kolea loves her baby dolls. She cuddles, cradles, rocks, sings to and even kisses her baby dolls. No doubt she's seen me do this a time or two to her brother! Not to mention, experienced it herself (by me.) This is what we do with babies!

This is also what we do with babies...

She cracks me up! What a good little mommy!

Alligator Pond

This is a fun little keiki (kid) beach near our house. There is some reef that looks like an alligator, hence the name. We took River and Kolea one morning. Ryan had never seen River's reaction to dipping his toes...

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER!

Poor baby. :) It really isn't that cold. I think it's more of the shock that he didn't know what was coming. Let's try this again...

TAKE TWO!

Aww So REFRESHING!

And about a half hour later...

It's so exhausting being at the beach! :)

Halloween Festivities- Better Late Than Never

Those of you in Fort Collins know that each Halloween we have an annual Pumpkin Carving Party at our house. Last year, we moved to Hawaii on October 15th and unfortunately we didn't have any friends to invite over for a party! So this year we made up for it- BIG TIME!

See all of our yummy treats? I was so impressed that everyone went all out!

Here's another view- as well as some of the fun pumpkin carving happenings!

I'm not kidding- we meant business!

You go ladies! Carve those pumpkins!

Much of the men-folk babysitting. Good times!

Some of the fine ladies helping out in the kitchen. We were washing pumpkin seeds, preparing them for roasting...

I had the brilliant idea to use our salad spinner to spin off most of the water, to quicken the drying process. It was a great plan until I took my hand off the lid for ONLY a split second - and that's when it happened...

Pumpkin seeds FLEW out of the salad spinner going 95 miles an hour in a 360 degree radius. It was INSANE! And completely hilarious. I'd trashed the ENTIRE kitchen area with pumpkin seeds. Too bad we were all too busy laughing- and then cleaning up to think about taking a picture of it. :(

Thanks everyone for celebrating with us- we had a blast!

Hunter and Gabriella got dressed and ready for school on Friday, 10/29 to walk in their Halloween Parade. Hunter wanted to be a vampire. And I'm all about the costumes you put together. I think he looks great! Gabriella was my sweet angel and looked so pretty!

On Saturday, 10/30 we were lucky enough to live in a community where they wanted to celebrate Halloween a day early! We decided to slick back Hunter's hair this time and thought he looked much more the part. :) Gabriella is hilarious with her "no-teeth" smile.

Where is Kolea? She is being her ol' two year old self and not cooperating. She did not want to dress up or be in any picture. WHAT??

So here is our family of SIX! Kolea is wearing the dress I'd put her in that morning. Since she would put on her witch costume I found bunny ears and a tail in our Halloween bins and craftily put them on her! Hehehe- the sneaky things we parents do! So her little dress worked out to be a cute costume after all.

Ryan was a sport and dressed up as a Mexican "football" sports fan. I am obviously Pippy Longstocking (as if you couldn't tell by the hair.) Unfortunately we couldn't get things timed right with River for when he was awake and changing him- so he's in a boring ol' onesie. That's OK. We have many Halloweens to come!

See Kolea's cute little cotton-tail? She is adorable! When she's not acting like the devil that is... and I say that with as much love a mother can have for her darling little basket-case of a two year old! Ha!

Some fun costumes I wanted to showcase. Our friends, Axle and Jenny. They won our ward's costume contest AGAIN this year! Way to go guys!

The zebras are my bro-in-law and sis-in-law, David and Danielle. She has THE MOST BEAUTIFUL hair in the world. I covet (k, not covet- maybe envy) her hair. They used "hair glue" to try and make it stand up like a mane!! I forgot to ask them how long it took to wash out...

And my friend, Rachel. She was Glinda- the Good Witch of the North (?) I think it's the north... time to watch Wizard of OZ again. :)

Happy Halloween everyone! Or should I say, Thanksgiving??

I'm so out of it. We even blessed River the other day and I forgot to tell (or remind) my entire family. I think four kids have sufficiently killed enough of my brain cells and I should quite while I'm ahead...

I swear, any more kids and you might as well call me a vegetable.

Comparisons

I love taking pictures of River laying on our Luv Sac (if you couldn't tell) b/c of the bright red cover. It makes everything look better :) Don't ask me why- I'm not a photographer by any means. Maybe just b/c the fact that it's a solid color background so I'm able to focus on the person in the photo- who knows??

Anyhow, this is my darling baby at 9 days old. Dressed and ready for his first day at church- well at least part of church. We left after Sacrament meeting. :)

I actually wish I'd had him in a onesie so you could see how "bird-like" my little guy's legs are here! He's so scrawny- well, was!

This is River as of yesterday, 8 weeks old. He's filled out a bit- the little chunk! And he's a bit more... aware :)

Just thought it'd be fun to see these two pictures side by side and see how they compared.