THE NEWTON'S

We had the opportunity to have both Rich's parents and my parents here for a couple of days the weekend after Alex's birthday.  They both came out to be with us that Sunday as Alex was ordained a deacon at church.  It was lots of fun to have them there, and odd to have the adults out number the kids when we went places. :) Here are some fun pictures the kids snapped while they were here. :)

We had a family birthday party on Alex's birthday.  It was also the first day of school, and Rich's parents were here. :)

I didn't get any great first day of school pictures... :)  It was busy, and the girls were so excited to get on the bus and worried about missing the bus that they didn't really let me take any great pictures.  I'm going to post some shots though... so you can see that I tried to take some pictures of them. As for Alex... well we aren't used to getting up and out the door by 7am... and now 3 weeks into the school year I'm still not used to it.  So it wasn't until about 2 days later that I realized I didn't get a first day of school picture for him... add it to my bad mommy awards I've earned in my life. lol! :) Incidentally, the girls rode the bus to school the first day, and haven't ridden it since.  It's not that there is anything wrong with the bus, they just aren't ever ready on time to take it.  We also found out that Angela as a Kindergartener in the morning would be let off at the Kindergarten playground, and she wasn't too thr...

As has become tradition, Alyssa had a little family party on her birthday and we celebrated with a small cake and presents from family.  Then a few weeks later after our Branson trip and after her friends were all back in town from various vacations, we had her friend party.  Ashley happens to have a bunch of friends that are older sister's to Alyssa's friends, so as her friends were being dropped off Ashley would run outside and ask if her friend could stay and play during the party as well!  We wound up with a full house of girls, and they all had a great time!  Instead of taking advantage of my cake making skills, Alyssa choose cupcakes to have at the party instead of a birthday cake.  I think they still turned out pretty cute, and they were so much faster to decorate than our regular cakes! :)

We went to Branson in August for a little trip before school started back up.  We of course went mini golfing (twice) and we went to the Dolly Partin dinner show, and to Silver Dollar City.  We went to a magic show, and we did some major shopping at the outlet stores. The pictures are mixed up a little bit, so it's just a little smorgasborg of pictures from the trip. :)  Alyssa stopped and took pictures of just about every single horse that was in the show, so I had to put a few of them up here as well. :)