Happy 7 to the Birthday Girl

Love me my holiday babies but I'm glad Rachel's birthday will never fall on Thanksgiving as it was yesterday (November 20th) and the 22nd is the earliest Thanksgiving can be.  We took chocolate cupcakes to school to celebrate with friends and then had her aunt over for chocolate cake & chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.  We just love our new 7 year old!

 With her loot from family

 Elizabeth was excited to buy her a birthday present

 Me and my mini-me

Some great things about Rachel--

• She started counting down for her birthday before Halloween, do you think she was excited about it?
• She's a great middle sister playing with both her older and younger sister so well.
• Has great determination (for better or worse at times :)  I remember the birthday we took her to the toy section in Walmart to pick something out and after showing her princess things and baby dolls she picked a dragon.  I thought she would never play with it but it was and still is played with in our house as our Rachel knows her mind.
• Good student at school-some boys like to copy her work word for word and the teacher said she wished she could clone Rachel and have a classroom full of her (there are 9 girls and 14 boys in class and its a tough one some days).
• She loves to wear skirts.
• She still loves to be tucked in at night by one of us and that can go on forever in my book.
• She's becoming quite the soccer player and it's fun to coach her even if she won't touch the ball off-season.
• She has the best facial expressions.
• Loves chocolate--who wouldn't?
• Loves In-N-Out Hamburger like her daddy, too bad we live about 8 hours away from the nearest one.
• Loves watching Doctor Who with her daddy & sisters.
• Loves to craft--will color and make crafts for hours.
• Actually enjoys practicing the piano and I hardly ever have to remind her to do it.

We love you Rachel and look forward to counting down to many more birthdays!

Jugar al futbol

We had another successful soccer season with Rachel.  She even survived and thrived despite me as a coach.  Rachel scored a couple goals which Eric rewarded with a candy bar--lucky girl.  Here are some pictures taken by a fabulous photographer/parent on the team Kelly Auger.

Some Action Photos

 I love this one.  A typical face by Rachel--what do you think you want me to do?

 RMSA U-7 Silver Stars

 We're a pretty silly bunch!

 A pretty cute soccer player with hopefully lots more seasons in her!

Prima Ballerina

Even though I consider myself more of a soccer mom than dance mom, it has been fun to put the girls in ballet and see how cute they can be there.  Evelyn just finished her first ballet class and I'm a little biased but she was the cutest one out there.

 Look at that 1st position!

 And trying to do 3rd position

 Getting ready to dance

Faces

This morning at breakfast the girls wanted their funny face pictures taken.  Yes, this is how we roll in the Carlsen household.

And Rachel's infamous eye twitch.

Halloween Fun 2012

Candy detox is now in session, oh wait they still have pounds of it from all our fun Halloween activities.  Saturday night we had a Fall Festival at school with lots of games and loot.  Say hello to this year's cutest witch, "princess" vampire, and pirate.

 The fun continued Tuesday night at our ward trunk or treat that I failed to get any pictures of my children at.  Picture this, above costumed children joining forces with about two bazillion other children in fun games with an Alice in Wonderland theme followed by the best way to get your bang for buck in trunk-or-treating.
The actual school day of Halloween didn't fail us either in fun.  Rachel did lots of crafts and paper things.

 And supposedly Elizabeth was a good witch.

 Uur family picture right before trick-or-treating.  Love my family!

 Elizabeth, always the poser and Pirate Evelyn who will follow in big sister's footsteps.

 Ah the yearly donut on a string contest.  Evelyn pretty much protested until she took a bite then was all in.

 Elizabeth had a hard time getting a grip on it but had fun.

 Vampire Rachel, not too sure about that thing.

 And me?  I pretty much failed at it blindfolded, a handicap since I had won a previous year.

Now I have to go lay down after too much excitement and food/sugar in the past week.