Harry Potter Birthday Party!

When the Bousquets were in town, we had a Harry Potter Birthday party.  It was so fun to share our love of Harry Potter with some of our favorite people!

 Cute Caleb!

 Pretty Joy!

 Grandpa and Grandma getting in on the fun!

Pretty Hannah and Pretty Chrissy! 

 And the fabulous Baker Bunch! Ben is such a great Draco!

 I got a new shirt for the occasion!

Harry Potter (Aiden) even came to help us celebrate! 

 And adorable princess Leeya!

 Team Slytherin in the house! (Eva and Xander)

 We even managed to fit everyone in our family room to watch Harry Potter. If you look close you can see lots of flying keys hanging from the ceiling

 And of course, floating candles in the dining room!

 These sweet younger kids (Leeya and Griffin, (and Andy, not pictured) ended up playing and watching Octonauts in the living room. So cute!

It was a great party! We'll have to do it again someday!

New Blog Address and Family Pictures

We had some family pictures taken in December. I sure love these sweet people.
Now that our little family has grown so much, we've decided to make our own family blog.  I will probably post here sometimes, but I'll be posting more regularly on our new family blog.  The address is www.rogersfamilyblog.com .  I hope you'll follow us there.

Love,

Aubrey

Harry Potter Party

We are big fans of Harry Potter.  Earlier this fall we had the idea to throw a Harry Potter Party and we spent a couple of months thinking of ideas (and looking for ideas online), planning and preparing.

 We all made wands from dowels, clay and hot glue.  Then Mark painted them.  They turned out pretty amazing.

 We made some fun treats including chocolate frogs, Bertie Botts Yummy flavored beans (Jelly Bellies), Ferrero Rocher Golden Snitches, Gringotts Gold (from Hersheys Nuggets) and Licorice Wands).  

 Even Daniel dressed up!

Joy posing in front of the 9 3/4 wall which the kids went through to enter the party, and it also doubled as a photo backdrop.

 Grace (on the right) and her friend Karyssa

Pretty BethAnne

 Yummy treats, I should have taken pictures of some chocolate frogs by themselves, they were cool.

 These floating candles were a labor of love.  They're made from paper towel and toilet paper tubes, hot glue, paint and led candles.  Mark helped a lot with these.  

 We also set up a Quidditch hoop for Quidditch practice.  (It was a hula hoop on top of a basketball hoop which was on top of a storage bench).  The kids took turns trying to throw a beach ball through the hoop while a "Keeper" tried to stop them

 We also had a fancy feast, played Harry Potter trivia and Bingo and Find the Snitch (hide and seek).  The kids had a lot of fun.  The youngest girl who came to the party later told her mom "this was my luckiest day!"  I could hardly move for a day after, but it was worth it.  We saved a lot of the supplies so someday we can do it again. 

Random Adorable Baby Pictures

Babies are so fun and cute.  Daniel is a great baby, even though he's been struggling with ear infections the last month.  He's our biggest 6-month-old, we're getting strong muscles.  Here are some pictures from the last few months. We love our Daniel!

Happy Birthday and Baptism Joy!

Our sweet Joy turned 8 at the end of September.  

 She was able to have a friend party and a family party.  So much fun.

 She made this pin the fish on the seal game, she likes seals. The girls helped make the fish.

Then Joy was baptized on November 4th.  She was a beautiful angel that day.  We are so grateful for our Joy and for the love and joy she brings to our family.  She is so smart and creative, she is often making projects or reports that amaze us.  We have decided to homeschool Joy (after much thought and prayer).  She will probably be skipping a grade in the process (she was old for her grade). We have a great curriculum and she will meet with other homeschooled kids every Friday for fun extracurricular classes (art and lego robotics).  We love our Joy!

Hogle Zoo

We went on a quick trip at the end of July to Utah to see grandparents and go to Austin Baker's return missionary open house.  We were able to take a quick trip to Hogle Zoo also.  It was quite hot, but it's a very cool zoo.  We hope to go again when it's cooler sometime.  

 Elephants are my favorite animal, so we stayed to watch the elephants for quite awhile. So cool.

 

 This funny bear had the right idea, as we watched he plopped down into a pond in his enclosure, we were jealous.

 Such sweet kids!

 Daniel was great on the trip.  We love our big van that lets me sit right next to him when he's having a hard time.  I took this last picture on the way home.  He's my little happy sunshine boy.

And that's the end of my blog catch up for the summer.  We are so grateful for our many blessings and we are doing great!

Love,

Aubrey