Goold Grandkids

Oops! I never finished posting this series of pictures! Aunt Briana with all her nieces and nephews! Too Cute! All of Gary and Elaine Goold's Grandkids! I love this picture of Miss Emma Suzanne, the oldest Grandchild! Lastly, all the Ladies! Too cute! (OK, I went back through and read this post after I published it and realized I ONLY used exclamation points as my punctuation. I guess I'm one of those hyper, wacky ladies. I'll probably get a purple hat with a red feather in my older age and annoy everyone with my tackiness. No exclamation.)

Joshua Levie and Benjamin Jared

Josh (11.5) and Ben (6). Ben refused to smile with his teeth because he thinks his eyes scrunch up too much.

I love this one, with Joshs hand encircling Ben . . .

The photographer emailed me after the photo shoot telling me she would like to photograph Josh again the next time we went to St. George, because he is a perfect model.

Matthew Levie

I have ALMOST ten nieces and nephews on the Idiart side, but only these two cuties on my side!

I love this little sweet boy, Matthew. He is so darling.

The Goold Grandsons . . . (although Matthew is the only one that carries the Goold name!)

Such a handsome boy!

He gets his good looks from his handsome daddy, look at that cleft in Pauls chin!

Ariana Chanel

I hired my new sister-in-law's photographer to take pictures of all the Goold Grandkids, the hour before the wedding. This is my niece, Ariana Chanel. She's 6 years old and such a beautiful girl!

I love this picture of my brother, Paul with his kids!

Katrina and Ari are special friends. They had such fun together at Magic Mountain. They are actually the same height, but Nina is wearing heels!

I love that when Ari laughs, she covers her mouth, too cute!

Ari and Ben are in the same grade, she is about 4 months older than him.

Family Portraits 2010 & some NEWS

These are my favorite 5 family photos, taken by my Aunt Marilyn. She's such a talented photographer. My favorite photos she took of each of my kids are on my sidebar.

After church, we went to a freightyard where animal feed is loaded onto train cars. I really like this URBAN look! We have a similar freightyard in Central Point, where fertilizer is loaded onto trains!

This cute shot includes our daughter, Diana Marta Gomez-Revilla Mancilla. Mancilla is her mom's maiden name, so when Diana marries, she'll add a new last name and drop Mancilla. She's been with us for a few months and will leave us in 2. We'll miss her terribly!

I prefer the b&w one of this picture, since Ben's white socks stand out SOOO much, in the color version! I'll post some pics of Josh's LACK of socks LATER. My boys have a fashion sense all their own. Just so you know, I helped them both PACK dark socks for the trip!

At the end of the shoot, Ben was really in a bad mood, so he's cranky here, but I still like the picture! If you've read this far, you will now know the NEWS:

I will be getting released as YW President next week because today Damian was called as the Bishop of our ward. If you look at my kids ages, you'll see that they'll all be in their teen years while their Daddy is Bishop, pretty much! That should help discourage them from any morality/substance problems, don't you think?

All about Emma

I've written about Emma a lot lately! She's worth a million posts, at least! She's adorable. It's hard to look at that grown-up young woman and remember her as a new baby!

Today, she was being sassy in the car on the way to school (we drive a few of her friends and having them really brings out her sassy side!) We were arguing "nicely" about how she "owes" me more respect because of all the things I've done for her. She figured after 9 months of kindness (because of her 9 months in vitro), that was enough. I frankly brought up feeding her from my breast for 1 year, every 2 hours and then wiping her poopy bottom for 4 years. That pretty much stopped the argument! Mostly because she and her friends were so grossed out they just wanted to turn the stereo up. Oh, and her friends were agreeing with me. It was fun. What else have I done for her that I can I bring up tomorrow and embarrass her with?

We went to Idaho to visit my grandparents two weeks ago. My grandparents live with Marilyn, my youngest aunt (she's only 9 years older than me.) Marilyn has 6 kids that my kids ADORE! We haven't seen them for about 4 years, since Emma was 9. Marilyn's teen boys, Spencer (17) and Benson (15) knew we were bringing our 16 year old foreign exhange student, Diana, on our visit. When Benson saw Emma, he didn't recognize her and he whispered to his mom, "Wow, Diana is really BEAUTIFUL!" Then, Marilyn informed him that he was looking at his cousin, Emma!

Emma had SOOO much fun with her boy cousins. They were so good to her. They invited her to a stake youth service project, parties with their friends, their Sunday School class and spent the whole weekend we were in Idaho with Emma. She met all their friends, fell in love with a few and hopes to visit them again ASAP.

I was proud of Emma, she stepped up to the plate and treated her younger cousins just as good as her older cousins have always treated her. This is Emma with cousin, Annie Richardson and Katrina.

Emma flirted with her little cousin Alan, who is the same age as Katrina. He tried not to die of embarrassment with all her attention!

Emma has always idolized Jessica, Marilyn's oldest. Jess is competing in the Miss Idaho pageant next month and she's beautiful inside and out. She's the sweetest girl I've ever met. She spent a lot of time loving Emma, too. I'm grateful for the people that love Emma and help her feel special and important. She needs as much of that as possible, right now!

Family Photos: Just the Guys!

The Idiart Men, December 2008:

My sweetheart Damian and our two sons: Josh (10) & Ben (4)

I wish I would have asked for a photo of me with my two little boys . . . this is the only photo of me with either of them. I'm begging Benny to wear his tie and be a good boy. And he's laughing in my face.

Benjamin was really cranky about the clothes, the photographer, pretty much everything for the first 75 pictures, but after his dad wrestled and joked him into a better mood, the photos started really turning out nicely. In another 2 years, when we hire another photographer, I’m sure all the dramatics associated with the pre-schooler will be a thing of the past, so I’ll enjoy the funny pictures of Moody Ben while they last.

Family Photos: Girls Only!

The Idiart Gals, December 2008:

Emma (almost 12), Rachel (8), Katrina (6) and Me!

I love this shot. Everyone is looking at Damian and Ben acting crazy, but Rachel is serious and posing for the shot. What a beautiful little girl!

I think I have the prettiest daughters ever. Aren't they cute?

Here are my girls climbing trees in the most expensive dresses I've ever bought in my life ($40). I've never even bought a dress for myself that cost as much as these.

BROTHER!

Emma and our babysitter, Hillary. I love this picture of Emma. She looks much younger in this shot than she is. Maybe it's the fact that she's next to a real teen-ager?

I wish I could adopt Hillary, she's a wonderful "Big Sister" to all my girls. For now, I'll just post pictures of her with Emma on my blog and pretend she's mine.

If she was mine, she'd be my only daughter with BLUE EYES. Don't get me started. It was the one gene I wanted to pass down and there were no takers, NOT EVEN THE BOYS! I also wanted my kids to have curly hair like their Dad and there were no takers.

I think the Lord mixed my order up and I haven't been too happy with it! I mean, my kids are beautiful and all. Beautiful with their Dad's hazel eyes (except Rachel has brown) and they all have my straight hair. Neither of Damian's brother's married blue-eyed girls and they both have blue eyed kids. And a bunch of my neices/nephews have curly hair . . . with straight-haired mothers. WHERE IS THE JUSTICE?

But I digress, this was supposed to be a happy post about my beautiful kids and here I am complaining. I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world, but I might buy them blue contacts and give them home perms if they're not careful!

Family Photos: All the Kids

Yesterday I asked you which Family Photo you liked the best . . . I promised to send you the one you voted for.

But I also had copies made of these. They are some of the only photos where Josh is smiling. He was sick on the day we took these and wasn't quite himself.

Maybe you love the Christmas Card where the family only sends a photo of the cute kids and leaves out the overweight, middle-aged parents altogether. So here are those shots. If you change your mind and want one of these instead I won't take it in the wrong way. But I won't tell Damian you didn't want a photo of him. He has a fragile self-esteem.

#1: Ben is STARTING TO Smile

#2: Ben is THINKING ABOUT Smiling

I liked these stair-step photos, but not enough to order copies. Plus, Ben was slowly inching away from the rest of the family. I like the way Katrina is laughing so hard that her shoulders are getting all scrunched up! What you can't see is the dynamic efforts Damian was putting out to get Ben to cooperate. He was pretending to be a gorilla during this photo.

This photo is very sweet, everyone is pretty much smiling and they all look cute, OH, these are hard choices for me!!

Now, onto something NOT related to Idiart Family Photos . . . If you haven't entered my contest for Chocolates, please don't miss your chance. Click HERE for details.

Family Photos: VOTE!

Before I start this post, I have to say, WOW! Yesterday's post really brought you out of the woodwork! I am thrilled and overjoyed. And I am a really mad because the cheapest box of chocolates at that dang fancy store costs $25, so I can only send one 1st prize . . . but I am going to send a smaller 2nd and 3rd place prize and 2 "Honorable Mention" Prizes. So check back in a week to see if you won, and see WHAT you can expect in the mail (or on your doorstep, if you're local!!) And I've already thought up another great prize for another great contest for next month . . .

These are my 5 favorite family pictures . . . I ordered copies of each because I couldn't decide which one I liked best. As you can tell, Ben's participation varies, so pay him no mind!

#1: Ben up High

#2: Ben and Daddy Wrestle

#3: Ben on Tranquilizers

#4: Ben saying, "DU!"

#5: Ben looking in Daddy's ear

Which one do you like best? I'm getting ready to send out my Christmas Cards and will send you the one you request!

Oh, I like this one too, but I won't be sending it out, so you can enjoy it here. The extra in the shot is our babysitter, Hillary, that went with us on the trip! I'll title this one,

#6: Ben mad at everyone because he's not the center of attention!