Burton World Cup Soccer Match

The Burton Family has a tradition of having a soccer match at every birthday party that's held at a park. So last week we had Hayden's party at the park and it was one of the best match-ups ever! The youngest cousins are now old enough to participate in the game and actually contribute rather than just being cute little speed bumps! Now I have to tell ya, if you know the Burton's, you know that they take their soccer seriously, they are aggressive, competitive and they don't care if your only 4 feet tall, they play to win! I was so proud to see my boys hold their own against the adults, they didn't care how big the other guy was, they went out full steam, and even knocked a few of them down!

What would a soccer party be without a soccer cake?

As you can tell, these photos are all blurry, the sun was just going down and nobody would hold still, but you can still tell how much fun it was! I had so many photos to choose from, it was hard to narrow it down, here's a few of my favs, plus a slideshow of all the good action.

And a quick break for re-hydration!

Happy Birthday Hayden!!

So my baby boy turned 7 today, and I can't believe it. He is such a joy to have in our family and he is such a funny kid, he's always doing something to get a laugh out of everyone around. He told me the other day that this kid named Jacob at school is his best friend, and then he said, "Ya wanna know why he's my best friend?" so I ask why...."because he always laughs at me and thinks I'm funny!" So that sums Hayden up right there, he loves to make people laugh and is always goofing off. So I thought I'd show some highlights of Hayden from this past year.

First off, Hayden loves his dog Shadow! He sleeps with him every night and they are best buds. Poor Shadow looks as though his eyes are going to pop right out of his head from Haydens hugs!

A friend of ours who owns his own plane, invited us to fly to St. George for the day. The boys thought this was the coolest ever! The best part was that they each got to take a turn flying the plane all by themselves!

Here's Hayden at the Dinosaur park, thinking he's so funny, getting eaten by the T-Rex!

Hayden loves all sports, but soccer is his favorite.

And he also loves tennis...this was in Sedona, Arizona.

Hayden has also had a few trips to the Emergency Room this year, once in an ambulance (which he thought was so fun, we had to remind him that we don't want to make it a habit of taking "rides" in ambulances!) Another trip was when he slipped at Slide Rock in Sedona and split his chin open, the ER there calls it "Slime Rock" due to the high number of chins and heads that get split open every year.

So Happy Birthday Hayden, you are growning up way too fast! I love you!!

USA VS El Salvador

It's a rare opportunity to be able to see a World Cup Qualifier Soccer match, but SLC was lucky to host this game at Rio Tinto Stadium. And of course we bought our tickets right away. We went with my sister Becca and her husband Steve and my nephew Parker, and we had a BLAST! The game was very exciting from the start, the fans were loud and we were on our feet the entire game! El Salvador scored first, but after that it was all USA, final score 2 to 1 for us. 

Me and my sister Rebecca.

Rebecca, Steve and Parker.

James is really passionate about soccer, ya think? This is after USA Scored their first goal, tying the score at one-one.

Final Score USA 2, El Salvador 1       GO USA!

What an awesome smile!

So the tooth fairy has been visiting our house quite a bit lately. Hayden has been losing teeth left and right. I just had to get a photo of his awesome smile he has right now, because it's changing everyday. He lost his front baby tooth a few weeks ago and up until yesterday it's been a big hole. And then I looked at him today and all of a sudden that big tooth was in, it came in so fast. The funny thing is, is that he also lost the baby tooth on the right side last week (the right lateral for you dental friends) and now that big permanent tooth is taking up all the space and somehow one more tooth is going to come in there. Can you say braces? So I just love the way his smile is right now, all funky spacing and jagged, crooked teeth crammed into a tiny mouth, that I just had to get a photo and share with everyone. He also speaks with a funny little lisp, and I think he likes the way it sounds because he's always saying words that he knows sounds funny.

I just love this crazy smile!

The Green Dragons!

Another season of soccer has begun, Hayden's new team is the Green Dragons and how lucky is that since his favorite color is Green! This little team is really good and they smoked the Blue team. The final "non-official" score was about 13 to 0, 5 of them from Hayden. His coach even told them that they couldn't score until they passed to each other at least 3 times, trying to keep the score down, but they were all just too good.

What a tough crew!

Sub-ed Out

A Happy victory!

First and Fourth!

Now summer is officially over, School starts! I can't believe how fast summer went! I am so happy to say that my boys still get excited for school, they've been counting down for the past two weeks. Hayden jumped up this morning with a big grin and couldn't wait to get dressed in his new school clothes. Mathis will be in fourth grade this year, and Hayden is in first.

Mathis with his friend Mitchell, they're pulling those faces not because it's the first day of school, but of course they don't want to take pictures. (I was not the only mom taking pictures and every other boy was doing the exact same thing, but of course all the girls were posing and smiling!)

Hayden with his friend Tim. Being goofballs!

And of course they had their best bud Shadow with them.

Waiting for the bus!! Here it comes!

I'm going to cherish this while I can because soon they are not going to be excited for the "First Day of School"

Let's get caught up!

So this is the exact reason I fought off having a blog for so long...how in the world does everyone else find the time to keep it up to date? Life has been so crazy and this summer has just flown by, but my kids have been out of town with my parents for the last week and a half, so I finally had some downtime today and started feeling guilty that it's been 3 months since I've posted anything, so here goes a quick recap of our families latest adventures...

Back in May the entire Burton crew headed to Sedona, Arizona for James' parents 50th wedding Anniversary. That place is truly beautiful and we packed the entire week with nonstop activities...Biking, climbing, tennis tournaments, swimming, Geo-caching, shopping and then there was Slide Rock! Slide Rock is a natural water slide, but this water was FREEZING!! Like take your breath away, think you might die, freezing! You can tell from these pictures that it was a struggle to breath while in the water, but we all had fun. This is Mathis with James and his cousin Sam.































And here's Hayden



He wasn't too excited to get in the water a second time so he started catching tadpoles in the small pools of water. Although he couldn't get the name right and kept calling them "catapults". He is so funny, he's always doing that...if he can't remember the name of something he just renames it with a word that sounds close enough for him, I never correct him because I love it when he does it, I have a whole list of Haydenisms!

Here's Mathis wearing my hat and sunglasses, is it just me or is he such a big cutie?

Sedona also has this amazing church built right into the redrock cliffs, it was very small but had amazing views.

Hayden usually hides from the camera, but he was very into posing this day.




I actually got in front of the camera once instead of always being behind it.



Just outside of Sedona there's an animal park called "Out of Africa". This is a park that mainly takes in exotic large animals that are unwanted by their owners after they get too big and are no longer cute little babies. It was even better than a normal zoo, the animals have much more open space and you get to be there when they feed the large cats big hunks of meat: a leg of a cow or an entire turkey, the boys thought that was so cool!

We got to feed a giraffe from the bus, check out the purple tongue, it was like sand paper!




Mathis being a cheezer with is cousin Elle, she's such a cutie!

Mathis and Hayden love snakes, (definately didn't take after their dad!). They got to pet two Pythons, that was their favorite thing of the entire day, James however stayed far away!





There were several Bengal Tigers.



Boom-Boom the Rhino.



Grizzly Bears.



Black Bears.



Lions, and so many other smaller animals, it was an all day event and we were exhausted by the end of it.

We also went to Montezuma's Castle, it was very close to the animal park.

Here's the kids playing tennis in the rain!

I still have many more trips and fun stuff to post, so hopefully I'll get another chance sooner rather than later!