Happy Halloween!

I used to think that this holiday was so silly, but now I have kids and it’s so much more fun. Let’s look at the costumes, shall we?

Here we have Andrea in her beautiful Sleeping Beauty dress (the hat would never stand up for us). We borrowed it from a friend and Andrea wore it every minute that she could. She actually sobbed when I made her take it off for bed.

Isn’t she adorable?

And here is our very scary dragon Zach! for the entire month he told me how he was going to be a scary dragon and “scare the pants off of dad.” We were going to make a dragon costume, but at the last minute our friend (who has boxes of Halloween costumes) brought this over for us. He actually won an award for his costume at our ward trunk or treat. The funniest costume of all; he made the bishop fall over laughing. Zach was quite pleased with himself, to say the least.

Katie our little Piglet. The cutest little piglet I’ve ever seen! But I don’t think she particularly cared for her costume, or maybe it was the fact that her brothers and sister kept chasing her around and pulling her tail. She is taking some steps in this picture! She’s getting braver and braver with the walking!

But she still loves to crawl!

Josh wore a costume too, for about 30 seconds. So a group shot will have to show you our Prince Charming.

Whoops. Too slow, he’s already ditched his hat. But then again, why would Prince Charming wear a helmet when he had such beautiful golden curls?

And here’s a group shot just before the we took a treat over to our neighbor. You can’t really tell, but Zach is wearing my Sunday shoes in this picture. I guess that technically this is a girl dragon… But no wonder after 10 minutes of trick or treating he was ready to go home (or maybe it was the distance we had to walk between houses ….not many houses on our street give out treats on Halloween.)

Earlier during the day I made them our usual green smoothies, but today it was called Witches’ Swamp Slime; created with gross ingredients like werewolf saliva (orange juice concentrate), dragon tears (water), swamp weed (baby spinach), and witches’ warts (frozen blue berries).Way to mess with my picky eaters! (Bwhahhaha!) I finished off by reciting magic incantations and waving my magic wand (my mixing spoon) and magically turning on the blender.  I think they were secretly delighted, buy my timing was bad. Zach was mad about something from earlier (Andi stealing his toy and time outs or something) and so he would say “No it isn’t! Call it by it’s real name! I’m not drinking that!” But by the time I used magic to turn on the blender he was asking where I found my witches warts.

Later we made spiderweb snacks. Zach, still kind of miffed from earlier whispered in my ear, “Tell me what they really are and then we can pretend they’re spiderwebs.”  “Pretzels, white chocolate chips, and raisins,” I whispered back. The raisins were supposed to be the spiders (I was too lazy to pipe them out of regular chocolate chips), but by the end, my kids were having so much fun with our gross monster food that they were pretending the raisins were the flies stuck in the spider webs. And you know what, raisins do kind of look like gross little dead flies. Ugh. Our spiderweb snacks ended up looking like this.

By the time dinner rolled around Zach was only too happy to pretend our tacos were bat wings. “And I hid in the dark and when they flew by I cut off their wings with my knife,” as he told his dad. And that’s where you get bat wings. We also had spider deviled eggs. My kids had too much fun pulling off the legs to eat them.

After dinner we carved our pumpkins

Zach drew the face for the pumpkin on the right. Do you like the warts on the end of its nose?

Me and Andrea carved the one on the left. It also says Boo on the back!

I have to say that Zach and Chris did a great job with this pumpkin!

Unfortunately, someone smashed it when we walked around the corner to our friend’s house. Seriously? We were only gone 20 minutes. Why couldn’t you have smashed mine?

(Side note: Dear Jerk, I wish you could have seen the tears and sad cries of my broken hearted 5-year-old because of your thoughtless actions. Don’t worry. We cheered him up by telling him how your pants caught on fire and you had to go to the doctor’s to get LOTS of shots, and then you lost all your Halloween candy).

Dear Everyone else, we also had a mini lesson on forgiveness and letting go of mad feelings.

Oh, we also celebrated Halloween by having a pizza party and watching Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit.

Whew. Holidays are so much more fun to celebrate with kids!

October is one of my favorite months! We kicked off the month with home made donuts and hot apple cider. Welcome fall! We also enjoyed the primary program (which was awesome with my singing kids!) and had a ward service project where we assembled 205 humanitarian kits (and because we had so many people show up it only took us 13 minutes to assemble all the kits). Later we were going to have a pumpkin potluck, but made a quick trip to Provo instead to celebrate my dad and my Grandpa’s birthday! One night we went up the canyon for a picnic, a bonfire, and the absolutely stunning leaves. Oh wait! I think I have some pictures of those!

Josh enjoy the chips and cookies. And when he finished with those he entertained himself by using the hot dog roasting stick to stab all the dry leaves and then burn them in the fire…

Katie learned the joy of chips and dip..

Zach got some good quality time with the uncle Rob

And then we got lots of yummy produce from the Williams’ garden.

We finished the month with the ward trunk or treat and then Halloween! Oh and Chris put in our sprinkler system and planted grass for us! Go Chris!!

All month we’ve been enjoying our Halloween books (nothing to scary because I don’t want to wake up with nightmares!) I thought I’d create a list for next year (These are all picture books, just so you know).

Top Three (I think we read these every single day):

• Room on a Broom, by Julia Donaldson
• Big Pumpkin, by Erica Silverman (Andrea can actually recite this entire book)
• Too Many Pumpkins, by Linda White

Others We Read and Enjoyed:

• Berenstain’s The Berenstain Bears Trick or Treat
• Sally M. Walker’s Druscilla’s Halloween
• Nancy Shaw’s Sheep Trick or Treat
• Margery Cuyler’s The Bumpy Little Pumpkin (Zach really liked this one too)
• Margery Cuyler’s Skeleton Hiccups
• McNamara’s How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin
• Helen Cooper’s Pumpkin Soup
• Kevin Somer’s Meaner Than Meanest
• Emily Homer’s Excuse me, Are you a Witch?
• Cambria Evans’ Bone Soup
• Lisa Brown’s  Vampire Boy’s Good Night
• Arden Druce’s Halloween Night (Beautiful pictures!)
• Elizabeth Hatch’s Halloween Night
• Judith Moffatt’s The Pumpkin Man (beginning reader book)
• Tom Brenner’s And then Comes Halloween

Last, but not least, my favorite Autumn book is Numeroff’s If You Give a Moose a Muffin.

What books did you read this month?

In August, Chris’ brother got married in Colorado. And since we were
headed in that direction anyway…well, we just decided to explore the
local National Park. It’s a pretty one!

Most mornings we slept in, but on the last day we were up early to see the sun rise. I think we changed our of our pajamas around noon.

At one point we came around the corner, and an entire herd of elk were sitting in the road.

Our little hikers made it all the way to the waterfall! Hooray for no more kid backpacks.

Oh yeah. We did make it to the wedding on time too!

Such a pretty temple, and such a beautiful wedding! Thanks for joining our family Jen!

On the way home, we took the scenic route, stopping in Black Canyon of the Gunnison for some incredible views! “No other canyon in North America combines the narrow opening, sheer
walls, and startling depths offered by the Black Canyon of the Gunnison.” (quote from gunnison-co.com). Yeah. the kids stayed in the car for most of this quick visit. Maybe next time…when they’ve learned a healthy fear of heights.

It was here that we learned to make popcorn on our camp stove. Wow. That was pretty awesome too!

And continuing on our journey we found a nice little park in a neat little town.

The slides were enormous!! I didn’t know that safety regulations allowed such fun things to be in the playground anymore!

It also had this huge rock climbing thing. Chris was in love.

All in all, a great trip! Trips like this make me excited to plan our next adventure!

One thing we’ve been meaning to do for the last few years, is to take our kids camping on the beach. We finally did it and WOW! WHAT an AMAZING trip!! Weeks later my kids still talk about it, asking WHEN can we GO AGAIN! and just the other day Andi was drawing a picture and said these are my two favorite places: grandma’s house and the beach. It’s nice to know what matters most to these kids!

Zach couldn’t get enough of playing in the water. This supports my theory that he’s part fish. We had to keep a close eye on him to make sure he didn’t get washed away! (although I’m almost certain he’d feel right at home in a merman’s castle).

We got there kind of late the first night, just before sunset and so we told the kids only to go in up to their knees. Silly me! Of course, three of my kids were soaked in the next five minutes. Andrea got tumbled by a wave and only entered the water if she could hold tight to Chris’ or my hand. She loved standing in the surf and feeling the sand being sucked away around her feet.

Josh fell in love with the sand. I think the entire trip he was intent on digging and dumping the sand into huge piles.

Katie, for the most part was content to lie in her crib and watch the people next to us try to catch seagulls (and they actually succeeded once or twice!). Apparently seagull catching can be pretty boring, so she spent a fair amount of time dozing too.

So much fun! I felt like a little girl playing out there. These pictures make me so happy thinking about the fun time we had out there! (even if I am in a swimsuit. Blah).

Ah, here we are lounging on the beach, and Josh busily trying to construct a shelter so we could stay there forever.

Hair in the eyes and feet in the sand. We’re definitely happy and tired!

So glad there were no tsunamis on our trip.

And here’s our handsome photographer! Chris enjoyed jogging on the beach, and I got to go for a couple of walks.

Yes, we literally played there till sunset one night…

Zach waiting impatiently for us to say that he’s “warmed up” enough so that he can rush back out to the water…poor kid was shivering so much he couldn’t talk straight. But he was still ready to go back and play in the ocean!

What a beautiful trip! Can’t wait till next time. And there will definitely be a next time.

Happy birthday Josh! (Yes, these were taken back in March) We decorated the house in balloons, and for the rest of the week we played fun balloon games. One of the favorite happened to be let’s-bury-Josh-while-he-digs-himself-out.

I love this picture of Andi swinging! Quite the angle when you think about it.  Can you tell that this is her favorite thing to do, I mean besides having her dad throw her up in the air… This was taken just before a huge Easter egg hunt.

And here’s us dyeing Easter eggs. You see, we DO do fun things together as a family (just in case my kids try to to tell you that we never do anything fun…)

Even baby Katie was there helping (note, she is much bigger and almost walking now…)

On conference weekend (last May) Provo had a snow storm, and so of course we had to show our kids the neat things you can do in snow…

And somewhere around there we got crazy and went for a family hike through some old railroad tunnels. Very cool! Very perfect hike for us.

One cute happy baby, before she got teeth and learned to crawl…(she’s still cute! just doesn’t sit as nice and still for pictures because she’s trying to catch and eat the camera).

See! I told you! And I love that this girl smiles with her tongue.

I’ve been dreading this day for a long time. I mean, can I really get my kids up and ready and to school on time? Breakfast and morning prayers and shoes and socks and everything by 7:20?

Yes. I can.

And the first day, which I have dreaded for so long, actually felt natural and filled with peace. It was like Heavenly Father was giving me a pat on the back and affirming that all is well and good.

Oh, and Zach loves school! In the morning he bounces out of bed at 5:30 yelling “Can I get ready for school yet?” I’m so grateful for our little charter school and great kindergarten teachers!

Don’t you just love Zach’s fake smile?

And here’s his super cool back pack!

School starts in less than a week, and Zach will proudly show you with seven fingers how many days there are till he starts kindergarten. He was very proud that his teacher called to invite him to the open house and then we looked her picture up online. She looks like a nice lady. I casually pondered trying to find her classroom on google earth so I could find out the entire set up of her classroom and delve into her classroom routine to make sure she is the perfect teacher for my child….but perhaps that more of a first time parent-sending-their-child-to-kindergarten.

I’m excited for him, but oh-so-not excited about being tied back to the school routine (is it possible to get my kids up, dressed, breakfasted, and across town by 8am every day?). So today we spent the day relaxing. We had some friends come over and play during the morning. Andi let me play with her hair and try a new style. Zach built a sprawling train track that traveled through our entire living room and my kids all played quietly and happily with that while I leisurely browsed children’s books online (There’s one called Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper that looks absolutely adorable!). Later Zach created a Lego motorboat ship (his own creation) and asked if he could test it out in water. He was delighted to find that it floated underwater. Ironically Andi’s house floated a little better (must be part house boat). Josh excitedly thought we were making Lego soup and tried to stir it with the wire whisk. Kathryn demanded real food, so we made some mini pizzas out of English muffins.

Before bed we cuddled in next to a big stack of books. I love reading with my kids!

I think we got some grocery shopping done too somewhere in there….but all in all it was a nice, lazy day.

This weekend we all (or most of us) got together and had a fun family reunion!

We went hiking up Rock Canyon, swimming in Rainbow Bay, treasure hunting, a family talent show, decorated cookies to look like ourselves (way cute and fun!), a read-a-thon, and a family pizza movie night with build your own pizzas. And of course we had to take some family pictures.

Here’s the whole family (except Rebecca, Jack, Jonas, Chris, Joe, and Grandpa-but Grandpa was taking the picture so he really is there, kind of).

Kara and her kids (Joe’s on a business trip)

Me and my kids (Chris had to go back to Vegas to work)

Derek and Jessica

Wendy, Will, and kids. They came all the way from Montana!

Lyn, Kelton and kids. They were visiting from Kentucky.

Good times! Let’s make sure to do it all over again next year!

And after a good day at the lake…Of course we needed to go swimming in the pool!