Happy Halloween!

Ryan decided to attend preschool as an army guy - they had a costume parade and all the preschool classes got to go around the district office trick or treating. He got lots of fun things like erasers, pencils and small toys.



Austin as a pirate! He got this great hat while at Disneyland with the high school band last spring. Molly dressed up as Dora the Explorer. She did a great job with her costume including the yellow beaded bracelet and socks, white shoes and black hair.

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James went to the youth Halloween party as a "guy at a barbeque" I was very impressed that he dressed up! I think it is the first time that he has since I've known him and we've been married for almost 17 years. Don't you love the black socks and shoes!
While James, Austin and Molly were at the church I took the three little boys out trick-or-treating. This time Ryan decided to go as spider man. We stopped by our friend Lucinda's house and her and her son, Kyler, who is 14 ended up walking with us door-to-door. Ryan made a new friend in Kyler tonight, although he's too old to trick-or-treat he took the boys door to door, helping them with the flashlights and their candy bags. A great help.

Fall festivities

We enjoyed another fun fall weekend! On Friday Molly went to a birthday party and Austin played in the band at the high school homecoming game, while James and I took Reid, Chase and Ryan to the elementary school's fall festival. We first went through the haunted house then went to the different classrooms where the kids played carnival games. The only downside was that Chase put his finger right inside one of the classroom cages that held a class rat and immediately got bite! He is fine and learned a lesson about not putting his finger inside a cage. They also had inflatables outside and a pitching game where you could see how fast you could throw a baseball. Chase even "boxed" against a sixth grader, with large inflatable boxing gloves and did great! Afterwards we went to McDonalds for a treat.

On Sunday our neighborhood held its annual trick-or-treating night. Ever since we have lived here our neighborhood does trick or treating on a different night other than the actual night of Halloween - we really like that we get to know our neighbors. It was scheduled for Monday night but was changed last minute to Sunday so we decided that we would not participate. The kids were not sad at all. We had a good time having a family night. We carved pumpkins (well, I was the only one who would actually get the seeds and inside out: I live with a bunch of boy chickens!)We also made yummy salty pumpkin seeds just for Chase, he loves them!

More fun photos of Ryan

Here are some more costumes we have! The thing that makes me laugh is that we own even more than these eight we've posted. We really need to find a family with a lot of boys to pass these on too. Happy Halloween!

The many faces of a four year old!

Ryan and I had a little photo shoot today, he was trying to decide what to be for Halloween. Since he is the last of four boys he had a lot of costumes to choose from! When he outgrows these (probably before next year!) we will need to find another family to pass them on too. Anyone interested? Ryan has four different events to wear a costume this year: elementary school fall festival, church party, preschool costume parade and Halloween night so he may just change his identity for each event!

October pack meeting

Tonight Chase was awarded his bobcat and Reid earned his pocketknife badge. Good job boys!

I talked with my parents today and they are now in Texas - we know they will be here for Molly's birthday on December 5 and are very excited for their visit. They have offered to watch the kids for four nights while they are here so James and I can have a get-away. It has been eight years since we've been away without the kids! We are thinking about a four night cruise out of California, we'll see.

I spent a some time today scrapbooking. I'm trying to get some gifts ready for the holidays. Christmas will be here before you know it.

Happy mail!

Isn't it such a happy surprise to get fun things in the mail rather than junk and bills!?!

I got my free popcorn from Dale and Thomas popcorn! They were selected by Oprah magazine as one of Oprah's "favorite things". Did you take advantage of their "free" popcorn giveaway? Yes, I did pay for shipping, but I just had to try it out and wow! SOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOD! We got two flavors, the one shown and chocolate chunk n'caramel. sssshhhh...maybe I'll share with my family.

I also received a gift card to eat out from our 'tax guy" and friend, M.G. Peterson. Granted his wife is one of my best friends, but he does this for all of his clients for their birthdays. I love that! Imagine if your doctor, dentist, hairstylist all sent you a restaurant gift card for your birthday...how great would that be! Don't you want to give your business to those that treat their customers well, I know I do. Such a great treat.

organization

This morning I am thinking about organization. Is it because around here we spring clean in the fall - when the weather is a bit cooler? When we can actually stand to be out in the garage for any length of time without dying of the heat? Or maybe it is because the holidays are approaching and with that comes new toys.

Christmas x five kids + one child November birthday + one child December birthday + one child January birthday + one December wedding anniversary + one grown man December birthday + nana and papa visit bringing gifts = a lot of new things inside this house!

Lately, I have been getting rid of things. Our neighborhood recently had its community yard sale, but instead of participating we just loaded up our full size van and took it all to Desert Industries. It felt good. And still there is more. Now that Ryan is almost five I think I am finally at that point to "get rid of it". There will be no more babies. We no longer need to "save it for the next one".

So now I am "spring cleaning". I'm also thinking about finding some way to have a scrapbook area (I don't have an extra room) and also wondering the best way to organize my recipes. As of now I have just thrown all my recipes into a hot pink folder - now really working for me. I think I need to type them all up and put them into sheet protectors with a three ring binder. What works for you?

A busy weekend

We had a pretty busy weekend. Friday night Austin was off to an away football game with the band and Molly was at a birthday party so James and I stayed home with the three little boys. We received a fun surprise from my friend Lucinda - she brought our family over this fun Halloween bowl FILLED with fun and yummy goodies. Inside were fun straws, orange plastic cups, orange soda pop, chocolate eyeballs, gummy skeletons, orange lollipops and more! So fun!
I didn't even leave the house on Friday and actually that was very nice. I got some good cleaning and sorting done (and have much still to do-does it ever end?)
On Saturday Austin was up early and at the high school for the PSAT. We were impressed that he came to us, asking us for the $ to take this test and that he was actually wanting to spend four and a half hours taking an exam on a Saturday. He won't receive the results until December and will take this same exam again in the fall of his sophmore year but this was a good experience for him to become familiar with the exam. It is hard to believe our oldest is already thinking about college. James and Molly went to the temple early Saturday morning with the youth from our ward and had a good experience there.
I took the three little boys to Reids baseball game. Chase and Ryan did pretty well entertaining themselves for three hours. The games last two hours, but we need to be there an hour early so the team can warm-up. Thank goodness for the snack bar and 25 cent lollipops!
Later that afternoon I went to my once a month stamping class. The ladies in the above photo and I had a good time creating a couple Halloween pages. I will need to post them once I've added my photos.
James and I went to a 8 p.m. movie at the "cheap theatre" with some friends. We saw No Reservations with Catherine Zeta Jones. James really liked it, I thought it was o.k. It was nice to be on a date and to be with friends so no complaints from me.

Preschool Pumpkin Patch Party!

Ryan and I had a great day today at his preschool class fieldtrip to Apple Annies Orchards. Everyone got a tractor ride out to the fields then we each got to pick a bag of apples. We chose a bag of Granny Smith and a bag of Fuji apples. After that we went over to chose a pumpkin and we even got to cut it off the vine. The weather was wonderful, as you can see Ryan is wearing shorts. This is a great time of year to live here.
Tonight James and I are off to see the BYU Ballroom Dancers!

Boys will be boys!

These photos make me laugh! Reid, Chase and Ryan being muscle men, as Ryan would say "strong guys."

Autism Awareness

I love this photograph of Chase with his yoga teacher and two other "yogies". These girls have become good friends to Chase, they just "get" each other. It amazes me how Chase can arrive to his yoga session pretty grumpy but he sees these girls and they just understand each other - what joy that is as a mother. Last week Chase went to yoga and commented afterwards how great he felt. It was enough for him to tell me "I get there in a bad mood and leave feeling so good."
Today www.autismspeaks.org is premiering different video clips for families to watch in helping them identify some of the signs of autism in their youngsters. Pretty amazing how far we have come in this journey.

Dinner with friends

On Saturday we had two families, The Eddingtons and the Kams, over for dinner. We had taco soup, cornbread, a fluffy jello, yummy dips and chips, veggie tray along with pumpkin bars and cookies for dessert. We had some fun little games for the kids, like guessing how many candy corn were in the jar (Julia won!) and as you see here wrapping the dad's up as mummies. The men were all good sports! We also had different touch and feel spooky items: peeled grapes for eyeballs, gelatin for a liver, spaghetti for intestines, cauliflower for a brain, and chow mein noodles for spiders legs. The kids all agreed that the eyeballs were by far the grossiest! It was fun visiting with these two families.

Also on Saturday I spent the day ordering different show tickets. Since my parents are visiting for the month of December my mom had two requests: The Southwest Nutcracker Ballet and The Gaslight Dinner Theatre. I got tickets to both although for the Gaslight we will be in the very last row for a 3 p.m. Thursday matinee. That actually works for us however and will be fun.

I also splurged and purchased Broadway in Tucson tickets. I have spent three to four months pondering whether to buy these or not as they are very expensive, but went for it and I know I will not be disappointed. James and I will see The Rat Pack Live next month and then in February I have two tickets to the Putnam County Spelling Bee and then in April Molly and I will go together to see CATS! (James has no desire to see this show!)This is a dream of Mollys! She watches the DVD all the time and knows all the songs. Basically this is why I splurged and bought these tickets. You need to be a "subscriber" to even get decent tickets to CATS - we will be sitting pretty far back and tickets are not even open to the general public until next year! I know the show will be spectacular and I have told her it will be part of her Christmas (she wasn't so thrilled about that, but really wants to see the show)

New haircuts

Molly and I had a great girls day yesterday getting our hair cut and highlighted. We are both looking forward to our mother/daughter date on Saturday. She "earned" this date by being so diligent in practicing her piano and vocal. She got to chose what we go and do and we are headed out in search of finding her the makings of a Dora the Explorer costume for Halloween! If you are not familiar with Dora just ask any child age 5 or under with cable t.v. and they will fill you in on this cartoon television star! Molly is going to attend a youth costume party at church on Halloween night. We have the pink shirt but are having a difficult time finding the orange shorts (I may have to dye some!) and large yellow beads for the bracelet. I haven't found the wig yet, but that should be located at any costume shop and we think we'll find "backpack" at the local Target. Wish us luck!

inspiring me to scrapbook

Look what arrived while I was gone camping! Such a happy, happy surprise! I have poured over this book I won from Becky Higgins since it arrived and it is really inspiring me to scrapbook. I love that she even signed it for me - wow! I'm going to a scrapbook crop this Friday with my friend Luncinda and I'm looking forward to trying out some of the many great ideas. If you are a scrapbooker you need to check out this book!

A visit from friends

Yesterday our friends, the Petersons and the Snows came for a visit! It is so nice to have visitors. The kids played the Wii, played outside, built with legos and enjoyed each other while the ladies talked and shopped. We took a quick trip to Michaels Crafts and Home Goods, where Christy and Shari picked up some extra cute Halloween decorations. Then I introduced them to their first Eegee. A great day!

It's Fall!

Happy Fall! Isn't this little guy filled with candy corn so cute! My friend Erin gave our family this little guy last week at church. Such a great surprise. We all love his smirky smile. The boys enjoyed munching on the candy corn on the way home and he has had a prominent place in our kitchen ever since!
And look what my friend Joanne brought by for me today! A fanatastic pop-open scrapbook of memories of our trip to Phoenix to attend Time-Out for women. It is so darn cute - I so love it! She even journaled different topics that each speaker spoke on and embellished it so cute. I think if you click on it then it will get bigger so you can get a better view. I really need to learn to make this pop-open card. It would be so great to make for one of my kids' teachers for a gift.
Our family had some fun visitors today - tomorrow I will post pictures of our friends! Also - I spoke with my parents the other day and they are in Pennsylvania, having a great time. We are so looking forward to spending the month of December with them.

more camping photos

Since I use this blog as one of our family scrapbooks, printing it up every so often and adding it to a scrapbook, I wanted to post some more photos of our camping trip. I love this top photo as it shows the leaves changing - wow! even in the desert! Ryan enjoyed trying to catch some crawdad with this piece of hot dog and a makeshift fishing pole. The boys enjoyed playing Scrabble and even the little guys did pretty well. James and Molly frying up some bacon. Austin so dislikes having his picture taken - although I didn't get a smile out of him, he was a good sport to let me take this one.

Also- the visiting teaching conference was last night and everyone was very appreciative of the goodies that were made for them. I really felt that they were basic so all the nice comments regarding them was very appreciated. It was such a lovely evening, I'm glad I attended.

family camping trip

We finally used our travel traveler! We purchased this trailer last April, but this was our first time using it. Our family left on Monday for Mt. Lemmon's Rose Canyon campground. We had a fabulous time - so relaxing, wonderful weather, quiet atmosphere as there were only two other campsites in the entire campground taken! The campsite we chose happened to have a tetter-totter made out of two logs so the kids had a great time playing on that through out our four day stay. We had a nice time walking around the lake there, quite a few people fishing for it being mid-week. We enjoyed going into Summerhaven and purchasing fresh homemade fudge one day and warm chocolate chip cookies another day. Mostly, we took a lot of walks, did a lot of reading, playing board games (Scrabble and Yahtzee) and enjoying each others company.

Visiting teaching conference goodies

I was asked to make 90 handouts for our ward visiting teaching conference. The theme is "catching the vision of visiting teaching" and they are decorating the room with butterflies. This is what I came up with - pretty basic, but when 90 are needed, basic is good. I did some pens with a butterfly topper for those sisters who do not eat chocolate. It is somewhat difficult to be creative with butterflies in October- the stores do not carry much in the butterfly line this time of year.