A Screamin' Good Time

Happy Halloween all! This month has been great.

Costumes picked. CHECK
Kids Halloween party. CHECK
Ward Chili Cook-off. CHECK
Carved Pumpkins. CHECK
Trick Or Treating. CHECK, CHECK, CHECK

I am actually ready for November to start. But let's check out this fabulous day of All Hallow's Eve...

The girls looked really cute this year. Here is the crew:

Tyler and I barely dressed up. If the Houck's hadn't hosted a party (to be blogged later) we wouldn't even have gotten that picture. It was my idea for the phantom, but my phantom is blind without his glasses, so he couldn't really stay in costume. But let it be documented....that we tried.

The kids dressed up for school. It is not every day that you find a skeleton reading to Cinderella in your bedroom.

The kids participated in their school parade. Here is my skeleton again.

And vampire Ives. I talked her into being a vampire because I think with her front teeth missing, the other ones look like little fangs.

I caught Robyn in her classroom since they didn't follow the parade.

I helped out with June's class party, but somehow never got a picture of her there. I organized a game called Witches' Brew. It consists of using straws to pick up small pieces of paper (cut out as spiders and bats) and depositing them in a bowl. We had two teams competing. (Orange and black) First we had them take turns. On each team they had to wait until their teammate sat down to rush up and move another paper over.

But then we did the 'free-for-all' round. Everyone could rush up and move papers over. These teams meant business and they were ready.

Mrs. Mahoney was a good sport to play with the kids. It was a very simple game, but the kids really enjoyed it.

After school, I noticed the lawn was a bit strewn with pine needles. We have a very large pine tree and instead of leaves, it drops needles, and blankets the lawn. So I raked. But instead of a nice fluffy pile of leaves, it created this prickly nest-like heap. When I mentioned this to Robyn, she begged to make a nest of her own. I even let them line it with leaves to make it softer.

I think it fitting that Robyn had a spotted egg.

June seemed very protective of her egg.

All too soon it was time to go trick or treating. Have I mentioned (besides at the top of this post) that we have never gone trick or treating? Maybe we have taken the kids to two or three houses, but we always do trunk or treat and that is plenty of candy for this mom. But in our new ward, there was no trunk or treat. So that left us with good old fashioned trick or treating. Tyler took them out, and I think they had a fantastic time. Here they are ready to go.

June said her favorite part was at the end when they stopped at a friend's house. Apparently there was a bucket exactly like Daisy's candy bucket sitting on their porch. Daisy had been running around and spotted the bucket and thought she had left it, so she went to go pick it up. Instead of finding her bucket brimming with candy, there was just an old bar of soap dissolving at the bottom. She was heartbroken and sat down and cried. Poor Daisy. June quickly realized what was happening and led Daisy to her actual bucket.

Man, the kids came home with a TON of candy. And so begins my battle of whether I let them eat it all, or take some away. This is my least favorite part of Halloween. But they sure look happy, don't they?

Hopefully we can detox this weekend and look forward to a month of thankfulness and blog posts. Happy Halloween.

A Little of This and That

I used to think people were lazy to take pictures with their phones. I don't think that anymore. If the camera I have with me happens to be on my phone, I'd rather take a picture than forget the moment. And really, some camera phones are very nice nowadays. So, no judging from me from now on. The biggest problem I have is remembering to take the pictures off my phone and incorporate them into our other photos. Right now it hardly matters since I have been posting all over the map, but I hope to be more organized....next year. (That is a good goal.)

The school carnival was in September and it was fun. I gave the girls an allotted number of tickets and they went through them in about half an hour. Fast, but fun.

Daisy bought a balloon.

Ivory used her tickets to ride the golf cart with her teacher, Miss Frost.

The Waffle truck has been on my bucket list for a while. I kept thinking I would go find it, and then I would forget. But, it was generous enough to save me the time looking and it came right to Tyler's work. How convenient.

I should have taken a picture of the waffle, but I was too busy inhaling it. Super yummy.

One of my new year's intentions was to take the kids on dates. Well, I was doing well, and then the whole move thing happened. It all kind of got lost over the summer, but I started back up this Fall and have had a great time with the girls. June and I went to the Bead Fairy again. (One of her favorite places.) We made many fun things.

I love this necklace/earring combo June made. So festive.

I made some earrings, but had matching beads left over, so made a bracelet to match.

Robyn's date was a surprise. I told her that she would like it, but I didn't know for sure. I took her to the Ropes Course at Provo Beach Resort. They strap you in a harness and let you roam around the course which is in the air on two different levels. Robyn was really good at it. She would walk across ropes and tiny balance beams with no problem. We would race from one level to another and she would always win. It was quite fun. I didn't have my camera while we were up there, but here we are leaving the building.

Speaking of Robyn, she donated her hair to Locks of Love again. And she decided to change it up and get bangs.

This isn't a huge surprise if you have looked closely in the last couple posts. Robyn loves them, and they may have stirred some jealousy in other sisters. My guess is that she won't be the last one with bangs.

One of my really good friends, Sharon, came to visit. It has been a few years and it was so great to see her. I love that with some people it feels like you were never really apart.

I got a little crafty this season. I do have a strange love of Halloween decorations, so when Jenaca called me up to do a craft, that was a no-brainer. She had the blocks and vinyl, and I had paint and ribbon. I think it turned out really cute.

Then Tricia invited me to a craft night. It was....hmmm. It was deceptive. There were cute pictures on a website showing the possible crafts. I signed up to make three little pumpkins. (An argyle pumpkin, a candy corn pumpkin, and a cute chevron pumpkin.) However, upon arriving, I found out that it was ALL do-it-yourself. No template, no cheats, just me and three pumpkins from the dollar store. (Really, I could have bought them myself and done the craft at home.) There were some supplies, like tape and stickers, but they didn't stick very well. I free-handed the argyle pumpkin, taped my candy corn pumpkin and then thought long and hard about doing a chevron one. I could already tell the tape wasn't going to stick or make nice sharp lines and looking around the room, there were already some chevron fails on the tables. So, I skipped that one and made my own creation. And I really liked how they turned out. You can tell that the paint bled a little on the candy corn one, but I was not going to try and fix it. I called it good and actually really like my three little pumpkins.

Whew. That was very rejuvenating!

No Guts, No Glory

I am super excited to be bringing you a current event. Meaning it didn't happen five months ago, or even a week ago. It happened TONIGHT. This is good news because it means that I don't have to add it to my ridiculously long list of things I still need to blog. (I am really considering tackling NaBloPoMo. I certainly have enough content to fill a month.)

What you see before you is a table of unpretentious orange vegetables. But in the course of one evening, they will be transformed into the likes of creations you have never seen.

There was a bit of drama in the beginning. We bought pumpkins a week ago, but the small ones rotted. I picked up a couple more today, but that meant shifting pumpkins around. This was unacceptable to one individual. She came with a very bad attitude, but after some threatening, I am happy to say that she turned it all around and was very pleasant the rest of the evening.

Something funny that I want to note: One of the new pumpkins I picked up was a deeper orange than the rest. It was almost a red-orange. When I was telling Robyn about the pumpkin change, I told her that I was giving my pumpkin to Ivory because I wanted the orange one. She gave me the funniest look and finally said, "What color is the other one?" Ha. Yes, they are both orange obviously....just one more orange than the other. It all makes sense in my head.

The kids got right to work. I was so proud of how they attacked their task with a will. Robyn was fast and was the first one finished this evening.

Pearl wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to do, but she scooped guts out of her little pumpkin for a good half hour. No squeemishness there.

June and Ivory worked hard on their designs. Pumpkin carving can be tricky since things must be attached somewhere. June ended up amending her design because she couldn't get it to work.

Ivory liked scraping off the outer layer versus actual carving.

Daisy...I don't know what she was doing over there, but she was perfectly content. She put on face pieces and scraped off pumpkin chunks. She was one happy camper.

I was working on my own creation while Tyler took pictures.

Tyler's arm was sore tonight, so towards the end we hollowed out one for him and I quickly carved it with an idea I saw on Pinterest. Love him. And look at the carnage around him. This guy means business.

Now for the glowing finished products.

Poor Pearl's pumpkin was hidden behind another, so I made Tyler go take some more pictures. Here he is.

My money is on p@mpkin.

It was such a fun evening with the kids. They are getting old enough they can do a lot of the work on their own. Go check out the detail on Robyn's Mrs. Wazowski. She has earrings and everything.

Happy Halloween All!!

Summer Birthday Fail

First, I forgot that I hadn't even blogged Daisy's birthday. FAIL. I only noticed when I was thinking of blogging June's and then I found Daisy's pictures. Ouch. I have never claimed to be perfect. (Although I may have mentioned coming close in some blog post. Please disregard that.) It is possible that I forgot to blog Daisy's birthday because we never really finished it. We were supposed to go swimming for her birthday. In fact, we were supposed to go to the new Provo Rec Center. However when we got there, the inside kid area was closed. (Thank you parents who bring children with diarrhea.) We could have just played outside, but I felt that I didn't want to spend a small fortune to miss half the experience. So we planned to come back. It is October and clearly it isn't happening. FAIL.

But I still have pictures of my cute Daisy Cakes on her birthday. We didn't completely forget her. We had presents. Grandma sent her a huge pack of gum. Here we are looking at all the flavors.

She got a Monster High doll and movie which have been very popular with all the kids.

Everyone gets their own set of scriptures when they turn five. At least I didn't forget that.

The new bike was perfect because she was just out of training wheels and the old neighborhood was perfect for biking around.

I went all out with the cake this time around. FAIL.

But we still sang and she blew out the candle.

And don't all kids love frosting? It is not until we are adults that we figure out how gross it is. (Yes, I know some adults still like frosting. I am not one of them.)

Daisy got balloons too. This one was her favorite.

I don't think she had a bad birthday, but I think I need to make it up to her next year. I have an idea...and if we don't move again, it might happen.