Halloween night

(sung to the tune of: O Christmas Tree)

Oh, skeletons! Oh, skeletons!

Rattling down my hallway

Oh, skeletons! Oh, skeletons!

Rattling in my attic...

 

Let them know the day is here

When your spirit will appear.

Oh skeletons! Oh skeletons!

Rattle through your graveyard!

 

Emme has been singing this song every single day. He has been so looking forward to Halloween coming and to going trick-or-treating.We aren't sure where his excitement is coming from since he has slept through all three of his other Halloweens! He did an okay job this year, but his energy puttered out after about 6 or 7 houses. He figured he had collected some candy, he was done and didn't need any more! We had already gone around our little town square and played some games and had some yummy treats, so he had already done some fun Halloween things.

 (here is  his first Halloween)

 

Tonight we had time to add some make up to Owen's costume, so now he looked more like a scarecrow should.

 Teagan went as Snow White and just kept her hair covered to hide the fact that we didn't color it black like the real Snow White.

 Emme wanted his face painted also, but our orange face paint ended up looking kinda sickly once it was put on, so he ended up looking like a pumpkin that had come from a dirty patch!

It had been sprinkling all day, and there was a 75% chance of it throughout the evening, but luckily it held off and the kids were able to go out trick-or-treating without umbrellas and rain jackets!

 Our first stop was the little museum in town where they had fun games set up throughout the museum for the kids to do to win treats. Emme loved the carnival type games, but was already showing signs of slowing down.

 He did enjoy the donut eating station, though! Being so short, he had great form in coming to the donut from below and grabbing it on the first try.

 Tig's form needed a little of work, and her donut goobered her face with maple frosting a bit before she was able to take a big bite out of the bottom of it!

After walking down main street, we walked around our block, with Emme only going to every third or fourth house. The Greens had met up with us, so once we made it back to our house I stayed home with Duncan and Emme and let the older kids go around another block in our neighborhood alone. My kids were so stoked to be able to go alone! This was the first year I have let them do that, but I figured that they were in a group of 8 people, I knew the houses and the block they would be on, and I had given them a phone to carry just in case they needed it, so why not.

This was my first year passing out candy and I was really amazed at the number of kids who came by. When I had gotten home, Scott had already given out all of the candy I had for him, given out all the candy the kids had gotten at the trunk-or-treat on Saturday, and he was scrounging around handing out anything and everything he could! I had to break into my hidden candy stash in my closet to help tide us over the night! There were more than 300 kids who came trick-or-treating to our house!!  When I asked the neighbors if that was normal they told us that our neighborhood is the Halloween neighborhood for our city and all the kids from around town come here. Some of the neighbors spent $100 on candy in preparation! Yikes!

Happy Halloween!

(Editor's Note - for some reason blogger is randomly adding hyper links all throughout the posts lately and I can't figure out how to turn them off...it is SO annoying! I have reworded and reworded it trying to take away whatever keywords they are grabbing on to, but it just keeps moving the links to new words. So ignore any links that might show up...they are dumb blogger ads that need to be ignored! And if anyone in bloggerland knows how to turn this function off, PLEASE let me know!)

 

We love October around our house. Halloween time is so much fun - the weather changes and gets chillier, the thrill of the scare is in the air, and knowing that a bowlful of candy will be here at the end of the month all help to add to the excitement around our house!

 

 

Saturday was the Trunk-or-Treat at our church and the kids had a great time at it. Not only was it a Halloween celebration, but they got to take their Grandpa to it with them so that made it extra special! I was in charge of the decorating and activities at it, so I was a stress case for a while, but it all went fairly smoothly and all the kids who came seemed to have a great time.

 

 

Here are just some quick shots of the kids costumes they wore that night that they will be wearing tonight to go trick-or-treating. Only, since there is a 75% chance of rain, they will be wearing rain coats over their costumes and will be carrying umbrellas along with their trick-or-treating sacks!

 

 

Teagan wanted to go as Snow White and this was what she came up with. She loves the cape!

 Emmett is an absolute Halloween freak! He LOVES this holiday so much and we have been reading Halloween books everyday for both nap time and bedtime for the whole month of October. He had a hard time deciding what he wanted to be, but finally chose a pumpkin. He's already decided that he wants to be a Frankenstein "with a flat head" next year.

 Owen looked so cute as a little scarecrow - no crow would be scared of his cute face!

 Garrett wanted to make his own costume this year, so he came up with Super Garrett - protector of everything and saver of the world. Too funny! Emmett was so enamored with Garrett and has been calling him a super hero all week long! Later on that night, someone asked him if the GF on his costume stood for Granite Falls Guy; Garrett just went along with it and found another pseudonym for his alter ego!

Duncan went as Eeyore but refused to ever stand still to let me get a good shot of him.  

 

And this was my costume. The last time I wore it was when I was pregnant with Emmett, and for some reason I had tucked it away in my maternity clothes...not knowing that there would ever be another Halloween where I was pregnant. We had found out what this baby was a couple of weeks before but wouldn't tell anyone other than family what it was and told them that my costume would be the answer. Either a bow in the hair, or a bow tie around the neck. Yep, it's another boy! The best thing about this costume is that all the bones glow in the dark!

 And this was as dressed up as Scottie would go. He said he was Grizzly Adams, and by the end of the night he was as loopy as Mad-Eye Moody and he put the crazy eyes in to prove it.

Then today we worked on carving pumpkins. Only Owen and Emmett were able to finish theirs because Teagan and Garrett had research papers due before Trick-or-treating time, so they missed out on the carving fun.

 

Emme wanted Spiderman on his pumpkin and the initials S.M. So that's what I tried to do.

 Not too bad...

 Owen was more independent and only needed  a little help at times. He gutted it himself, pre-poked the design in, and did all the big carving.

His is called Rise and Shine and is supposed to look like a vampire coming out of his coffin. I think he did pretty good!

 

 

Now we are off to go get dressed again for tonight's trick-or-treating around the neighborhood and to let Garrett carve his pumpkin while I finish toasting the pumpkin seeds and make a Ghosts in the Graveyard dinner (It's almost like a 7 layer dip made to look like a graveyard! Super cute and easy!). We already hit all the coffee shops in town at lunchtime and the kids scored full size candies and a  nice hot chocolate!

We love Halloween!

Never an empty bed for me

A couple of weeks ago Scott made a trip out to stay with his Dad in the hospital as he was recovering from neck surgery. The first night he was gone, after scriptures, prayers, and teeth brushing, this is what I found when I came to my bedroom to go to sleep:

 A bed full of boys.

 

Garrett was sleeping in Scott's spot, and Emme and Owen had taken over my place, with Emme sleeping just as close to Owen as he does to me each night when he sleeps with us.

 Emme has his own bed; two actually. One toddler bed that lives in a three man tent that is always up under Garrett's loft bed , and one that is the twin sized mattress on the bottom bunk of Owen's bunk bed. But each night he will either crawl into bed with us around 2 in the morning, or he would start off in our beds from the get-go.

He has been a co-sleeper from the time he was a newborn, through the years he was always so sick and feverish, up until now; so it is something he has grown up loving. I actually don't mind having him sleep with us, I really like having him as a cuddle buddy, and know that this isn't a trend that would stick for too long so I have been enjoying while it has lasted.

Even when Owen unknowingly retaliated Emme's close quarter cuddling by using him as a pillow, Emme stayed just as close.

 Wanting to have a place of my own to sleep, and knowing that Scott wants him out of our bed, I came up with a sticker chart for Emme. His very first one. (I love sticker charts!)

 

 

 

 His prize at the end of his chart is a little Lightning McQueen car. A red one. He has been asking and asking for the red McQueen car so it became the perfect incentive. (Three bucks to get him stay in his bed, yep, I can handle that!)

 I moved his toddler bed into my room, near my side of the bed, and posted his chart AND his prize on the wall above him so he could see it all the time. This helped get Emme out of the bed, and Garrett had had enough of the Emme close quarter cuddling the first night that he didn't come back for a couple more nights. Owen, however, remained in my bed the whole time Scott was away. He needed a sticker chart of his own I guess!

Emme is excited to get his new Lightning McQueen car soon - he only has four more days to finish before he does get it - but I think the biggest draw for him is the actual sticker chart itself. He loves waking up and getting to stick that new sticker on his chart. I found some old Cars stickers in the school room, so now he is getting to put Lightening McQueen stickers on his chart to earn a new Lightning McQueen! After the first two and a half weeks, he even asked me to move his bed back in to the boys' room and he is willingly sleeping in the tent again on his toddler bed! He will occasionally wake up in the middle of the night, and wanders around the halls or in our room, but he is sort of sleep walking and is easy to walk back to his bed. Last night when Scott found him and asked him what he was doing in the hallways at 3am all he could say was, "Frankenstein."

 

 He has done so wonderfully at mastering this that I am excited to see if it keeps up after his chart is done.

A lesson in compassion...caution, contains partial nudity!

Our house has been divided for a little while on those wanting this last baby to be a girl, and those wanting it to be a boy.

 

Teagan and I have been referring to it as "her" and "she" in the hopes that we were right, and Scott is on our side for wanting it to be a girl.

 

Garrett and Owen are sure that it is another boy. I think mostly just for the fact that they know it will bother Teagan :-)

 

Emmett and Duncan were in groups all of their own and we sorts of just ignored them. Duncan doesn't care which it is because he just loves all babies. Emme think it will be a boy, a girl, AND a dog...so yeah, we're disregarding his vote.

 

Today was our ultrasound where we were finally going to find out which side was correct.

 

We decided that whichever side was correct, the other side would make them the dessert of their choice. The boys wanted us to make a double-layered strawberry-frosted cake. Teagan and I wanted brownies with caramel and marshmallows.

As the Ultrasound tech was searching for the kidneys I saw this fly by and I let out a little exhale. She turned to me and asked if I knew what I had seen and I told her that I did. I'd seen it four times before already.

Little boy parts - plain as day!

 She went ahead and confirmed it for everyone else. Teagan asked her to double check, and she did, but it was the same obvious outcome.

The baby is measuring little still; he is weighing in at about 10 ounces right now and is about a week behind my due date, but doing fine overall. He is an active little fella and waved to us all through the scan with his tiny skeletal hand.

She took picture after picture after picture. We were there for over an hour! But the end result was that everything fell within normal ranges and we were set to go. So we left, thirteen printed shots of our new little man in hand, with the boys beaming that they were correct and drooling over the cake they would get once they got home.

 But on the way home I realized that I had presented this game in the wrong way. Instead of making so the winners could be doubly rewarded and given bragging rights, I should have made it so that it was a lesson in compassion. Where the winning team took mercy on those who were not going to get the baby they were imagining and instead let THEM have the dessert they were hoping for.

I had missed that chance to instill these good qualities of mercy and compassion in a real life situation for my kids. So I did what any good mother would do...I changed the rules to the game.

We came home and made the decadent brownies the girl wishers had chosen, while the boy wishers revelled in the joy that they were getting another brother like they had hoped.

Garrett thought it unfair that I changed the rules to be in MY favor after they had already been made, but I just told him that I had wanted to make sure that he had this opportunity to learn real life compassion, and then I gave him seconds on the brownies.

4th at 7 and a Tut-less tour

This weeks has been a good week around our house. Children are happy and engaged in their school and Mom is loving it. Here are two of the reasons for this break in their usual attitude differences:

 

1: Owen moved from his 3rd grade math book up to his fourth grade math book. He has been so excited about this and actually finishing this 3rd grade book finally has made him one happy little man! He is loving division and is loving even more that he isn't working on long multiplication problems! I've already given him the heads up this this book contains the dreaded long division that was a stumbling block for both Tig and Garrett, but he said he would fair much better than they did because he loves math so much. We'll see if his tune changes mid year once we get to the long division chapters. Just the fact that I am giving my seven year old a fourth grade math book to work on has made me one excited mamma! The boy loves his math.

 Reason number two for the giddy excitement around the house has to do with our field trip this week. We drove into Seattle with some friends of ours to go see the King Tut exhibit at the science center. It is being touted as a "Must See," "Last Time in the United States" tour. It is only here until January and then it goes back to Egypt. So we thought, hey, it's a must see, once in a lifetime opportunity for us and the kids. Then when BYU offered a deep discount for their alumni, I couldn't resist! We hired a babysitter to watch the two littles who weren't old enough to attend and the rest of us excited went to this life changing exhibit!

 The exhibit was wonderful. Well laid out. Interesting. Quite large. The only problem we had with it was that King Tut wasn't actually there. There were a few artifacts from his burial chamber, and an empty conopic jar that had once held his stomach, but HE wasn't there. There was a replica of his mummy and we only got to see that after we followed the Ikea store-type forced-walk through the gift shop past all the Tut souvenirs. When we asked the tour guide why Tut wasn't there if it was the King Tut exhibit, he looked at us like we were wacky and said, "Uh, King Tut is a national treasure. Do you really think they are going to let the real King Tut out of Egypt? He he"

Yeah, what were we thinking? It was being advertised as a once in a lifetime experience that was leaving America never to return again. What would ever give us the impression that Tut himself would be there?! Silly Americans!

It had been a long, filling day, and we lost all the kids to slumber land on the way home. Emme was wide awake though when we got home!

Since our Tut adventure, Owen has been on a major hieroglyphics kick. We had gotten his name printed out in hieroglyphics there at the gift trap shop and it set off some long dormant Egyptian bug inside him. Everyday now he writes his spelling words in hieroglyphics and requires that I actually spell check them. I tried just 'looking' at them the first day and approving them, but he knew I wasn't fluent in Egyptian and handed me a symbol key so I could translate all his words for accuracy. Thanks, dear!

Cubby camp in July

Okay, so this is WAY over due, but I just got the pictures downloaded from our little camera on to Picasa, so better late than never, right?

 

This was the first year that Cub Scout camp was more than just one day for Garrett. In Utah, he would only go for 8 hours on a Friday, and that was Cubby Camp. But this year, he got to go for eight hours a day for FOUR days. Wahoo for him! He was elated! Too bad this was his last year as a cub scout :-)

 

I volunteered to help out three of those days and I brought Owen along as a Tag-Along. That meant that he would hang out with the kids of the other volunteers and would get to do some of the same activities as the cub scouts. He was so excited to get to come with Garrett and I! He is just itching to be a cub scout already!

 

On the Tuesday that I volunteered, they had a police come and bring his canine dog with him; which made Owen completely melt with joy. The puppy was so well behaved and playful. Owen and Garrett both came home wanting to be K-9 cops when they grown up.

 

On the Thursday that I volunteered, they had a reptile man come and bring some of his friends from his zoo. Owen got chosen to come and help hold a beautiful albino python. (Unfortunately he had been playing with my camera earlier and changed the settings to black and white pictures, so there are no pictures of the snake's striking yellow color.) Being the wildlife buff he is, Owen was once again completely happy.

 He also brought with him a snapping turtle, a tortoise, a hooded cobra, a rattle snake, and an alligator name Lucy. She was beautiful and he let the boys come and pet a lot of them after the show was over. (They couldn't pet the cobra, rattlesnake, or the snapping turtle even though the snakes had been defanged...he said they were still temperamental at times)

 Garrett wanted a turn holding the boa, and he thought it was wonderful as well. He was amazed at how silky its scales felt.

 By the third day, Friday, Owen was done being a Tag-Along because he said it was just doing a bunch of 'baby stuff' and he hung out with me and the group I was helping out with. I was with a bear den, so the boys in our group were only a couple of months older than Owen, and he fit in fairly well with them. He got to help pitch a tent the old fashioned way and whittle a bar of soap with a wooden knife, and made a wooden bug catcher.

I wish I had been with Garrett's group so I could have gotten some fun shots of him doing his classes, too. I only got to see him when all the boys got together for lunch and demonstrations. Teagan survived the week being mommy to Duncan and Emme and I called and checked in on her every couple of hours; both boys are really easy going that everything went nice and smooth for her.  So it was a successful week for all of us!

September memory

The first of September Teagan and her Ecocars team were participating in a Wings of History air show. (Yeah, I'm not sure how prototype cars and the Red Baron go together, but they were invited to be there and so they went to display their cars and collect donations.)

 

The rest of our family wanted to go as well, so we decided to go support her team and the airshow. There were so many great old airplanes there! We got to watch a lot of them come in to land then be parked along the strip for us to walk up and look inside. They also had old WWI and WWII tents, tanks, bunkers, etc set up for you to go inside and learn about. Then they had a parking lot filled with old, restored cars - Bentleys, Oldsmobiles, 1920's Fords, Buicks...such pretty cars!

 

They even had one plane that they were letting people get inside and see what it was like in it. They were also auctioning off a 30 minute ride in it it, too, to one lucky winner. Garrett, my future air force pilot, was in seventh heaven!

 

 The bombs on the side of the plane represent the 125 'missions' it ran during its heyday and one was a night mission, so that bomb was painted navy blue. The extra large bomb marks its 100th successful mission.

 Owen isn't as big of a plane nut as Garrett, but even he thought sitting in the gun turret was pretty awesome.

 And Duncan just loved getting to watch it all from the safety of his stroller; blankie close at hand in case any loud noise should startle him. Emme wouldn't get in the plane, either, but he also wouldn't stand still long enough for me to get a picture of him!

 Garrett went back for seconds, and later even for thirds. He couldn't get enough of being inside the plane!

 Teagan and her friend, Kelsey, snuck away from their car display long enough to get a shot of them in the nose of the plane as well!

I loved Dunky's little excited finger pointing at all the planes. He would do his 'huh' humming sound that he makes whenever he is talking to us and would point to a plane. When one would fly over us he would get quite and just watch it until it had passed and then would point and talk about it again.

It was a fun family field trip for all of us, and Teagan's team was able to raise almost $300 in donations! That money will help them by parts for this year's new car build so it was a worthwhile trip for the team as well!

Is that really gonna work, Emme?

I recently uploaded all the pictures from Teagan's camera and was surprised when I found this little gem among her pictures.

Back story: Emme is a bike riding fool. He would spend all day outside riding his bike if I would let him. Our biggest struggles come from him either wanting to go outside and he can't, him taking his training wheels off his bike and insisting that he is a big enough boy to ride without them (which he can't), him trying to take the back two wheels off his trike and insisting that he can ride a 'woonicydle' (which he also can't do), or from him bringing one of his wheeled toys inside the house and riding them around on my hardwood floors.

Apparently Teagan was having the 'No-You-Can't-Bring-Your-Bike-Inside' Battle one day and she decided to take a picture of Emme screaming his displeasure at her verdict.

What I love so much about this picture isn't the fact that my baby is throwing a fit and no one is trying to calmly talk him down or explain to him why (for the four millionth time) he can't bring his bike in the house, but rather, the expression on Duncan's little face. It looks like he is trying to figure out what in the world Emme is doing because it clearly wasn't producing the results Emme hoped it would! At least that is what I hope was going on in his little mind...and not that he was taking notes on how to act to try out later!

Absolutely perfect

Recently I got to go on a youth temple trip with Teagan and the other teenagers in our ward to the Seattle Temple. We are in the middle of the strangest autumn anyone around here can remember and the weather was ABSOLUTELY perfect! Normally, the rain and fog have already settled back in for their 8 month stay in western Washington, but not on this day!

After we did a session we ate our sack lunches on the lawn in front of the temple grounds and just soaked all the warmth and love in! It was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday!

Railroad Days Parade

This past Saturday Teagan and Garrett had a fun opportunity to be in their first parade. They were both walking in the city's Railroad Days Parade. Teagan with her Ecocars team, and Garrett with the intermediate middle school band.

 

The three little boys and I went into town about half an hour to an hour before the parade started (I don't remember which) to walk around a bit an to scope out where the prime parade watching spot would be.

 At first it was a lot of fun. Walking around with all the hustling and bustling parade attendees and parade marchers scrambling to find where they belonged. Watching the carnival rides spin and twirl and roller coaster all around. Smelling the yummy cotton candy, caramel apples, funnel-cakes, and numerous other foods that the various vendors were selling.


 But soon enough they were bored and getting hot and were more than ready for the parade to start!

There were over 60 entrants in the parade, but luckily we didn't have to wait too long before we saw who we were waiting for. Garrett and the middle school intermediate band were probably about 20 floats/entrants back in line. He was playing his French Horn and sweating up a storm in long sleeves and black pants.

 But he did smile at me when he passed by, and later on told me that other than walking a mile and a half in the heat and having his lips numb from playing for so long, he HAD had a fun time in the parade.

 About 5 or 6 entries back came Teagan and her Ecocars Team from the high school. The orange boxcar is the coed team's street legal version, while the lime-green flat one is the girls-only team prototype class entry. (That one won second in nationals getting over 600 miles to the gallon of diesel fuel!) She is on the girls-only team this year with her friend, Dansil, who was driving it.

Scott was walking with the team as well along with Dansil's dad and Scott's friend, Dave. (He and Dave are like long lost twins. They have such similar interests that it is scary sometimes! They text each other throughout the day with new ideas and future inventions and whatevers! It makes me laugh!)

 The boys got some candy that was thrown out from the floats and got to see a SpongeBob float and a pirates float with a real working canon (man was it loud!!). They both got too hot to sit through the whole thing, so we walked home towards the end of it, eating all the best chocolates out of their bags along the way! It was a fun day for all of us!