Trick-or-Treating 2010

Ready to hit the streets!
In our part of Utah when Halloween falls on a Sunday, the trick-or-treaters go out on Saturday instead. Unfortunately this year it rained off and on most of the evening - thankfully it wasn't a really hard rain. We started out with DH and MJ staying at home and me taking out the older 5 kids. Kay never really got into it and was content to just go around our block - partly because of the cold and the rain. She was cute to say "thank you" at the houses and when they let the kids pick a treat out of a bowl she would manage to come out with a handful. I also think she didn't quite understand why we were going house to house to get candy when we had a large bowl of perfectly good candy at our house.

Once we made it around the block we stopped back at our house and the kids bundled up some more and then we sent the 4 oldest ones out on their own with a cell phone. We live in a safe neighborhood and there were lots of kids out so we felt comfortable doing that and putting M&M in charge of them. They were out for quite a while (after stopping back one more time for some bathroom breaks). I finally called the cell phone when we hadn't heard from them and they were just a couple of houses away and on their way back to the house. They ended up walking the majority of our ward boundaries (which is about 5 square blocks) and were pleased with the candy they got. It was nice being able to send the kids on their own and I think they really enjoyed it.
DH got out the exersaucer and put it together in-between trick-or-treaters. Here is MJ trying it out for the first time!
One of the few pictures I have managed to get Kay to smile for! She loved her candy!
Sorting through the candy
Kitty with her stash

The story behind the costumes

I initially had no plans to make any costumes this year - at least not for Blondie, Kitty and Kay. Blondie and Kitty had decided that they were going to be witches and we have several costumes that would have fit Kay this year. We also already had one witch costume so I was just planning on buying another one for one of the girls. Then I made the mistake of letting Kitty go into the fabric store with my mom to buy a pattern for my sister and she came back out and mentioned that she had seen a cute fairy costume pattern - I was out in the car feeding MJ at the time. I thought about it for a minute and thought that that would be the perfect costume for the three girls because they are obsessed with the TinkerBell movies lately. I sent them back in to buy the pattern (it was on sale for 99 cents) and then I looked it over and had the girls pick which fairy they would like to be. So here we were with about 3 weeks to Halloween and I all of a sudden had 3 costumes to sew (and buy all of the fabric for).

Thankfully my mom came over several times last week to help me out and even took some of Blondie's costume home to sew at her house. I tweaked the pattern a little and added a sleeve to it so they would be a little more modest. They were all mostly finished by the school parade day on Friday (just a hook I needed to sew on two of them that I did on Saturday - we just pinned it on Friday). Thankfully we had two sets of wings already and just needed to buy one more (which Kay then didn't even like wearing). I think they turned out really cute and the girls have enjoyed playing in them! I just need to remember next year to not get myself into that same situation so close to Halloween (especially when I have a newborn around the house)!

Halloween Costumes 2010

A leaf blower - she blows the leaves in front of her face. :) M&M wore this to a youth activity on Wednesday but didn't quite get the reaction to it that she was hoping for so she decided to wear a different costume idea for trick-or-treating.
Smartie Pants
Our little clown
A skeleton
Kay as Tinkerbell - she didn't like wearing her wings
Kitty as Rosetta from the Tinkerbell movies
Blondie as SilverMist from the Tinkerbell movies

Jack-O-Lanterns 2010

The two pumpkins on the right were carved by my parents.
My parents joined us on Friday night to help carve pumpkins. We ended up with 5 from our garden this year - and two of them were tiny and still green, but we carved them anyways. I tried going to a couple of stores earlier in the day on Friday to buy a couple more but couldn't find any stores that had any good ones left to pick from.
Kitty's pumpkin - I drew the bat design and Kitty carved most of it by herself.

Kay's pumpkin - Designed and carved by DH - Kay said she wanted a scary face.

Luke's pumpkin - Luke picked a stencil design that Grandma had and he proceeded to make dots along the lines of the stencil. Then he took off the stencil and tried to follow the dots while he was carving, but the pattern was a little too advanced for him and he made a couple of mistakes. We were able to salvage it at least somewhat so that it at least looked like a skull at the end. He was a little emotional when he realized he made some mistakes but in the end he was pleased with how it turned out.

Blondie's pumpkin - Blondie also chose a stencil design that Grandma had, but this one was very intricate and much too difficult for her to carve. I was busy helping kids and feeding MJ and Blondie was poking the design on her pumpkin before I realized how difficult it was going to be. She did most of the gutting of the pumpkin and then marked most of the design on it, but I ended up having to carve it - and it was not easy in the least! I ended up cutting off a part of the face, but the jack-o-lantern still turned out pretty good. I was amazed at how some of the intricate details really came to life once it was lit up. I kept carving and thinking, I have no idea what this is going to end up looking like in the end. I had a hard time figuring out what parts I was supposed to cut away and what was supposed to be left in the end. It was definitely the hardest design I have ever carved.

M&M's pumpkin - Our biggest pumpkin from the garden would not stand up on its end so M&M and I were bouncing ideas off of each other on how to best carve it. M&M ended up deciding to carve it on its side and then put some pumpkin "guts" hanging out of its mouth (these were both suggestions that I had made). M&M picked out a stencil face and ended up doing all of it herself. We all thought it turned out awesome!

Rolling over already?

MJ is already learning to roll over from her back to her stomach. I'm not ready to have a mobile baby yet... I enjoy the stage where you can lay them down and know that they will be in the same spot when you come back.

Band placement test

M&M had playing tests in band for seat placement a couple of weeks ago and they were just told the results of them after their school concert. Out of 11 flute players, 9 of which are 8th graders, M&M got second chair and the other seventh grader got third chair! M&M was very happy and surprised by the results. She was excited to tell me and her dad especially!

Fall Soccer 2010

This year we have 3 kids playing soccer so we've been super busy with practices and games. With MJ being so young still and Kay being quite a handful we ended up doing a lot of tag-team parenting on game days. Sometimes I would go to a game with just MJ while DH stayed home with the other kids or I would stay home and DH would go alone or with one or two of the older kids. Blondie had quite a few early morning games so we would leave M&M home with the other kids and just take MJ to the game with us. It is nice having M&M old enough to babysit now!

This was Blondie's first year playing and she enjoyed a lot more than I thought she would. We put her on an all-girl team and she loved it. Unfortunately she has a coach who seems a little too busy and distracted to be an effective coach for this age. Just about every other practice was canceled for one reason or another and the girls had no idea what they were doing in the games. At first it was kind of funny to watch the girls try and figure out the games, but by the end of the season it was more frustrating than anything else. They ended the fall season with a 3-3-2 record, but I don't think Blondie really learned anything during the whole season...
Luke also had a pretty frustrating season. Since I wasn't able to coach this year, we just turned in the registration form with a couple of his teammates from last year and they were placed on a team. Unfortunately I wasn't able to observe any of the practices during the season, but the coach had an interesting style that we are still trying to figure out. It seemed like his main goal was to win and he did everything he could to make that happen - but I think most of it backfired. He had the best players on the team playing forward during the games which left all of the weak players for the defense positions. He also would only let his own son play goalie even though his son was not very good at it and he didn't enjoy playing it - AND one of the players from my team last year is an excellent goalie and loves playing the position. This boy was always asking to play goalie and the coach just wouldn't let him - until the end of the last game of the season and he did an awesome job and kept the team from losing by much more than they already were. There was also another kid from my team last year that played goalie occasionally and was pretty good - at least better than the coach's son... Luke's team ended up with a losing record overall (3-5) and it was pretty frustrating for the boys from my team last year. I don't think that any of them will choose to play for this coach next time if they continue to play after the spring season.
M&M by far had the best coach out of the three this year. When we registered her for soccer in the spring, she had two choices of teams to sign up with and she was really torn on which to pick. The coach she played for last year decided at the last minute to coach again (and he lives just a couple of doors from us and was just released from our ward bishopric - a super nice, but also super busy guy). The other team is one that is mostly from her school and they practice much closer to our house and a good friend of hers from the ward plays on the team. The coach is the husband of one of M&M's 3rd grade teachers. I told M&M that we would leave the decision up to her because she is the one that would be playing for the team and she couldn't go wrong with either of the teams. M&M finally decided to try out the closer team with her friend on it. This team has been playing together for many years and the only reason we didn't put M&M on the team last year was because they were playing the division older than M&M. The first few weeks of the season M&M was afraid that she had made the wrong decision and she wasn't really enjoying the team yet - the practices were much harder than she was used to and a lot of the kids are a year older than her. By the end of the season, M&M was absolutely loving the team and loving playing soccer. Her team ended the season undefeated and we were very impressed with the team as a whole and how the coach coached them. They had a couple of close games and they were pretty intense to watch. The team was really good with passing and the kids all played really well together. The league this year ended up hiring some high school players to ref the games which worked out very nicely on the whole. We just had to pay a few extra dollars per player which I think was totally worth it. The coach seemed impressed with M&M and how aggressive she was especially since she is quite a bit smaller than some of the other players at this age. She is also one of only 2 girls on the team.

M&M was actually pretty upset after the last soccer game of the season because she was really close to scoring a goal several times and just couldn't manage to get the ball in the goal. The coach really liked putting her in at center forward for some reason - I think he liked how she always ran towards the goal when a shot was taken in case it bounced out of the goalie's hands. M&M's team played her team from last year and a couple of the players jokingly called her a traitor, but I think she made a good choice to switch teams. She has definitely learned a lot this fall season and is looking forward to playing for this coach again in the spring.

Pinewood Derby 2010

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

We had our pack's pinewood derby last week. Luke and DH worked hard on it and it did a little better than last year - he almost made it to the final race. Our ward hires someone in the area to come and put it on for us so it is a pretty elaborate setup. Next year I really need to push them to start the car earlier so they are not so rushed at the end and can focus more on the car's performance. The night of the race DH ended up staying at home with MJ since I am one of the Bear den leaders.

Antelope Island

Thursday, October 24, 2010

The Thursday and Friday before the elementary kids went back on track, M&M was out of school for two days for fall recess. At first we were trying to plan a trip a little farther away and would spend a night or two away from home but because MJ is still pretty demanding on my time we decided to just take a day trip somewhere. We finally decided on Antelope Island which none of us had been to before (except for my parents many years ago before they were married). We packed a lunch and headed out (and this time we remembered to bring the cooler with the food in it :) ). The weather was a little cool when we stopped for lunch but it warmed up quickly after that. It was a nice place to visit. There were a lot of bison around, wandering the island. We also saw a few antelope. There is a ranch there that you can visit with lots of old buildings and machinery that you can look at. Before we left we stopped at an area of the island where there is a beach and you can swim in the Great Salt Lake. I stayed in the car to feed MJ and stay with Kay who was asleep. The kids had fun wading in the water - but it took quite a bit of work to clean all the sand off afterwards.

The road out to the island - a manmade causeway. It was a pretty hazy day for some reason.

Bison up close to the road

Sitting on a saddle at the ranch.I think M&M was trying to get in every picture! :)
Pushing an old doll stroller
Taking turns holding MJOne of my favorite pictures :)
Kay watching some chickens - she kept trying to stick her finger in the cage.
A snake we found in a storage cellar under one of the old buildings on the ranch. It was a pretty big snake!

Playing in the lake:

Little things

* My mom coming over to help sew yesterday.

* Being able to run to two stores while she was here to look for a costume for Luke.

* Having MJ sleep the whole time I was gone.

* MJ and Kay napping at the same time while the other 4 kids were all at school.

* Getting some good work done on some costumes while the little ones napped.

* Finding the perfect costume for Luke just when I was about to give up and leave the store - and it was less than $15!

* Luke absolutely loving the costume when he saw it - and it fits him pretty good too! (M&M opened up the costume when she got home from school and then put it on and scared the kids with it when they got home from school.)

* Having a good FHE discussion about temples and testimonies.

* Luke entertaining MJ while I finished getting dinner in the oven.

Spice

I don't think I posted these when they came out, so here is the original Old Spice commercial and then BYU's version of the commercial:


New Spice:

Sesame Street: Smell Like A Monster

Cute take on the Old Spice commercial!

What happened to fall already?

This morning I woke up to snow on the ground and temperatures in the 30s!! Time to crank up the heat! I hope the kids stay warm at the bus stop!

Little things

Luke making a lunch for Blondie this morning.

Kid talk

The other day DH and the kids were watching the newest Star Trek movie. At one point the main villain says something to the effect that he would rather die than live and have to watch this other character live and progress in life. After a minute or two Blondie pipes up, "If I were him then I would rather live than die."

Kid talk

Kay has started answering "course!" (of course) to a lot of questions that I ask her lately. "Would you like some breakfast?" "Course!", "Can I get you in jammies?" "Course!", and my all time favorite: "Do you have a poopy diaper?" "Course!"

Her other favorite response to a question is "I don't know!" "What happened to this toy?" (that she colored on) "I don't know!", "Where did you put your shoes?" "I don't know!", "Why did you take your pants off?" "I don't know!"

Yesterday Kay was watching DH shave and he kept saying "ow" because his electric razor isn't working well lately and he was in a hurry. Kay walked into the bathroom with a concerned look on her face and asked, "You got an owie?"

Blondie, Kitty and Kay are obsessed with TinkerBell lately. They quite often throughout the day act out and/or recite different scenes from the TinkerBell movies. Last night just before bed Kay was walking around the house looking for pixie dust. I told M&M to pretend play with her for a few minutes and then see if she could get her in bed. A few minutes later they come upstairs and M&M is pretending to sprinkle pixie dust on her. So I say, "Kay you can fly now! Fly around the room." She responds back to me, "No, I can't fly." Me: "Why not?" Kay: "My wings are wet!"

Little things

* MJ finally sleeping a little better. She fell asleep at the end of Blondie's soccer game on Saturday and stayed asleep while I drove home and dropped off some kids, drove to a craft activity, learned how to do a craft and finished it, drove back home and picked up 4 more kids for M&M's soccer game and then drove to M&M's soccer game. Then she finally woke up! She also slept for a few hours so I could get some work done on some Halloween costumes.

* Taking the 3 youngest to M&M's band concert by myself and being able to video tape it as well! (Thankfully they only played 2 songs.)

* Watching the kids play in their soccer games. Blondie always got so excited for her games and practices.

* M&M helping me make dinner on Sunday and then making cookies for dessert.

* Watching M&M and MJ make spitting noises back and forth to each other.

* Getting some really cute 3 month pictures of MJ at the photo studio. It was hard to pick which ones to buy!

* Having my mom come over and help sew Halloween costumes with me.

* Taking 4 kids to the dentist and none of them having cavities.

* Having M&M come to our Relief Society craft night and helping me paint my crafts and tend MJ.

Sleeping pretty

MJ will occasionally let me put her down and stay asleep for a few minutes:
But usually not... This is how she prefers to sleep: