Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone!!! The boys have been on a Halloween "high" ALL MORNING, and the sugar hasn't even started yet! For breakfast this morning they were plotting on how to get rid of their mom and dad - Why you ask? I think it might have something to do with me starting the conversation this morning by telling them I think it's time to set some new family rules...like no more chores for Mom and the kids have to do all the work, and that mom and dad should get to have sugar for breakfast etc...the kicker was probably when I told them that when they get home from trick-or-treating tonight they'd have to put all their candy in a big "mom and dad" bowl and eat salad while we ate all their candy....Anyway, then Sharla called so I talked to her for a minute and when I got off the phone they were plotting to do away with me. I have no idea why!! :) So...They decided on baking us in the oven and turning us into a Gingerbread Man and Woman, then they could eat us. Yum! I asked them what they would do without a mom and dad and Sam said they would just get a babysitter to stay with them forever, then Josh said that they would turn the babysitter into a cookie too and so on..you get the idea. So then I asked them who would buy them school clothes and Joshua said they wouldn't go to school, they'd just stay home and play all day, and Sam said they'd just "play" school at home, so then I said that you have to actually know big things like times-tables and stuff to "play" school and Josh said "I DO know my times-tables!" WHAT! (that is what I thought in my head) - So then I tested him and said "oh, yeah..what is 4x2? He answered 8! without a second hesitation...hmm....okay..."what is 4x3? - this one took him a minute but he said 12! Okay....2x3? 6! WOW! He really does know his times-tables! Some of them at least. Who knew!! :) Anyway, that is just an example of the conversations at our house. No real rhyme or reason, anything goes. :)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, have fun TRICK-OR-TREATING!! (Gabe is a TOTAL pro at this by the way. If you ask him what he's going to do he will run to a wall or door, pound on it and say "knock-knock - Tic-do-deet!") I can't wait for tonight!

Witches EVERYWHERE!

On Friday we went with Tricia, Cydney and Ben to Gardner Village to see the Witches. I've never been before and didn't realize it was such a tradition among families. I think it will be a tradition for us now too. It was SO much fun! They have the grounds all decorated so cute with witches everywhere doing funny things. We had Emily with us too and they all got to ride a pony and pick a treat at the candy store. The candy store was a bit of a joke as it was SOOO BUSY!! I kept losing Gabe and every time one of us found him he had something else in his mouth, like a jelly belly bean or an m&m. Finally I stuck a .20 cent sucker in his mouth so I could actually PAY for something he was eating. :) They have the best fudge there and I asked for a sample of their raspberry cheesecake fudge only to be left wanting more and ended up buying some. Yum!

Pumpkin Patch!

A few weeks ago we went to the Pumpkin Patch for family night. They have a darling spot right in the patch to take perfect pumpkin patch pictures (say that three times fast, hehe!) I had turned the house upside down looking for Will's cute halloween shirt and couldn't find it so I settled on a halloween sleeper that barely fit him and his pumpkin hat. Everyone else wore their halloween shirts and the weather was perfect. We got them all situated on the hay and I went to click the picture only to realize that my camera had no memory card. Where was it? Still in the memory card reader left there from updating the blog. ARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!! I vowed to return and take pictures another day but then the weather turned freezing and then we got busy. Well, on Thursday I had a few errands to run and it was a beautiful day AND they were in their halloween shirts so I stopped by the pumpkin patch again to take our picture - lucky for me, it is practically next door.





We had Brayden with us so I snapped a few cute pictures of him. He was SOO excited about the tractor that kept driving by that I couldn't get him to smile, I think he was kind of mad at me for trying when there was a totally awesome tractor to look at nearby - how silly of me! :) He kept saying "See it? See it Mennie?" SO CUTE!


I made these cookies on Thursday night. The boys had a blast decorating theirs and ate them before I could snap a picture. Gabe's favorite was "Toodles" the Mickey Mouse head that is also the shape of the Toodles character on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and those are the only ones he would eat. :) They were so YUMMY!! I love sugar cookies!

Indian Summer

Definition of "Indian Summer" via the Wikipedia website: Indian summer is a name given to a period of sunny, warm weather in autumn, not long before winter. Usually occurring after the first frost, Indian summer can be in late October or early November in the northern hemisphere, and late April or early May in the Southern hemisphere. It can persist for a few days or extend to a week or more.

I would definitely say we are having an indian summer right now. The weather has been ABSOLUTELY beautiful. I am hoping it lasts at least through Wed. for all of the trick-or-treaters. It would be SO much more fun to take the boys around in good weather rather than snow and freezing temperatures which has been known to happen in previous years. Here's wishing for a few more weeks of Indian Summer!! :)

Comments!

Isn't it funny how you almost start to rely on people's comments! I love to hear from everyone and was sad that I hadn't heard from ANYONE on my last few posts....only to realize that I hadn't enabled the comments section on those - which apparently didn't happen automatically for some reason!! ARGGGHHH! I hope that isn't going to be how it defaults from now on, because I'm sure I'll forget again! Anyway, I fixed it for now and to make myself feel better I'm just going to pretend that that is the reason I haven't heard from anyone - because you didn't have the option to comment. He,he! :) We've had a BUSY and FUN week, I'll try to update very soon. Love you all!!

Yeah...we're cool!

Gabe is hilarious. Crazy, busy, Mr. CHAOS, exhausting, cute AND HILARIOUS! He is ALWAYS putting goofy things on and wearing them around the house all day. Lately it's been a santa hat but I have yet to snap a picture of him in it. On Sunday he walked around wearing these sunglasses and thought that "baby Will" needed to wear them too. They looked pretty darn cool, I must admit!! :)

SNOW!

The boys saw SNOW as soon as they woke up on Saturday morning and they were SOOO excited! It was all they could do to get their chores done and eat breakfast before they were searching for their snow pants, boots and gloves. Mark pulled out our little snowman kit and helped them make a snowman. The snow was PERFECT for snowman building and we saw a lot of little snow people in our neighborhood and around town. The poor guy didn't last too long though as the boys also thought it would be fun to knock him down. Maybe the next snowman they make will last a little longer. :)

Family pictures

Here are my favorites from our photo shoot on Friday. It was a lot of fun at Wheeler Farm. It was SUCH a beautiful day, there was a big storm due on Saturday so it was kind of the "calm before the storm" effect. I'm so thankful for our wonderful friends that came with us so we could take pictures of each other's family!


Same picture as above, but in black and white.

Flowers in a BOX!

We went to Wheeler Farm and took family pictures with the Miller family on Friday afternoon and Mark had a few errands to run afterward so I took the boys home and was thrilled to see a BOX of flowers on my front porch!! I've never had flowers from a BOX before, it was a lot of fun trying to guess who they could be from while I got the boys situated inside. Of course I had my suspicions that it would be my sweet husband, but I couldn't think of anything I could have done to deserve them - so my mind kept racing at who else it could be. They WERE from Mark with an incredibly sweet card attached and they are BEAUTIFUL! It was so much fun snipping off the ends, filling the vase with water, adding the plant food and arranging them myself! The sad part about this story is that my house was a WRECK! I felt really guilty when Mark got home...."Hey sweetie! Thanks for the flowers, welcome to TORNADOVILLE!" I have since cleaned up thank goodness...the boys are off-track right now and we don't have our "system" down quite yet. We'll probably get the hang of things right about the time they go back. :)

Misc. comings and goings...

I thought I'd post some miscellaneous stuff since I don't really have anything new and exciting to report. The boys looked so cute the other day on their way to school, I finally got them some school clothes for Fall a few weeks ago. Joshua came with me and is SO fun to shop with. That sounds like I'm being sarcastic, but it's really true. He's my kid through and through. My favorite shopping story is when we went to Ikea in Arizona last Feb. and I promised the boys I would get them out of the play area when I went to the kid part of the store so I did. By that time Sam was at his LIMIT. He kept telling me his feet hurt and can we PLEASE GO BACK TO GRANDMA'S??? Josh on the other hand was a completely different story...he was running back and forth from bin to bin and one time he grabbed a wooden spoon from a big bin and said with WAY too much excitement "Look MOM! a SPOON!" I laughed all the way home at that, he is such a goof! ANYWAY, when we were school shopping Mark took Sam and Gabe to get some lunch and I took Josh and Will - KNOWING that Josh would be easier to shop with and I was SO RIGHT! He would find something he liked, then find his size....."Ooh...I like that shirt, it has a guitar on it...let me see if they have an 8....or OOH, FLAMES! where's an 8??!" Then he started shopping for Sam..."Oh Mom, I think Sam would like that! I need to find a 6!" It was really funny when we got to shoes and he was looking for a size 8 for him and a size 6 for Sam in shoes. I had to explain that shoe sizes don't work the same as clothes sizes do. :) Sam doesn't like to shop but he LOVED his new clothes! I knew he'd love this red and tan shirt with red pants because it was SOO soft and that is the first thing he said when he put them on. "Mom, when I get home from school I am not even going to change because these are already soft like my play clothes....can I wear them to bed?"

This is a picture I took the other day of my cute little pumpkin. He was all dressed up that day for no reason, I just felt like making him look cute. Sharla stopped by later to visit - wait..I should clarify...she stopped by later to visit GABE - and I told her it was a good thing she came by so she could see how cute Will looked. Plus, she's the one that bought him the little hat and socks..(actually they are mittens I think, but they looked cuter as socks!) so it was good for her to see them in action. :)

I love this of Sam reading to Gabe. He was reading to him so cute, in a little sing-song voice and Gabe was soaking it all up. Sam would say "he forgot his coat!" and Gabe would say "UH-OH!!" I got video too, it was so sweet - I know these are the times I'm going to look back on and miss the most from when they were small!

I got to go to lunch with Christine and Tiburon on Monday. It was so much fun to catch up. Tiburon and I both have 4 kids around the same age and Christine has 2 darling little boys that I have never even met. I was sad that her little Carter didn't come but I got to see Easton and he was SUCH a doll! Tiburon and I swapped "little Devil" terrible two-year old stories of Gabe and Olivia. I'm not sure who beats who - mine with the permanent marker on my cabinets and fridge or hers with the baby oil dumped in the kids' rooms and stairs!! :)

YAY for new furniture! We have been wanting a new set for our front room ever since we moved in but there have always been things we needed or wanted more. We found a great deal on this set and went for it! I was a little nervous because all we had to base the color on was a 5x7 swatch, but the color turned out to be MORE PERFECT than I could have imagined. It was exactly what I hoped for and matches so well!

I think that's all for now, Gabe is running around naked (I hope you're right about this Christine! :) ) waiting to go potty - I told him he can't watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse until he goes potty this morning, to which he replied "No tank you Mommy" so we'll see what happens. :) Will is asleep in his little moses basket on top of the dryer - which incidentally REALLY WORKS! He is so content, happy and snoozing away! I better make the most of these few minutes and CLEAN UP!

Dressed in White

Yesterday was William's blessing day. It was SUCH a beautiful day, we couldn't have asked for better weather. I feel so blessed to be here with my family, to have been entrusted with such an incredible little spirit to raise and for the opportunity to be a wife and a mommy. He was SO sweet yesterday morning and gave Mark one of his first smiles. He smiled at me a few times the other day but it was so fitting for him to smile so sweetly at Mark on THIS day. He cried almost the whole time during his blessing, he seemed to have a belly ache...poor guy. Mark was worried that we couldn't hear the blessing but we heard it crystal clear. His words were beautiful and he even blessed him that he would always be there for and take care of me. Mark always jokes that I will never have to mow a lawn or take out the garbage or lift furniture. :) We had some wonderful friends and family come and it was so good to see them. Joshua and Samuel chose to fast with Mark and they both got up to bear their testimony. Joshua told me in the morning that he was going to and said he was going to say "today is a very special day because my baby brother is getting blessed and that really helps us to keep the Sabbath day holy" but then he got up there and gave the traditional "I know the church is true, I love my mom and dad and I know Pres. Hinckley is a true prophet" testimony. I can't say I blame him, I got up there and froze also, I always have so many things I want to say and never end up saying any of them. :) Sam's testimony was so sweet because it was in his cute little voice. I'm going to miss it when he can pronounce all of his words correctly - I'm not ready for him to grow up that big just yet. We had a very simple lunch afterward of ham, turkey and roast beef sandwiches with chips, baked beans and soda. I was SO relaxed during the planning and preparing. Mark helped a lot and it just didn't seem as stressful as these events can sometimes be. I'm so grateful for that, it was such a wonderful and relaxing weekend! We are all so smitten by this beautiful baby boy. We love you baby Will!

Sam

So, Sam had a friend over on Tuesday and I pulled out some mini carrots to munch on. His friend was in the front room so Sam runs to the kitchen and snatches a carrot for himself and proceeds to return to the front room. This is our conversation WORD for WORD (I immediately e-mailed it to myself so I could remember everything):

Me: "Wait a minute Sam, is that being polite" (this isn't in front of his friend, we are in the other room by now)

Sam: "Um..No?"

Me: "Right, so what WOULD be polite?"

Sam: "Uh, to chew it with my mouth closed?" (he wasn't even chewing with his mouth open!)

Me: "No...WHAT would be a POLITE way to act when your FRIEND is over?" (giving him ALL the hints I can at this point)

Sam: "Um...hide it from him?"

Me: "SERIOUSLY SAM? You SERIOUSLY think I'm telling you you should HIDE your food from your friends??"

Sam: "No?" (notice these end in question marks...like he's not quite sure of ANY of these answers up to this point...)

Me: "Right, so what WOULD be the BETTER thing to do if you have a snack and a friend is over?"

Sam: "MOM! I DON'T know!"

Me: I go to the table, put a carrot in my mouth and say VERY politely..."Hey, Gabe...come here....would YOU like a Carrot??"

Gabe: "No Tank you, vezy Kaa Kaa"

Me: "Okay, Sam...do you know what you should do NOW?"

Sam: "No"

Me: "I JUST DEMONSTRATED IT!"

Sam: "I don't know!"

Me: "Okay, if YOU were at a friend's house and they got a snack and just went away and ate it without you would that make you feel happy?"

Sam: "No"

Me: "Right..so what would be better for your friend to do then?"

Sam: "Um..just stay right by me and eat it?" (as opposed to the "went away" part of my question apparently)

Me: AAARRGGHH!! "Alright Sam...when friends are here we play and SH....?(trying again DESPERATELY to give him another hint...he doesn't take the bait, URGH) we play and SHARE right? We SHARE! SO....WHAT SHOULD YOU DO IF YOU GET A CARROT AND YOUR FRIEND IS HERE???"

Sam: "OH! I get it! I should break it in half!" (it's a MINI CARROT!)

Me: "Sigh...yes Sam, you COULD break it in half...OR! You could just give him his own, there is a WHOLE bag of carrots!"

Sam: "Oh, *smile* OKAY!"

Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam! I love you kid!...and it's a GOOD thing you're SO cute! :) - I didn't say this...actually didn't even think it at the time because I was so exasperated - but I am thinking it now as I type this so I thought I'd add it anyway. :)

Signing Time!

I got to go on a date with my two "middles" on Monday night! We went to "Signing Time Live!" at Cottonwood High School. I was a little nervous that Sam might be too old but he LOVED it! Especially when Leah came from the stage and handed us a handful of little rubber frogs! When Hopkins (a great big frog) came onto the stage Sam was really confused because on the DVDs he is just a tiny cartoon frog - so I thought for a second, then just went for it and told Sam that it wasn't really Hopkins, it was just a guy in a costume dressed like Hopkins. Well, Sam wouldn't go for it. Mom, I don't think that's a guy in there, because how could he even see? Mom, I think he is not big enough to have a person INSIDE of him.....finally I gave up and said, "Hmmm, maybe Hopkins just grew really big for the show tonight" that settled him because apparently that notion is MUCH easier to believe than the fact that it was just a normal person in there. So much for being truthful, I guess he's not as grown up as I sometimes make him out to be. :) We went with some of our most FAVORITE people and that made it even more fun! We saw more friends when we were there too! I haven't been able to get Gabe to watch Signing Time lately because he's been SO into Mickey Mouse Clubhouse but he LOVED IT and clapped and danced along with the rest of 'em. I've even been able to get him to watch it since. YAY! I'm so glad that Jenna called to see if we wanted tickets too, I didn't even know they were doing a show! I told Sam he was a great date and he said "yep, I'm the best date EVER, we should go on dates ALL THE TIME!" I was really glad I decided to bring him along. :)

My cute boys! We got there early so it looks like nobody is there yet. It filled up later. We had to move 3 TIMES because we kept sitting in the wrong place.

This is "Hopkins" it was his "surprise party" with Lindsay, Sam and Emily. Gabe wouldn't have anything to do with him.

Pink PINK EVERYWHERE!

AARRGGHH!! I just accidentally washed Joshua's Flag Football Jersey in with my load of whites. How it snuck itself in there is BEYOND ME! Now we have pink underwear, t-shirts and my boys have pink socks. Which as you can imagine is not going to go over very well in this house. I tried re-washing with color safe bleach and it helped on some things but most are still PINK! I just talked to Becky (she's SO great with laundry stuff!) and am off to buy some "Ritz color remover" as she suggested. Cross your fingers!

a fun day...

We had a fun day today. We relaxed and watched the last two sessions of conference. I told Mark I wish conference was every 3 months instead of every 6. There is just something about relaxing with your family and listening to talks that all seem to be meant exactly for YOU. The added bonus of not battling the two year old monkey for an hour in a public chapel during sacrament meeting was nice too. I am always sad when it is over. I love that it comes at the beginning of my two favorite seasons, the start of Fall (one of my favorites, but MILES behind summer) and the start of Spring. We talked about what talks we liked best tonight and Joshua said his favorite was Gordon B. Hinckley's talk about Joseph Smith, when asked why he said "because when he talked about Joseph Smith it warmed my heart and I could really feel the spirit" this is word for word out of my eight year old. I love that kid! Then Sam repeated the exact thing as Joshua for his favorite talk but I think had he thought a little harder he would have said the talk about the shoes. He laughed all day yesterday about the dad that painted his son's toe black with black shoe polish because his big toe was sticking out and they couldn't buy new shoes. It was one of my favorite stories too. :) Mark enjoyed the talk about decisions being good, better or best, and I enjoyed a talk yesterday about all callings being equal and not one better than the other, and how we are all equal also. (I'm horrible about remembering WHO gave these talks and I didn't write any notes...sorry!) Gabe just chanted "Jesus, Jesus" and danced a little jig. We often look at each other during times like this and wonder just where this child comes from.....Mars, maybe? The jungle even? Seriously, if I wasn't so sure it was me that has raised him from infancy I'd be sure he'd been raised by monkeys. :) His newest thing is saying "no thank you" to everything....like it's going to get him out of doing things he doesn't want to do: "Gabe, it's time for bed" .... "No, tank you" - "Gabe, you need to go tell Sam you're sorry" ..."No, tank you" etc. It's pretty cute, I must admit. He's such a little goofball. :)

Anyway, on with our day - after conference we had a nice visit from Grandma Cain, Ron, John and Taysha. I got a cute picture of Taysha holding Will, John held him for a minute before that but was a little worried about "breaking" him so he gave him up quickly and just admired him from a distance. :) I'm sad that I didn't get a picture of Mary holding him - she even got him to sleep when he was starting to fuss! We played a fun game of apples to apples, then said good-bye. We had a yummy dinner of chicken, carrots and potatoes (that only Mark and I seemed to enjoy) Gabe said "no tank you - it's vezy(very) kaa kaa" ...thanks kiddo! and the other two asked every two seconds how many more bites they needed to take before they could be done and still get dessert. Oh well, we tried!

That about sums up the day. I'm excited for Halloween, I think I'll let the boys wear their halloween shirts tomorrow!


This was Friday night. We picked up a pizza on the way home and the boys had a pizza party with their t.v. trays while watching a movie. This is probably their most FAVORITE thing to do!

Clearance stuff at Sam's club!

Hey everyone! I was at Sam's club yesterday and noticed they had a few great things on clearance. First is this 24 pack of Lil' snackers puffs by Gerber. They were only $4.88 - I'm not sure how much it would normally be, but this seemed like a good deal. I wanted to buy some but they expired in Jan-Feb. of next year and Will will only be 5-6 months, which is not old enough for them yet so I didn't get them but thought I'd pass the word along! They also had 22 packs of Granola bites by Nature Valley for $3.71! I might go back and get some more of these. Some of their v-neck t-shirts by Chaus Organic and another brand that I can't remember were only $4. something and the best deal are these DARLING spi-dogs that retail for $30 - Sam's originally had them for $24 and now they are $7.81!!! My big boys both have these and they LOVE them, they can act as speakers for anything that takes headphones so they use them for their Nintendo Ds's and their little i-pods (not the real ipods..they just call them that) They are so cute because their ears and tail go up and down and they shake their heads to the music, they also growl at you when you pull their tail. CUTE, CUTE, CUTE!....er...COOL, COOL, COOL!!

Anyway, if you can make it there you'll get some great deals! Happy Shopping!

LDS Conference Packets for Kids

Hey everyone! Check your e-mail for a WAY cute packet to print out for your kids for Conference this weekend. If you didn't get an e-mail it is because I don't have your e-mail address, you already got it from Holly, or I didn't think you'd need it - so if you didn't get one and WANT one please e-mail me and I'll get it to you.

Nothing else really to report....my "N" is still sticky which is bugging me like crazy....OH, I killed a KILLER FLY earlier....I'm serious, it was the biggest fly I've ever seen - it would have fed a spider for a MONTH! I only had a towel so I kept wacking it and it would fall on the floor, so I'd start to walk away only to have it start flying again, one time it even flew behind the Armoire in our room after I wacked it so I thought, "Oh, good, it's really gone now" and then wouldn't you know it, I walked into the bathroom and came out again and there it was flying around, seeming a little wounded but flying nonetheless - maybe it bit the cat and inherited it's 9 lives or something. ARGH! Anyway, I finally got it, happily flushed it down the toilet and I'm probably the only person on earth that can write an entire paragraph about killing a fly. :) Seriously, it's been the most exciting thing to happen today - pretty sad, huh! :)

OOh, OOh, I just remembered something that Gabe said when I got him out of his chair this morning after breakfast.... every time we take a picture we say "Oh, CUTE" so now he goes around with his toy camera, clicks it, and then says "TUTE!" Well, today when I got him out of his chair he said, "Mommy so tute TOO!" completely out of the blue - no camera attached or anything, I repeated what I thought he said just to be sure I got it right, and he confirmed it by saying Mm Hmm, while nodding his head. I said "Thank you, Gabe is SO CUTE TOO!" and then he said "Mommy TOO!" again and then planted a kiss on my leg (all he could reach since I'd put him down on the ground by this time) SO SWEET, that will carry me through the chaos that is called Gabriel for the rest of the day I think. OK, so I guess that was better than the fly story - I just had to think a little harder.

Have a GREAT DAY!