Halloween 2010

Anyone else have trouble getting a decent picture?  It's nearly impossible.  Some of you may recognize the frog costume - Jared wore that a couple years ago.  It was fitting for Owen this year as he loves to hop around.  Nathan and Jared agreed to wear the costumes I bought after Halloween last year that were 90% off.  (Jared was spiderman last year, and he wore the hat.)  I made a die out of a box for Westie, but he didn't like wearing it because it came up past his chin.  So then I quickly made one out of fabric, which was much more wearable.  Notice the suckers stuck to Owen.  He's been opening his candy and taking one lick or one bite.  Those suckers got stuck to him while sitting in his car seat...  I sneaked in a picture of me, since I know you've been wanting to see the face behind the camera.  :)  I guess what it doesn't show is how frazzled I was after trying to take pictures.  Whew!

Look who rolled over...

Jared!  Ha-ha.  I didn't catch Weston rolling over, but he has been doing it.  He sleeps on his tummy, but lately when I've gone to pick him up out of the crib, he's on his back.  I'll catch him in the act one of these days.  I thought it was cute that Jared was trying to teach him how to roll over though.  Jared can be very nurturing sometimes. 

In my spare time...

I attempted to make my first baby blanket that looks like a quilt.  It's not.  But the fabric makes it look that way and it has quilt batting on the inside.  I didn't do very well on the trim - I'll do better on the next one.  I should have known better than to make a blanket for my seamstress sister who is 9 month nesting with her 1st baby and already found this same exact adorable fabric.  Oh well.  It was made with lots of love.  (Alex said it looks like a good camping blanket.).  Maybe it will get there before her baby comes.  We'll see...

play dough, snakes, and jack-o'lanterns

 Homemade play dough (thanks for the idea Michelle) - I was a little worried when mixing it up, but it turned out well.

 

These were fun and yummy, although not nearly as pretty as the recipe and picture I saw on-line.  We didn't do them in layers or use whipping cream (just cool whip), and I thought the strawberries would be yummy dipped in chocolate.

Check out Nathan's new face... he's looking pretty scary.  Loved the "sunset" setting on the camera - try it out for your glowing pumpkins!

pizza & pumpkins

We made a brownie pizza this week, which turned out super sweet after loading it with frosting, shredded white chocolate, M&M's, and chocolate chips.  I had to scrape all the frosting off, but the boys loved all that sugar.  We also made paper strip pumpkins (which would have been easier with brads, but didn't have any so used the stapler).    What should we do this week?

3 months

Boy, it's rough around here - you have to grow up fast.  We kicked Owen out of the crib for good (he's been sleeping in a big boy bed since we moved here, but napping in the crib).  The very day that Westie was 3 months old, we moved him from the pack n' play (in our room) to the crib.  And I let him cry himself to sleep (about 20 minutes).  Poor guy.  But he's such a good sleeper - we've had several 10 hour nights and pretty consistent with 8 hours.  I love this boy.

(I'm sure you noticed that he's sleeping on his tummy.  We tried on his back for a while, but gave up on that.  He sleeps sooo much better on his tummy.)

crafts and treats

Here's a peek at our Monday treats and Tuesday craft from last week - Halloween sugar cookies and egg carton spiders.

 Here's a link for the spiders. 

joy school

  Jared has been doing a little joy school for a few weeks now on Thursday mornings.  Last week and this week are my weeks to teach.  I have letters C and D.  I did letter C last week.  We practiced writing the letter C on lined whiteboards.  We made black cat hats.  They played with cars, plastic chocolates (matching), and cutting wooden food toys.  We read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" while they threaded the different food onto the caterpillar. Then they got to make caterpillars out of cucumber, carrots, crackers & cheese, and chocolate chips for a snack.  We also read "Click, Clack, Moo."  They did a sorting and counting caterpillar and they counted and colored the spots on cows, cookies, and caterpillars.  I got some cute things off of a website here.  She has free downloads in her posts or you can buy her entire letter set for $10.  It was only Jared and Marielle (and Owen) for right now, but it was fun to plan and do something structured with them. If you don't have Pre-K or don't want to pay for preschool programs, I highly recommend doing a joy school with friends.  There are so many easily accessible resources out there.    

not too young for chores

We've been doing chores for a few weeks now and it's going pretty well.  I wasn't sure if Owen was old enough for chores, but he actually is a good little helper and loves to get stickers on his chart (he puts them wherever he wants and finds stickers around the house to put on, but that's okay).  I love to see him jump up and down when we tell him he gets a sticker for a completed task.  Owen especially likes spraying the table - it's just like a water gun.  This Clorox Anywhere spray is pretty good for kids since it's very mild.  I probably should just fill it with water when it's gone though since he drenches the table with it.  The one bad thing is that he likes to help so much that it's hard to get him to stop.  He wants to spray the table about ten times a day.  Just put the spray down and no one will get hurt... 

Barnyard Fun

Here's the rest of the weekend... I took about 250 pictures and here's about 50 of them.  The first is from camping - we drove along a bumpy gravel road and got to the very primitive campground after dark (no bathroom, no water, no lights, no fee station, nothing) - basically just an open area in the middle of nowhere that they call a campground.  Great pick Alex...  

We heard something wandering around outside our tent in the middle of the night...creepy.  Especially since there wasn't anyone else out there (and no one would be checking on us either) - just us and the critters.  Looking up at the stars through our tent were pretty though.

The pictures below are from our outing to Avila Valley Barnyard, which I saw recently on a friend's blog (thanks for letting us know about this fun place!).  I think we'll make it a yearly tradition as well.  We had a great time picking apples and pumpkins, hayride, feeding farm animals, eating yummy food, hay maze and hay jumping.  The boys also got to enjoy the fun with cousin Nicholas. 

just by a brick...

This is what happens when you go camping instead of general conference (what we should have been doing yesterday):

 You won't understand the title of this post until I tell you the rest of the story... 

So here's the story - we decided to go camping on Friday night and then meet up with my brother and his family on Saturday morning.  Mike had a triathlon this weekend not too far from us, so we thought it would be great to get together.  We knew it was conference weekend, when we should have been listening to spiritual counsel from church leaders, but decided that we'd visit family instead.  (So this is all really Mike's fault for doing his triathlon this weekend...  :) )  Anyway, we got up Saturday morning, packed up and headed in to do a short hike before meeting up with Mike and Carrie.  We had packed up our tent and things as fast as we could because the flies were terrible.  We didn't even eat breakfast because the flies were so bad.  We decided to head down to another area to eat without the pesky flies.  We found a nice lookout area and got out to enjoy our cinnamon rolls.  But, we had also just heard the van making some weird noises and when we got out, we discovered the flat tire.  Okay, a little annoying, but we had a spare tire.  So Alex unloaded the stuff in the back to get out the jack and got the spare tire.  A car drove by and they asked if we needed help.  At this point, we were pretty confident, so we told them we were okay.  Off they went.  So Alex proceeded to work on changing the tire.  We were on a little bit of an incline, but Alex thought that would work to his advantage.  But, the jack wasn't tall enough.  Great.  So now we thought maybe the van should be more level.  So, he turned the van around, moved it to a little more level area, and started over.  Just as it was looking like the jack would work, another person drove by and asked if we needed help.  Again, we waved them off.  We nearly had it.  And then just nearly didn't have it.  The jack wasn't tall enough.  Now what?  We were on a fairly secluded road and just sent away the people who did drive by.  We had a phone, but knew it would take forever for someone to get there to help.  And then we saw the brick and had a stroke of inspiration. 

  

It was just barely enough to make it possible to change the tire.  Nearly 2 hours later, we were on the road again... only with the help of the merciful brick.  I couldn't help but think the flat tire was punishment for our choice to go hiking instead of conference.  But I also couldn't help but think that finding the brick there was a tender mercy from the Lord.  And then I couldn't help making a spiritual analogy out of our experience.  I was thinking about how we are like the jack (and the flat tire is like sin).  Sometimes we do the best we can, but just can't quite measure up.  No matter how much we try, we still fall short in our efforts.  And that's where the brick comes in - the Atonement of Christ is like the brick.  Without Christ's atoning sacrifice, we would not even be able to repent and would be stuck in our progression (you can't go very far with a flat tire). We can't even begin to change (repentance) our flat tire until we have the power of the Atonement in our lives.  We still have to do the best we can and then Lord makes up the difference where we fall short. And, we also sometimes turn away the people who might be able to help us. 

Anyway, I was also grateful that we pulled off in a nice lookout spot

  and we had camping chairs to sit in and Oreos to keep the boys entertained.  

 

 (Oh, I also should mention that we should be thankful for those pesky flies in our camp area, because if it hadn't been for them, we would have eaten our breakfast at our campsite and been on our way.  We wouldn't have pulled off where we discovered the flat tire - and who knows exactly where or how we would have realized that flat.  )