Catching Up....

Wow! It has been a while. I have so much to catch up on that I haven't had the time to post. Which means more time passes, and there's even more to post. It's a vicious cycle. At any rate, I am going to try to get caught up with one extremely long post. I'm sure I will miss a lot of what's happened, but we'll hopefully get the big stuff covered.

In October, we took our annual UEA trip to St. George. We mostly just hung out and let the kids play. We also went to Jumpin' Jacks and caught Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Our trip always includes a trip out to the country to pick out pumpkins too.

Here are a couple of my favorite quotes from the weekend (to the best of my recollection):

• We're driving down the road and Josh says, "Mom, that guy has a smoking stick." (aka cigarette)


• After fixing Jonah's hair he asks me to lift him up to the mirror so he can see. He exclaims, "I look like Jonas Brothers!"

My kids look forward to this trip every year. They get along so well with their cousins and LOVE spending time with them. It is always a blast!

I'm breaking now for chocolate...feel free to do the same. Okay, I'm back. Let's move on, shall we?

PUMPKIN TIME

This was one of my award-winning mom moments. I bought these cute plastic parts to stick in their pumpkins. They make for adorable, unique pumpkins with NO mess! It was quick and easy, yet the kids still loved it and I didn't have to slime around in pumpkin guts. The best three bucks I've spent in a long time.

After we finished our pumpkins we headed off to see the witches at Gardner Village. It was crazy busy, but we still had a great time. We came, we saw, we had a cookie and left. Perfect!

OUCH!

Shortly after Chris was helping a friend and dropped a bunch of bricks on his foot. The pictures do not do it justice. You should have seen how swollen his foot was. He was lucky the bulk of the impact was on the joint, so he chipped a bone but had no other breaks. We joked that he could be Fred Flinstone for Halloween or we could add some hair to his foot and he could go as a hobbit. So if you see him limping around (yes, a month later and he's still limping), you now know why.

GARDEN AFTER DARK...

Our neighbors, the Madsen's, invited us to go to Red Butte Garden's Storybook Garden After Dark. We have never done this before and it was really fun. This was my first time all the way through the gardens. We also had our friend Bridger with us. They had a Navajo man telling sand stories. It was pretty cool how he made the pictures in the sand as he told the story.

The funniest part was they give you a little paper and, if you stop at all the different stations, they'll give you a treat. Well...I thought they said treat, but they really said tree. When we got to the end and we collected our tree Zoe looked at me and said, "A tree?....Why would anyone want a tree?" My kids are more for the treat, but it is a garden after all.

HALLOWEEN

Halloween was a very full day this year. Usually the kids' school carnival is on the Friday before Halloween, but because it was on a Friday this year it was on Halloween. It was good because we only had to do the costume thing once, but it made for a long day. Noah's parade and carnival was in the morning, then Zoe's was in the afternoon.

Zoe was a ladybug, Noah was Mutt (Indiana Jones' son) and J was Indi himself. I let the kids spray their hair black this year. It was one of the highlights for them. Every year I think I'll just whip up something for their costumes (this year was Zoe's wings) and about half way through I think, WHY? They ended up costing way more and taking much longer than they should have, but it is fun to say I did it and they turned out cute.

After the carnivals, we came home to relax for a bit. I made pasta with eyeballs for dinner, then we got ready for trick-or-treating. My Grandma came over as well as Nana, Grandpa Hardman, Keri, Deb, Eric, Daelee and Dahri. Adam and Jenn stopped by on their way to a Halloween bash dressed as Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Daelee was Cinderella and joined us for trick-or-treating. The weather was amazing! I think it was the first time I didn't freeze my toes off!

We ended up with plenty of candy (did I mention I still have candy in the freezer from last Halloween?), but we're going through it faster this year. Hope you had a great Halloween!