The Missing Link

So my brother questioned Matt's choice as a ewok (who are traditionally the size of my children) for halloween, versus a wookie (who are at least 6 feet, which Matt is). That thought had occured to us too. Truthfully, he started out as a wookie, then we just had the hillarious thought (or funny to us at least) that it would be funny to have Matt be an obviously oversized ewok. I guess not everyone got the joke.

However, one of Matt's friends posted this comment on his facebook page that makes the connection for us all:

"That's freakin hilarious, you're like the missing link between ewoks and wookies: ewooks or something."

So, really, Matt was a ewook for halloween.

Halloween Madness!

WARNING: It's been a busy week - long post to ensue!

I am always just tingling with excitement when October finally hits and I can start putting some of my creative and mom energy into holiday celebration. We picked our costumes at the beginning of the month and figured I had plenty of time to put them all together.

Well, lets just say a week before Halloween, those store bought costumes (though seemingly outrageously overpriced in my book) were looking very appealing. I LOVE doing family themes, and will continue to do so as long as my kids let me (which will probably only be a few more years). Nathan was all set early, I had religiously hit craigslist and we had scored a great $5 darth vador costume. Check. Carter we started out with me making a jedi costume, but I had a hard time finding a good pattern, ended up winging it on making the costume, patternless (which I do often), but only ending up frustrated. So, we both happily settled on the less impressive, but less complicated storm trooper costume from the DI. Downloaded, printed, and laminated a mask for him and he was done.

That left Luke, Matt and myself. Luke was the one I was tempted to buy - a yoda costume. But, I finally dove in the morning of a good friend's kid halloween party (realizing at 8 a.m. that this was probably a COSTUME party! Ha!), and had that done in a few hours. It needed some adjustments between the party and Halloween, but in the end I was glad I put my scraps to work and didn't buy the store bought. I thought mine was cuter!

Here are some pictures from the fun party our local party queen Kari put on for the kiddos:

Nathan, his friend Spencer (aka Indiana Jones), and Luke doing a craft

We've all probably done the "use toilet paper to turn someone into a mummy" game, but I have never seen kids do it, and it was so great! Here is my cute little mummy. Plus, as a bonus, the kids loved playing in the toilet paper afterwards, dancing with it to halloween music.

I finally figured out how to do video clips! Yay! Here is the mummy game in live action:

On with the Halloween madness! Thursday I took Carter and Luke to meet up with Nathan at his first field trip - to the pumpkin patch! It was our local one, just up the street, which we hadn't been to yet, so it was fun. The kids loved the hayride, getting to pick out not just a pumpkin but a gourd, feeding the animals (who definitely had Luke captivated), and playing in the playground and haunted maze.

Nathan proudly showing off his "perfect" pumpkin:

Nathan on the hayride with two of his best buds, Mia and Aiden.

Carter loved this horse-shaped tire swing!

Nathan bravely feeding the goats

I thought this pumpkin snowman was awesome. No, Carter doesn't too...he just got a piece of candy and is doing a happy candy dance = ).

Friday I helped out at Nathan's classroom Halloween party and then watched the kids do their little Halloween parade. I had to laugh as at least half of all the boys were star wars themed - I had no idea it was the "thing" to be! Nathan just wanted to be Darth since last year, and we followed suit as a family.

The rest of Friday was spent madly getting Matt and I's costumes ready. I made both of them that day. Maybe procrastination exasterbated the halloween "madness" just a little! Let's just say I used my sewing machine more this week than the whole rest of the year...and am very happy to put it away, maybe until next halloween!

Here's our couple pic and let's see if you can guess who we are (again, think Star Wars):

Here is who we are modeled after (Queen Amidala - Luke and Leahs mother, and an ewok)

In the end, I had a lot of fun with my costume. I think all the girliness in my combined and enjoyed this princess costume. And, man, was I the envy of the 8 year old girls out trick or treating = ). They seemed to appreciate the costume the most, complete with "ooh"'s and "wow!"s. Though, I did have a man tell me that I was the best adult costume he had seen that year, which I appreciated. So, in the end the creative process was fun and worth it (though my husband might still be recovering...).

Finally, here are some pictures from our ward trunk or treat and the whole star wars gang together. Hope you had just as happy of a halloween as we did!

I love my little Yoda! Of course, he was the only one without a mask...masks sure do hide cute kiddos faces!

Manna From Heaven!

Amazing but true, just when I was threatening to buy a new camera this week, the video camera turned on and gave me back my pumpkin patch pictures. Again, the quality isn't the best, hence still probably the need for a new photo camera soon, but I will take what I can get and am glad I get to share these with you!

One thing I LOVE about the holiday season that it's so easy to do fun family activities (and hence take cute family photos!)

Two weeks ago we headed to the pumpkin patch, one in the nearby city of Talent. They have the pumpkins, a huge giant hay pile to play in, a big and small corn maze, a kids craft, and then some things you can pay to do (pony rides, pumkin launching, etc.). We went last year and loved it and had to hit it again.

We started by hitting the pumkin patch and picking out our jack-o-laterns to be. (Last year we tried to save this for an end climax to the pumpkin patch and only met with anxious "Is it time to get our pumkins yet?" the whole time. So we learned and hit that first!). Each kid got to pick out their own, though Carter and Nathan helped Luke, as Luke was only interested in driving the wheelbarrow. Here are the boys with their selections (and Lukie with the wheelbarrow...):

Then they had fun doing the kids craft. I love how, no matter how simple, kids love a "project". This one was just a piece of paper with eyes and a mouth, white streamers and a few stickers = voila! a ghost wind sock. These ghosts are proudly hanging on our front porch now.

Next it was time to play with the hay. This is always a highlight for the kids, though we have to police them from throwing hay at each other too much (or, worse, unsuspecting unknown kids who want nothing to do with this hay fight). Luke especially got the giggles out of this hay mess, though he always seems to crack himself up. The little boy with our boys in these pictures is a friend Isaac, whom Nathan and Carter boy love to play with and whom we met up with at the pumpkin patch.

There are times in life when you realize how sadly sheltered your suburbia children are, and this Saturday was one of those when Luke would not be pulled from the chickens (they were the first live ones he had ever seen) and then the boys were just amazed by a REAL sunflower that was as big as their heads!

Finally the boys played in the little photo area where I snapped this cute shot of the two brothers (well, the two brothers that will hold still for a picture!) and then the boys got to play on the real tractor, which we had to DRAG Carter away from! But, of course, my camera had died by then...

Got a camera you would recommend?

Yup, no post lately to do several serious cases of camera swine flu. The first was a fatality - the canon camera that my parents so generously had given us when they upgraded theirs died a few months ago. So we switched to the not so great, but it got us by, video camera camera function. However, the video camera is temperamental too so the great pictures I took at the pumpkin patch yesterday cannot be downloaded and shared as it won't turn on. Argh!

I am ready to buy a new digital camera. I can't stand family moments not being captured and documented. I am mostly interested in the small point and shoot digital cameras, something I can slip into my purse easily to take pictures of the kids. Also, if there is a camera you have gotten and DIDN'T like, I would want to know that too so I can avoid those.

Thanks for the tips! Hopefully you can all benefit from great pictures to come!

Peacocks and Salamanders

I asked Carter for tips on a title for this blog, as it's just kinda a hodgepog happenings blog. He suggested, "Peacocks and salamanders." If nothing else, it made you curious, though it be potentially misleading...= ).

We love the weather where we live. For the most part, it's a mild version of all four seasons - just enough to get a taste without being fed up with the sweltering heat or feet of snow. One other great thing is we are in a valley and there is a decent amount of wind on a regular basis. Not enough that you get blown away, but just the right every now and again for flying kites! More than anything I love how kite flying captures everyone's attention, even my spirited (I am told that is the PC word...) energetic little Carter.

We were all impressed when Nathan got his new kite THIS high!

Carter was very focused and attentive to his kite flying, taking it very seriously.



What you do when your legs are pooped but you just aren't done flying your kite. New sport - seated kite flying!

Another season of soccer has started and it's been fun to watch Nathan's growing enthusiasm for it. The first season we had to force him to go to practice, even though he wouldn't participate, and he would only play in the games because there was a treat at the end. Now he just loves it and goes all out, running around, kicking "monster kicks", and getting sweaty (though, poor little guy, that's not very hard for Nathan to do! He sweats so easily...hate to see what happens when puberty hits!). It's been fun also for Matt to coach Nathan and have that time with him. Every year they pick their team name, this year they are the Turtles. Mostly because the girls wanted something pretty like the Ponies and the boys wanted something fierce...somehow turtles were a middle ground.

Coach Matt doing his kid herding, I mean coaching, job while Nathan joins the pack of kids running tightly around the ball.

Over Conference weekend we got to have my brother and his wife and three little girls down for the weekend. The boys loved having the to twin babies around, especially Luke (who is a baby fanatic, at least until he gets his own). The pictures aren't great because we are still using our video camera camera function (anyone have a point and shoot digital camera you love and recommend??), but it still captures a fun weekend. Carter still gets excited when he sees someone with two babies just like his cousins. We had fun pulling out princess plates and anything remotely girly (there isn't much).

Back to School!

What? We've been in school for three weeks? Nonsense! Didn't your mother ever tell you to NEVER argue with a pregnant woman? That's what I thought...

Nathan was just stinking cute on his first day of kindergarten. He has afternoon school from 11:00-2:30, so of course all morning long - "Is it school time yet?", "Is it school time yet?" I tried to clarify things by telling him that school wouldn't be until lunchtime. I thought I hit home as he mulled that one over, only to be followed by a chorus of "Is it lunchtime yet?"s.

Finally the time came, and mom of course made him take a bunch of pictures. No hunny, in front of the door. Smile! Now, in front of the tree. Now, in front of the tree with your brother. Okay, yes we are done now.

I love this one of Nathan and Carter together.

I know, the door was a bad idea - horrible lighting - but I just love when my kids voluntarily show affection to each other (Nathan's arm around Carter).

The only time I got teary that morning came next. I got down and looked Nathan in the eyes and said something like this, "Nathan, mommy has been with you almost every day, every hour of your life. I have loved sharing everything with you and sharing all the things you are excited about. Mommy is so excited for you to go to school and learn even more fun things. But, this time mommy's not going to be there, so I need you to store up all the cool things that you do and learn in your head and then come home and share them with mommy so I can still be a part of that part of your day, okay?" (He of course was lost on the sentimentality of this situation and just kinda, "uh-huh"ed me...) Sniff.

Shuttled them into the car and then drove the whopping 1 mile away to school, unloaded everyone and took Nathan to the cafeteria, as Nathan eats lunch first. He proudly opened his transformer lunch box (matching his transformer backpack of course - I did ex-nay the transformer shirt for the first day of school however. Come on, I had pictures to take!) and ate his pizza squares, chocolate milk, yogurt, and fruit snacks. It was so cute to see him with all his little friends. I had no worries about him being sad at my leaving, so I said adios and shuttled the other two off to the park.

Nathan proudly sitting in the big kid cafeteria (though notably absent of big kids!). He is sitting next to his favorite pal Mia (Who did you play today with hunny? Who did you sit by at lunch? Mia. Mia. And more Mia.). She and two other kids in his 14 kid classroom are LDS, which is fun.

How's Carter doing with the change? Well, it's rough...yeah right. Every day he gets pure JOY out of wearing Nathan's shoes, sitting in Nathan's carseat, playing with Nathan's toys. Suddenly karma has come!! He plays by himself for hours on end, even shoeing me away when, out of motherly guilt, try to interact with him (my mom said to never wake a sleeping baby - I say the same with never disturb a happily playing toddler!).

Here's to your journey Nathan! I am excited to see the boy you become and know your little sponge of a brain will just love school, hopefully for many years to come!

Losing my marbles!

Today has been one of those mornings. Luke spilled a whole box of cheerios, smeared ketchup all over himself and his chair, climbed into the bathroom sink and then filled it up (fully dressed mind you)...all before 8:30 a.m. and usually with me in the room. He is just too quick! I finally headed to the store to buy some sale items and to be able to make large batches of pumpkin bread (it's the first day of autumn and I think I am going to start a new tradition of handing out pumpkin bread - my favorite fall treat! - on the first day of autumn).

I was trying to collect myself, looking at the ad and pulling out coupons as the kids were looking in the toy isle of Albertons. Suddenly, Luke had reached a bag of 100 marbles, bit through the bag and they spilled out, heading every which way direction down the isle. I groaned and sent the boys after them. A nice man was nearby and started helping. Embarassed, I thanked him, and he said not to worry about it, that he had three kids too. Though as he left, he laughed as he said, "Well, you can tell everyone today that you really did lose your marbles!"

Let me know if you find any extras rolling around - I am pretty sure I am still a few short!