It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Well, Christmas season is officially under way at our house. Today, the kids talked me into pulling out the Christmas boxes and decorating the house and then for Family Home Evening tonight we listened to Christmas music by Gladys Knight (great CD) while decorating the Christmas tree. Blake was in charge of the treat tonight and before he would reveal what it was, he made us go outside to look at the neighbor's Christmas lights and get cold so the hot chocolate he made could warm us up. It worked and it was delicious.

Had to get a snap shot of the low decorations put on by Colton. He was having such a good time decorating the tree I didn't make him put them where they would look better. We already had our first Christmas decoration fatality. Colton was trying to get a better look at his stocking, and he pulled his stocking and the stocking holder it was hooked onto off the mantel and it smashed on the floor.

This week several ladies from my church ward are having a Christmas tree ornament exchange. We had to make one ornament for each person involved in the exchange and they all had to be the same. I made snowy pinecones. They turned out cute and they were easy to make. I like how the glitter sparkles in the light.

Change your clothes

When we got home from church today, I told the kids to go change their clothes (meaning: change out of your church clothes into another outfit). Megan came out with the shirt she had on under her dress at church, over her dress. When asked why she was wearing it that way, she said, "You said change your clothes, so I changed my clothes." Next time I'll be more specific.

Megan's not a baby anymore

So what did you think we would do when we were in the car waiting for Blake to meet us? Take pictures of course. I think Megan is officially a big kid now. The baby girl is gone (sniff-sniff)

These pictures make her look older than 8. Not what I want to do. Trying to keep her young not make her grow up faster than she will naturally.

Thanksgiving Indian

For Colton's preschool group, we created and wore indian costumes in honor of the indians at the first Thanksgiving. He even made the noodle necklace. Colton sure looks forward to the days he has preschool.

Fall leaves

The kids were thrilled to see all the leaves at my mom's when we showed up at her house a couple weeks ago. After trying to rake leaves into a leaf pile to jump in with no luck because the wind kept blowing them away, the kids thought there would be no jumping or playing in leaves for them this year. Wrong. We all had fun jumping in them at throwing them at each other and mom even had enough that the kids could bury themselves in them.

Unfortunately, non of the leaves are actually from a tree in my mom's yard. They are all from their neighbor's tree. Too bad the neighbor doesn't rake mom's yard too. You can see how thick they are in the background of this picture. Burying themselves in leaves was so much fun. Megan and Cousin Joey.

Nevada Day 2009

Nevada Day and Halloween are on the same day, October 31st so before we went trick-or-treating we went to the Nevada Day parade.

We met my mom, and sister, Katy with Joey and watched the parade with them.

While waiting for the parade to start, we noticed night crawlers crawling out of the grass and onto the sidewalk. Not just one or two but many. The kids spent time trying to rescue them so that people walking on the sidewalk didn't step on them. Look at the size of those things.

After almost three hours of parade watching (and we left early)we were hungry and ready to go find a park to picnic and play.

Halloween: The longest season of the year!

We sure got a lot of mileage out of the Halloween costumes this year. The kids attended 5 Halloween activities requiring a costume before Halloween night including a ghost walk in Dayton, a friend's Halloween party, school Halloween parade and parties, our church trunk-or-treat, and Halloween soccer games. I think this took away from some of the excitement of getting dressed up for trick-or-treating on Halloween night but the kids didn't seem to think so.

We went on the ghost walk and trick-or-treating with our friend's the Clark's (Selena, Savannah, Ethan and Jesse) It was a coincidence that Colton and Jesse had the same costume.The kids made a haul with buckets over-flowing before the night was over.

Megan's final vampire make-up. Not too scary for the boys as initial night,but not as plain as 2nd night. She liked this one best especially because she didn't have to wear those fake teeth she hated so much.