I have to post pictures of Halloween quick so family can see, plus I'm exhausted after all those Halloween activities, so I want to sit down for awhile!  I am blogging about something that happened the day after it happened.  Ha!  How's that for a novel idea?  But before we get to Halloween, there's a few more pictures to show.

In Cub Scouts the boys made milk jug masks.  Their leader told me that sometimes she worries about doing crafts with the boys because they might think it's lame.  But I think they love it, especially when they can make things that look gross.

The leaves our falling! Our happy linden tree keeps the kids entertained for a long time.  And it's nice and warm outside, I just can't make them do chores or homework when I know they'll be stuck inside once the really cold weather hits.

Caleb wanted to be a zombie coming up from the leaves.

 

Brushing off the aftermath.

What a happy picture!  I might have to frame that one.

Abby wasn't as sure about getting buried as the rest of the kids, but if they were doing it so could she.  That's pretty much her attitude about everything right now.

Abby prepping for Halloween.

And the pumpkins!  We went up to Idaho for Farris' mom's annual pumpkin party, which we always love.  We were going to stay the whole weekend but Farris was asked to speak in church so we had to leave on Saturday afternoon.  It was probably for the best anyway because Farris wasn't feeling very good and ending up sleeping after he gave his talk and staying home from work on Monday.  

But back to the pumpkins.  Judy always has about forty or more pumpkins for the kids to choose from  and all the cousins have a ball together.  We also did family pictures this year which is great because it's been awhile since we've had them with Farris' side.

And I keep wandering away from the pumpkins.  We carved our jack o lanterns on Monday for Family Home Evening.  Felicity found a pattern with the Headless Horseman riding his horse so she drew that on hers, minus the horseman.  It turned out really good.

Caleb was going for Spooky and wanted to leave the knife in ti.  I vetoed that idea, so he settled on sticking plastic spiders all over it.

Abby was just cute.  I carved in Minion into hers.  A word of advice, unless you're a better artist than me (as most of you are) do a two eyed minion, because the one eyed minion on a pumpkin looks a lot like Mike from Monsters Inc.

And Seth wanted to "marker" his, he just drew a face with the markers.

Joseph using his top as a shield.  Farris carved a vampire for him.

On Halloween morning, I hosted our joy school Halloween party.  The best thing about Halloween is the little kids in their costumes.  Cute.

We played Spider Web, where they kids threw plastic spiders onto the tape web.

Here's our picture of the whole gang.  At least I thought it was until the pictures were done and I realized that Seth had slipped out.  He has his own idea of what he wants to do.

But here's Abigail with her little friends.

Then we played another spider web game where they had to walk along the web collecting spiders until they got to the center where they could pick a prize.  We also had ghosts made out of plastic cups that they had to avoid.  Then we played with pumpkin spice playdough and had treats, like eyeball cookies (Chocolate chip cookies with a mini marshmallow with a dot of food coloring for the pupil) and popcorn with candy corn and apples and pretzels with Pumpkin Pie dip.  Yummy!  I had another craft planned, but the kids were having so much fun with the playdough I just let them go.  Preschoolers are easy to entertain.  Sometimes.

After joy school was done we ate lunch and then hurried over to the school for Joseph's party.  Because I was doing so much for the joy school party, we just brought twister.  But I did it Hallooweenish by calling it Bone Bender and we made up monster names for the colors: Frankenstein's Head, Troll Spit, Alien Guts, and Vampire Drink.  2nd graders like a little gore. 

Right after his party was the Costume Parade.  I like this picture, not just for Joseph, but because the girl following him looks like she's levitating.  What a great costume!  Joseph was a stick figure, after going to through a dozen different ideas that he changed until about five minutes before he left for school.  I had painted a white circle around his face, too, but he rubbed it off.

Caleb was Percy Jackson.  My favorite kind of costumes are from books!

Felicity was a detective, and her friend Becca the Happy Darth Maul is next to her.  Becca is the kind of person who can't stop smiling, even when she's supposed to be an evil Jedi.

After the costume parade we went to the sixth grade classroom for more Twister--err- I mean Bone Bender.  And I'm proud to say that my daughter and her closest friends had no issue with too short of skirts during a twister game.  Oh sixth graders!  You don't have to grow up that fast!

Seth and Abigail were getting bored by the time the third party was done.  We ran home and got dinner in the oven.  I decided to try Dinner in a Pumpkin for the first time.  Pretty tasty, except pumpkins aren't the tastiest of squash.  I think next year we'll do it in a sweet meat instead.

Abby fell asleep sitting up before dinner and when I finally coaxed her awake she was not happy.  Three parties and a costume parade?  Too much Halloween for one little girl.  But I love these pictures, how many Halloweens are really like this?

Oh, and I didn't introduce Seth's costume. It was actually a dragon, but he told people all day long he was an alligator with wings.  And Abby was SuperGirl, complete with a cape (thank you Cindi!) and a tutu (thank you, Tasha!).

By the time we got to the Trunk or Treat, she had recovered her spirits and spent the rest of the night shouting "Hey! Candy! Hey!"  Yes, that's verbatim.

Our alligator and detective.

Stick Figure and Percy Jackson.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Llamas. Yup.

Yes,  llamas, but before we get to that...

 When the kids had their fall break from school we weren't able to do any big trips, but Farris did get Friday off work.  In the afternoon we decided to hike up the back of Timpanogas just as far as the waterfall.  So very pretty, but a little chilly. This was the first time I'd been on this hike and I really liked it.  When my feet heal up Farris and I want to climb the whole thing together.

 There's the waterfall, isn't it beautiful?  And doesn't that picture just look cold?

 Joseph kept telling me, "Mom!  Take my picture here!" I could have had twenty different pictures of him, my funny kid.

 Made it to the waterfall!

 Abigail made it, too.  Lucky girl gets packed everywhere.  But she's the one who really got cold.  Farris hurried down the trail so he could get her back to the van quickly.

 My Caleb, such a sweetie.

 Another view, I love the fall colors mixed with the wispiness of winter.

 Felicity picked leaves to press the whole way. 

 

Goofiness.

 More pictures of my photo hog.

 Sethy.

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 Saturday was the BYU Homecoming parade.  We like to watch it next to the duck pond so the kids can play before it starts.  And those ducks, especially the baby ducks, are well loved.

 Abigail was excited and was running all over.  Thank you Felicity for being responsible enough to watch her while I set up for the parade!

 Farris couldn't help because he was running the 10K (He did great, 1st in his age group).  

 Part way through the parade the kids started chanting with the crowd "Go, BYU!  Go BYU!"  So Abby had to get in on it and of course it was really cute.  She was really saying "Go Bye U! Go Bye U!"  but she was loud and persistant and when a car went by with a couple who had won a service award the woman was impressed and threw her blue pom pom to Abby.  She knows how to work that cuteness angle really well.

 And the Llamas!  Farris is the advisor for the student council in his college and instead of making a float they decided to rent llamas. That's a meeting to sit in on.  Just tossing around ideas and someone randomly says "Hey!  Llamas!"  If you want to rent llamas for any function, the Krishna temple rents them along with a trailer to haul them in.  So Farris borrowed our neighbors truck and picked them up.  They were a hit and were the slowest in the parade because so many people wanted them to stop so they could take pictures with them.  We waited until we were loading the trailer to take pictures.

 The little ones enjoyed sitting on the llamas.

 We decided Caleb and Felicity were too heavy for the llamas.  But I don't know if Caleb would have gotten on one anyway, I love how he's as far away as possible from it.

 And then when we were driving home with the trailer Farris decided to stop by our house to see if any of the neighborhood kids wanted to meet a llama.  When you got'em for the rest of the day, share'em.  So we had our Random Llama Day and many kids were happy.

And now I want to go watch The Emperor's New Groove, 'cause it's just funny.

End of September and Beginning of October AND Seth's birthday!

September means fall soccer here, which means manic time if you have more than one playing.  Last year we had three and it was insane.  This year it was just Caleb, so two games a week, plus practice on Monday (which we only remembered twice. Hehh.).  His coach this year was the dad of his best friend, plus his friend was on his team so he had a lot of fun.  He mostly played defender which he really really likes and he'll chase the ball all over.  Well, except the one night when he wasn't chasing and when we watched closer, we could tell he was limping.  After the game we talked to him and he said his thigh had been hurting since he played basketball that day.  Poor kid, pulled a muscle and didn't want to miss his game so he didn't tell us.  He healed pretty fast, we kept him from the game two days later but then he was back in the next week. 

Yay!  We scored a goal!

 Pinterest has lots of fun ideas for hair, so we tried a new one on Abby one Sunday, you make her hair into a hair bow.  It's really pretty simple, but we only achieve it half the times that we attempt it.  It's all up to Abigail's mood. This is after church and nap, so it's a little frizzed out, but you get the idea.  Here's the link to the instructions: http://www.simplysadiejane.com/2013/07/toddler-hair-bows-tutorial.html

 During Spirit Week at school, they had a Crazy Fashion Day.  We braided Felicity's hair with pipe cleaners and were going to bend them into Cat's Ears, but she had to leave early for Choir so we just tied balloons on the ends of her hair.  It was pretty cute.

 Caleb and Joseph's outfits.  Joseph  was so funny, he wanted to be crazy, but not toooo crazy. They both wore different socks and Caleb wore two different shoes, but Joseph didn't want to do that.  I drew mustaches on them, too, which they liked.

 And after the kids left for school, Seth and Abigail had to have their own mustaches.

 I was able to go to the Clark Planetarium with Felicity's class for a field trip.  Those sixth graders are loud on a bus.  But we had fun, and the planetarium is pretty cool.  This was a scale that would tell you how much you weigh on different planets.  Thank you, but I don't need to add to my anxiety.

 Waiting for the star show to start.  Once the lecturer started tilting the stars around I was about done.  I don't get motion sick very often, but that was not very fun.  Then he did this thing called a Space Rollercoaster.  I was dizzy for about half an hour after.  The kids loved it and jumped up right after.  Us chaperons moved a little slower. 

 Then we went to the moon...

 Clark Planetarium has the biggest ball run I've ever seen, it was about three stories high with knobs you could pull or twist to make the balls go different directions.  Very cool.  Felicity could have spent a lot more time just watching the balls and sending them in all kinds of directions.

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And then it was Seth's birthday!  He's so nonchalant about his birthday, I'm used to kids (well, mostly Felicity) planning their birthdays down to the last detail months in advance, but Seth was pretty calm about it.  One detail was that he wanted a pig on his cake.  He has decided that he loves pigs.  And he didn't want a pig cake, no, he wanted a pig on a cake.  And it had to be a chocolate cake (whew, that's what I like!) and he wanted plain chocolate ice cream.  I asked him what he wanted for his birthday dinner.  He said "Cake and ice cream."  I said "No, Seth, what do you want for dinner?"  He said "Oh. Cheese."  So I said,  "NO, what do you want for dinner, you can have something like pizza or spaghetti, or enchiladas..." and I'm spitting out all kinds of ideas and he's just looking at me like he's trying to figure out what I mean.  He had spent the day at a friends house and they had corn dogs for lunch, so the next thing out of my mouth was "or corn dogs..." which I instantly regretted and came back to the pizza idea, which was what I was hoping he'd want (yes, I manipulate my children).  But he heard corn dogs, and that's what he wanted.  A Birthday Menu by a Five Year Old Boy:  Chocolate Ice Cream, Chocolate Cake, Cheese, and Corn Dogs.  I don't think he meant to have the alliteration.  We changed it a little bit, and came home with corn dogs, french fries, and chicken nuggets.  Plus the cake and ice cream, of course.

I had baked the round cake when I still thought I was making a pig face, but then he insisted on a pig on the cake, so Nicki and I ran to the dollar store to see what we could find.  We combed the store, found nothing, almost came home with a bag of plastic bugs because we figured that he does like bugs and he would like a gross creepy crawly cake, but then we found a box of piggy banks!  Whew!  Thank you Dollar Tree.

Happily opening presents...

He loved the hat and gloves from Melissa and Nicki and I appreciate having more gloves and hats because it's always difficult to fully winter cloth everyone.  Extras are always welcome.

Mom and Dad found some trucks at IKEA that are stackable and switchable, he can make his own truck/tractor creations.  He loved that.

And then the cake came out!

Happy birthday Seth!  You are my sweet kisses giver and first class snuggler.  You are eternally in a fight against the Bad Guys and have an amazing imagination that makes me smile.  You are a great big brother to Abby and play so well with her (well, mostly) and you love your big brothers and sister and want to be just like them.  You're learning so fast right now and growing and maturing, but you still have that mischievous smile with the crazy long eyelashes that melt hearts left and right.  I love you Sethy!

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And we can't have a post without another mischievous little thing.  I rarely leave anything out like this that she can get into, I have experience in the mothering after all!  But she watches and waits and then attacks when we least expect it...like when we're eating dinner.  At least it was flour and not baking soda.  Although she might have stopped sooner if she tasted that.