Jack-O-Lantern Chaos!

As is tradition, we went over to Jennifer's to carve Jack-O-Lanterns. We keep adding people and kids to this tradition and it turns into jack-o-lanterns and pumpkin guts everywhere!
In order to speed the process along (and make it easier on myself), I cleaned out 2 of the pumpkins earlier in the day. That left the third one for picture taking as it was cleaned out.
Notice how high up their hands are so as not to actually touch inside the pumpkin! This next picture is typical of my kids trying to avoid touching any sort of pumpkin guts while trying to satisfy their mother's request to take one spoonful out. (Cole is trying to get anything from the very top that doesn't require his hand to actually go in the pumpkin and Emily is frantically trying to get off the one orange pumpkin string that got on her hand! Oh well, maybe one day!)
Thankfully Chad is not afraid of a few pumpkin guts and he finished cleaning the thing out.
Cole, "Addy, you might as well learn now. Mom has to get her obligatory picture."
Addy, "Fine. Can I just pretend to touch the pumpkin and call it good?"
Cole, "No Addy, Mom wants you to actually touch the stuff." (Notice the fear in her eyes!)
Addy, "Can I just chew on the spoon that was used to clean the guts out, while watching carefully to make sure that nothing touches me?"
(I have discovered that I can easily take care of my young ones on pumpkin carving day at Jennifer's if you put them on the chair and surround the area with pumpkin carvers and pumpkin stuff, they refuse to get down just in case they might actually touch something yucky. Addy was no exception. I think she sat in the chair for an hour. The longest she has sat in one place in a long time!)
I do have to say that finally my older two did get into the designing and carving part of the pumpkin. (Maybe there's hope for the rest of the process.) Cole and Emily got paper out to carefully design what they wanted their jack-o-lanterns to look like.
Then, they brought their pumpkins to me so I could draw what they wanted on the actual pumpkin.
Then, they took them to Chad so he could help carve them. They did carefully monitor us to make sure we were doing it properly!
Like I said, there were lots of other carvers in the house.
Cole thinks he is a cousin too, so we can't leave out our buddy Brock!
Somehow, Chad and I ended up helping some of the big kids also. Chad helped carve and I helped clean out! (Apparently by cleaning out my pumpkins earlier, that freed me up to clean out some for the big kids that don't like to touch the pumpkin guts either. Maybe there isn't any hope for my kids later in life!)
Thankfully, Kim was there to entertain the little ones after their pumpkins were finished. (Funny, I guess that means she also avoided her hands getting dirty!)
And don't forget the yummy? treats. Emily sure enjoyed them. Apparently she doesn't mind getting her mouth dirty if it's for a good cupcake!
The finished products don't look too bad, even if I do say so myself!
Baby steps. This year, designing. Next year touching the insides!!

Preparing for Halloween

Ever since Emily went to someone's house who had Halloween decorations up, she has been begging me to get ours out. I put her off for as many days as I could, but finally, I relented. And, I was glad I did in the end. They had a great time and it's always fun to have some holiday decorations to get you excited!
Emily helped me put most of the decorations up when Cole was at school and Addy was napping, but as soon as Cole was home, he wanted to help. So we filled up some pumpkin bags with newspapers.
Addy decided decorating was too much work, so she decided she would just lounge!
As usual, we had a few extra helpers! But they all had a great time!

What Happened to Fall?

Ok, I didn't realize we were going straight from summer to winter this year! Two weeks ago it was 80 degrees. Yesterday it snowed so much that we still have snow on the ground today. I really like fall and I kind of miss it.
Emily and her friend loved that they could eat fresh snow again! However, Emily learned the hard way that if you don't have gloves on, snow is very cold.
Addy wasn't sure what to think. She liked looking at it, but she did not like when the snowflakes landed on her or when she touched the snow on the ground.

Las Vegas Here We Come!

A few weekends ago, we journeyed to Las Vegas to see our cute new cousin Blake. (A funny story about the name. After Katie had her baby, I told Cole what she had named him. He looked at me and with a disgusted look on his face, said, "that's a girl's name!" Apparently the only Blake he knows is a girl named Blake in his class. There are a lot of names that I associate with a girl, but Blake is not one of them.)
Along the way, we made several stops.
For as many years as we have been going to Las Vegas, Chad has always commented that we should stop at the Cove Fort Historical Site that is along the way. However, we have never stopped because we have either just gotten our momentum going or we are so close to home that we just want to hurry home. Chad insisted that this trip we were finally going to stop, and I just rolled my eyes at him. Which of course guaranteed that we were stopping!
It was actually significantly better than I anticipated. Having grown up in Missouri with all of the Church History sites there, I have grown to love the history of the church and the great sacrifice the early saints made. Cove Fort is yet another example of this.
The next stop on our journey was St. George to visit Chad's cousin and his family in their fantastic new house. I always forget how much fun our kids have together! They had a great time jumping on the tramp, playing who knows what games they invented, and having a sleep over in the family room. Then, the next morning they built a stroller for Addy out of toys.
Finally we made it to Las Vegas! Cousin Blake and cousin Weston, here we come! (I think both Addy and Weston were ready for naptime in this picture!)
The kids had a great time seeing the new baby, and loved seeing Weston again. Weston was only slightly less enthralled with Addy this time. Blake has replaced her some, but he still liked to talk to her and watch her. Addy on the other hand, wasn't all that excited about a new baby stealing her attention! Emily loved baby Blake so much that when Grandma asked her what she wanted for Christmas, Emily told her that she wanted a baby brother just like Blake! When Grandma quit laughing she told Emily that she would have to discuss that with her mother, and I referred her to her father!
Did I mention that coincidentally? the BYU-UNLV football game was the same weekend? How did that happen that Katie blessed her baby the same weekend of that game? Oh the powers of persuasion of my husband!
It's a good thing Chad enjoyed the game, otherwise I might question why we even went.
This is how Emily spent most of the game. (I think this is why she rarely gets to go!)
Although she did enjoy getting to see her "flying" Grandma and reminding her how much a 3-year-old can talk and squirm!
And this is how Cole spent the 2nd half of the game. (In his defense he was sick for a good part of the next week.)
What, this Grandma LIKES to go to BYU games?
All in all, we had a fun weekend! I am sure we will come visit again soon!

Sidewalk? Chalk

Sidewalk chalk is for making beautiful artwork on the sidewalk, right?
Then why does it end up on our hands?
And feet?
And clothes?
And butt?
And mouth?

Kidisms

It seems like my kids have been making me laugh a lot lately, so I thought I would share some of their funniest moments.
Cole is turning into quite the little sports maniac, just like his Dad. Of course, it's starting to backfire on us a little bit. I feel sorry for his wife already!
One night Cole fell asleep watching Monday Night Football. The next morning, he came out of his room and declared that instead of watching the usual PBS cartoons that we watch in the morning while we all wake up, (I push those because I can pretend they are slightly more educational then Spongebob!) that he needed to watch Sportscenter to see what happened in the game after he fell asleep. So he turned on the TV and went right to the correct channel (that is also a little scary that he knows the ESPN channels at age 5!). Emily was not happy about this, so I tried to tell Cole who won and the score, so we could get on to the educational cartoons, but that was not enough for him. He needed to see the "highlights".
A different night when Chad was at scouts, Cole was watching a football game on tv. When Chad got home, Cole was so excited to tell him that the #20 team was playing the #2 team (he's really into monitoring the rankings lately to see how BYU is doing.) Chad said, yeah I know Oklahoma is playing Texas. Cole said, "No Dad, it is not that game, it's a different one." (He also knows all about BYU's opponents, so since Oklahoma played BYU earlier in the season, he can recognize their name and uniforms.) The two of them proceeded to argue about this for like 5 minutes because Chad was sure he knew more than Cole and Cole insisted that his Dad was wrong. Then, the game scrolled across the bottom of the screen and it was like South Carolina and Alabama or something and Cole said, "see Dad there is the game, it's not Oklahoma." Sure enough, those rankings were on a different poll than the one Chad had seen. I laughed for like an hour. Cole already is matching his Dad in sports knowledge!

I think Emily is 3 going on 16. Not a good sign already.
The other day she stayed home from preschool because we had some virus at our house and I didn't want to spread it (thankfully it didn't end up being the swine flu so I quarantined my kids unnecessarily). Emily loves preschool and was very distraught that she was having to miss it. So I told her that I would call her teacher and have her send the worksheets and projects home with her friend so we could do them and she wouldn't miss anything. She got a look of panic in her eyes and said, "But Mom, what if you don't know the color." I explained to her that I was pretty sure that I knew my colors and could teach her. Then she said, "But Mom, what if you don't know the letter." I informed here that I was pretty good with letters and I could probably figure it out. Then she said, "But Mom, what if you don't know the shape." By that time, my patience was running out and I told her that I had taught shapes to lots and lots of kids over the years and I was pretty sure I could teach her." She of course was not satisfied with this and looked at me and said, "Mom, if you don't know you can just call my teacher and ask." At this point, I gave up and agreed to call her teacher with any questions. I thought I was supposed to be smart at least until she got into Kindergarten. Oh well.

Addy is a garbage gut. She likes to eat. We are not sure how she is still a runt.
One of Addy's favorite foods is goldfish crackers. Anytime she sees a bag, she tries everything she can to get the bag. In fact, we were in the grocery store one day, and she pulled the bag out of the cart and tried to chew it open. Not too long ago, we were in church with cousin Weston who was sitting on my lap. This did not make Addy very happy to begin with, but then when I pulled out some goldfish to give to Weston, she was even madder. Pretty soon, Emily handed Weston a picture that she had drawn for him. Weston set his goldfish down on my lap so he could properly appreciate and look at Emily's artwork. This was just the opening that Addy was looking for, so she dashed down the row as fast as she could and snatched the goldfish off my lap. Then, she scampered back to the safety of her dad's lap, all without Weston seeing her. A minute or so later, Weston finished looking at Emily's picture and reached down to pick up his goldfish. He started to get a panicked look as he lifted his legs to look underneath and all around trying to find his lost fish. He finally looked up at me with a sad look and said, "Fish?" In the meantime, Addy was sitting happily on Chad's lap munching on the goldfish, with a smug grin on her face. Victory was hers!