More Pre Halloween FUN!

The younger kids had no school the day before Halloween, but poor Ashlyn still had to go. It's hard to miss school in Junior High. But Dreamworks did their big yearly Halloween Family Lunch. The kids always look forward to this.

Last year we waited in line for close to an hour to get fake eyelashes on. So this year Leah made sure we did this first thing. She picked some pretty long ones which were super cute, but within a couple of hours she was ready to take them off.

Carter loves all the activities. They had candy necklace making, trick or treating, cookie decorating and more. He was one happy boy.

Brandon was most excited to discover that Dreamworks bought the rights to Captain Underpants and are currently working on the first movie. 

They aren't my favorite book series, but they get him excited about reading and up until the most recent few, were at least acceptable (despite the constant potty humor). The newest books crossed the line on their appropriateness for kids (in my opinion) and I asked Brandon to please not read them. Hopefully he'll listen to me.

I'm sure the movie will be harmless, especially since it will just be based off of the first book.

That afternoon we did the dreaded pumpkin carving. I say dreaded because it usually turns into a big fight about who gets to do what and no one really being able to do anything anyway, cuz they're too little and it's too hard. BUT…..this year surprised me. I guess the kids really are getting older. The girls worked together on one. Me and Carter worked on one together and Brandon had his own which he cut three faces into. They were each able to do it themselves (for the most part, minus Carter) and it actually was a lot of fun. So here's to having older kids! Yahoo!

Plus I think they turned out pretty cute!

This is one of Brandon's faces he designed himself.

Carter wanted an angry bird pumpkin.

And the girls had a bit of trouble with their pumpkins eyes so they ended up larger than they had wanted them. But I think it gave it a kind of "Nightmare before Christmas" look and I thought it was cute.

I tried putting glow sticks in the bottom to make them light up at night, but it didn't work that well. Next year I'll go back to candles.

Carter's Halloween Class Party and The Freaky Fright Night Festival

Carter had a cute party the last day of school before Halloween and lucky me got to be there to help.

He is just loving school. They played this cute game where they had to push the pumpkin around with a broom stick. All of his little classmates were cheering him on. It was adorable.

Painting is one of his favorite things to do. He brings me many many….MANY pictures home on a daily basis.

Decorating Halloween cookies of which he actually did eat some of it. There's a first time for everything.

That night we went to the Freaky Fright Night Festival at school. They kids always LOVE this and look forward to it so much. I just think it's one big stress mess. Keeping track of four kids in the dark when they have costumes on and are hard to see is NOT my idea of fun. But we go every year, and I just deal with it. Leah usually teams up with her bestie Gracie and since she has no siblings, her parents don't mind keeping an eye on Leah as well. Brandon found his buddy Tomi and Carter was super excited to see a couple of his friends from class as well. I was just glad when Paul was able to get there to help me keep a better watch on these four kiddos who all want to run in different directions. Thankfully, Ashlyn is older now and not too into it, so she was a big help to me.

Carter with Brady (middle) and James (left).

The Before and After

Not much motivates this girl to get her room cleaned up. Seriously, it is disgusting most of the time. I can't even stand going in there. She does clean it from time to time (after much nagging on my part), but it is rarely deep cleaned (unless I do it). Well, miracle of miracles and she decided one day to get it cleaned. Probably had something to do with the fact that Gracie was coming to stay with us for four days (wink, wink). Ashlyn chipped in and helped her, cuz she's a nice sister like that, and voila….a few days later…..

It is beautiful. Wonder if it will last after Gracie leaves. Haha

Ward Fall Festival

My kids always look the cutest and most put together the first time we put Halloween costumes on. By the time Halloween rolls around, the costumes are beat up and I'm tired of doing makeup. Lol. 

I think they all chose good this year.

My fearless Captain America.

My protective Ninja.

My silly monster who is all about being happy and having fun.

She also loves the camera.

My sweet 50's girl who puts up with my picture taking.

But would rather do anything, than pose for a camera shot.

Paul didn't dress up, so he didn't get in the family shot.

 The girls with a few of their friends. I wish I would have taken more pictures, but I ended up being a judge for the chili at the last minute because the Sister Missionaries were late. 

Looks like Gracie caught herself a monster. Good cop!

A couple of school awards

Carter got his first ever School Award. He was so excited and quickly told me afterward that he was going to be really good in school so that he can get another "reward". Lol. I said, you mean AWARD. And he was like, yeah…that! I want another one. I didn't have the heart to tell him that unless he's in AR, most kids only get one class award a year. But I guess you never know. Maybe he'll get the Principal's Award this year. He would be thrilled.

Leah got an award the same day so it was cool to get to go back to school for hers. She got a reading award, which is amazing considering how she hates reading so much. She works really hard and is determined to not let anything get her down. I'm proud of her.

Brandon and his crazy obsession with ritz crackers and jelly. I sure wish he would put some peanut butter on it so it would be semi good for him, but no luck so far.

Some happenings around here

I got to take these two sweet Sister Missionaries to the Temple for the morning. They get to go when it's their birthday month. It was fun to be able to be the one that can take them. They were so excited to get to go. It was cute to watch them.

Carter raking up leaves from our big CA "Fall" time.

Brandon doing flips on the swing and giving me a heart attack. 

Becky and I went to the Stake Halloween Youth Dance as Chaperones. I was a deviled egg. Get it…lol. I thought I was pretty funny. It was fun hanging out for the evening. We probably embarassed ourselves, but oh well! 

Carter got hit with a block in the eye and it gave him the first black eye any of my kids have ever had. So sad. It lasted for WEEKS! Poor guy. I was just thankful it hit him right below the eye, not any higher. TK is apparently a dangerous place to be. Thankfully it was just an accident and no kid had intentionally hit him in the eye. That would have been a whole different problem. 

The weather is cooling off which means soccer practice is more enjoyable for the kids. The girls were cloud watching instead of doing their homework. But hey, they weren't fighitng or whining so I was okay with it.

The church had a special live event with "The Piano Guys" and all the youth came over to watch it at our house. It was so good. I really loved it. I hope the youth did too. 

YWIE

We had our yearly Young Women's in Excellence yesterday. This is the first one I have ever been in charge of though. Thank goodness for amazing counselors who are creative and fun and willing to be at the church late the night before our event setting up and laughing about silly things. Sure love those two ladies.

We had an olympic theme and played "events" for each of the YW values. The girls brought things they have been working on this past year and Bishop ended with a great talk on Virtue. We gave the girls "gold medals" to remind them that there are no Silver or Bronze medals to Heavenly Father. They are each special and important and valued and deserve the "Gold". 

I think it went really well. I at least had fun anyway!

Next up on the YW schedule…Our Walk to the Temple in November.

Fall Break 2015

Ashlyn had only two days off for Fall Break, so we weren't really gonna go anywhere or do anything amazing. But then at the last minute I decided to take the kids up to Big Bear just for one night so that we could at least feel like we did SOMETHING. Paul was on mandatory over time so I knew he wouldn't be able to come, which was sad, but we are always grateful for how hard he works for our family!

It was about a 2 hour drive up there on a pretty windy mountain road and we found out, rather unfortunately, that Leah gets car sick. Luckily I had just told her like two minutes earlier (because she was telling me her stomach hurt) that if she needed to throw up, to do it into her blanket instead of on the floor. So being the smart girl she is, she did just that. A blanket is MUCH easier to clean than the floor of a minivan. 

The weather was crisp and very cool especially compared to the high 90's we were still having at home so it was really fun to get to bring jackets and feel ike it was autumn. We first walked all around The Village, taking pictures with every scarecrow we saw, per Carter's request. There were LOTS of them. 

We got some duck and bird food and went down to the lake to feed the ducks. No birds actually got any food. There were TONS of ducks and they were very greedy. 

This one even knew how to beg at my feet. Hilarious!

We went over to the Alpine Zoo, which is a tiny little zoo up in Big Bear, but we got to see two presentations. One on the bobcat and one on bears. All the animals in this zoo have been rescued from either homes (where people thought they would make good pets) or from roads, accidents, backyards of people's houses when they got to friendly with people, etc. Basically all the animals there would have otherwised died or been killed if they were not at this zoo. 

We had fun walking around and seeing different sorts of animals not really found in our own LA zoo.

For dinner we headed back to The Village for some yummy pizza. Even Carter can now enjoy pizza with us. So it's really getting so much more fun and easier to take them all out. Brandon is still working on his manners, but he hasn't embarrassed me TOO bad yet…well actually he has. I'm just forgiving I guess and keep taking him out.

That night the kids played games in the hotel game room and we watched some cartoons and called it a night.

In the morning we hung around the hotel, had breakfast and packed up. Then we headed out for a little more fun. We stopped at a Goldminers place and I let the kids pick out something to "mine" for. They all agreed this was their favorite part, which was good because it was FAR more expensive than it should have been for what we ended up with. 

Lunch at Subway where Carter is once again enjoying something other than cookie letters and milk. Yahoo!

And then last on our list was a boat tour around the lake. I might have pushed them a bit too much because a certain 7 year old boy who looks rather cheerful in this picture was basically a HUGE grumpy pants and if it weren't for the fact that the boat wouldn't have gone out unless we were on it (they needed 15 passengers to take it out and it was definitely slow season at Big Bear), I might have bagged it and done something else….like go home. But we got on and while me and the girls enjoyed it, it was a bit too long and not entertaining enough for the boys.

But they did get to take a turn driving the boat and they all thought that was pretty cool!

After our boat tour, I was pretty much exhausted so we headed home and made it back by evening with enough time to shower and relax and then head to bed.

Ashlyn was back at school on Wednesday, so the rest of the week was just me and the three littles. We pretty much just hung around the house on Wednesday and recooped. I was going to take them to Magic Mountain on Thursday, but we got there and realized it was closed except for the weekends. Bummer. So we used our free mini golf passes and still had a fun day.

I even let them do a few arcades and we stopped for ice cream on the way home. 

Friday was the hottest day of the week, so we invited some friends over and had lunch and swimming at our pool. Unfortunately, the pool is no longer heated so even though it was almost 100 degrees that day, the pool was pretty chilly and the kids didn't do a ton of swimming. But they still had fun running around and playing together so it was a good day.

And that's a wrap. Until next break…..Now, back to school!