When the kids get the camera

After downloading pictures from my camera, I found these surprises! I should learn to expect it when I leave the camera where the kids can reach it. This is only about 10% of them, but some were actually rather run to see, so I'm sharing.

We decided this was too many toys to have upstairs at one time, we took most of the big ones downstairs to come up occasionally, instead of being left out






Wow... The kids made a HUGE mess of the toys! In reality it looks like this most days, and then gets cleaned up before bed time. It's amazing no toys/bones have been broken with all this stuff lying around... I can't wait for summer to come when they can play outside again and my house doesn't get destroyed daily!!

Ward Halloween Party

The ward had it's annual Halloween party this weekend. We pretended to get the kids dressed up - they only sorta cooperated with that part. I guess the kids aren't really into dress-up yet. It probably helped that we don't really have any costumes, so we faked it with what we already had on hand.

Jason in a witch hat
Shelly in a dress-up dress with butterfly wings. I'm not sure what she's supposed to be - and neither is she. She told people about 3 different things all night, from a butterfly to a princess with wings... I don't get it either.
Maybe next year we should put some effort and money into getting actual costumes! :)

Grape Harvesting Time

It was time to pick the grapes. They were finally ripe, and it was time to get something done with them. So, outside we headed with some bowls to gather grapes. The kids came outside with us. Some were more helpful than others... :)

Emily 'helped' by sitting by the bowl, and taking them out and putting them back in

Ethan just played

She's helping put them back in

Shelly helped pick grapes. She was the only actually helpful kid

Then she would cradle them in her arms until she put them gently in the bowl

Jason didn't help either, but Ethan helped keep him occupied and out of the way

Cradling the grapes...


Don't worry, we thoroughly washed the grapes before processing them...


Here's Shelly helping

She was really into helping

Emily decided that the boys were having more fun than the girls and abandoned us for the toys

Corn Maze

We had fun taking the kids to a Corn Maze. They had a lot of fun running through the maze!

Heading to the maze!

Which way should we go kids?

There was a fun play area before the maze started.

Shelly is posing in some strange way that makes sense to her... I just took the shot she asked me too.

There were several of these, but it was harder than it should have been to get all three kids looking out at the same time.



Peek-a-Boo Shelly! (as a bat)

And again as a ghost...

Jason the cat

Two of the three! Jason is doing his best to see how Emily looks. Pretty sure he never really saw.

Can you see Shelly trying to peek her head through the top?

Hi Emmie Sue!

We were over these by then, but Shelly still wanted another picture. I probably should have had her be the bride, and not the groom... :)


The kids walking through the corn maze. Shelly is holding out her hand so she can follow the wall that her hand would be touching. It's a trick I learned from my dad that has all but ruined mazes for me... Shelly seemed to enjoy it though!

At the end of the maze there was a great play area! The kids had lots of fun here!

Shelly and Emily


This was great! Shelly was talking to the animals and I'm just glad I got it on video...

There was even a room of crazy mirrors


Jason had a lot of fun with the mirrors.

Awesome huge Jack-o-Lantern!

Shelly is peeking out, not that you can tell... Or is that Jason??


Jason read a book in Talking Time about a pumpkin who said 'boo boo'. He loves to tell you what a pumpkin says.

Emily in the 'tunnel.' She loved this toy!

Visit to Cedar for the Homecoming Parade

We went to Cedar for a visit and it happened to be on Homecoming Weekend. The kids had lots of fun playing with all of Aunt Grandma's toys in her awesome house.

Balls!

Aunt Grandma making the kids chocolate milk. She quickly became the favorite in the house.


Aunt Grandma was supposed to be in the parade that SUU puts on, and she invited the kids to join her.
On the 'float' (it was a trailer pulled by a tractor)

Wave! Emily got it.

Shelly catches on

Apparently it was such a long wait to get started that Shelly lost it and started to get grumpy. She opted to walk until they caught up with us - almost at the end of the route.

Jason and Emily were fine hanging out with complete strangers (I'm sure Cindy knew who they were and trusted them with the kids, but the kids had no idea who those people were)

Katie, Mark and I had headed off before the parade started to see some of the other floats, and then we were hungry, so we walked back to Katie's place to find food. Then back to the parade route to see everything in action (and apparently find Shelly) and then we followed Cindy's float to the end of the parade so we could catch a ride on the tractor back to the starting point, but it never stopped and we missed it. We had to walk back. Cindy had taken my phone so we could call if either of us needed anything, but without telling us she had gone home and switched phones before the parade... We tried calling her to see what the plan was, but for some reason she never answered my phone - which she had left at the house when she picked up hers... I think all in all we walked a few miles that day. For Shelly's sake (or mine...) we stopped in the shade on the way back for a while just to catch out breath. Shelly found a map on campus that she wanted to read to see how to get back. We let her lead us, mostly because it was straight up the road for several blocks before turning onto Cindy's street. It was good to get back to a house with water and a comfy place to sit! All things considered it was a rather fun day.

Mark's joining the Guard

It's official. Mark heads up to Salt Lake tomorrow morning to be sworn in. Hopefully we'll find out when he ships out for basic then too. That will be nice to know. We have heard that he will be an officer with a field artilary unit based in Filmore. That's just about everything we know so far. Oh, and that there's officer training sometime in January. Don't know when in January though, so we're not sure that basic will be done by then, but I guess we'll find all that out tomorrow.