Trick or Treat

We had a pretty good conversation in the car about what you say on Halloween today. Vincent then told a friend that you say “Frick or Freat” (He still has some sounds to work on) and then “freank you”. Then he told them that you don’t say, “Give me some candy!” They didn’t understand that he was explaining what you don’t say. He’s one excitable kid.

As soon as school was out today, we were on the move. We picked up the girls and narrowly avoided a fight in the parking lot with the lady who thought I should back up into traffic to go in the wrong way to park my car because she was going out the entrance and was telling me that I was going the wrong way-and it was pretty obvious since the parking spots are the diagonal kind that face one way….parking lots at the school scare me, mostly because people just don’t seem to GET it. Like dropping off kids for school, people will park in the drive up area and leave their cars. Dude, if you have to get out to drop off your kid, park in a parking spot. I just don’t understand why some people have to make it more difficult (and also more dangerous for the kids). Rant over….for now. We’ll see if she tries to tell me to go in the exit again tomorrow. If you have to back up more than once to get out of the parking spot, you aren’t doing it right.

We headed home for a quick change and then off to ballet where the ballerinas were all dressed up. Then home for a quicker change of five people to get to the Trunk-or-Treat at the church.
And a picture because I had to have one (or several to try and get them all to look.)
We got there just in time (but we weren’t the last ones) and I took the kids while Andy and our buddy Nathan passed out our candy. They caught up to us after they ran out and we divided girls and boys.
I’m a baker and Andy is fire (his eyes were open for the first picture, but it was all blurry, so this is what we have.)
When the trunk-or-treat was done, we went over to a friend’s house for her homemade chicken noodle soup (which was AMAZING and had big homemade noodles) and homemade rolls and apple slices dipped in caramel and sugar cookies (I gave her some of mine too.) It was great to visit with them and eat yummy, warm food.
Abby and one of our babysitters at the house party. They decorated and everything.
Then we were off to Kennewick to trick-or-treat at Andy’s boss’s house (one year we didn’t go there and they called us at 9:30 to see what happened to us….we haven’t missed since.) and then to Andy’s parent’s house. We normally go to the lady who lives next door too, but this year she wasn’t home, so the girls were a little sad about that. It was nice to visit with George and Shirley. Abby and Vincent both took catnaps on the way from Richland to Kennewick (about 15 minutes) and kept sleeping until we got to Andy’s parent’s house.
George talking to Vincent about Christmas presents already. He’s got to make his list early, I guess. Olivia wanted 29 chapsticks in a suitcase a few weeks ago, but now she wants earplugs.
Shirley with Abby. Abby was being silly.Vincent pretending he was dead.Then we came home and the kids looked through their candy to pick 15 pieces that they wanted to make sure stayed just for them to have.

Elizabeth helped Vincent pick his. Olivia was very methodical about her candy.The rest will go into two bowls (one for them and one for us) and they will still have plenty of it. Candy doesn’t affect our kids like it does some kids because we give them sugar year-round. Eating candy is just something they do all the time.

They went right to sleep (except Abby who is up and ready to play) and now it’s time to go and pick a few of my favorite candies to eat. I love Halloween!

Primary Program

Highlights of our Primary Program included:
-Olivia’s incredibly fast saying of her part “He (Jesus) protected them and blessed them.”

-Olivia’s class of four girls singing the loudest and with the most enthusiasm.

-The cute little sunbeam who started talking about how he fell down at his brother’s school instead of his part.

-Elizabeth’s long part about how she prepared to be baptized.

-One of the five year old’s repeated “That’s It” after his part because that’s what his teacher told him.

-Beautiful Hymn’s sung by wonderful kids.

-Several children who shared their talent by playing the piano to accompany the kids.

-Both Grandma’s and a Grandpa who came to watch.

-Vincent singing with the kids from our row. (He know’s most of the songs pretty well too!)

-And finally, our favorite, the five year old who whistled through EVERY song instead of singing. A little disruptive, yes, but also funny…..at least for the first song or two. He’s a character.

-And lest I forget, we got to the church and Andy had to turn around and take Abby back home for a change. She had a bit of a wardrobe malfunction. Eww.

I can hardly wait until next year to see what Vincent does. In nursery today, he was showing his teachers his Diego underwear.

Vincent has keep his underwear (Andy calls them shorts) dry all week and also told us and has run to the bathroom anywhere we went the past week and a half. (Cold showers work!) And he has even kept his pull ups dry during naptime and woke up dry several days, although he did skip a few more naps this week too. Hooray. I thought I’d never see the end of that messy stuff for him.

Fifth Annual Halloween Party

We love having or going to parties with just grown ups, so we decided to start our own several years ago. We had some friends who threw a Valentine’s Day party and Christmas and Easter are pretty well covered without even more to do, so we picked Halloween. It’s so much fun!

This year the kids wanted to have a little party with their friends too, so I said we could do that (I’m crazy. I know it.) Since this was the first one, we couldn’t invite everyone, but we did invite a lot of kids, especially ones whose ages line up with our kids). Andy ended up having Nutcracker practice from 12-5pm, so I was very happy when a few moms stayed to help me. The girls (not Vincent because his birthday is in January, so he’s not a sunbeam yet) had Primary Program practice in the morning, so we had their party from 3-5pm and ours from 7-10pm. Our kids went to someone else’s house to be babysat and had a fun time over there.

The girls prepared some things for games for the party in the last few weeks. Elizabeth has always been excellent at bossing people around (I mean that in a nice way), so she’d get everyone’s attention and tell them what we were doing next or where to go or that we’d start the next thing when everyone is sitting. Yeah, I just counted using my pictures and there were 25 kids and two babies at our party. Crazy.

We had several witches, superheroes, and ninjas. We also had Mario, A Transformer, Referee, Fairy, Mulan, Angel, Puppy, Ballerina, Cat, Pirate, and a Clown.

Click on picture to see it bigger.
(I love Google’s Picasa. It freaked me out a little at the beginning that it took all the picture files from my computer, but now I love that they are all online in case something happens to them from my computer-although Andy backs it up pretty frequently with an external hard drive from work and we make DVD’s of the files on here occasionally-and I can edit pictures there-lightening dark ones, cropping, making collages-for free. I recommend it.)

Here are some of the games the kids played.
The games we played were:
*Pass the Pumpkin (Like Hot Potato mixed with Musical Chairs) The kids really liked this.
*Blowing up Balloons (and then I tied and wrote names on pretty much all of them. I don’t really recommend this one for such a big group.)
*Halloween word game for the big kids (making as many words as they could)
*Yarn Spiderweb for the little kids (They didn’t really get it until the end…)
*Sugar Cookie decorating
*Snack eating
*Foam Jack-o-Lanterns (used a small foam pumpkin and they drew pictures on it)
*Costume Contest divided by age (0-3, 4-7, 8-10+)

*Guessing jars

Costume winners were the cute puppy for the little group, the fairy for the middle group, and there was a tie for the big kids with the referee and the ninja with red on his tunic.

The parents reported at church this morning that their kids all had a great time, so I guess it was a success. Will we do it again? I don’t know yet. Probably.

Anyone else want to do it instead of me????

We had a few hours between parties to clean up, feed the kids, and take them to the babysitter’s house. My plan was to rest a little since I was up late finishing party planning and as soon as I laid down at 3:30am, Abby woke up until 4am. (I know you all look shocked that I was up that late, but normally I’m up until 2am anyway. And Saturday night I went to bed early at 1am and slept straight through until the kids running through the house yelling woke me up at 9am.)

Our Grown up Costume Party was a hit. We had some pretty great costumes. Which one is YOUR favorite?
The adult costumes were an Angel with Spiderman, a Mummy (that didn’t last long before he fell apart…), Fire (Andy) with a Baker (NaDell), Ken and Barbie (who just had a baby six weeks ago and looks that amazing!), Jack-o-Lantern with a “Generic Costume”, a Witch with a Ceiling Fan, a King with Sharsha (from the movie Willow), one non-costumed couple-they normally dress up, The Three Little Bears, Death Bevan with a Japanese Bride, Dog the Bounty Hunter with Beth, a Prince with a Frog, Flower children with a Honey Do man, and Emperor Palpatine (and I failed to take a standing alone picture of our Angel and Devil set, so they have their own picture below:Ken and Barbie won our Couple’s Costume Contest and Death Bevan won for our Individual Costume Contest.

We didn’t play the little kid games, but we did play MarioKart, Apples 2 Apples, Whonu?, Eye to Eye, ate some yummy food, and had a lot of laughs (mostly at Ken’s pants).

It was a pretty awesome party and my fruity punch was delicious too.

Now, for the REAL Halloween. We are going to have a fabulous time. School for the girls and I get to help in their classes while Abby and Vincent play at a friend’s house, resting in the afternoon, then picking the girls up from school, taking Olivia and her friend to ballet, coming home, eating sandwiches, dressing up, Trunk-or-Treating, going to a friend’s family Halloween night Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup party, and then going to Kennewick to visit Andy’s parents. That will be a full and busy night, but that’s how we like it around here.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Getting a Little Country

The first grade hoedown (Elizabeth’s is at that link) was tonight for Olivia, so we went and watched her sing and dance with her class. This is the kids in her class who came tonight. They took a group picture at the end, but it just didn’t work right between the kids being way too wide to people sitting at tables in front of the group, it just didn’t work, so I was a little bummed.
Olivia is in the red shirt with her jean skirt.
The first graders pick someone to do one of the dances with them and Olivia picked Elizabeth so she wouldn’t have to teach her anything. But then they moved all the way to the middle of the room where I couldn’t take a nice picture. Pictures are hard in the school.
Elizabeth can take them alright though, I guess. She took this one of Abby and I.Abby was trying to take the hat off, but it looks like she’s acting like a cowgirl.I wanted a picture of everybody in our family but me, so I took this one and the color is even decent. Nearly everyone looks pretty good too. I told them all to smile and most of them even listened.
Now nearly all of them don’t look good, but one of them does. That’s the way the cookie crumbles, sweetheart. And as much as people say you can photoshop pictures, no one ever really does it…
Here is Olivia with her saint of a teacher. She’s a long term sub in their class while the regular teacher is on extended maternity leave until after Christmas.
They have a pretty wild class this year. There are several kids who just need one on one attention and it’s impossible to do that with 25 kids and one teacher. I really think a few of them would have benefited from redoing kindergarten. One that I’m thinking of put glue stick all over his hand on Monday and right after I made him go and wash his hands, he came back and tried to do it again. So frustrating….and I’m only there for 45 minutes a week!

At least it’s not my kid who’s the problem. Not Olivia. Never. We were talking about refocuses (that’s what they call it at our school when a kid gets in trouble) and Elizabeth and Olivia both said they haven’t ever got one and NEVER EVER will. That’s right. Be good girls…..and would you please start listening the first time at home while you’re at it?
We’ll see how Vincent does at school! I’m sure I’ll get my share of those refocus papers when he starts, although he is getting so much better and no more accidents this week. He’s really getting it!

Costumes at the Fire Station

This little boy had the option of being several different things for Halloween this year and wanted to be Batman most. Andy’s cousins passed down this outfit, so that was easy enough, but when I was going through our dress up box last night to look for it, I realized that it’s just the outfit and not the hat/mask or anything, so Andy and I worked together to make this for him. Andy drew and cut out the shape of the hat (he can’t wear masks to our Trunk or Treat anyway) and then I used some contact paper to make it more sturdy. Unfortunately, I let the girls use the last of my black paper on the decorations they are making for our house for our weekend of parties, so we had to use blue. I thought about sewing a hat, but discovered that somehow I had NO plain black fabric. We also made a little bat weapon thing. You know the thing Batman throws? It’s done the same way as the hat, but with velcro on the back of it and on Vincent’s belt. Also on his best is his Buzz Lightyear laser.

Thursday morning we went with our mommy swap preschool of four three year old boys and their two little sisters and two little brothers (they each have one) and went to the fire station to talk to the fire fighters. We decided it would be extra fun to have them dress up too.

He was kind of excited about this costume!
He was greeting his hero friends (aka Buzz and Superman) at the fire station. A duck was also there, but he’s not in this picture.
Here Vincent is in front showing the firefighters his weapon. That’s what he called it. And you can see his ducky friend here. We have some friends who have a stuffed duck just like this costume for all three of their boys and the stuffed ducks are about that big too! This is a fun group of boys!
Vincent trying on the fireman jacket. This is the captain’s jacket.
Vincent loved climbing in the truck!
He liked the ambulance as well.
In the firefighter house area, they had these fun fire trucks to play with. Batman and Superman sort of got along.
The off-roading fire truck was there so they could test all the hoses after we left. All four of these fire fighters were on the whole tour with us.
When it was over, we went to the park because it is still sort of good weather, although it’s starting to get a little chilly. This will likely be one of our last park visits for a while.

I put Abby in the swing and Vincent wanted to push her around a little. (I happened to have a change of clothes in our emergency bag in the car because all he had was his Batman outfit and I didn’t want to wash it. I need to do a little post about my emergency bag.)
Abby loves the swing. Loves it.
I took on the 9 month olds while this little boy’s mom took the 3 year olds to the bigger swings. This cute little guy is four days younger than Abby. I think I got the better deal. These two were contained.
The day got slow in the middle until it was time for school to get out and Elizabeth went to Activity Day and made caramel apples and helped clean up some leaves in two yards while Vincent napped because he was cranky and then we had dinner and Olivia’s first grade hoedown at the school.
Here is where Abby’s newest pictures are. I took her for her 9 month pictures Wednesday morning. She didn’t want to smile, but we got a few little smiles out of her and then she’d growl and get all mad right after the flash went off. Oh, yeah, the growling. That’s new. She’s a growler. I’ll have to get that on video. It’s really something when she’s growling and clawing at our faces.

Here is where you can keep voting for my mom’s quilt (and leave a comment if you want to.)

General Tso’s Chicken

I can’t take credit for this recipe, but I did make it and I substituted a little, so here’s what I did and it was a success. This is a recipe that is great to make because who doesn’t like General Tso’s Chicken, but this is even better than the stuff at buffets because you eat it as soon as it’s made and it hasn’t been under heat lamps. Andy said to me several weeks ago that General Tso’s chicken is his favorite and that I should make it, so I found a recipe and gathered all the ingredients (it was hard to find Hoisin sauce-WINCO!) and made it for our family.
I should warn you that this meal used several bowls and pans to make. This is a little time consuming, but so worth it and you’ll feel awesome knowing you can do this. And if you clean up while it fries up, you’ll be ahead of the game.

The things that you might not have in your stocked kitchen are:
*Red chili (or pepper) flakes
*Chinese rice wine (or rice vinegar)
*Hoisin Sauce (I finally found this at Winco for $3. A little pricey, but I plan on making this a lot with that $3 bottle.)
*Chili paste (This is in the aisle with the other Asian food. It’s red and usually has garlic with it. It’s SPICY!)
*Sesame oil (also in the Asian aisle.)

You just need a little of each of these things, so if you know someone who likes to cook with them, see if you can borrow a little before you invest in them. However, if you do buy them, you can use them often.
I bought some Oyster Sauce for a trial dinner once and it was DISGUSTING (to us….we don’t like seafood and I could hardly even taste it after smelling Oyster Sauce.) I gave all the sauces I bought for that meal and the recipe to my friend and borrowed back the rice vinegar and sesame oil from her to make this.

Serves 4 adults as part of a multi-course meal, 2 to 3 adults as a main entree.
It served our family with two adults and three kids (maybe 2 1/2 is more like it) for TWO MEALS! I think next time I will double the sauce that goes on the fried chicken so it would flavor the rice a little more.

Ingredients:
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs (I used 3 slightly defrosted large chicken breasts), sliced into 1-inch cubes
1 1/2 cups cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
3 cups vegetable oil for frying, plus 1 tablespoon for stir-frying
8 dried whole red chilis, or substitute 1/4 teaspoon dried red chili flakes (I used red pepper flakes)
2 cloves garlic, minced (I like the little bottle of it you can buy in the produce section for a buck and it’s ready anytime.)
1 teaspoon white sesame seeds, for garnish
Scallions, green parts thinly sliced, for garnish

Marinade:
1 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine (I used rice vinegar)
2 egg whites

Sauce:
1/4 cup chicken stock, or substitute water (I used water and it was YUMMY!)
1 1/2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 teaspoon hoisin sauce
1 teaspoon chili paste
1 teaspoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch

Instructions:
1. Prepare the marinade: In a large bowl, combine the soy sauce, rice wine, and egg whites (save the yolks to make fried rice with the leftover rice later). Coat the chicken in the marinade mixture and let sit for 10 minutes (or longer).

2. Prepare the sauce: In a small bowl, combine the chicken stock, tomato paste, sugar, soy sauce, rice vinegar, hoisin sauce, chili paste, sesame oil, sugar, and the 1 teaspoon of cornstarch. Stir until the sugar and cornstarch are dissolved. Set the sauce aside.

3. In a large bowl or deep plate, toss the 1 1/2 cups cornstarch with the salt and pepper. Coat the marinated chicken in the cornstarch and shake off any excess before frying.

4. Heat the 3 cups of peanut or vegetable oil in your wok (or large frying pan) until it registers 350°F on an instant-read oil thermometer (or just set the temperature to medium-high and wait a minute or two). Working in 2 or 3 batches, add the first batch of chicken cubes and fry until golden brown on the outside and cooked through, about 5-6 minutes. Remove the chicken with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Repeat with the rest of the chicken.

5. Drain the oil into a heatproof container and save for discarding. Wipe the wok with a paper towel to remove any brown bits, but don’t wash. Make sure to wipe the outside edge of the pan so it doesn’t cause a fire.

6. Reheat the wok or skillet over medium-high heat. Add another 1 tablespoon of oil and swirl to coat the base and sides. Add the dried chilis and garlic to the wok and stir-fry until just fragrant (such a great smell!), about 20 seconds. Pour in the sauce mixture and stir until thickened, about 1 to 2 minutes.

7. Return the chicken to the wok and stir well to coat with sauce. (Again the next time I make this, I’m doubling the sauce.) Transfer the chicken to a serving dish. Garnish with white sesame seeds and scallions. Serve with white rice and vegetables. I add the sesame seeds at the table because Andy doesn’t like them and I didn’t have scallions. It was still delicious and our 8 1/2 and 6 year old daughters gave it many thumbs up.

Let me know if you try this.

Typical dinner

I love eating dinner together as a family. It’s a priority to me. Our kids aren’t signed up for very many evening activities for that very reason. I like to make dinner (most days) and enjoy the time we get to spend eating and talking about the things that happened to them that day. It’s a great time to see if they will like new kinds of food and to encourage manners (that’s a continual process!)Andy took this picture. Pardon our window air conditioner. It wasn’t on. =)
I tried this new recipe for General Tso’s Chicken on Monday and everyone LOVED it, except Abby. She didn’t try it, but she did gobble up peas and carrots. She loves those! The rest of us had the yummy chicken, broccoli, peas, and carrots, rice, and sticky Chinese bean see-through noodles (really just the kids had those).One of my friends was talking about the dinner she makes for her family and she said she cooks for an hour, loads up her three son’s plates at the counter while her husband fills his, then she gets drinks for everyone, cleans up a water mess, and then finally gets to eat her food and everyone else is done. That’s not quite how I run my dinnertime. I DO prepare most everything, the kids usually set the table after they clean up their toys in the family room (where the table is), then Andy or I brings the hot stuff to the table, we pray, we dish up plates, we eat TOGETHER, we visit, we enjoy, everyone clears their own spot. And if someone spills water during dinner, I am not the one who gets up to get a towel. They are. I highly recommend this kind of dinner.
Leftover nights are a little different because then we pull the leftovers out of the fridge, heat them up, and put them on the table, pray, then eat. Either way, it’s much nicer than going out to eat every night (and more feasible/healthy) and it’s time spent together (and man, oh, man are those kids funny at dinnertime. It’s so hard not to laugh!)
I remember eating dinner with my family growing up and although it wasn’t always at the normal dinner time (usually it was after practices and it was sometimes after 8pm), it was good to eat together. My mom was super accommodating and would make one dish that had onions and chunks of tomatoes and another without or one batch of cookies with nuts and another without. A few of my brothers were a little picky. I don’t think they were as picky after their missions to South America (the one who went to Arizona was never all that picky.)
My friends liked to come to my house to study because we’d whip up a batch of cookies to snack on. We always had treats. I want to be that kind of house for my kids (and me! I love treats!) This week I also tried a recipe for Oatmeal bread. It was pretty good.
I love trying out new recipes. It’s so fun to experiment with things I know I like the ingredients and find a new way for them to fit together. I have several recent recipes on my food blog. I have several more to come this week.

I love change

I love the fall weather. Some people like to sit outside on their patios when it’s a hundred degrees, where I’d much rather sit outside in the fall when it’s the best temperature (60-70 degrees).

I love the smell of the dirt and the yummy dinner smells from our neighborhood.

I love seeing the leaves change and the holiday decorations going up.

I love wearing my sweaters that I’ve missed and now that I’m nearly done nursing Abby, I can even wear real dresses again! Hooray! It’s like a whole new wardrobe!

I love that after nine months, I have another new calling. I was a ward missionary (with Andy as the ward mission leader-he still is) and now I’m the Compassionate Service Leader. I’m excited for a new adventure doing this calling. I really do like change and learning new callings often. Andy was sad to leave the nursery just before Abby was born, but I was aching for a change (probably because I was about to have a baby and had NO patience or energy for nursery and I wanted to visit in Relief Society.) Anyway, I’m excited to be helping the Relief Society with dinners for people who need them or whatever else this calling entails. (((How have YOU been helped by someone in this calling???)))

I love that Abby is crawling around and pulling herself up to furniture, although when she can climb onto chairs, I may think differently.

I love that Vincent is not wearing pull ups anymore and has graduated to underwear. He’s finally growing up!

I love that Olivia still likes to draw and write and gives us little folded up pictures that she drew just for us.

I love that Elizabeth is now singing in our ward choir at church with Andy. She looks so grown up up there with everyone else.

I love that Andy takes over on the weekend afternoons and lets me nap (because I stay up too late and I’m tired in the afternoons). He is great!

I love my extended family and how they all are so supportive and wonderful. I know I can count on any of them to cheer me up if I’m in a funk or need a little boost.

I love our friends around here and far away and that I’m able to keep in touch with them through blogs and facebook. It’s great to stay in touch with them and watch their kids grow and know their kid’s names and personalities. We live in a wonderful time!

I love that when I go and see my chiropractor, his massage therapist can work her magic on my back and help me feel a little better. (She compared my back to a bumpy dirt road. Ouch. That’s another reason I have to lay down in the afternoons. It just hurts to be up!) But, having a massage and working the kinks out helps so much!

I love that my kids like to play together and that they help with chores (most of the time) when asked. I assigned the girls to fold some clothes and they were folding them. They were asking how to fold them and I taught them how to fold them like hotdogs or hamburgers like I learned when I was a kid (remember that?) Olivia got a kick out of that. She started saying it over and over when she’d fold things.

I also love that so many of my friends are voting for my mom’s quilt. I have fabulous friends! (Leave her a comment after you vote to tell her how cool her quilt is.)

I love that each of you took a few minutes to read my ramblings. Thanks!

Crepe Paper

Who doesn’t like crepe paper? Abby sure likes it.We went to a birthday party for a girl in Elizabeth’s class at school and Abby and I stayed to hang out and get to know them better. It was an outdoor dress up tea party. It ended up being a little windy, so that was exciting, but it wasn’t really cold at least.Elizabeth liked dressing up in this fancy dress and getting her punch out of the fountain in a ladylike glass saucer.She also enjoyed being not so ladylike eating her cotton candy.
How ladylike can you be when you eat that anyway?
Elizabeth had to leave a little early to go to her Nutcracker costume fitting. She’s a battle soldier this year. Friday night she had a real practice, so Abby and I took her to that and when she was done we went to Kohl’s to buy some underwear for Vincent.
<<< Warning potty-training paragraph to follow. >>>
We had some before, but we threw it away some of the time if it was pooped in disgustingly (which was often there for a while and it’s gross). He is now doing SOOOOOO much better in that department and is telling us when he needs to go and keeping his pull up clean and dry. He’s doing awesome. It’s so strange how you think the day will never come that they actually GET it. Finally, that day is here. Maybe it was the cold showers he got to have anytime he pooped his pants. (I know it sounds mean, but it’s not. He enjoys warm baths, so we had to do something that was unpleasant to help him know not to do it anymore. Trust me, if you ever have a kid as stubborn as him, you’ll try almost anything to help them understand. He’s 3 and 9 months.) I’m sure there will be a few set-backs here and there, but this week we are venturing into just underwear and no pull ups. He will still have diapers for naps and bedtime because we don’t expect him to wake himself up yet. Anyway, back to Kohl’s (my favorite store!), they were having a deal on character underwear in the little boys section and it was buy one, get one half off, so I found a few similar packages (because it doesn’t make sense to pay $18 for one and half off a $10 one for the second package, right?), and they had a few packages that were $7.99 each, so I picked up two of those and then in the baby section they had some other underwear that wasn’t the B1G1 half off, but they were on sale for $12 a package of seven pairs. I took all of them up to the register to figure out which set up would be cheapest. I figured that I needed at least seven pairs. The packages that said $7.99 rang up as $1. There were three pairs of underwear in them, so this was a fantastic price. It ended up that three of the packages were $1 each, so I spent $3 for 9 pairs of little boy underwear and I had 15 percent off on top of that, so close to 33 cents each after tax. And the underwear is Star Wars, Diego, and Toy Story. I love shopping at Kohl’s and finding things on sale there (which is really all that I buy there because I don’t pay their normal prices ever).
We got the girls’ school pictures back and I put them on our wall. They did pretty good. The big picture that I printed out for free from Walmart fits into a frame I had already, so I hung it up that way. Our sticky putty stuff wouldn’t keep it up on the wall. This is on the way into their room, so they can see themselves at the Temple all the time. I love it.
Here is some of our Halloween decorations this year. Not too fancy, but since they are basically all in the living room, it seems like more than it is.
Saturday night we went down to Umatilla to go to my second cousin’s wedding reception. Her dad is cousins with my mom. I lived in Umatilla from four to ten years old, so I expected to know a few people too. I saw my bishop from when I was baptized. He came over and said hello and said how nice my family was. Because Janelle (my cousin) married a guy (Trevor) from Walla Walla, the people my parents know from there all told me that I look like my little sister. Okay. I never lived in Walla Walla, so I don’t know them as well. My parent’s moved there when Elizabeth was 17 months old.
I used to babysit (or maybe her mom was watching me while my mom got her hair done???) Janelle and her siblings (who all have J names) after we moved to Burbank. We used to watch The Little Mermaid together and play Barbies. We were penpals for a long time too.
Apparently, it’s been a while since I visited the church in Umatilla because it took us a little longer than expected to find it. In my defense, they did build a few neighborhoods around it in the last 19 years and it was night and Andy had the GPS all set up to get there and turned it off before we were there and I was TEN when we moved. Alright. Enough of that. Janelle looked beautiful and it was a lovely reception. I’m so happy to see her happily married and even more excited that she went to the Temple.

Oh and keep voting for my mom over here for her Doggie quilt. She’d really appreciate a comment (or ten) over there. It doesn’t show who leaves comments so be creative. =)

Skylander Spyro Adventure Party

I was able to host another House Party (like the one I did with Expo Markers) and this time it was for Skylander Spyro’s Adventure. It’s a game that plays on the Nintendo Wii and they sent me the package with the game and this little pedestal with characters that interact with the game for free. This is what it looked like. It’s a two player game and the characters go around trying to solve puzzles and a little cartoon fighting.The kids were moving the characters as the people playing would tell them which one they wanted to change to. Olivia was our main mastermind.Until she wanted to join in and play with Andy. She has played it several times since our party and enjoys it. (I even played for a little while and I don’t normally play. I liked it too.)Elizabeth and Vincent took over the character switching when needed and played the the characters not in play the rest of the time.
The bottom (green line that shows above) changes colors. When one character is lifted off the base, the game pauses until the character is put back.Our friend Mary came to play with us.Several other friends were planning on attending our little party too, but things came up and we had a smaller party instead. We’ll play it anytime anybody wants to come over though! It was fun!Even Abby enjoyed it.If you come over and play with Olivia, she’s get all spunky and trash talk (meaning she’s pretty confident). It’s fun.