More catching up: Halloween

Halloween seems so long ago. But I need to post about the festivities because I'm printing my blog into a family book. (That's the idea, anyway. The way I move these days, we'll hope it happens.)

The actual Halloween--our neighbors barbequed tri-tip and chicken, we all brought sides and sat out and ate together. It was so nice to get to know our fun neighbors better. Here's the collection of kids and grandkids:

The ward trunk-or-treat and fall festival. This was so fun this year. We had Navajo tacos, caramel apples, lots of fun games and bounce houses for the kids, costume and trunk competitions, trunk-or-treating, and J even participated in the pie-eating contest (out of force, given his strong anti-pie sentiments). J also manned one of the rick-shaws. Needless to say, I spent a good portion of the night chasing H and trying to find the other kids.

Our trunk and our kids and our ostrich-rider:

I was a porcupine. H a turtle.

Dorothy and the sick turtle and the mad scientist

The jack 0' lanterns

Join me

over here today.

And maybe now that it's Christmas time I should post some pics of our Halloween? I'm not making any promises, though. Anything extra sends me over the edge of this delicate balance I've got going here!

Fall Break

Fall break seems like such a long time ago, even though it's only been a month. If I hadn't have taken pictures of it, I wouldn't have remembered anything but staying in our pjs half of the day and a blessed lack of "Come do ____ right now!! You're going to be late for ____! I've already asked you ___ times!" on my part.

Thankfully, I did take some pics to remind me what else we did besides laze around. We went hiking to the Tonto Natural Bridge. I loved it. Hiking relaxes me and reinvigorates me. I need to do it more often. What you can't see in these pics, though, is that I forgot my hiking boots and was left to navigate the wet, slippery rocks with flip flops. But I've never been one to let a little problem like lack-of-appropriate-footwear slow me down. I did feel the need, however, to explain to everyone we encountered that, no, I was not an idiot who planned on hiking in flip flops, just a frazzled mom who remembered to pack the lunch, the snacks, the water, the camera, the toys for the drive, the jackets, the baby backpack, but forgot her own shoes.

The kids broke out the video games. With football, soccer, piano, and homework in our "regular life," they don't usually play much. We also made caramel and chocolate apples with LOTS of sprinkles. I want to know how it is that I'm the only one in my family who likes caramel apples. Seriously? What's not to like? We added the chocolate layer in an attempt to appeal to Mister, lover of all things sweet, but not even that did the trick. See all of those on the tray? I ate all but 2. Oh well, a thing of the past, a celebration of fall, right?

I took the kids to the new aquarium. It was overpriced, even with my coupon, but H had the time of his life, so that was worth it. He kept running to new tanks, shouting, "WHOA!" It was a good thing that I snapped some pics before I let him out of the stroller since after that, all I did was run after him.

Remembering this is getting me excited for Christmas break . . .

Brothers

Oh how I love my boys!

Sweetie plays soccer

And who knew she would be so fierce? Actually, I should have known, since I play games with her at family game night every Sunday and am well-acquainted with my do-anything-to-win and sad-face-when-losing Sweetie. Still, I didn't anticipate this level of fierceness. She averages 2 goals a game, and the child sacrifices her body for the ball. At this game below, she hit the goal post three times, each time from diving in front of the ball to save a goal. All I can say is that if we play soccer for family game night, I want Sweetie on my team.

Getting a hug from a teammate after scoring a goal:

Spectators: Mister catching the footballs J throws down the sidelines and H, looking for dogs in the crowd and other people's food and drinks to confiscate.

Is that a dinosaur cleaning the play room?

Nope, just Sweetie. Apparently she works better incognito.

Here she is writing to her missionary cousin. Maybe the words flow better when you wear a mask? I'll look into that theory the next time I have writer's block.

Catching up: My trip to Massachusetts

I've been crazy busy. But I'm going to try to catch up with all, okay, some, of the posts I wrote in my head and was too tired or didn't have time to actually post.

At the end of September, H and I took an excruciatingly long flight to Massachusetts to visit my good friend smartmama. We had such a good time. H worked on terrorizing her 2 1/2 year-old while she worked on the mothering painting that you see in this blog post, and I worked on this painting and these throw pillows--all of which, you'll notice, are not yet finished.

I didn't actually take any pics of the trip because we spent it talking, vegging, shopping, eating (who really wants a picture of me, eating my 7th German chocolate brownie?), helping a bright Jordanian friend write his BYU application essays, and being creative. (The latter occurred most often late at night while laughing at what Pandora selected for our listening pleasure.)