Happy Halloween!

Here are our trick-or-treaters all dressed up:

an oh so cute little pumpkin (or squash) loving that whole knocking on doors and getting lots of attention and candy thing.

Little lion boy, Ben.

 

A boxer minus one glove, oh well, all the better to get candy with.

Abby the cupcake.  We added the cream and cherry on top.

The hippie chick

And, that’s not all, Brennan and I actually dressed up this year.  We got to go to a fun costume party and so I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea, but no one got it.  Please tell me someone out there reading this gets it:

Anyway, hope you all had a great one!

Dance Party

Do you remember a few posts ago I showed you all those P’s that Ben worked so hard on, and they were invitations to party he was having?  Well, he was dead set on having a party, and not just any old party – a dance party.  Monday, we had tons of cookies leftover (that was the other thing he was adamant about, we had to have cookies) from Sunday dessert so I told him he could call his friends and have it that afternoon.  Lots of friends came, his and Nate’s.  They went down the basement and danced, for about an hour and then they each got a cookie and went on their way.  It was quite the dance party.

The Trolley

Growing up, my siblings and I, all benefited from the creative, and only rarely evil (remember “hypnotizing” grasshoppers?), genius of our oldest brother, Braden, who always had us involved in something that completely absorbed us.  Sometimes it was a play, or building a village of huts in the nearby empty lot, organizing or overthrowing the village government, preparing for and engaging in battle with the kids down the street, etc.  Our busy and idyllic summers flew by and we always mourned their passing;  however, we weren’t totally out of luck when the weather turned cold.  We were fortunate enough to have a large, unfinished basement. 

If you didn’t mind spiders or a surprise encounter with one of Braden’s latest escaped pets it was a perfect playground for us.  There were two finished bedrooms (mine and Braden’s) and a bathroom, but the rest was all unpainted drywall, cement floors and wooden studs.  A primitive turf, bursting with potential for our active imaginations.   We rode bikes down there, strapped pillows onto our stomachs and rammed into each other on our roller skates, played hide and seek for hours.  We thought had everything, but that’s before we knew what we had been missing.  One year for Christmas (I think it was a Christmas gift, wasn’t it?) our parents surprised us with what we called our trolley. 

Something like this

We had to climb onto something (I think Mom’s old cedar chest?) with roller skates on to reach the trolley then grabbed on and rode it the length of the unfinished room where it gently sloped down enough for our skates to touch the cement floor and skate back to the other side of the room to get in line for the trolley.   We spent many, many hours down there perfecting our rides and collecting blisters from our skates and calluses from the trolley.   Now our basement was perfect.  That trolley was completely life-changing for us.   That’s a gift.  I would love to give my kids a gift like that for Christmas this year.  Any ideas?

Party, Party, Party!

Friday afternoon Abigail hosted her Halloween party.  It was really cute and she really planned and executed it all on her own.  She made her invitations, prepared several activities, cleaned and was a wonderful little hostess.  I made some sugar cookies and got a few things from the dollar store and that’s it.  Abby even arranged for her friend who can’t have any gluten to bring her own sugar cookie to decorate.

The table she set up

 

Pin the nose on the pumpkin

 

Guess how many candy corns?  Notice the special papers to write your answer on.

Some of the cute guests

 

A few hours after Abby’s party we were able to have Brennan’s uncle and aunt, Buck and Jamie, come for dinner.  Buck and Jamie live in Arizona and when we lived there they were so good to us.  They often had us over along with their 3 children and their families for dinners and special occasions.  I always felt so comfortable there, they’re such good, fun, easy-going people.  We hadn’t see them for years and were so excited to hear they were coming to town.  They were good sports to drive an hour from where they were staying to come see us.  We loved every second of their visit.  They weren’t at all shaken by the chaos of our family and were so cute with all the kids.

They recently returned from a mission and brought scrapbooks of their experience.  It was fascinating to hear all their stories.  What wonderful people!

Finally, tonight we had a blast with three of my cousins.  They’re brothers who are all attending a University about an hour South of us.  Their family lives out of state so we thought it would be fun to have them join us for dinner.  We were right, these are three of the cutest, most interesting, intelligent, just plain fun young men in the world.  They were so cute with our kids and our kids are riding high on all the attention they were given.  Daniel, Jackson and Cameron just smiled and reminisced as they watched Nate and Ben roll around the floor wrestling.    What a great weekend! 

Benjamin George

Lately this little guy has been a laugh a minute.  I don’t know why, but a little kid who takes him or herself very seriously is always so hilarious to me.  I guess that since he’s now in preschool he feels like he’s finally achieved some big kid status.  So he is constantly telling us all about the homework he has.  Just so you know, he doesn’t actually have homework assigned, but could not be busier with his pencil or pen and any paper he can get his hands on.  He’s figured out how to write the letter P and this morning he honestly worked for about an hour writing a million letter Ps on sticky notes and then cutting them out. 

Abby is having a Halloween party today and I think Ben decided he was going to host some kind of gathering and these letter Ps are an invitation of sort.  It started out that he was inviting just our family and then expanded to Anna’s friends, Abby’s friend, Nate’s friends and his friends.  I’m not sure what I may have unwittingly agreed to.  He even delivered a couple of these to his neighbor friends.  

He’ll sit and write and draw things, telling us he can’t play right now because he’s got his homework to do.  He’ll often ask me things like, “Mom, what’s 8 plus 8 again?”  LOL. 

Abby was sick the other day so I gave her some ginger ale.  Ben kept asking me if he could have some “gingerella”.  I can’t get enough of that word and say it as often as I can.  He also told me the other night that he was having a horrible time sleeping.  What a nut, we love Benny.

Fall Fun

We had a great Fall break with the kids off school for a few days we headed down South to stay with Brennan’s parents.  Jamie pulled out all the stops and fed us like kings!  We had a great time visiting with them, and Brennan’s brother, Brett, and step-sister, Emily, and her husband, Paul, and their kids.  We went swimming and out to yogurt with our good friends the Hafens .  It was another whirl-wind trip, but really good times.  While we were there my back started causing me some serious pain and I was pretty non-functional for that last day.  Sweet Jamie came to my rescue while Brennan was golfing with his best friend who had driven a couple of hours to meet him.  Thank you so much, John and Jamie, for letting us invade your peace and quiet!  Somehow I didn’t manage to take one photo :(.

On our way home we stopped in a little town about half-way between Brennan’s mom’s house and ours.  It’s the perfect stopping place.   Another step-sister of Brennan’s and her husband and little boy have an incredible cabin right there in a gorgeous mountain paradise.  Terri, Mike and Matthew were so kind and hospitable as they welcomed our motley crew into their home.  They gave us the tour of their cabin that Mike and a few friends built all on their own.  It’s amazing and you can tell how much they love it which makes it all the more inviting and cozy (not cozy as in small, it’s very big).  They have a parrot who speaks Spanish and my kids thought that was about the coolest thing they’d ever seen.  5 year old Matthew is the sweetest little boy who has fought through major health setbacks and illness.  He just sort of wandered around watching all the kids and then would spontaneously hug Abby.  Later he kept doing it to Anna.  It was the cutest, sweetest thing.  He’s a smart boy and evidently recognized that these two girls are sensitive, sweet souls.

After the grand tour Terri, Brennan and Mike divvied up the kids on three 4 wheelers and went for a ride.  Ben was with Terri and I could hear his squeals of delight miles away.  Joshua was with Brennan and evidently he LOVED it.  When they got back he kept trying to climb back on.  So cute.  I finally managed to take a few photos.

We were sad to say goodbye, but were invited back so hopefully we can stop by again.  As we drove home, Brennan kept saying, “What good, good people”.  It’s true, there’s just something special about this sweet family and I was so grateful we got to enjoy their company and home.

Good Times

This evening I went for a run and Brennan was in charge for a bit.  When I took Joshy’s clothes off to bathe him, this is what I found:

One cheek is better than none, right (and quite a cheek it is!)?  Which by the same logic means one sock is better than none.

We love Squash and his Dad.

Ben has had some serious business lately.  He found a book order flyer which he calls his “magzagine”.  This magzagine is evidently keeping him very busy with lots and lots of homework.   Tonight for Nate’s homework we played a math game and then Ben told us about a game he “learned up” from his magzagine (can you tell I can’t get enough of that word?)  He pulled out a little notebook my Mom gave him and told the kids they had to draw a line in between the notebook lines without touching the notebook lines.  We all attempted to play and after each of our turns he’d evaluate our work and usually tell us we had a little bump and had to “skip our turn on the round”.  Abby and Nate were eventually told they had to skip their turns for all the Sundays.  We love Ben.

It doesn’t get much better than a chubby dimpled half moon and a four year old taking himself so VERY seriously and misspeaking at the same time.   That’s entertainment.