Pumpkin Carving

I am so glad David likes to carve pumpkins, if it was left up to me we would probably color them and that would be it. This is Ben's favorite part of Halloween (aside from the candy of course :).
Ben loves taking out the guts. He isn't comfortable actually carving yet though.

I don't think taking out the guts is Emma's favorite part :).

Not sure about Joelle :). She didn't complain.

Jacob didn't want to do either. We just made him come and watch so we were together as a family :).

We had to literally drag Katie away from Cinderella to come and watch, but then she had a blast.

Ben loved his pumpkin. David carved it for him.

The girls did all their own carving. It was really neat to see them do it. They both loved it. I think it is great that they are getting old enough to do all these fun things.

The finished products. Hooray! (David cleaned up the entire mess - he's so good to me :)

Lets Party!

Last night (Friday) we were invited to a Halloween party at a neighbors house 2 doors down. All the neighbors were invited. We had so much fun. The kids loved getting dressed up for the first time this season. The party was incredible. There was amazing food, decorations, music, laser lights, games, and great company. We felt like we got to know our neighbors a lot better. I wish I had taken my camera. We played a game where we divided into teams and wrapped up one person on our team as a mummy. Our family was a team and our host asked us to wrap up David. The kids did such a good job helping me. We almost won. We were a very close second. It was so much fun. Katie spent the night dancing around in the laser lights to the Halloween music. She came home and kept going on and on about the party. I am glad they had fun. We love our little neighborhood.

Katie was such a stinker when we were getting ready to go. She has 3 costumes that are pretty new and she wouldn't wear any of them. In the end this is the only thing I could get her to wear. She has a long sleeved black shirt to wear with this skirt, but she wanted to only wear the under shirt. We were already running late, so we went with it. I really hope she cooperates better for our ward party tonight :).

I think David makes a great pirate. These are our favorite costumes. We really need new ones though, we have used these for probably the last five years. It is hard to give up a good thing :).

On Monday a storm had come in and it was pretty chilly. We decided to have our first fire for family home evening. Of course my camera can't take a picture without the flash, so you obviously can't get the full effect, but it was magical. When we asked the kids what songs to sing they were picking Christmas songs. It was pretty funny. We even had cider and hot chocolate for our treat. I think they are going to want to do this every week now :).

SR-71 Model Rocket

Let me start out by saying that it has been a childhood dream of mine to build the SR-71 blackbird model rocket. When I took Jacob to the store to get a replacement model rocket (we lost the last ones) they had one on sale and I jumped at the chance to get it.


It took me about 4 weeks to build the rocket and paint it. Finally it was finished, but I could not find any rocket engines. For some reason the Michaels store by us has stopped selling model rocket supplies. I finally found some engines and took the kids out for the maiden voyage.

The first launch went perfect. The rocket went up about 600ft and parachuted back down to the kids who were trying to catch it.




On the second launch, the rocket soared about 400ft up, turned sideways and started heading toward the tree line. Fortunately, the parachute came out before getting to the trees and we had another successful recovery.

The third attempt wasn't so great. The rocket again went up about 400ft and turned. It was now heading toward the nearby school building. I had the feeling that the rocket might get stuck on the roof, which of course it did.

Once again, Jacob was heart broken about loosing the rocket. I really need to get better at this. Anyway, I quickly went home, grabbed by ladder, and climbed onto the school roof to retrieve the rocket. Luckily we were out of rocket engines and called it a day. Who knows where the rocket would have gone next.

Halloween is on its way

We have the sweetest landlords. They are the cutest couple. They are both in their 60's and very healthy and active. They have a huge farm and are always bringing us vegetables. Two Fridays ago Ray (our landlord) came to cut the grass. I was still not feeling well so I didn't get out of the bed to say hello like I usaully do. When David came home that night he said Ray had left some big pumpkins out in our dirt mound by the grave markers we had put up. The kids were so excited. We thought it was so cute that he had started a little "pumpkin patch" out there in the dirt that we added all our pumkins too. We love the way it looks. Believe it or not it is even more cute when it is cloudy.

The weather has been beautiful these last couple of weeks. I wish I handn't been so sick and tired so we could have enjoyed it more. The kids love being outside. It really started to rain these last couple of days. It is still beautiful to me though (we'll see how we feel in a few months :).

This is last sunday. I think the spiders rank up at the top of the fun crafts the kids have done.

I tried to take a picture of the piano where they ended up, but you can never quite see them.

Left front to right: Jacob (he loves the teeth on his spider), Joelle (she has 3 eyes on there if you can't see them), Emma (her's reminds me of rudolph... love the red nose)

Left back to right: Katie (she had to have a big puff ball hat... that's Katie for you:), Ben (his has a big happy smile... just like him:), and David (the one without a mouth..... not sure what that means exactly :).

David felt like making cupcakes today which everyone enjoyed. He had me buy this fun little kit a few weeks ago. They were so cute.

Some how I missed getting a picture of Joelle eating her cupcake. Rest assured she loved them too :).

Fun with the kids

We woke up on Monday to a fun covering of fog. The kids were so excited you would think it had snowed. Obviously my camera doesn't pick up the fog well, but it was really neat. The first picture is my view out my bedroom window. I love it.

The back yard (of course), so fun! It wasn't even all that cold.

The fog was Monday, on Tuesday I woke up and started feeling sick. I spent the next 4 days totally sick. I finally felt pretty much all better (albeit exhausted) on Saturday, but to give me some much needed alone time, David took the kids out to the Library, the park to launch rockets and the store to pick up dinner (he had to be out of town a little while I was sick and felt really bad about it - not that it was his fault- so he was making up for it..... not to mention the kids were bored to tears after those 4 days). Today (Sunday) the kids were still clamoring for something to do so we broke out some crafts.

We got some Styrofoam balls and spray painted them black. Tomorrow when they are dry we are going to make spiders out of them.

Then we went inside and started painting these little figures David and I pickup up at Michael's.

We had a blast (even David and I). After the boys and Katie were done and had left the table, I took over Katie's (there were only 6 in a box). I don't know why I thought she wouldn't notice, she came in right as I had finished, got mad and spent another 15 min. repainting hers. It was pretty funny. She was actually more proud of hers the second time around.

Emma loves to paint. She was in heaven.

She had asked me to help her paint the back of it the first time around. Maybe that is why I thought she wouldn't mind if I took over after she was done :)

Jake loves his. He keeps saying it is his friend.

Joelle was very careful and did a great job getting in all the nooks and crannies.

Ben was determined that his would be scary. He loves Halloween.

David had a lot of fun painting with the kids. His turned out perfect of course :).

From left to right: Ben's, Katie's, Jacob's.

Emma's, David's, Joelle's

Thank you Michael's for cheap, easy crafts for those of us with no craft ability (talking about myself here - My children would have no fun with crafts if they didn't have stuff like this. I don't know how I hold my head up with sisters and sisters-in-law like I have :).

Fall is in the air!

We are having such a fun fall season. The leaves are all changing color and falling all around. It is so fun to see it. When I went to Costco the other day I actually noticed I was crunching leaves on the way back to my car. Massive amounts of yellow and red leaves that had fallen. there are so many trees here though that I can't really tell where they fell from, it still seems like there are leaves on all the trees. I love it. It is beautiful to see.
Yesterday, (Saturday) we went to a farm called "The Pumpkin Patch". It was so much fun. It is on a little island just north of Portland (about 15 min. from us - if you don't make a wrong turn :) called Sauvie Island. There was a gift shop, a market (with a great variety of inexpensive vegetables and squash), and a big barn with animals to look at.


They had free hay rides which take you out to the huge pumpkin patch (they had pre-picked pumpkins up by the market, but David thought this would be a much better adventure). You can pick your own pumpkins, then you ride the hayride back and pay the men that are there when you get off. We ended up getting a pretty big pumpkin (like the normal size you get at a store) and 3 smaller pumpkins for $6. The prices were great. I forgot to take pictures of our pumpkins so I will put them on later.

It wasn't really cold, we had our hoods up because it was drizzling. It stopped shortly after we got there.

My camera got water on it but I had to show what Samson looks like when he gets wet. David thinks he looks like a chihuahua (sometimes he calls him a little rat).

This patch was huge. This is most of it, but there were still more pumpkins to the left.

When we got off the hayride, I saw how muddy it was and I pretty much stayed put in one spot on the hay on the side of the road. You could tell who had been here before and who hadn't. Some people were very prepared with rain boots and old clothes. That will be us next year. The shoes got so bad (believe it or not, everything got clean at the end of the day - nothing was stained).

It is hard to say who had more fun, David or Katie. The kids can't wait to go again. I have to say I had a blast, but I did have a 10 min. freak out session about the mess. I got over it eventually, but I was a little upset for a bit. It was so worth it though. I would do it again in a heartbeat. It will definitely be a tradition for us while we live up here.

Emma was such a big help with Katie. She took great care of her in the field when I wasn't willing to go out in the mud.

Joelle is standing where the rest of the pumpkins were. There were so many vegetables growing everywhere. I loved the Market. I wish I could go get my veggies there every weekend.

Look at the mud! Two inches thick at least. I took this picture after about 5 min. in the field. We were in there for a total of about 30 min. Try to imagine what it looked like then. I took a picture but it didn't really turn out. Katie had mud caked all over her legs.

This was on our ride back. We ended up taking an extra ride before we left because it was so fun. I kind of hope our pumpkins rot so we can go back before Halloween :).

At the end of the hay ride they had these huge Hay Pyramids for the kids to play on. This was Ben's favorite part of the day. They played for at least an hour on these things. There were 3 of them, but this was the largest. David kept having to get up and help kids up to the top. It was so cute. What a great Dad (I'm sure he loved it - I even climbed up there :).

It really was the perfect place to get pumpkins.