October 2014

Have you ever watched How I Met Your Mother?  Well if you have this will make perfect sense to you, if you haven't you'll still get the idea.  So Hunter needed to sell cookie dough for his school.  Ben and I were debating which kind we wanted to get, Ben said we should get peanut butter.  I thought he was joking.  He was totally serious.  So I made the argument that there was no point in buying peanut butter cookie dough when you can easily make those from scratch at home, where as things like white chocolate macadamia nut are much harder to do at home owing to the fact that macadamia nuts are way expensive.  Then he informed me that peanut butter cookies are his favorite.....WHAT?!?!?!  We had been together (dating at least, in February will be married) for 10 years!  10 years!  That's kind of a long time and a lot of batches of cookies that I've made and never once heard that he even likes peanut butter cookies, let alone that they are his favorite!  Granted I don't think I have ever made him peanut butter cookies since I am not a huge fan.  I will eat them but they are definitely close to the bottom of my cookie loving list.  So I looked at him and gave him the best "Challenge accepted" I could muster.  So we picked 2 less easy to make at home cookie doughs from Hunter's fundraiser and the next couple of days found me scouring pinterest and my favorite recipe site (melskitchencafe.com, amazing!) for the best peanut butter cookie recipe.  I don't think Ben expected me to be as serious about the challenge as I was, but the very next day he came home to a batch of peanut butter cookies, made with a few variations, the recipe told you to roll it in salt, so I did that, and rolled some in sugar and some not rolled in anything.  None of them were the winner, so the next day he came home to 2 different recipes made also with some slight variations.  I asked him if he had expected me to be this serious about the challenge, he said no, but that it didn't surprise him either.  Haha.  Well we never found a wowing recipe but we did find one he liked better than the rest and it was definitely the one I least expected.  It only had peanut butter, sugar, egg and vanilla, that's it.  It had the most peanut butter flavor is why it was his favorite.  Someday maybe we will find the perfect recipe...

These 2 sure liked helping taste test!

Hunter played soccer for the first time this year.

Goalie was his favorite position.

He liked kicking the ball, but I think it made him nervous when it would get so crowded on the field.  Goalie is definitely a lot less crowded!

He would always try to be the one to kick it in from the sidelines, it was a free unhindered kick from there!

I thought their coach was cute with them!  Overall I think he liked soccer better than he liked t-ball.

Isn't she a cute laundry helper?

This girl and shoes!!!  She is in her jammies with some high heels on!  She loves them!

Green beans and big blue eyes!

Does anyone else just love going to check on their kids before going to bed??  It's probably one of my favorite things!  I love when I find them sleeping crazy ways!  Don't worry I helped her back onto her bed right after I took the picture.

Pumpkin anyone?  If you don't know we have weeds... and only weeds.  We didn't plant these pumpkins and never watered them either, we just happened to see them growing along our sidewalk one day!  There were also a couple of them growing across the street by the empty lots too!  I talked to the Storey's (the neighbors with the amazing garden) about them, and they said that they had planted some pumpkins right before a rain storm so some of those seeds had probably gotten washed down the road.  It was very fun and exciting for the kids (and let's be honest for me too) to watch them getting bigger and bigger!

They were getting pretty big!  We would go out and check on them almost every day!  Then one day as I was coming home I saw something in the middle of the road.... As I got closer I kept thinking, "No, no, no. Please no!"  Someone had smashed every single one of the pumpkins all over the road.  Even the tiny ones.  Every single pumpkin from the plant by our house and the ones across the street.  I'll admit it, I cried.  My kids handled it way better than me!  I was so sad!  It had been so fun for us watching them growing and the kids had been excitedly waiting for them to turn orange and planning on carving them.  I had a long talk with my kids telling them to not be punk kids when they grow up, haha!  I'm sure they will probably have forgotten all about this when they get to be teenagers.  Seriously why do some kids just have to be such punks!  Grrr!!!

I just love her cute pudgy hands!!  She has started to prefer this hand, it's her left.

See! Shoes!  No clothes on, but she still has to have some shoes!

Feeding grass to a baby is OK if it results in cute pictures right?  This is how we "play" while watching Hunter and Aspen actually play.  Did you notice her teeth in the top picture?  I can't remember the exact date they came in, but it was probably a few weeks before this, maybe in September.

I have several headbands like this that I would put on Aspen, and I thought it was looking ok on Timber...

Then she looked up and she just has too much hair for headbands!  They always make some of the hair do crazy tweaky things!

We still occasionally hand her a binki hoping she will like it instead of her fingers (so we can take it away when we are ready, how do you take fingers away??), but really she just plays with them.

Look who is starting to sit up!!

Gets better everyday!

This also happened to be the Sunday of our Primary Program.  The first counselor is in charge of the program in our ward.  She was asking us if we knew someone that has regular scripture study because she wanted the child to do a little talk about scripture study... I so smartly let her know that we do... What was I thinking!  Give my Kindergartner a talk!  Well we forged forward with it and came up with a small talk:

Every night after we get ready for bed we read the scriptures as a family. We always get to read a story from The Friend magazine. Then we read from the scriptures too. We have the Book of Mormon scripture stories, I like to look at the pictures as my mom and dad read about them. I'm starting to learn how to read some of the words, whenever we come to Jesus' name and some other words that I know I read them for my mom and dad. After we get done reading we take turns getting to say our family prayers. I love to read scriptures and say prayers as a family. I know that it helps us learn and grow together.

I figured since it was this small I could pretty well get him to memorize it and it would be fine.  We probably didn't practice as much as we should have so on the day of the program he didn't even try to do it by himself, he just had me come up and help him!  Since I'm the Primary Pres I was already on the stand but still, kind of embarrassing.  I'm sure I was probably bright red after, and I bet some people were thinking that we just gave him a talk since I'm the Pres, truth be told, had I been thinking of what me letting her know that we do nightly scripture study would get me I wouldn't have told her! Haha!  I really should learn to think before I speak!  I must give Hunter credit though, he did speak nice and clear so you could understand all of it, he did good, just wish he could have done it on his own.

I'm not sure I like this mom...

no, really... Save me!

Hunter had a week where they got to dress up each day, I apparently only got a picture this one day, he was dressed up as a teacher.

Hunter's first dance festival!

They danced to baby eagles.

I loved how he kept turning and looking right at us!

Picture perfect timing!

I at first thought that the hula hoops were just to give them a spot to stand in, so when they picked them up and he totally knew how to do it we were way surprised!  We don't even own a hula hoop, so had no clue he knew how to do it!  There were a lot of screams of encouragement when they all started hula hooping!

The boy next to Hunter is the neighbor that he has become pretty good friends with, unfortunately they moved on Halloween, this was the Monday right before Halloween.

Aspen and Lucas watching Hunter, this was part of the few seconds they were watching, most of the time they were running up and down and up and down the grass!  The kids had to do their dance 3 times so families that have more than 1 kid dancing can go to each grades dance, so we saw Hunter do it 3 times, that was way too much for Aspen or Lucas haha!

This was how Timber spent the Dance festival.  Luckily!  It was freezing and very windy, so we kept her as covered as we could and kept rocking the stroller back and forth to keep her sleeping!  We did not want her in that freezing wind!

Sitting up in the tub makes it so much funner!  Much easier to splash your hands!

Timber had her 6 month check up the end of October, she was 14.18 lbs and 24.5 in. Making her 15% in weight and 10% in height.

My friend Misty was able to go to the temple and be sealed to her hubby on the 25th.  We didn't end up being able to find a babysitter, so Ben and the kids walked around the temple grounds and the visitor center while I went in and was able to see her get sealed.

Handsome boy ready for school.

Aspen ready for school at our house!  We had a Halloween party!  Right when the kids got here we read a Halloween book, then went and did several of the activities the kids in the book did.  We had a "costume parade" to walk into the kitchen.

There I had this "spider web" set up.  They all got to throw wadded up paper at the web, originally supposed to try to throw it through the gaps, but the duct tape proved to not be sticky enough so instead we tried to get the paper to stick to it!  Not many pieces stuck but the kids still had fun throwing paper at it!

Then we did bobbing for apples.

They were looking at me like I was crazy and didn't think they could get an apple, so of course I had to show them how to do it!

Can you tell I think the normal version of bobbing for apples is kinda gross! Haha, I might be a bit of a germ-a-phobe!

Aspen got one!  I also did sliced apples, I thought they might be easier for them to get a hold of them, plus then easier to eat after!

They were pretty cute watching them getting their apples!

After we dumped their apple water we made some witches brew!

I pulled out any old or never used spices, sprinkles and other random stuff.  I let them go at it for a while, then I pulled out vinegar and baking soda so that it could bubble!  One little boy did NOT want to stop!

Ghost string cheese for a snack.

And no Halloween party is complete without decorating sugar cookies!

When Hunter got home from school he wanted to try out everything we had done for Aspen's Halloween party.

Got it!  He may have cheated with that hand in there, and when I pointed that out...

he had to keep trying and trying and trying!  Even after he got it without his fingers he still kept going!  He was a big fan of bobbing for apples!

Goofy girl!  Those clips can't feel good!

Time to carve!

It's so much easier to reach inside if you stand on the chair!  We saved the seeds and cooked them in the oven, we have a recipe that we have used the last couple years and they are very good!

Ben was so nice and carved Aspen and Hunter's pumpkins.

While I carved Timber's much easier pumpkin!

Timber's is the incredible symbol, Aspen's is Elsa, and Hunter's is Pikachu.

They loved them!

Then I thought I better test out how we were going to do our masks for Halloween the next day, I'm glad I tested it, because they turned out much better for Halloween!

We had this fun Halloween count down this year, the kids loved covering the ghost each day!  The day finally arrived that he was all the way covered!

Hunter ready to head to school!

Aspen ready to go to the library Halloween story time.

Timber all ready too!

We headed to the school to watch Hunter in his kindergarten costume parade.

Hunter was done with school after the parade so got to come to the library with us.  There was a family dressed up as lego guys, Hunter thought they were pretty cool! 

After the library we met up with Grandma Lisa and Grandpa Keith at IHOP for free scary face pancakes!

Hunter and Aspen love IHOP!

Only half way through our Halloween day and we completely wore this little girl out!

That evening we ate a jack-o-lantern pizza from Papa Murphy's, then got our masks painted on and were ready for trick or treating!

Our cute little Violet.  If you look close you can tell she had already smeared some of her mask and we hadn't even made it out the door!

And handsome Dash.

Elastigirl and Mr. Incredible himself!

We went to my mom's first.  And my attempt at making my hair the right length had already started to sneak out a little, but I did have a couple of people think that I really had cut my hair, so I guess it was still pretty successful!

Knocking on our first door...

And heading straight in, haha!!  Good thing we know them very well!  After this house we headed back over to Ben's parents, his grandparents and then trick or treated in the neighborhood right around there.  We also made a stop to my friend Tami's house where she had a cotton candy machine set up!  A lot of work, but she had a pretty good turn out at her house!

And we made it back home with some light up teeth!  Do you love how smeared their masks were by the end of the night?!?!  We had a couple people ask us why we didn't do the mask on Timber, can you only imagine what she would have looked like!!!  It was a great Halloween!