October 2015

A family in my ward got chickens and their boys came by the house and sold me some eggs.  I went to make cookies using some of the eggs, can you guess how many are in my bowl?

Did you guess 4? Or maybe 3?  Wrong!  This is 2 eggs!  Definitely don't see this often with store bought eggs!  In fact I don't think I have ever seen double yolks before!  Haha!  Ben did not find this entertaining at all, and definitely not picture worthy in his mind, but I was very entertained by it!

Timber got this weird rash all over her body, luckily it went away quickly and on it's own, but we have no idea what it was from!

Conference weekend!  Ben was gone on his elk hunt, so it was just me and the kids.  I thought they were so cute all peacefully coloring.  For some reason my kids won't just color in their own books, they have to go "help" each other color, and just depending on the day that can either be totally fine or cause lots of fighting!  Usually even on days that it's OK, it's only OK for a short while, then they have different thoughts on what to color something and again fighting breaks out.  Leave it to my kids to be able to fight over coloring!  Thank goodness they really do all love each other and get along pretty well a good chunk of the time!

I love this cute face!!

Had to try on the costumes and make sure they fit.  We lucked out and only had to buy Aspen one this year.  Timber is using Aspen's from when she was Timber's age, and we bought Hunter's on clearance after Halloween last year!

This cute girl went to nursery for the first time!  I had sharing time and Ben was gone for a hunt so I took her in hoping she would do OK and I wouldn't have to hold her during sharing time.  They said she did great!  It was only a couple weeks before she turned 18 months, but I still felt bad doing it, so I was very glad when she did so good!

For family night we went to a local farm that does a corn maze and other Halloween type stuff during the month of October.  We went to it 2 years ago as well, but the kids didn't really remember it.  You park out on the road and then you ride on a hay ride (trailer pulled by a tractor) in to where everything is.  They have the headless horseman ride his horse along side the hay ride, which the first time we went Aspen was terrified of him, this year she at least was only nervous not shaking in fear haha!  Then they have all the furry farm animals out where you can pet and feed them hay right when you get off the hay ride.  Then they had a caged in area for all the fowl animals.

In the few moments that I asked Aspen to look at me for a picture that big turkey made his way right there to the fence, she had no idea he was there so when she turned back to look at the animals she jumped a little at how close he was to her all of a sudden!

Notice how she took her hands off the fence and took a little step back? Haha, I don't blame her!

I've decided that turkeys have a thing for blond hair, blue eye little girls.  We had a turkey when I was little that would chase me around the backyard and I would be stuck on top of the wood pile so he couldn't get me.  I was quite happy when Tom was no longer around after Thanksgiving.

There was this hay tower.

That they got to slide down once they climbed to the top.

Aspen was a bit nervous with all the other kids up there and it took quite a while for her to figure out to stand in line and there would be no problem getting a turn to go down the slide!  Joslyn and her family were there too, and we had her Aspen go up and talk to our Aspen since we could see her cowering off to the side.

They had a hay maze for the little kids and a slide coming out of it, Dwayne helped Timber through it.

She seemed to like it.

Then they got to go on a hay ride, these carts were pulled by a 4-wheeler... by a very young boy.  I'm talking maybe 11 or 12.  And he takes them around the house, so for a good portion of their ride you can't see them... It definitely made me a bit nervous having such a young kid driving them around, but they loved it!

Aspen and Aspen riding together.

And the whole train!

Aspen's best friend from school happened to be there too!  His name is Oliver and they have held hands!  Haha!!  It's definitely a different world watching Aspen's experiences with school compared to Hunter's!  She is a social little thing and has made many friends very easily.  This was them riding next to each other on the hay ride back to our vehicles.

And here is Hunter, Timber and Ben on the hay ride.  To end the evening Dixie had some Little Debbi cakes back at the car for a treat.  It was Aspen Smith's birthday that day, but they don't celebrate birthday's so this was the next best thing!

Timber trying on some of Hunter's underwear.  This girl loves clothes!  Any and all apparently!
She had her 18 month check up this month and she was 19.6 lbs and 30 in long.  Putting her in the 2% for weight and 12% for height.  She's staying pretty consistently dainty!

I got to go on Hunter's first field trip this year.  It was a walking one where they went to local businesses and learned more about them.  First we went to the post office where they met their invisible pet elephant (the loading dock sounds like one when they move it up and down) and got a coloring book, then went and learned about the bank, next to McDonald's where they got a tour then a cookie and a drink while they played in the playground (they also gave us adults a small size drink to take with us), and last was the grocery store where they got a lot of treats (suckers, string cheese, apple, cookies, etc.) throughout the tour.  Joslyn also went on the field trip but it was by classes so we only passed each other once since our kids aren't in the same class.  She did point out something pretty funny though, McDonalds took the kids right by all the cooking and food stuff and didn't have them cover up or anything, the grocery store took them in the back but not really close to any cooking or food prep happening and still had them wearing hair nets.  I definitely felt safer about eating the grocery store food after she pointed that out!

The field trip only lasted until lunch time, so after we walked back up to the school with the kids the parents left.  Later that day I got this picture in a text from Hunter's teacher, the fire department came and talked to them in the afternoon too!  Hunter had a great day!  When I asked him what his favorite part was, he told me when the grocery store gave them their hats!  He sure liked that hair net, did you notice he still has it on in the picture above?

The very next day Hunter lost his 4th tooth!

This cute girl was "helping" me work.  She loves to get into my sticky notes so I put one on her nose thinking it might entertain her for a minute.  She though it was pretty funny and just wanted more on, and really how can you say no to a face like that!

This was our countdown to Halloween, the kids loved it so much last year we decided to do one again this year!  Timber even loved helping glue the cotton balls on, I love those cute tiny fingers!

This was after one of Hunter's soccer games, I looked over at those two and had to get a picture of their unknown matching outfits!!

Doesn't Aspen have gorgeous hair!?  People pay good money to get all those highlights and she gets them free from the sun!

Ben got him a pretty nice buck.

Letting the kids check out the antlers.

I love the photo bombing happening in this one!

Even Timber got in on the action.

Posing with daddy.

The last Sunday in October was our ward Primary Program.  The Sunbeams (Aspen's class) sang "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam" for their part.  Hunter's part was to say "Jesus taught us to read and study the scriptures.  My favorite scripture story is ) And then he was supposed to take 2-3 minutes to tell about it.  It took a bit of coxing to get him to decide on his favorite scripture story, we ended up handing him the kids scriptures (ones with pictures and condensed versions of the stories) and told him to look through them and pick which one he wanted to talk about.  He chose to talk about Ammon.  He didn't want to write the whole story down so we had him write the start and end of what he was going to say and then for the middle he just took the kids scriptures and told the story by looking at the pictures.  We kept trying to talk him into just telling part of the story and not the whole thing so it wouldn't be so long, but when he got up there he told the whole thing!  He did a great job!  One of the primary boys that I was sitting next to on the stand turned to me and said, "I know why his part is so long, it's because you're the Primary President."  I figured people would be thinking that, but in our ward the 1st counselor is in charge of the program.  I do read through what she writes up for it and let her know if I have any problems or suggestions, but that's all before she has even assigned the parts.  Honestly I was a little bummed when she handed us his part.  With last year having to get up and help him in front of everyone, I was expecting to have to do it again with this part.  But he did great!  We had tons of people come up to us after and tell us how impressed they were with his part!  I must say my least favorite part of being on the stand for the program is that I don't get to see my kids faces when they do their parts.  So I could only see the back of Aspen and couldn't tell if she was singing or not.  She doesn't sing much during sharing times (which surprises me, I thought she would love to since she sings quite a bit at home) so I wasn't sure if she would for the program.  Ben said she did though so that's good.  My mom and Ben's dad came and watched them as well.  The kids of course loved that they came to watch them!  Definitely one of my favorite Sacrament meetings!

Hunter's 1st Grade dance festival.

Do you remember last months post about him biting a girl?  Ya, she must have forgiven him because she is his dance partner and they got to pick who to partner up with as they showed up!

I loved this part of the dance, Hunter would very stiffly stay facing forward as he would "round his partner" and she would joyfully skip around him.  He might have a bit of Grandpa Keith's dancing genes in him!

As the night went on (they had to preform the dance 3 times so that families with kids in different grades could go watch all their different dancers) this part got crazier and crazier.  The first time he was very nice about clapping her hands, the last time he was just trying to slap as fast as possible!

We sure enjoyed watching how well he did!

Crazy hair day at school!

The girls all ready for the library Halloween party!  We even put glitter spray in Aspen's hair to be like snowflakes in it (she said that's what it looked like without me even having to tell her that was why I got the spray!)  Of course when Timber saw it in Aspen's hair, she needed some in her hair too!  We had glitter all over by the end up the day and it wasn't even Halloween yet so we were going to be doing it again!

We met up with Brandi at the library, she had Tucker and Jack with her.  We got there in time to listen to a Halloween story, then they started all the games, our kids went right for the cupcake walk and as soon as they all got one (luckily really close to the same time) we headed outside to eat them.  It was pretty crowded in there and they didn't seem to care to do any of the other activities so this worked out much better!  Timber loved her cupcake!  Everyone else got done before her but she was not going to stop eating that thing so we could go get lunch!

We all piled into Brandi's van and went and picked up lunch then took it back to her house to eat it.  Timber and Jack thought it was pretty cool that they could turn around and check out Aspen and Tucker in the back.

I bought these Halloween shirts for the girls on clearance last year, they were pretty excited to finally wear them!  They have been hanging in the closet waiting for October to come around again!

Friday (the day before Halloween) Hunter had a party at school and then had a parade around the play ground to show off their costumes.  After he was done with the parade he was able to come with us.  That night we went to IHOP for free scary face pancakes.  Hunter and Aspen love to go to IHOP, so they were pretty excited to go again this year!

 The week of Halloween Hunter had a book report project to do.  They had to fill out the book report paper and then decorate a small pumpkin to look like a character in the book.  He loved decorating the pumpkin!  I tried to give him paint to paint it, but he told me he just wanted to draw the nose and mouth on not have the whole thing black, next thing I know he's using a sharpie to color the whole thing!  He used up 2 or 3 sharpies on this guy!  After his parade at school we picked up his pumpkin and report from school... I don't think his teacher was very impressed with the book he chose!  Haha!  If you zoom in you can read on the report that the bear gets shot and turned into a rug and sausage.  I'm guessing her family doesn't hunt!  She didn't say anything but the vibe she was giving off about it seemed like she didn't like it!  To Hunter's credit he had picked a different book but when we went to do the report we couldn't find the book he wanted so I had him choose a different one so we could re-read it before he did the report.  He had picked his other book "Going on a bear hunt" a few days before and I had set it up on a higher shelf on my bookcase so that we wouldn't have to search for it when we did the report.  Well... I forgot where I put it for safe keeping, I found it there a few weeks later!  Oops!  Sorry Hunter!  It amazes me how nice of writing he has, especially in 1st grade!  Their classroom wall always has some of their projects hanging on it and he definitely has some of the best handwriting!

Hunter's soccer team right before their last game, which happened to be on Halloween.  I wasn't very excited to get up early on Halloween knowing that we would most likely be staying out late that night, but he had a great game and it's always fun to watch!

Playing goalie.

He was really starting to get into soccer this year!

After we got home from Hunter's soccer game we finally got to carve our pumpkins!  Just in time for the big night!

Hunter and Aspen did pretty good at helping clean out their pumpkins this year... although they did try to save every single seed!  I have started cooking the pumpkin seeds each year, so we saved the seeds for that... but for some crazy reason I just never got to them.  I put them in the fridge to do later and finally we had to throw them away because they had gotten mold on them, yuck!

I love that you can see his gappy mouth in this!

Timber didn't even last through gutting the pumpkins!  It was nap time, but I wanted to at least get a picture of her taking some seeds out since this was her first year being big enough to do pumpkins!  Right after this picture I laid her down for her nap and she slept all the way until it was time to get dressed up in our costumes.

Here are the finished pumpkins!  Timber's is Minnie Mouse, Aspen's Tinker Bell, and Hunter's Batman.

Here they are all ready for trick or treating!!

And mine and Ben's last minute costumes.  Kira had sent me some pictures of some pregnant women and their husbands dressing up as Cast Away and I thought it was cute but we weren't sure if we were going to dress up this year.  That afternoon we decided to dress up, so I hurried and painted my shirt to be Wilson and printed a FedEx label to slap on a box for Ben while he dirtied a white shirt for him.  This was the first Halloween that I have been pregnant enough to use my belly as part of my costume!  I was pretty excited to use it!  We went to our wards trunk or treat (the first of what will probably become an annual trunk or treat/chili cook off) and unless me and Ben were together people didn't know what we were and half the time they didn't even realize I was dressed up haha!  Also some people found out for the first time that I was pregnant that night too haha!!

Ben hadn't been feeling very well this day but even with the soccer game and carving pumpkins he still took the time to make his elk chili for the chili cook off at the trunk or treat!  He didn't win but a lot of people liked it!  The winner was someone that used canned chili and just added a little bit more to it haha!  We also hadn't known if we were going to go to the trunk or treat until that afternoon, so I hurriedly found an idea of how to decorate our trunk that we could do quickly.  I think it turned out really cute for how quickly we threw it together!  The tongue was even wet to be more tongue-like.  Once we got done eating (it was chili cook off/pot luck) the trunk or treating got started.  Hunter took off by himself without us even realizing it.  So Ben sat at the trunk to hand out candy and I took the girls around.  By the time we went through them all Hunter had been done for a while and had been helping Ben hand out candy.  The kids buckets were almost completely full!  Timber wanted to carry her bucket but it was so heavy she couldn't without my help, so I got to hunch over to her height and help her carry it!  Luckily it was only for the last few cars!

Once we got done at the trunk or treat we headed over to Ben's parents, then his grandparents and on to my parents (they had texted us a bunch of times asking when we were coming during our trunk or treat.)  The kids had a blast!  And had very full buckets!

We forgot to light the pumpkins until we got home...

and this cute girl was so tired that she fell asleep on the drive back from my moms and didn't even get to see the pumpkins lit up until the next day!  And since she was laid on our bed to get her out of her costume while sound asleep, we got to sleep with glitter!  You would think since I do nails and deal with glitter a lot I wouldn't mind it, but... I HATE glitter!!  It just gets everywhere!  It is my fault though, she didn't ask for the glitter hairspray, I just thought it would go great with her costume, which it did and she loved it, but why does it have to get everywhere???  By everywhere I mean all over the girls car seats, stuck on their scalps after a couple of baths, stuck in the dryer lint collector and on other clothes, seriously some tough glitter!

I did my hair in all of a few short minutes (to spike it up like the sticks for Wilson's hair) since I spent a lot more time on the girls hair that was all the time I had, but I think it actually turned out pretty good!  I hadn't even looked at the back of it until we got home at the end of the night and I took this picture!  I love when it works out OK like that!  It was a great Halloween!

This whole pregnancy I kept having a hard time with the fact that we are pretty sure it's our last one.  The last first time feeling a baby kick and knowing I only have a few months to get to feel that ever again.  While Ben was gone hunting I would get on facebook more and came across a blogpost that someone had shared about a lady that had just had her last baby.  It was very sweet talking about those last moments and how most of them you don't even know it's your last until weeks or months later.  I was an emotional wreck reading it!!  I got to the point where I didn't really want to talk about my pregnancy cuz I knew it was most likely my last time and I just wanted to cherish it and not let anyone else in on what was going on... it really didn't let up much throughout the pregnancy.  It's a very crazy feeling going into this pretty sure we are expecting our last baby.  Last... it's so final.