hurry...it's almost thanksgiving....

yeah, it was now or never for this little post. how can i talk about halloween when i'm eating turkey?

(as if i haven't done that before!)

this year the older kids designed and carved their pumpkins all by them selves. lucy had a little help but they all ended up looking very similar.   

one big happy family of scary pumpkins and scary kids

we had a cute flapper girl, darth vader and a little mermaid this year. and apparently that's all the pics i took this year.

the end.

Lincoln's Birthday!

my boy turned 7 a few weeks ago. he really is a cutie i think.

apparently, having 2 kids birthdays in october is too much for me since every year one of them gets a more elaborate cake and the other gets...a less elaborate cake shall we say. i know it totally doesn't matter and they don't even notice, but i do. oh well, at least it has seemed to alternate years nicely.

exihbit A: i got a coupon in the mail a week before lincoln's birthday for a free cake from bashas. and since there was absolutely no time to make the awesome r2d2 cake in my mind that week...this is what he ended up with. i picked up the cake and threw some star wars action figures from his room on it and called it good. i was channeling my barbie cake from younger years that i loved so much.

he loved it. and guess what? it tasted like cake just like the one i was going to make. amazing i know.

we may or may not have opened presents and eaten cake on the sidewalk. just writing the reality of that makes me laugh. i had a groupon for a bouncy place that was about to expire so we did that, but then i wasn't about to pay for us to do a birthday party in there (you know cuz i'm cheap) so we just made ourselves a party outside...on the sidewalk. nice.

it really was a lazy step down from a previous kids party where i didn't want to pay for a chuckie cheeses party so we brought our own pizza and had an "extra special picnic" in the back of the van. 

awesome.

i'm just wondering how many more years i will be able to get away with stuff like that. maybe hannah will go for her sweet 16 in an alley and call it bowling? 

we had a great time celebrating lincoln. 

even on the sidewalk. 

i love you buddy!

Do I hear a Niner?

Hannah had a birthday shout hooray!

I can't believe she is 9! Pretty soon she will be 19...then what am I going to do!??

Hannah wanted a Monkey party this year...

Pin the tail on the Monkey...(thanks auntie kayla for drawing this for her) 

Monkey cake pops... 

pass the banana with your feet...

then peel it withouth using your hands... 

and don't forget to blow out the candles with a funny face!

Happy Birthday Hannah Monkey!

You are loved.

Member when i used to blog sometimes? yeah...me too.

A couple of months ago I actually wanted to try and put something up every day or every other day just to see if I could. But instead...I guess I just decided to not put anything up at all for a few MONTHS! I'm sure there is some type of psychoanalysis thing that can be learned about me from that.
I'm sure it means that I'm a loser in some way. whatever.

Would a loser mom let her oldest daughter practice face painting on her siblings when it was not even close to Halloween? I submit to you that a loser mom would not.

and i say "practice" because Hannah came home from Activity girls the other month...(remember it's been a while) and told me that when asked what one of her talents was that she would like to share, she replied "face painting"...even though she had NEVER done it. I guess wanting to have that talent is a good start to having it. So of course she needed a little practice, and what better guinea pigs than younger siblings. Next time someone asks me what one of my talents are...I'm going with "vacationing". then maybe I'll get to practice it!

 

Perry the Platypus cake

some friends invited us over to watch the new Phineas and Ferb movie tonight.  My kids volunteered me to make a Perry the Platypus cake and this is what i came up with...

Lincoln had this picture and wanted me to make him kicking of course, so i just tried to copy it.

i made 2 bread pans of cake and used one for the body and cut up the other for the legs and arms. rice crispies for the hat and feet.

then crumb coat...

and decorate...

i wish i had more time for his hands but i think it turned out pretty well, and the kids thought i was pretty much the best mom ever =). Happy Perry the Platypus!

so behind....

we have been playing hard all summer! we got to go up to colorado with some girlfriends and our kiddos and play. it was beautiful!

we played some Just Dance 2 on the Wii. I love that game! I may have dominated...even though it was against 6 children and 2 adults...i'm still claiming 1st place.

one of our favorite things was 4 wheeling. Seriously that is fun. There was a wonderful little stream that we gunned it through over and over to see how wet we could get...and wash off some of the dust...

or just make it into mud. whichever.

another fun thing was going out on the lake. we rented a boat and all the kids took turns driving us around. My kids had never been on a boat so they thought it was pretty great.

the water was freezing but how could they pass up the opportunity to jump in a lake?

...even if it was for 3 seconds at a time.

we had a great time with the kids by day and hanging out and playing games just adults at night. Crazy things happen when girlfriends get together. The later it got...the more interesting it became. silly girls.

We got back home then turned around and went up to Winslow for the 4th of July.

We had a great time with the family. And of course our big extended family dinner where we ate some "dead cow". The kids played so well together and the adults just got to sit on the lawn and laugh together...a perfect 4 of July.

then it was off to the fireworks!

i love America and i love socks so these were perfect obviously.

and i love him too.

the line up...

the crazies...

we did miss nathan's and leah and paige's families this year. it's just not the same without them. hopefully next year...

weeping and wailing...

my big sis and her cute family moved far, far away last week. talk about sad! her husband is doing his residency in Ohio. Ohio! seriously.

we have known it was coming for quite a while now, but in the past few months we all tried to pack in as much time together as possible, and then the last 2 weeks before they left- that was about all our lives consisted of (which i loved!). i would tell my friends that i was doing such and such..."because my sister is leaving", and i had one friend say "wow, she's been leaving for a while now =)". it's true, we were counting down for months. but we just love them. so here are a few pics of us all right before they drove off into the sunset.

the sisters!...(pre-bawling)

the cousins...

these girls are besties!

uncle Kallam and Claire-bear

big cousin hannah

kayla and leah 

no really it was so sad =)

see. =)

i still get choked up if i think about it...or write about it!

i feel so lucky to have been able to live by leah and her family for so long. we had some great times. before she had kids, we lived 2 blocks from each other. she would work the night shift in the e.r. then go to aerobics with me in the morning, then sleep on my couch and hang out with me all day till her husband got home. she played with my kids and read scriptures and sang songs with hannah in spanish.

when our air conditioning was out, we stayed for 2 weeks in her house. it was a blast. we would let all the kids destroy the house while we played board games all day. we have all thrown some killer bridal and baby showers together and made mounds and mounds of delicious food together.

fun memories. and although being far apart will make things different, it will still be great. we love you leah and ben and eden and grace and claire! see you soon!

down to"hell"...

the other night lucy requested a new song for bedtime..."go down to hell". of course, i initially laughed and said what? i tried and tried to figure out what in the world she was talking about or where she had heard it, but in the end settled on the more recognizable song..."i am a child of god" (ya know to get those bad words out of her mind). well, she kept asking for it the next few nights, and i finally got a chance to ask peder what in the world he thought she was talking about. it appears that on saturdays when i'm at work, peder drives hannah to her art class and goes up and down the freeway ramps and sings..."the grand old duke of york...he had 10,000 men...he marched them up the hill and then he marched them down again".  apparently lucy heard... "the grand old duke of york went down to "hell". if that's not selective hearing i do not know what is. so watch out people, next time you sing a song to your kid....enunciate.

...

Ellipses...i love them. I'm pretty sure that i use them way too often, and at completely the wrong times. I've never claimed to be a good writer. some of you "english major" people probably cringe at my grammar. sorry. oh well. i love them. once i wrote a post about some of my favorite words, well this is my favorite quotation mark...by far. i looked back, and there are 39 blog titles that have ellipses in them. 39! and as you all know, it's not like i blog a lot. 39 out of 109 titles is a pretty good average. my guess is that it's actually in 98% of my blogs...just like a favorite quotation mark should be.
it's perfect for almost any occasion(especially when you use it any way you want to). i feel that it is totally superior to the comma. Commas to me just give a split second of a pause, where ellipses give that real thoughtful, sassy pause. it adds feeling, and can even denote the rolling of my figurative eyes.... Plus if you are Japanese you can even double it at one time......!
So here's to you ellipses...you complete me.

snow is fun...

but only as long as you can't actually feel the snow.

The longer i live in the "Valley of the Sun", the colder i get. I mean, we are talking that when it gets below 69 degrees, i am freezing...time to bust out the extra blanket on my half of the bed. i was excited though to take the kids up to flagstaff with my parents and sister to play in the snow. we all know that opportunity doesn't arise every day around here.

this is right at the beginning when everyone was bundled and hadn't really felt any snow yet. awww the innocence...

we had a great time throwing snowballs at eachother ...

and seeing how much snow we could pick up...

and being really cute, all bundled up...she kinds looks like a chipmunk =)

this is when we hurried and took a group picture because we knew we only had moments left before the wall of cold hit and the icy tears began.

 

even after all the work of finding/dressing in layers and layers and layers of warmth, it is just never enough.

she may be smiling here, but she was crying just moments before...and after.  i decided that i love the warmth even more than before. seriously, trying to go out in the cold with little kids is way too much work.  and way too many clothes. and snow is only fun if you can't feel it.