Halloween!

Well it all starts with carving the pumpkins. Lydia loves this part and just dove right in. She dug out hers and anyone else's that would let her. She had a very definite idea of what face she wanted and drew it herself. Sadly I forgot to take a picture of the finished products this year.

Elijah didn't want anything to do with that yucky stuff. Here is Todd trying to get him to stick his hands in there. It took a while, then he started with one seed at a time.

Pretty soon he was saying "Hey Mom, I'm not scared anymore."

After that, the kids went outside to put up the web and spider.

Dallin just liked to pretend he was Spiderman and was spinning the web himself.

On the day before Halloween we went to the trunk or treat at the high school put on by the Key Club. Since Bridget was involved we decided to check it out. And since I didn't get any real shots of them on Halloween this is what we got. Eli was Spiderman and Lydia was Tinkerbell. There was much anticipation by Eli for this Spiderman costume. He talked about it for months before Halloween. I made the mistake of telling him it was coming in the mail. Everyday he asked about 5 million times if the mailman brought it yet. I think the day it came may have been the happiest day of his life. Pretty much since he could stand upright he has truly believed he was a superhero. He started doing push ups when he was two. He is always bouncing off the walls and doing flips off the couch so to have an actual costume...well he was in heaven. I couldn't get the thing off of him. It has all the muscles and everything. The day that Lydia's costume came in the mail, Elijah looked in the box then put his head down and started to cry like his heart was broken. He said, "I wanted Lydia to be Mary Jane." He finally came to terms with it and told me on Halloween that he guessed that Spiderman could save Tinkerbell from the bad guys. Lydia also loves Halloween. She talks about it all year long. She changed her mind several times on what she wanted to be. The bast part of her costume was the wings. It's hard to tell but they have green lights that blink. They were a big hit.

Earlier in the day on Halloween Eli and I went to the Children's Museum. He saw his friend Bat Man there. These guys were born one day apart and love to play together.

Next we went to Lydia's class for the Halloween party. Somehow I ended up in charge of the party. And I try hard not to let that happen. I bought all the supplies and made all the sugar cookies and frosting. Here are the kids decorating their cookies.

We also went to the grocery store. Eli was disappointed that people just smiled at him and they weren't even scared. I had to remind him that he was the good spiderman. Then he reminded me that there was some BLACK on it.

Our neighborhood is very popular for trick or treaters. It is non-stop. People come from all over to our neighborhood. So every year I make a couple pots of soup and rolls and hot cocoa and have people over. It has gotten harder to do that since our ward's trunk or treat is on Halloween now. So this year I just made the food and invited in whoever came by afterward. Only a couple of families did but we had a fun night. Dallin had a couple friends over but they just stayed upstairs most of the night. Here's all the kids that were bouncing off the walls all night.

The Pumpkin Patch

A few days before Halloween, Lydia's class went on a field trip to the pumpkin patch. Eli and I met them there.

They had a huge hay stack and a long slide. Eli was loving it.

And then all the other kids showed up.
We took a little tour and learned about growing pumpkins and saw and talked about the reindeer that live there. This is Lydia with her best friend in her class, Beau.

Their favorite part was they each got to take home a little pumpkin.

Happy Birthday Bridget!

17 YEARS OLD! Wow! This was the scene on October 22, 1991 just after she was born.
Look at that little bow mouth. She still has that mouth. It's so cute.

Bridget was our surprise baby. As in "Surprise you are 20 weeks pregnant!" Yeah that was a big surprise. She and Garrett are only 16 months apart. You would think I would be able to figure it out by the third baby but somehow it escaped me. She only weighed 6 pounds 9 ounces. After Garrett's 9 lbs 9 ozs it felt like half the baby was missing. She may have been small but she was mighty with a strong will.(And a strong voice-always screaming) I tend to think she just decided she was going to be born when she wanted to whether we were expecting her or not. That is the way she has lived her life. She knows what she wants and she goes after it. As a toddler she was always climbing and moving. She never watched TV. She just couldn't sit still that long. She has a great work ethic. She is smart and gets good grades but she has those blond moments that we all love so much. The best thing is that she has a great testimony of the gospel and always wants to do the right thing even if it isn't popular. Bridget loves to be involved and doing. She has tried every sport available. If there was something to sign up for she signed. Here is a picture I ran across recently. I love how tiny she looks. It's worse if you could see the other players since they are twice her size. She was fearless.
I love this picture of her. This is her Kindergarten picture. Lydia is in Kindergarten. Everyone says they look alike so see what you think. Look at that sweet face. She was my baby when we left California. And the baby of that first three that were so close in age. So Bridget always seems like my baby. I can't believe she is 17!

She had a great birthday. It started with a phone call from a certain boy just after midnight. Then breakfast before school with another certain boy and a couple of friends. I brought donuts to seminary. When I got home there were two bouquets sitting on the front porch. One was from her sister, Samantha, the other from yet another certain boy from Boise. That night she went to dinner and dessert with friends. On Saturday she and I went on a shopping trip for her birthday to the Tri-Cities and then Dinner at the Olive Garden. We didn't get around to the family dinner (her choice- chefs salad and sushi) until Monday. Poor thing, I'm not sure she got enough attention.

All that Jazz

Okay so I am really behind again. A couple of weeks ago Dallin had his first band concert of the year. The past couple of years he has played the alto sax. When Garrett graduated I made Dallin switch to the tenor sax. Dallin put up a fight. But I didn't feel good about buying a new alto when we had a really nice tenor just sitting here. So he had to concede. Since then he has had a lot of compliments on his rockin sax! I will say it is pretty cool. It is black and gold and has some cool details. So it wasn't such a bad deal after all. Unfortunately a few weeks ago he dropped it and put a bad dent in it. It looked bad. I was worried that it wasn't fixable. But we sent it in and it came back looking great. You couldn't tell at all. Here he is at the concert.

He is also in the jazz band. This is my favorite part of the concerts. He goes to school an hour early three days a week so he can be in the jazz band. Last week he had a jazz concert with both middle schools and the high school. It was pretty jazzy. I really enjoyed it.

Soccer!

This was Dallin's last soccer game. I enjoy watching soccer. It's a good thing because I have watched a lot of soccer over the years. This is the first time in about 12 years that I only had one soccer player. Dallin is a good soccer player. As you might notice, he is not the biggest player on the team but he has some great moves and he's always where he needs to be. I have often had three playing soccer at once. This is fall- me at the soccer field.

What a way to end the season! They finally beat the team they weren't sure they were ever gonna beat. Dallin contributed two goals to that score. He was so happy. His coach finally figured out how to pronounce his name by the end of the season. The office staff at the elementary school never figured it out before he left. Who knew it would be that hard? No one seems to be able to pronounce it. Poor Dallin doesn't get a lot of blog time. He's a good kid and we depend on him a lot.

If soccer doesn't say fall to you maybe this does. This is one of our backyard apple trees before I picked the apples on it. I just love to see the apples growing. Eli funny:

I was squatting down looking in the cupboard. Elijah comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my neck.

Me: Aww Elijah you're so nice. I love your hugs.

Elijah: I'm choking you.

What a sweetie.

Rachel and Josh came to visit!

Yea! Rachel and Josh live in Washington now! Rachel is my cute niece and she and Josh have been married for two years now. They moved to Spokane for Josh to go to Gonzaga Law school. We got to spend all of Conference weekend with them. This was perfect timing because this would be the first conference without both Samantha and Garrett which I was feeling sad about. Although we really missed them both it eased the pain to have some more family around. It was a busy weekend. We were being rained on at the football game when they arrived. They wisely skipped it and went straight to the house. The next day I dragged Rachel to Dallin's soccer game in the pouring rain. She and I and Lydia and Eli all huddled under an umbrella (Josh was at home studying). Of course we did a lot of eating. Luckily Rachel was here to help harass Bridget's date for homecoming since Todd, Josh and Dallin were all at priesthood meeting. Then Rachel and I stayed up while the homecoming gang had dessert and played games at our house after the dance. They went home way before Rachel and I went to bed at 3:30 am. We just had a lot of catching up to do and it was finally quiet. They are so fun to have around, everyone really enjoyed their visit. The first time Todd ever met the family was at Rachel's baby blessing. We spent a lot of time hangin' out with her family when we lived in California. It is so crazy weird to be hangin' out with her as an adult now. It was funny when we got home from the football game Rachel saw the note we left for the babysitter. She couldn't understand why we left the Bishop's cell number with her. Yeah well we expect our Bishop to handle all our children's disciplinary issues. (It only took her a few seconds to remember who our Bishop is.)
Poor Josh spent the whole weekend listening to Elijah calling his name a million times. Josh! Josh! Josh! Hey Josh remember how you are a monster and I run? Can we do that again? He couldn't go to the bathroom without Eli standing outside the bathroom waiting for him. Here they are enjoying conference together.

Lydia wanted to do Rachel's hair all the time. And she might need to re watch conference so she can hear it without hearing Lydia singing or humming nonstop through the entire thing. She makes music where ever she goes. Here is Rachel and Eli being superman together. Eli thinks for sure he is a superhero. He loved having a partner in saving the world.
They even got to see the famous shop! It now has a roof.

And walls and (most exciting for Todd) electricity. Now he can be there half the night too.

Here is everyone outside just before the driving tour all over town. Bridget was at home sleeping off her long night.
We were having so much fun we made them stay way past their planned departure hour. I really hope they come back and I just hope they didn't feel the need to go home and stock up on the birth control.

Homecoming 2008

Homecoming was weekend before last (yeah I'm a little behind). Here is Bridget with her date Jordan. I was still working on altering the dress at the last minute but she looked beautiful. It was a very pretty dress and she felt like Cinderella in it.

This is the group that went to dinner together. They decided to have the Mom's make dinner. It was still really special with cool decorations and probably better food too.
Bridget spent half the day setting up and decorating for the dance. She also had to clean up after so her friends helped and they got out of there late. These are the ones who came back to our house for dessert and games. It was a good time had by all.