Halloween Overload!

Here is my scary blue dragon saying Trick-or Treat! Doesn't that put you in the Halloween spirit?
We had the annual Morgan cousin Halloween Party today! I think that it was fun! My kids said that they liked it :) (standing: Jack (Nara's cousin) back row: Isabel, Zoey (Yamashita cousin), Ari, Noah, Adam holding Sam Front row: Ben, Sarah & Nara)
Here's Nara, the good witch, who hated wearing her hat!
And Indiana Adam holding a very wiggly otter :) I love Adam's smile these days. I also love the lisps that kids get when they lose teeth. Very cute.
3 of our cute princesses reading a book with Kelli Ann. (Sarah, Nara, and Zoey)

I had a few stations set up for games. A pumpkin bean bag toss, ghost bowling, ring around Frankenstein, the bat cave (where they made toilet paper roll bats) and a ghost eating contest.
This was by far the favorite game. We set up 2 chairs and tied yarn across it. Then we tied marshmallow ghosts to the end of yarn, had the kids lay down and swung the ghosts.
With no hands, the kids had to try and eat their ghosts first. This was the favorite game, for those playing and watching :)
Someone cheated !!!!
See, funny huh?!

And what is a party without treats? The kids made oreo spider cookies, but I had the idea of making no-bake cookies with candy melt eyes and legs to make spiders. I think they turned out cute, and tasty too!

And these are the toilet paper roll bats. The kids liked making these too.

After our party, we headed over to out ward Halloween parade. A little chilly, but fun none the less.
On to other activities this month..... We had or Morgan monthly dinner for October and I made rice crispy ghosts for treats! I think they turned out cute! The kids loved them!

For Family Home Evening we painted pumpkins. Brady had to turn Isabel's pumpkin for her so she could get to it all! She loves that it is almost as big as her!
You can never have too much paint!

Ben painting his pumpkin!

As we got closer to Halloween, I let the kids make jack-o-lanterns. They thought pulling out the seeds were awesome. They also loved eating the roasted ones!

My 2 cute kiddos. Pulling out seeds. I am glad that we painted them first. Then I didn't have rotting pumpkins on my porch...... Speaking of painting, Ben and I painted these juice bottles to make ghost bowling! We were able to use them for preschool 'g' is for ghost, and again for the cousin party. The Frankenstein ones were for throwing rings at. Sam loves them. He is getting good at throwing a ball to make them fall over!

We had Ari and Zoey over for a play day. They wanted to paint pumpkins, so we went to Kents and got some for a really good deal! They painted for over 40min! I call that a good activity! Notice the cute pumpkin pillow on the back of the couch? Jen saw one like it a Tai Pan for $15 and thought we could make one for way cheaper. We had all the felt on hand, so basically it was free! It is really cute.

Painting pumpkins was Ben's idea!
Who needs a paintbrush...... or a shirt for that matter!
Isabel looking cute painting her pumpkin.....
Zoey LOVED painting with the round brushes. She especially loved the pink sparkles! She is such a cute girl.
Ari painting her pumpkin! We love having her close so she can come play :)
We have the tradition of going on the hay ride at Day Farms in Layton to get our pumpkins. You get a hay ride, pulled by a tractor and your choice of any pumpkin for $5. Isabel always makes sure to get the biggest one out there! Ben always makes sure to get one that he can lift by himself, cause he wants to be able to carry it around :)

We made it earlier this year, so there were lots of big pumpkins to pick from!
Isabel and Brady on the hay ride! Notice Isabel's smile.... 2 fewer teeth on the bottom :)

The token family picture. Ben's smile cracks me up!
Ben can't leave without taking some worms. He loves that they let him take the worms with him.
My attempt at creativity! I was sick of the fake spider webs, so I decided to make one out of yarn. Ben and Isabel love the movie Charlotte's Web, so of course we had to make the web say something. The orange is the web, and the purple is the word.......Really hard to see in this picture, but it says 'spooky'. I made 2 other webs. One has bugs in it, and the other one says 'boo!'. I was very glad that Jen came and helped me out! She did awesome. She made a really cute one on her banister. Have to say that it is fun to have crafty sisters-in-law :)

Happy Birthday to me!

I guess I have started a tradition for birthdays at our house. I don't care if the kids get me a present, what I do like for them to do is come up with a cupcake that reminds them of something that they think I like. (We do this for Brady's birthday/fathers day too). I have them come up with the idea, then let them browse the candy aisle for supplies and then help them bake the cupcakes. Can you guess what their idea was for me this year?????

Those are volleyballs with nets! I think they turned out cute! And I sure love that they made them for me! (Isabel's original ideas was a vacuum...... volleyballs are way better!) These were a great way to end my birthday. FYI, the brazilian festival isn't all that it is cracked up to be... at least I was with my family!

Kindergarten!!

My little bug a boo is in kindergarten! She is so excited that she gets to go everyday!

She wanted to make her teacher a special gift to take on the first day. At first she wanted to make her teacher a turkey hair clip, but we figured she wouldn't wear it because she has really short hair. So when I asked Isabel what she thought her teacher would use, she said, " clorox wipes. We use lots of those!" So, we ended up getting her her own container of clorox wipes with a bow and a handwritten note with lots of jewels!

Her cute present and new school outfit! She is really into skirts with leggings this year. Crazy girl... skirts???? She must have got that trait from Brady's side of the family :)
Here is a picture of the whole outfit! Hello kitty skirt with leggings and big flower in her curly hair and flower sandals! When I dropped her off she was very excited that the girl sitting next to her, Rylee, had curly hair with a flower in it too. The things she gets excited about make me smile! Here's to a great year!

Trek

Brady and I had the opportunity to be a ma and pa for our stake's trek this year. We spent many a Sunday in meeting helping us to prepare spiritually to go on trek. I even read Fire of the Covenant and Brady read tons of historical books on the pioneers.
Although we felt spiritually prepared to go, we were a little lacking in temporal preparation. We had no idea what was going on. We found out, each day, just like our kids did. I guess pioneer parents were the same way, they just had to encourage their kids to keep going and not complain even if they themselves weren't sure of what was in store each day.
The first day was interesting. We had a really good family. They were excited and very eager to make it to Salt Lake. :) They had pushed 3 miles, when we got to Brigham's arrow. They looked at the landmark, and then we were told to turn around and hike back those same 3 miles. Talk about grumbling! I have to admit, I did a little complaining myself. This was not part of the 6 miles/day they told us about. (We ended up hiking 18miles that day!) We got a baby (sack of rice) too. They had real pioneer names on them. Luckily Brady had read about our baby and knew that he would make it to Salt lake, so we didn't have to bury it along the way. There were trail sides along the way also. They had people act out pioneer stories, and sometimes we had treats that went along with it. We had one son that doesn't walk.... I had Brady take the rest of the family and my son and I walked at the very back of EVERYONE for the whole day. Every once in a while I would run to catch up with the rest of my family to make sure they were doing good. My son and I ended up having to catch a ride on the medical 4-wheeler at the very end.... they didn't want to wait for us anymore. It's hard to walk that slow....we never would have made it to salt lake in the olden days.
We got back to camp late, so late that my family ate and then asked if they could go to bed. It's not often that kids ask to go to bed, so we of course said OK. Before they went to bed, I had them grab their buckets and sit in a circle. It was too dark to read scriptures (and I forgot my flashlight) but I told them about a scripture that helped me on my mission, in D&C where we are promised that the Lord will be on our right hand and on our left and that His angels will be round us to bear us up.... I promised them angels to help them if they did their part and asked Heavenly Father for help, and then I had them go around and tell me what their favorite part of that day was. For some it was hard, but I reminded them that it was the journey that was important. I then told them that we would have the same family meeting the next night so they should try to think during the day about what would make them happy. We were blessed with a really good group!
The second day we really did only hike the 6 miles. We had the women's pull, which wasn't as hard as I expected. My girls were awesome. We sang Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, and every time we said sunbeam, we pushed really hard. The girls thought it was fun. Our boys were at the top cheering for us. It was nice to have them take over for us though. We also had cholera hill. We received a letter after lunch telling us who in our party was sick with cholera (bloody diarrhea and vomit) Those who were sick had to just walk to the top of the hill, while the others were left to push the handcart by themselves. Brady and I were both sick, so that left 3 kids to do it. They did awesome! Our handcart tipped, knocking off all of our water and supplies, and we made it to camp around 2, so pioneer games commenced. This helped every one's spirits. There was tug-of-war and water balloons (totally a pioneer game) and they filled up socks with flour and played dodge ball. There was a fireside that night, I got to sing, and Brady got invited to have man steaks with Chad Zito, Kith Mitchell, and Colby Dabb. I wouldn't mind if he hung out with those guys!
The third day was the last one. We had lots of trail side stops and the kids were itching to get to the finish line. There was an awesome one where we were sitting on a grassy field and over a hill came Colby Dabb, dressed like captain Moroni. He spoke like Captain Moroni and had the attention of everyone. It was awesome. Then, finally the trail boss (Kirk Douglass) let our family go first. (We set too fast of a pace, so we weren't allowed to be first the other 2 days). Our boys ran to the finish. They made really good time. :) The girls and I speed walked behind. We let the crazy boys just go!
I bore my testimony the next day at church. What I realized is that there was a lot of complaining. It just occurred to me that the pioneers probably didn't want to have to make all the stops that they did, but still they did it. I mean, who really wants to have their baby die, or have someone get sick, or have to cross a river.... they all wanted to get to Salt Lake too. They had to take care of those in their family though, and sometimes that delays the journey. I remember reading that Brigham Young had to remind them to quit complaining a few times along the trail. And I also remember reading about the valley boys, boys that were called to help and were very eager to get to salt lake. Most of the boys in my group were valley boys. Strong in testimony and eager to push forward to salt lake.
Brady and I had a good experience. It was fun and I look forward to seeing my kids again at the trek reunion next month. Hopefully I can get some pictures to add to this post. I am very grateful for the pioneers and I am very grateful that I didn't have to cross the plains. I would have done it, but it sure would have been hard. I'm truly grateful for their examples of faith and perseverance.

Whitney Reservoir Trip

In July we had the chance to go camping with our neighbors, the Swenson's up at Whitney Reservoir. We didn't plan it, we just happened to be going camping the same weekend and when we asked where they were going and they said the Uintah's we asked if we could tag along. I'm glad we did. It was beautiful!
We got there, set up camp, then went fishing. The kids loved it. Here is the fish Isabel caught.... well, Steve caught it and handed Isabel the pole :)
Ben absolutely LOVED fishing. When anyone caught a fish, he would hold it and throw it back in the water. We didn't keep anything that we caught. Ben only had one casualty.... the poor fish got thrown into a rock and died....

The mosquitos were horrible. Brady went back to the truck and came back all decked out in his repellent gear! :) I eventually begged some repellent off of some other fisherpeople that were there. (Ours was back at the trailer, about 20min away)
Ben loved having Ryan there. He would just lead him wherever he wanted him to go.... and Ryan would go :)

Here is Isabel 'fishing' with her dad.
And here is Ben fishing with his dad. Ben is just getting ready to throw the line out into the water. He swings it like a baseball bat :)
Ben was entranced with anything to do with fish. Here he is waiting eagerly so he can throw the fish back.

Our cute kiddos! This is how they posed when I told them I wanted a picture of them at the lake. Silly kids!

The next day, we took a break from riding 4-wheelers and Isabel tried to catch something.....

Ben tried too.... can you guess what it was????

Yep, cute little butterflies! They were everywhere.
Isabel wanted to be cute and wear my helmet and glasses! (The glasses didn't really help keep bugs out.... When we got back to the trailer, I had to pull bugs out of my eyes...disgusting!) Isabel looks so cute....
Her pretending to drive it! I don't think she could, but Ben has watched very closely so I have no doubt that he could drive it. Hence the reason the keys are kept away from him! We only had one incident where I was driving and screamed a little, and it freaked Ben out! He started hysterically screaming.... I had to go back down the mountain so he would calm down. I only screamed because we were going through a huge mud patch and I lost all traction.... Nothing big :) He eventually calmed down and all was ok! The scenery was gorgeous...... There were trails everywhere and not too many people!

Steve took our picture up there. I think it turned out ok for everyone having helmet hair :)We are all looking at the camera, that's a bonus!
When we got back to camp, we had a visitor. A nice moose came and camped out for half of the day. He was huge. He was about 30ft from our trailer, just laying down, resting. The kids liked to check on him, and were sad to see him walk off.
Here are Ben, Steve and Ryan fishing again. Ben loves Steve. In fact Steve is giving him rides around the cul-de-sac on his 4 wheeler right now. Ben is in heaven.
Here is Steve's catch of the day! What a fisherman!
Here are the kids with Brady. This only happened once or twice, they usually rode with me, and Brady would ride on his dirt bike. I loved having the kids on the back. Isabel would sing, 'whenever I hear the song of a bird, or look at the blue blue sky, whenever I feel the rain on my face or the wind as it rushes by. Whenever I touch a velvet rose or walk by a lilac field, I'm glad that I live in this beautiful world, Heavenly Father created for me!" It's comforting as a mom to know that your kids know that Heavenly Father loves them because He created everything for them!