Halloween 2014

Well, I'm proud of the kids. I've been feeling like a Halloween bah-hum-bug this week, but they carried on without me, which I appreciate. I didn't want to buy anything new. ...cause we have two very large bins of dress up clothes, and I figured they should be able to figure something out from that stash, and they did or made their own. Natalie and Sophi - Tinkerbell and Jasmine. We went over to a neighbor's house for some pizza and quick pictures.

Hyrum had got Natalie ready for the fun, I got Sophi ready 5 minutes before we left.

Lily was a dog and figured out this costume by herself, even made her puppy ears. They wore their costumes to school today. I told them I wasn't going to make it to the parade but did snap these at the bus stop.

Abi got together her "random cowgirl" outfit. She had to keep clarifying for people at school that she was not Jessie from Toy Story, she was just a random cowgirl.

Wesley stole an idea of Melodie's and made himself a cupcake costume. As he cut and worked on it on Wednesday, I was being a scrooge and said I didn't think it was going to work... "can't you just be a vampire?" I pleaded. No, he wanted to be a cupcake, so I wished him good luck and he came up with this on his own. I did break out the glue gun this morning to help him attach his sprinkles, he didn't ask. They were stuck on with ducktape, but I thought little dabs of hot glue would hold them better and we were able to put more on. Good job Wes, way to keep with your plan even when the nay-sayers (your mom) tried to dissuade you. Never let people tell you you can't do something, and that includes me.

Hyrum didn't know what to be, so that's what he decided to be. He made a question mark out of duck tape on a shirt. When people asked "what are you?" he said "I don't know!" But he also had a few people think he was Dr. Who.

I went and bought candy this afternoon and ate too many KitKats. I finally got a little into the mood tonight and decided to dress up - put together a pirate outfit for myself and I carried Tinkerbell around. Melodie saw my attire and was inspired and got together a quick pirate outfit too.

Ethan and Joseph wore their Zoot Suits from their Caleb band. Melodie decorated our door step, the kids carved the pumpkins on their own tonight, I got the candles. It all came together and they are great kids. After about 10 houses, Lily, Sophi and Natalie were done, so we made out way home and listened to Thriller on the door step and danced our Michael Jackson dances as we passed out candy to trick or treaters.  

Great kids. I love them and am glad they are patient with me. And I'm pleased that they are becoming such independent kiddos.

Music Practice

Natalie has been practicing the recorder. 

"Hey, it's 10:30 at night and everyone else is blasting music and practicing... so why can't I?"

You sound good, Natalie, and you look funny with that in your mouth. You're cute.

Joseph, Melodie, and Ethan had a music Halloween concert at school last night. I took the younger kids to a "fall festival" at our church, so I didn't see the show, but Corey said it was great. Ethan has a solo, Melodie has a solo and her flute sound is so bright and clear, and Joseph soloed and also sang "Witchcraft" during a jazz band song, Fun stuff. I'll get pictures up when Corey sends me some. Joseph's in charge of a school Halloween stomp tomorrow, good luck buddy.

Nerd Day

It's been "spirit week" for the jr. high crowd. Pajama day was one of them, Nerd Day was today.

Joseph said everyone was very impressed by what a good "nerd" he was. He ate his lunch weird, did his school work "nerdy" - he really got into the roll. Funny kids. (Joe says thanks again for the great glasses, Gpa Wride!)

Lightswitch

Simple pleasures with my baby girl ~ lets turn on the light!

She has to turn around to see - yup! It's on! Fun

Now turn it off (love her little finger)

Did I do it?

Yup! It's turned off! So fun!!

On, Off, On, Off - we did this for several minutes. Turn the fan on and off, on and off...

What other buttons can I push? 

So fun, such simple pleasures. 

Lego Hair

It was crazy hair day today. I was prepping myself a little last night, that I'd have to get up and figure out something creative (Abi still brings up that last year kids said her hair wasn't "crazy", other moms give some pretty good competition, and I'd really rather not be competing...) so this morning I was pleased to see Wesley taking care of it on his own - he was clipping legos in his hair. Abi thought it was brilliant and followed suit, and did it all by herself. Sweet. "Don't loose the legos though..." I requested as I saw that Wes had a squirrel lego and Rapunzel's pet Pascal... Not that I should concern myself with lost legos. But I guess I do get involved sometimes when it involves minifigures and animal legos.

So off they went. I did help Lily with her hair before she left for afternoon kindergarten. She was pleasantly surprised at my skill, but instead of just appreciating it, she had to go and put the pressure on and said "I hope I win!" We'll see if I get a lecture about what a lousy job I did when she comes home.

Oh! She just walked in... "Hey Lily!!" ~ "Hi Mom!!" ~ Did you win?!!?" "No..." "Are you sad?" "Yeah..." Hmm, but she's still smiling. So she feels sad, but no lecture, and apparently no high expectations to step it up and win it next year, so we're good. Phew!

One last thing for today, this video was of Natalie and I playing on the bed last week, where she was giving me a little scowl face while trying at the same time to not break character and grin and I would push her over. It was pretty adorable.

Hike to Vista Mound

Today was a little more than it's usual busy... In addition to Melodie's orchestra and flute lesson, the boys had some jazz band thing in American Fork. So two things and both at the same time. That means all of our sitters were going to be gone and busy, so guess what little kids! You get to come with me to take Mel. It was around 8:15 am that I learned of these logistics, and all the little girls were still sleeping. So I opted to drop Mel off at Orchestra (at the U of U) then came back home for the rest of the kids. I figured I'd rather make two 30 minute trips downtown than to try and get everyone up and dressed and fed by the time Melodie had to leave in 15 minutes. So I dropped her off then came home just in time to wave to Corey and the boys as they left, then we had an hour to get my crew ready.

I made sure they all ate breakfast but didn't do a good job making sure they had jackets... or socks and shoes. I told them to get ready and then told them to go get in the car when it was departure time. As we were on our way, Wesley informed me "Abi doesn't have her shoes. Or Lily. Or Sophi." Doh. I had planned on possibly taking a little hike to Ensign Peak while we wait for Mel's flute lesson to be done, but sounded like that just got cancelled since my hiking companions were shoeless. I knew Natalie didn't have shoes, but I was planning to carry her anyway. So, that's okay, we'll just go on a drive around the capitol and look at the view from the car. Up and up the hills we went.

And as we drove past the Engisn peak trail entrance, I saw that it had a nice trailhead with cement steps and what seemed like a cement trail going up the start of the trail. Well, let's get out of the car and just look around for a bit. 

Turned out the cement side walk went all the way up to a lookout point called Vista Mound, so we were kinda able to do a hike!

Barefoot and all. I may have gotten a few looks from other trail walkers, but that's okay I do not attempt to hide the fact that I do not have my act together. But I do like to roll with it and take what opportunities I can get, and that means our little hike today was barefoot, and that's okay! Abi said "There's broken glass!" Yes, there were more than a few broken beer bottles. "Don't step on it."

Lots of cigarette butts too plus graffiti on the information sign. That's too bad.

Nice view though!

The kids all ran back to the car without me. I called for them to stop for a photo. Abi strikes a pose as usual.

So we didn't go up all the way to the peak, just to Vista Mound, a short hop skip and jump from the entrance with a nicely paved trail. Sweet.

I wanted to make everyone come out with me again that evening to do it with shoes, then we could have gone all the way to the top. But maybe we'll give that a go next weekend?

Pillow Fight

Hyrum was the last to return from school today - it was early out day for everyone else. They had already scattered to play outside and at friends' houses, so it was quiet here for a moment with just Natalie and Sophia. Soon I heard Hyrum and Natalie playing a game in the front room. They were having a baby pillow fight.

They had been playing and laughing and squealing for a good 20 minutes when I came to capture the moment. Hyrum would throw the pillow at Natalie ~

The pillow would bonk her in the head, then Natalie would pick it up and go get revenge on Hyrum.

Are you prepared to feel the wrath of Natalie?

Each time I was surprised she was able to "throw" that pillow at all. But she was able to somehow toss it over her shoulder and have it pat Hyrum ever so gently on his back. But then he would give her a great roar of "HEY!!" and turn her on her heels running away ~

And he'd grab the pillow and toss it at her, and they'd repeat the whole process again.

It was precious to watch. Heaven is here. Love these little moments with them. Thanks for creating it Hyrum! I love it when the kids play together, especially the big kids with their little sisters. Joseph helped Lily read over her kindergarten word list yesterday, and his eyes lit up later as he told me about how she was trying to tell her b's and d's apart. After he told her which one was the b, she made a note at the bottom of her paper by putting "b B" and then "d D" and drawing a circle around each one. Our little Lily is already turning into a good student! Joseph thought it was super cute, and so do I. Love these kids.

Passports

Every five years or so, it seems that Corey likes to make sure all the kids have current passports "just in case..." Yeah right. If there's one thing I know, it's that when Corey starts thinking about doing something, he's probably going to do it. And if there's another thing I know, it's that I'll probably go along with it. And Corey's thinking about us going to Brazil. Thus, I spent most of the day trying to fill out passport applications for everyone with Natalie underfoot ~ not an easy task. She doesn't like to let me sit at a desk and do anything (hence the reason why I'm standing as I type this - can't sit or she'll crawl on my lap or on top of the desk or start hitting computer keys...) On top of the challenge of writing and filling out forms, was the challenge of keeping important certificates and cards safely away from her. I didn't finish before lunch, but had to pause my task and hurry to Costco to get photos taken for the little girls. I finished filling them out at 2:00, just in time to go get the kids out of school for our passport family outing. I recognize that filling out 9 applications should take a small chunk of time, but seems like it shouldn't have taken me all morning and afternoon, but it did. Oh these hard first world problems!

So I left at 2:15 to start getting the kids out of 2 schools on my side of the valley, Corey got the Jr. High crowd, and off we both went to the county building to turn in our applications. The other 6 kids got their photos taken there at the county office, and now we almost look like the Brady Bunch~

So there are no travel plans, so we didn't to do a last minute expedite rush order like we have in years past. Cause like I said we have nothing nailed down at the moment. Corey's just "thinking" about it. After they got their pictures taken, I went out to the car with the kids and Corey stayed and waited to sign. Outside Joseph had a flashback - "I remember when we were here last time, we were eating Dunford Doughnuts..." Unfortunately, that was back before I blogged regularly (hence the May - August gap in entries in 2010). And I just looked back through the July 9, 2010 digital photos (I know that was the date when we got our passports last time cause I filled it out in the "previous passport issue date" box 7 times today) but unfortunately I didn't take pictures either, so we'll just have to go with fuzzy memories of the chocolate doughnuts. Here's a fresh memory of muffins...

The kids and I killed time, Corey worked over things with the nice lady who was the unfortunate employee who got to help us with our 9 passport applications.

Some ground crew employees came along and asked us if we had seen the eclipse. What?!?! Where have I been? My astronomy radar was way off and I wasn't even aware!! Ahh! So it was so cool that they were so thoughtful and stopped to mention it to us. They even shared their solar glasses, thank you, cool people! After 20 minutes, Corey called and summoned me up to sign. He had to call me via Joseph's cell phone 'cause mine got busted last night when Lily knocked it off the kitchen counter - the screen cracked in half. Touch screen still works on the top half, but not on the bottom half, like where you have to push "answer" to phone calls or "back" or "return to menu"... so yeah, it's worthless now. Doh. So he called Joseph's phone, I headed up and was soon signing that "to the best of my knowledge" these kids are mine and that everything I filled out was true, but we confessed as we signed that we really don't know their eye color, even when we're looking at them. So we just faked it with a bunch of "hazel" answers for everyone but Sophi (dark brown) and Abi ~ those are definitely "blue!",

Here Corey, my turn to sign. This is one view of what "you've got your hands full" looks like.

Last check of everything, making sure photos are stapled to right names... and that was that!

Corey made the comment "First we came for our marriage certificate... now... 15 years and 9 kids later..." that clock up on the wall just keeps tickin'.

Manilla Park

Last week, while Joseph and Ethan were at band practice in American Fork, I took the girls and Wes to one of the coolest parks in Utah - Manilla Park. Also called "Discovery Park". And my kids call it "the wood park". It is a very cool park.

We had a few cheese sticks to help keep their blood sugar up during the two hour practice.

Sophia enjoyed herself, and kept her new Anna doll in hand the whole time.

"My Anna!"

 She did put down Anna for a little bit so she could swing. Love seeing happy faces on the swing.

That is pure childhood joy right there.

 Love you Sophi!

However, tragedy struck when we got home - Anna was missing. I thought maybe she had left her at the park. We looked all over in the car. Then luckily we saw this picture below that I'd taken  - proof that Anna had made it out of the park safely and went to the grocery store with us (had to grab some bananas for my monkeys).

I called the grocery store and asked if there was an Anna doll in one of the shopping cart cars in the east cart return. Sophi is a lucky girl, cause they found her. Then the only trial left was to wait 5 days until we went down again for Hyrum's practice. Happy day when Anna was returned. Mom's lesson learned: take the kids to the wood park, but next time sneak Anna away from Sophi and hide it until we get back home.