Trick or Treat!

Happy Halloween! Just wanted to share a few of our costume/trick or treating photos. Kaitlyn made us dress up - neither Sam or I would have bothered if she hadn't insisted. The kids had a great time, of course. Tyler thought it was great fun to run down the road following his sister. But boy was he MAAAAAD when Kaitlyn declared she was done and we strapped him in the stroller for a quick walk back home. This was after we had spent probably an hour an a half walking around the neighborhood and not even hitting half the houses - trick or treating sure takes a long time with an almost 2 year old. But as I said - he loved it!

Ok, on to the photos!
Our beautiful princess Ariel (the mermaid).

And our little "King" - Tyler as Elvis! Don't you just love the black hair? It looked adorable but it was a mess and kept rubbing off on things. He had black hands and black streaks on his face most of the time we were out, no matter how often we wiped him off.

Washing it off wasn't a picnic either. What a mess!

But worth it! Well, I think he has finally managed to fall asleep and Kaitlyn will soon be headed there. I kept her up past her bedtime so I wouldn't have to keep getting up to answer the door :) Good night everyone! Hope you had a wonderful Halloween!

Carving Pumpkins

Yep, we left the carving until the last minute. This is because Sam doesn't like it, I'm not in love with it and as we found out tonight, the kids lose interest fast. So we did this for no other reason than because everyone else did it. I really don't want my kids to be shaking their heads when they are 30 and lamenting the fact that they didn't carve pumpkins for Halloween. There. 'Nuf said. :)

The kids were excited for the carving, especially Kaitlyn who had asked many many times today when we could carve her pumpkin. And they had fun for the 2 minutes they spent scooping out the pumpkin seeds but they were soon sick of the process and back on the couch watching Alvin and the Chipmunks (the halloween one). Maybe we should have turned off the TV before we started?
Here is the face Katy wanted on her pumpkin.

And here are the finished products. See, you can tell we don't do this very often. Kaitlyn's is on the left. Think I came close enough to the face? She says no, "it's a mad face." Ahhh well, maybe next year!
Then after all this, poor Katy threw up. We're thinking it's a very mild case of food poisoning - fingers crossed she's ok for all the fun tomorrow!

Katy's Preschool Halloween Party

Kaitlyn has been so excited for her Halloween party at preschool. She wanted to get ready as much as she could by herself and I had a lot of fun watching her. First she painted her nails - pink and blue on her toes, purple and orange for her fingers. Then she worked on her make-up - lip gloss, blue eye shadow, glitter body spray that smelled like grapes and what must have been red lip liner through her eyebrows. I got as much of the stuff out of the eyebrows as I could under the guise of "making it straight" :) But really, don't you think she has a talent for this stuff?
You only get a head shot. I will post the costume shots tomorrow.
So...off she went to the party and she says she had fun though the only thing she can remember doing is eating pizza. When I picked up her up they were taking a group photo and I'm sorry to admit that I didn't even have my phone on me, let alone a camera to take a photo. So I'll have to ask her teacher to email me one.

Ty is rushing me to go outside and play so I'll leave you with this last photo - Katy trying out the glow in the dark teeth that was one of her party favors.

Corn maze

Going to a corn maze has been the ONE item on my Fun Things To Do list this fall that I knew we couldn't miss (other than Trick or Treating of course!). So this morning we headed down to Thanksgiving Point to their corn maze/pumpkin festival. We had a great time though I have to admit that I wasn't really impressed with the maze - and that's not just because we didn't realize when we got to the end and went back through more of it before finding our way out another entrance :) But they did have a great selection of other things for the kids to do. We had to pretty much drag them out of there when we were ready to leave.

Tagged

I've been tagged by BeauDee. This one is easy - This picture is from my 4th folder and its the 4th picture. I tag Audrey, Christina, and Jacalyn. Find your 4th folder and 4th picture in that folder and describe it.

This photo was taken Oct 10, 2006. Kaitlyn was almost 3. Audrey and I had taken the girls to a pumpkin patch/corn maze. In this photo Katy was mad at me for trying to get her to pose for photos. But she quickly forgot her bad mood and had a lot of fun with the girls.

Pumpkins

With Halloween almost upon us we picked up a few pumpkins last time we were at the grocery store. Sam doesn't like carving pumpkins so we will probably just carve one the day before Halloween. Until then, Kaitlyn and I dressed them up for Halloween. Fun huh? Maybe next year I'll start this earlier and do something a little more elaborate.

Witchy Day

Yesterday it was time for The Girls to get together again. This time around Alisha, Cheri, and I decided to check out the witches at Gardner Village. They do a fantastic job decorating out there and we had a great time wandering around looking at everything in and outside the shops. It happened to be the day for their kids activities - and only baby Anne with us so we didn't participate - so the place was packed with all kinds of little ones in cute costumes.

One of the funnest things to see were all the elaborate witch hats. This lady is the main witch for the village who was wandering around signing autographs but there were tons of "civilians" dected out in their own versions. I am seriously considering having us get together next year for a hat decorating day then maybe going to Witches Night (their women's only activities - takes place next weekend for anyone that may want to go check it out). We'll see.

Cheri and I spent most of our time taking photos of decorations we would like to duplicate for ourselves - tons of ideas for future craft days yay!

And I just had to share one of the photos I took of the kids last night while they were playing in the leaves. Isn't autumn just so much fun?!!

Cake and Ice Cream

It has become our tradition to have cake and ice cream with close family and friends - those special people that get the honor of eating the "fancy cake." This is usually very low key and I was extra-grateful for that last night as I had reached the end of my usefulness. I was worn out and hurting (did I mention I had slipped on the ice while decorating in the morning and had spent the rest of the day dealing with the injury? Yeah, coudn't have picked a worse day for that to happen) and all I could manage was feeding the kids before everyone arrived then attaching myself to the couch for most of the party. All right - on to the last of the party photos!

Kaitlyn told me that her favorite thing of the day was blowing out the candles. Anyone else wondering what she wished for?

In between cake and presents the kids and the grandparents (mostly Grandpa Dennis and Dave) had a lot of fun playing with the left-over balloon swords and each other.

"Look at all this stuff!" Kaitlyn said at the end of the night. And I agree - that's a pretty nice pile of loot. Kaitlyn says Thanks Everyone!

5 Years Old!

Kaitlyn's main goal in life has been to make it to her 5th birthday. For some reason this has consumed her for months and months - probably something to do with being able to go to Kindergarten and ride the bus to school. And now she has finally reached it! We just can't believe that we have a 5 YEAR OLD.

And what a wonderful little girl she is. Our Kaitlyn is a beautiful, smart, friendly, happy, fiercly independant little princess. We love her to pieces and don't know what we would do without her. Happy Birthday Sweetheart!

Aurora Birthday Party

For months now Kaitlyn has wanted "an Aurora party with a horse pinata" and that's exactly what she got for her birthday.

The kids all wore their best royal clothing (note Katy's friend Tyler who didn't want to dress up as a prince or knight but came as the Lion King instead :) ) and we played games, made hydro bracelets, did the cake and presents thing, bashed away at the pinata, and had a great time. I can't believe how fast the time went during the party - thankfully because everything just seemd to flow really easily and everyone was having a great time. Couldn't have done it without my friend, Dari who at the last minute volunteered to stay to help me keep an eye on Ty and be my camera operator - thanks Dari!

The balloon swordfighting

The pinata. All the kids took one turn with the blindfold. But the pinata didn't look any the worse for wear so we let them take another turn without the blindfold, and another...until they had all taken at least 5 turns and still no sign of the candy. So then the grown ups took a turn. But that stubborn pinata! I finally managed to knock the body off but it still didn't release the candy and I ended up cutting it open and dumping the prizes onto the floor. Nobody seemed to mind though - I think those kids would have happily taken turns hitting that thing all night long.

Playing in the castle

*I will be putting a more detailed description of the party itself on my craft blog for anyone that wants to see more

Fieldtrip - Treehouse Children's Museum

Not only was it Kaitlyn's birthday yesterday, but it was also her first official fieldtrip. Her preschool went to the Treehouse Children's Museum. I volunteered to be one of the mothers that went along and they let Ty tag along with us too. It actually felt more like our little family outing since a lot of the other mothers wanted to go as well and I only ended up in charge of my own two kiddos. I guess we're all overprotective and having a hard time letting our babies grow up - and we don't want to miss out on the fun or another reason to take photos :)

We all met at the school so we could carpool then headed to Ogden. First stop was a park where we at lunch and let the kids play a bit. Then on to the Museum. They had a nice little story time with the kids then released them for free play for a while. I'm sorry to say I didn't get to experience much of the museum, although I'm sure it's great fun. There wasn't much that managed to hold Katy's interest yesterday (probably too much birthday energy going on) so we kind of ran through the place stopping only to play with trains (Tyler's favorite), do a little artwork (Katy's fav), and pound on everything in the music section.

Before we knew it, our time was up and we had to rush home in order to get there before Kaitlyn's friends started arriving for the party.

You can call me Birthday Girl

"You can call me Birthday Girl now mom!" That's one of the first things Kaitlyn said to me when she woke up yesterday. She was so excited that her birthday had finally arrived and we had done our best to make it a good day for her from start to finish.

After the kids went to bed the night before, Sam and I blew up a bunch of balloons (as if we hadn't had enough of that while making the balloon swords for the party!) and snuck them into her bedroom to line the floor. We also made a curtain of streamers to cover her doorway.

When Sam got home from the gym that morning we let Kaitlyn open one of her birthday presents. Then we all had pink waffles with sprinkles. I think making them was more fun for the kids than eating them. :)

Big boy bed

Look at our big boy! (and isn't he great at posing? LOL His sister taught him that) I can't believe how fast he is growing up.

Ty is so much younger than Katy was when we switched her to a big kid bed but we just couldn't take it any longer. Once he was able to climb out of the crib he kept falling on the floor and crying. So we turned the crib backward, with the high side facing out. But of course that made it very hard to get him in and out. So, while rearranging his room this weekend we decided we may as well bit the bullet and turn his crib into a toddler bed. Bedtime that night was hard - he got out of bed to pound on the door about 5 times. And then when he did catch on that he wasn't supposed to do that when we went in to check on him we found he had fallen asleep on the floor by the door. However, bedtimes and naptimes since then have gone ok so maybe switching to the big kid bed won't be the nightmare we were expecting it to be.
Katy of course had to be in on the photo session. And then here's Ty all set for bed. Instead of a stuffed animal or other lovey he likes to sleep with whatever book we read to him before bed.