Trick or Treat

The kids enjoying some candy after our night at the Trunk or Treat and Trick or Treating.

After the Trunk or Treat at the park, we took the kids to a few of our neighbors homes from our old ward to trick or treat. Because they don't get many trick or treaters in this neighborhood, they gave the kids a lot of candy. Bella just made herself at home and couldn't even wait to get in the car before she started sampling the goodies. I sure do miss our dear sweet neighbor Sister Bodon - truly a great woman of Christ like service. I was so glad we stopped to see her because she said she was hoping we would come.

Gathering treats at the Trunk or treat.

Chuck and I didn't dress up for Halloween, but Chuck really wanted to carry Big Buddy on his back because he and Samuel were watching Star Wars last night and they saw a scene from the movie where Luke Skywalker was running around carrying Yoda on his back. Chuck thought he was being clever, but Big Buddy actually hated being carried like this and only lasted a few minutes before Chuck had to get him down.

Pumpkins and Pancakes

Friday morning I made the kids orange pancakes for Halloween. They enjoyed helping me make them especially when we added the food coloring, but they weren't so sure about eating them. Bella did eat hers, but Samuel took one bite and then said he was done. It's amazing he won't eat pancakes even with a lot of syrup.

Yum, Yum!

Taking turns helping stir the orange batter.


We took the easy way this year with decorating our pumpkins. I thought about carving them, then decided the kids wouldn't really be able to help. Then I thought about painting them, but late the other night that sounded like a lot of mess I wasn't in the mood to clean up. I finally decided to just have them use markers and draw on them. They thought this was great and didn't realize mom was just being lazy!

Ward Halloween Party

We had our Ward Halloween Party this week. The kids had a great time playing the games and getting candy. Samuel was so relieved they weren't any Hulk costumes. He's been a little uptight about scary Halloween costumes, but he did great. Both kids were a little scared of our cute neighbor girl that comes once a week and watches them. She was dressed as a zombie and did look pretty scary.

Big Buddy eating his trophy he won for the most original costume. The Young Women were in charge of giving the costume awards. Chuck and I laughed because we didn't think Yoda was too original of a costume, but he sure did look cute so I guess they just couldn't help giving him an award.

Thriller

I tagged along with Trina and her friends for a girls night out to see Thriller. I left all the kids with Chuck for the evening and it was wonderful! I need more of these nights away! The show was good, but scary.

Trina and I with one of the scary women. She looked so bad, but had a sweet voice when we asked to get a picture with her.

Trina's cute neighbor girls that let me hang out with them for the night.

Halloween Fun

I decided to make Halloween sugar cookies with the kids. Making cookies with a 2 and 3 year old is a little crazy, but they loved it. Samuel decided he wanted the frosting to be blue so we had yummy blue pumpkin and ghost cookies.



Chuck and I went to a Halloween party without the kids this weekend! We got these Greese costumes a few years ago and broke them out for the party. I should have taken a picture of the back of my hair. I used my steam curlers that I haven't used in years and forgot how curly they make my hair. And Chuck had on the worst wig you have seen. He insisted it was better than his own hair, but I would have to disagree!

For some reason all of my pictures are being uploaded out of order.

Anyway this is the completed view of the haunted candy castle we made for FHE. We tried to start out making it look nice, but that lasted about 2 seconds. Soon we were just squirting frosting and letting the kids stick on candy where ever. Samuel was so excited to build this castle.

The kids had almost as much frosting on themselves as was on the castle.

2 yr old joys

So this same scene has played out a couple of times the last week. Bella goes to her room for a "nap"/quiet time or how big of a mess can I make in my room time and goes poop. She has now decided she can change her own diaper. So she takes the poopy diaper off, climbs up into the closet to retrieve the wipes and uses half the pack cleaning herself up and gets dressed again. Now this would be great except for the fact that she sits on the floor with the dirty poop bum to do it. Probably can't tell from the picture, but there are two nice poop stains on my new carpet! And as I said this has happened a few times this week - there have been a few more of these nice stains. So I've decided potty training is a must now and will be taking the advice of a friend to put her in a onesie during "nap" time so maybe she can't get her diaper off! (Okay so as an update I tried the onesie and when I went to get her from her room she was completely naked again. So anyone have any more ideas?

I got Bella underwear for her birthday and am nowing going to go full force on the potty training. I opened up the package and told her to pick a pair to wear. She decided to wear every one of them.

Bella's crib turned into a toddler bed. I took her to the store and let her pick out a new sheet for the bed. She chose this one, but when I put it on and showed it to her she just started crying about it and didn't like it anymore. She's already invoking the right to change her mind frequently! Things are getting better with the toddler bed. One night about 12:30 a.m. I heard what sounded like typing on the computer and sent Chuck to find out what was going on. He discovered Bella sitting at the computer having a great time. Who knows how long she had been wondering around.

These next pictures are for you Monica! I think you cursed me with your comment. Sunday Samuel was chasing a balloon and ran face first into the kitchen. He got a big goose egg and bruise above his eye.

And yes, maybe the kitchen does need to be nailed to the wall since I caught Bella standing on it and then a few minutes later she had pushed it completely over. Big Buddy was laying on the ground not to far away so I wasn't very happy about this.

Bella's 2nd Birthday

For Bella's birthday we got her this cute play kitchen. Poor Chuck didn't get home from City Council until late Thursday and then he stayed up until 1:00 a.m. putting the thing together so we could have it ready for Bella when she got up Friday morning.

Both of the kids really like the new kitchen, but it has become yet another thing for them to fight about. Here is Samuel throwing a fit on the floor.

For Bella's birthday dinner we got nuggets and fries from Wendy's and took it to the park. The weather has been beautiful all this week so we are taking advantage of it.

Bella playing at the park.

Chuck and Big Buddy going down the slide.

Chuck finally got Samuel to climb the rock wall all by himself. The kids loved spending the evening playing at the park with their daddy!