The Cutest Pumpkins!

Are these not the cutest pumpkins!
Trina and I have been trying to take the babies pictures in a pumpkin for weeks and we finally got around to making it happen. We actually did this with Isaac and Kambree when they were this age. It was a lot funnier experience this time though! There were so many cute pictures that it's going to take me awhile to edit them all so here's just a few that I did quickly.

This picture was before we cut the pumpkin down - I'll explain below.

It always seems like when Trina and I get together to take pictures something funny always happens. We had to gut the giant pumpkin so we could get the babies inside and Trina ended up with that nasty job. (I really don't like gutting the pumpkins!) About 5 minutes after she was done carving this is what I heard, "My hands, my hands, they feel like they're on fire. Oh they're burning. Ow, ow, ow!" She rushed to the sink to try and stop the burning. In the mean time I'm trying not to laugh wondering why suddenly her hands feel like they're burning up. Well Trina is allergic to most melons - can't eat cantaloupe or honeydew because it causes her throat to swell. And it turns out she must be allergic to pumpkins because her hands literally turned bright read and developed hives after gutting the pumpkin! Luckily I kept some of that spray they give you in the hospital after you've had a baby that's supposed to stop burning so we gave it a try and it gave her some relief. Just crazy!

Then we have to haul this giant pumpkin around to the picture taking spot in the stroller and carry two babies, the camera and other stuff we needed. I'm sure we looked comical wheeling a giant pumpkin down the sidewalk.

Let's just say Jenna didn't really want to sit down in the pumpkin. But once we got her in she actually was great. She was digging around inside, biting the side and just smiling away.

Bronson on the other hand could barely fit in the pumpkin - he's huge compared to Jenna. Then he couldn't sit up very well because he couldn't get his arms out so he kept falling forward. He was all tears and of course we didn't bring a knife to make adjustments to the pumpkin on the spot. We decided we would just have to try again the next day.

That night Chuck cut the pumpkin down for us and we headed out again the next evening to take a few more pictures. We went to another spot and the older men missionaries must have thought we were crazy as we wheeled the pumpkin up the walkway. They were really nice and helped us carry it around the mud and get it into place. Bronson was much happier this time.

Then I decided I wanted to take Jenna back to the first spot because we could hardly see her when the pumpkin wasn't cut down the night before. And I was so glad we did because Trina had bought the cutest vintage bow and pearls at the What Women Want Expo that morning and I just happened to notice it in her car and decided I had to take a few more pictures. Let's just say it was a lot of work, but we do some crazy things to get a few cute pictures!

I LOVE October

I love fall and the fun October activities we been doing so far this month.


Samuel went on his first official deer hunt with Chuck, Grandpa Paul and cousin Austin. The boys had such a fun time even though they didn't get a deer. They hiked, rode around in the jeep, shot the guns and spent the whole day wondering around the hills.

We spent a fun afternoon at the pumpkin patch. (I learned during Samuel's field trip to the farm that most of the pumpkins are actually brought in from Colorado because it doesn't get cold enough here to actually turn the pumpkins orange until much later than October. That's why all the pumpkins that are attached to the vines are still green and the orange ones they just place in the patch)

The kids and I carved one of the little pumpkins we got at the pumpkin patch and used it for an oozing eye experiment. The kids thought this was so much fun and wanted to do it over and over again with a different color oozing out each time.

We spent another evening decorating our Halloween house. It always makes me laugh to look at the example picture on the box because I just don't think with kids helping it's possible to have it turn out so neat. Samuel was so excited about how spooky I made it look this year. It was only because the purple frosting was really runny since Chuck mixed it up while I was feeding the baby. But the runny frosting was great for making the best house ever according to Samuel. He just kept saying, "Thanks mom for making it so spooky!"

My sister-in-law has a wonderful from scratch brownie mix on her recipe blog. I've been making them entirely too much, but this was a little twist I tried for a fun Halloween treat. I melted the white chocolate I had left over from Bella's birthday cake and poured it into a cookie cutter to make the ghosts. Can I just say this was so yummy! Bella wanted me to make this again for actual birthday but we made pink chocolate ghosts. The only problem - I can seriously eat the whole pan of brownies in a day!

And what would October be without making carmel apples. I bought a package of carmels and thought the sticks were included, but they weren't. Again I was feeding the baby so Chuck improvised and stuck forks in the apples instead of sticks. Oh, I love carmel apples! And I'm hoping to make my mom's delicious carmel popcorn this week. We're having way too many treats and we haven't even collected the candy yet!

Samuel had his first school field trip. Thanks to Aunt Trina for coming to watch the kids so I could go with him to the farm. He was so excited to ride on the school bus. I think that was his favorite part of the trip.

Bella had 3 birthday celebrations this year. For her actual birthday she wanted to go to Pirate Island. Can't believe she's 4!

We love to hike this time of year and actually tried out a hike we haven't done yet. It went to a little slot canyon and overlook. Nice easy trail for a quick hike with the kids.

Some days I think it would be really great if I could just grow an extra arm. It always seems like everyone is needing something all at the same time. Well, I discovered my extra arm - Samuel! I was feeding Jenna and Isaac needed help with the potty so I turned the feeding over to Samuel. It was a messy affair with food all over Jenna and even some on the wall, but they were both having a great time. Soon all the kids were piled on the chair to watch the entertainment of Samuel feeding the baby. It was great and I didn't even care that I had a lot of cleaning to do once he was finished because everyone was having such a good time. He's asked to feed her a few more times so now he's my go to when I need an extra arm with the feeding.

Do you ever just feel like you need a change? I've been feeling pretty frumpy needing to do something with myself. So after talking about it for weeks I had Trina dye my hair dark this weekend and I love it! I actually really like my hair dark, but I have tons of gray hair and it shows a lot more when my hair is dark. Yes, thanks to my dad for that bad gene because it couldn't possibly be due to the fact that I'm getting old! But I'm circling around to being dark again. Trina and I also went shopping because I hate to clothes shop. Just don't have the patience for it and it's hard to find clothes that fit, look good, are modest and comfortable. She got me to buy some new pants and there's a funny story, but I'll save it for another post (maybe!)

And I finally finished Bella's room. I got the girls pictures edited, printed and hung. The wall is really busy, but it's fun. I loved seeing one of the pictures I took blown up to such a big size. My next project is to transform the laundry room. I'm going to move all the kids clothes from their closets into the laundry room. Our laundry room is a pretty good size and I'm tired of having Bella empty her closet on the floor everyday. We'll see how it turns out!

Don't Eat That!!!

I hesitated writing this experience because it was really quite a disturbing incident, but like one of my wonderful friends likes to say sometimes you are just thankful that angels are watching out for these precious little ones.

I was standing by the table in the kitchen helping Samuel write sentences and sweet Jenna was crawling all around exploring every nook and cranny. She stood up against our sliding glass door and I just had to snap a picture of her cute little backside. Just look at those cute little rolls on her legs. A while later she was crawling by the track of the sliding glass door. I was still helping Samuel when I noticed she was digging in the track had pulled something out and was taking it to her mouth - she is in that stage where she eats everything! I said, "Oh no, no honey" which she usually just looks at me and eats whatever she is holding, but today instead of eating it she dropped it on the ground. I walked over to pick whatever it was off the ground to throw away and was horrified to see the following:

Yes, another baby scorpion!!!

Luckily it was dead, but if you look closely you can see the stinger in it's tail. I'm not sure how she managed to grab the thing and not get pricked. Someone was definitely watching out for my sweet baby today.

Every time the pest control people come I tell them we still have scorpions, I think I should get a refund after this incident!

(I'm starting to think we built our home on a colony of scorpions and I'll just be grateful the pest control is probably killing most of them. )

The Kids

Jenna is now 8 months!
This past month has been crazy busy with her, she is everywhere!
* She pulls herself into standing position on everything and everyone.
* She is crawling everywhere (the right way now) and I'm constantly looking for where she has disappeared to. She roams from one end of the house to the next. Yesterday she even crawled outside because the kids had left the door open.
* She can also crawl up the concrete stairs which has lead to a few falls and tears.
* She eats everything on the floor. I constantly feel like I'm fishing things out of her mouth.
* She doesn't really like to play with her toys anymore. She just wants to try and keep up with the other kids.

* Occasionally she'll sleep through the night, but most of the time I still nurse her a least 1 to 2 times during the night. She's my last baby so I figure soon enough I'll get some sleep!


Isaac is 2 - what else do I need to say! Sometimes he's delightful and sometimes he makes me want to pull my hair out.

* The most exciting news is that he is potty trained. He has shown NO interest in the potty until a couple of weeks ago and then he just decided he was ready and the rest was easy.

* He also likes to wake up VERY early. We're talking around 5 a.m. every morning he's up and ready to start the day. It's caused us to start going to bed earlier just so we can survive these early mornings.

* He loves to build and can put together 25 piece puzzles all by himself.

* He loves to sing. I even had to buy a Barney songbook so I could play songs on the piano for him to sing to. It makes me smile to hear him singing all the time.

* We are working on colors and letters during our Learning Time everyday. He likes to argue with me when he gets a color wrong. Chuck's also working with the kids on Spanish so sometimes he tells me the colors in Spanish instead of English.

* He loves playdoh, trains and markers.

Sweet Bella girl will be 4 this week and I'm just not sure how this happened so fast!

* We are doing Joy School again this year and we both love it.

* She's doing great in her gymnastics class and can do a cartwheel and arch. She is in an older class because it's the only time that worked for me and I think it's really helped her progress.

* Bella and Samuel are both doing the Let's Play Music Class. She really loves to sing too.

* She also loves our Learning Time each day.

There have been days lately where I look at Samuel and think what happened to my little boy? The past month since he started school he has changed so much. It's hard for me to pinpoint what the difference is. He just seems so grown up. It's exciting to watch him grow into such a wonderful responsible boy!

* He started Karate a few months ago and just got promoted to a while belt with a yellow stripe. He LOVES Karate and so do I. His teacher is amazing. Karate has made Samuel a lot braver. He is my thinker and at times doesn't like to take physical risks because he thinks really hard about the consequences. But Karate has changed this in him. The other day he called me upstairs so he could show me something. I walked into Bella's room where he quickly scaled to the top of the closet. He then told me he was going to jump down. I looked at him and thought there's no way he's going to jump. I didn't even consider telling him that might not be such a good idea because I really didn't think he'd do it. Then he did it! He jumped from the top of the closet to the ground. I told him that sure was brave, but maybe not a good idea to try again.

* He loves going to school each day. I was worried about him being bored, but he loves the technology curriculum.

And now for me:

I feel blessed every day to be able to raise these precious kids! I love fall and October. We decorated our house, made yummy Halloween treats, went to the pumpkin patch and have been hiking. I also have been taking lots of cute pictures. Life is good!

Princess Party Extravaganza

I LOVE planning birthday parties for the kids and usually start well in advance. Bella really wanted a princess party this year so I bought the cake kit early, but then didn't give it much thought until suddenly it was only 2 weeks until it was mine turn for teaching Joy School and her party. (Instead of having a big friend party we just did this party as part of Joy School) Now 2 weeks sounds like a lot of time, but like I said I love planning parties so I like to drag the process out!

This is the invitation - I found the poem online and thought it worked great for what we were planning. I got several cute pictures of Bella dressed in her princess outfit, but I liked this serious one best.

Grandma Jerri Lynn was in town the weekend before Bella's party and insisted we start on the cake early. Good thing since we had to build it in stages. It was really quite a lot of work! At times we had our "creative" discrepancies, but I was glad she helped because it really turned out great. Too bad Grandma couldn't stick around to see the finished product!

Bella was so cute as I was finishing the cake she said, "When I'm a mommy then I can make cakes for my kids." I just laughed because that's why I make birthday cakes because I remember my mom making me cakes when I was young. And so the tradition continues!

And as always, Chuck was a good sport too help. I always come up with crazy ideas and then Chuck is the one who figures out how to make them work. He spent a couple hours making this castle. Our ceilings are 12 feet high in the family room so it was huge! It was midnight when Chuck, Trina and I were trying to hang this thing up. Somehow we managed without ripping it or having Chuck fall off the ladder.

When the kids got up the next morning they were all excited to see the castle their dad had made. Samuel was asking all sorts of questions about the building process and Bella was just delighted that daddy had built her a castle. It was really cute! What an amazing dad!

Bella and I dressed up in our princess attire.

Chuck was very surprised that I dressed up too. Dresses and nice clothes are just not me, but I figured I had this pretty dress hanging in my closet that I wore for Trina's wedding years ago and I might as well at least wear it one more time.

Drum roll please - Here is the castle cake.

Bella LOVED it. That morning as I finished putting it together I was really worried it might come crashing down before Bella got a chance to blow out the candles, or worse before I could get pictures! But I anchored the pillars with white chocolate and so it held together with no problems!

And thanks to aunt Trina who also went along with my idea of having her dress up as Snow White and come to the party. Good thing the Halloween costumes are out. But why are all the women's costumes so skanky! We had to alter this one a little to make it more modest!

I told Bella a few days before the party that I had invited a special guest to her party. When the doorbell rang the girls rushed to see who it was. It was so funny because they were excited to see Snow White, but they were all a little shy at first. Trina and I were trying really hard not to laugh because at first Bella kept looking at her very skiptically - almost as if she was thinking in her mind "You sure do sound like Aunt Trina". The girls eventually warmed up as Snow White helped them make bracelets and crowns and then played a princess dancing game with them. They were asking her all sorts of questions and several of them wanted Snow White to come to their house.

All the pretty princesses.

When it was time for Snow White to leave all the girls rushed to the window to watch her. Poor Trina wasn't sure what to do becuase they wouldn't leave the window. Finally she just walked around the back of the house until I snuck out to let her back in.

The party was a lot of fun and it was so cute to hear the girls tell their moms all about how Snow White had come to the party. Bella has asked me every day if we can have another princess party with a castle cake and next time she would like Sleeping Beauty to come and then she wants Snow White to come after that.

I was really glad Samuel was at school because when Bella told him Snow White had come to her party he just kept saying that just couldn't be real. We showed him a few pictures and his exact words were, "That's not Snow White that's just a girl dressed up as Snow White. Look at that hair!" Bella kept insisting that Snow White really had come. Samuel finally decided maybe she had, but wanted all sorts of questions answered. How did she get here, where did she go, did she eat cake, what did she say, if Snow White was real then the dwarfs must be real - it just went on and on and on in typical Samuel style. The two of them discussed it all afternoon!

Bella's actual birthday isn't for another week so we still have some celebrating to do!

Lucky 13!

Chuck and I celebrated our 13th anniversary a couple of weeks ago!

It's been a joyful journey from these days

to this day!

(Yes, we got a minivan for our anniversary present!)

Eating My Words & Loving It!

Yes, We traded in our Pilot for a Minivan.
I swore I would NEVER EVER (I can't stress how strongly I felt about this!) drive a minivan.


This was me with my sad face as we left the house to look at a van Chuck had found in Vegas. When we got to the very small "dealership" in a iffy part of town to look at the van it reminded me of the time Chuck had us buy our computer from the teenagers in a warehouse - not good! I took one look inside the van and there was no way I was trading in our perfectly good Pilot for a very used and abused van! Then we went and looked at a van that was great on the inside, but there was no way I was trading in the Pilot to drive what looked like a Smurf mobile - the color was horrendous! So we left Vegas that day with no van which really didn't make me feel bad because I wasn't totally convinced I could drive one any way.

But then another couple of weeks went by of fighting Isaac every time I had to get him in his seat. We moved everyone around in the Pilot trying to make it work and it just wasn't happening. Having Isaac in the back was a nightmare for me because I had to crawl in the trunk to get him in and out of his carseat and it was no easy task. You can't imagine the fight this "little" guy throws! If he was sitting by anyone else he just caused problems. We couldn't put Bella and Samuel in the back because I still have to help Bella get out of her carseat so I would still have to climb in the trunk.To top it off everyday I had to pick Samuel up from school and he always had to climb over the top of everyone to get in the back while the teacher was trying to hurry him into the Pilot.

I finally came to the sad realization that with 4 little kids - 3 or which need help with carseats a minivan was our only solution. So Chuck found us another van in California and had the dealership in Vegas transfer it. We drove to Vegas a couple of weekends ago with just baby Jenna (thanks to Trina and Wes for watching the other kids) and after looking at the van I decided I could do this.

So we traded in the Pilot for a 2009 Honda Odyssey - after a mere 5 hours at the dealership! Another long story.


I can I just say that I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!

All it took was the ride home from Vegas and one day of picking up Samuel to make me realize how wonderfully convenient minivans are. It's absolutely FABULOUS! The kids love the "magic" doors and Samuel is convinced that he wants to drive a minivan when he turns 16.

I love that it is so roomy and drives so smooth, there is so much room in the trunk, it seats 8 but we have the middle seat removed so Isaac doesn't have to sit by anyone, I can reach Bella to help her out of her carseat without having it get in the van, I could go on and on.

Do I feel a little geeky driving it, not when I have all the kids with me, but Chuck and I went out for a little desert last night and yeah it felt geeky with just the two of us, but that's okay! I'm a mom with lots of little kids and I need something that makes my life easier!


So thanks to Isaac since he's the cause of making me eat my words and Loving every second of it!

He's still a nightmare to get in his carseat every time we to somewhere, but at least I'm not crawling around in the trunk of the Pilot and once he's finally in he can't bug anyone.