A fun-filled day

PHEW! Yesterday was a jam packed day! Every year my parents take the kids to the pumpkin patch to pick out their pumpkins, since there was no school, they decided to go yesterday. Here are the kids with my mom.

Then we went up to Gardner Village to see the "witches" with our friends the Barnes. The kids had a great time walking around looking at all the fun witches. After that we took the kids to get some ice cream. It was great fun!

The two little sas-a-frasses


To finish off the day we took the girls up to SLCC to see the musical "The Ark". I had never seen the play, but was familiar with the music. I think that the girls really liked the play. The play itself was great, but some of the talent really didn't sing that well. Oh well, it was a great activity to do for family home evening. The zoo had some live reptiles in the lobby that the kids could pet (if they dared), so Tae got to pet a boa...YIKES! What a fun day!

3 more days!

Three days until Chris and I leave for Paris!!!! AAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH
I can't believe that it is actually happening! WAY excited here!

The family photo shoot

Why is it that the best of intentions always turn into a disaster??? I made arrangements for my brother to come and take family pictures of us, he has a really nice camera and I wanted to go up the canyon to capture the essence of fall.
To start out with it was tears and tantrums. Ana had a MELTDOWN about getting her hair done and then about the pants that I was making her wear (she only wears a couple of different pants and this was not one of those pairs). So after that fire was put out, Sienna started in with hers. She didn't want to wear the assigned pants either...I mean they were only Khaki's for pete's sake! Then Faze missed his nap (that was really foolish of us to let that happen). My brother brought his little boy that is Faisal's age and the two of them wanted to run around instead of taking pictures.
We found the perfect spot and started taking photos.... but NO ONE was cooperating, especially Faze. But then Chris jumped on the band wagon and started telling us that that was enough. I think that we MAYBE got three or four family shots. OK, the sweat and tears that I endured up to this point was not worth three or four pictures, I wanted a bunch to chose from. So now we will have to do it all over again. SIGH.
I brought along my camera and took a few shots, the others are on my brother's camera...when I get those, I will post some.
I NEED A NAP!

Sienna's sleepover

Last night Sienna had her first sleepover!!! Chris has been VERY against sleepovers and has always said that our girls will never have them. I personally don't see what the big deal is, when I was young I LIVED off of having sleepovers with my friends. They were the best! I know that times have changed DRASTICALLY since I was a child, but I still don't see the harm. So Chris finally relented and allowed her to have her two friends (who are sisters) sleep at our house last night. She was sooooo happy! Do you think that sleepovers are OK? Do you let your children have sleepovers?

crazy obession

I must confess, that I LOVE Christmas music. I listen to it 24/7 during the Holidays and YIPPEE for me, I found a radio station that starts playing it on Halloween night! There is nothing like going Trick or Treating or carving a pumpkin with the kids and listening to Christmas music in the background. I consider Halloween the kick off for my Holiday festivities. So take a look at my sidebar for the glorious countdown!

scrapbook night

We had our monthly scrapbooking get together on Tuesday and this month was my month to host. When it is your month to host that means that you create a two page layout and purchase all the supplies to create that layout, you also make some kind of refreshment for everyone. I know that I am biased, but I LOVED my page...it turned out so cute. For dessert I made the yummiest treat...carmel apple cake. I had never made this before, so I was worried that it wouldn't be tasty. It was so good and perfect for this time of year!
Here is the page...the pictures really don't do it justice since it doesn't show the dimension of all the things that were popped up....oh well.

The same skin

The other day Tae and I were watching Country music videos and in one of the videos it showed one of the singers at a concert. All of the fans were screaming and trying to reach up on stage to touch the singer...we've all seen this scene before, girls crying if they were able to touch someone famous etc. Tae and I had the following conversation after watching this.
Tae: Mom, why are all of those girls screaming and crying?
Me: They are just excited to see someone famous
Tae: Why do they get excited about touching someone famous? His skin feels just the same as mine.

Oh little Taelynn, you have wisdom beyond your eight years! LOL

Getting creative

Yesterday Chris didn't have quite enough time to finish his workout at the gym, he still needed to do his weight lifting. So he decided to have Tae help him out...this was the end result.

OCTOBER 12???!!!

So this morning I woke up and looked out the window and guess what I saw? YEP! SNOW!!! And not just a tiny bit, there was a good inch! It is supposed to get back into the 70's by the end of the week...that is our crazy weather for you! By the time we got home from church it was melted so Faze didn't get to build his first snowman yet. Today was a pretty busy day for us. My cousin blessed his baby and we had all the normal festivities associated with a baby blessing. It was also the dreaded Primary Program. Me and the rest of the Primary presidency have been working on this program for weeks and can I just say what a relief that it is over. It actually went off very smoothly.
We have had a lot of family in from out of town for the baby blessing, so it has been fun to visit with my brother and cousin. Aren't family the best!!
Oh a funny story! Last night we had an unexpected visitor come to our home... my sister-in-law opened the door to get something from her car and in flew a BIRD!!! It freaked everyone out! We have vaulted ceilings in our entry way, so of course that is where the bird flew round and round like a crazy bird! My brothers and Chris were trying to catch it with their hands...actually Chris was trying to hit it with a broom. It finally got tired and landed, long enough for my brother Joe to throw a towel over it and my other brother scooped it up and set it free. The entire time I just kept crossing my fingers that it wouldn't poop in our house. Now THAT would have made for a good story!

A night out with my hoomies

So a couple of nights ago some of my friends from my neighborhood decided that we needed a girls night out so we went to the LATE night show. I didn't really care what movie we saw, as long as we got popcorn! We saw "Road to Rodanthe", which was so-so....I recommend that you wait until it comes to the dollar show. The company was the best part, we had such a great time and ladies, I can't wait to do it again!

A day at the zoo

My cousin Tara is in town for a few days from Tucson so we really wanted to go with her and her kids to the zoo. I am sad to say that Sienna is the only one of my kids that have ever been to the zoo before. After looking at the weather, today looked like the warmest day this week. So we surprised the kids and checked them out of school after lunch and drove up to the zoo. The weather was perfect...about 71 degrees. The kids had such a good time being with their cousins and seeing the Rrrrrrrr's (as Faisal calls them) animals. Thanks mom for coming with us and helping me with the kiddo's.The kids didn't really co-operate with this picture, but it is the only one of all of us.

The entire gang of kids and my cousin's husband Buddy, riding the rhino

Ana and the elephants

Posing with the ape statue...clearly Tae had issues with the nipples on the ape. LOL

Serious issues!!!

It was just too cute to not snap a picture of

Faisal yelling at the turkeys

Just had to get the picture of someone at the water fountain

Riding the train

Yummy cookies!!!

Aqua aerobics has proven to be beneficial in more ways than one. The ladies there like to share great recipes that they have come across and last week one of the women shared this great one that I just had to try. They are pumpkin cookies (one of my favorites) and they only have FOUR ingredients...that's right four!!! So the kids just had to jump in this one.

Now for the recipe:
2 spice cake mixes (If you don't want them to be overly spicy then use one spice and one yellow cake mix)
1 can pumpkin
1 bag chocolate chips
1 bag cinnamon chips (I had never heard of these before, but MAN are they amazing!)

And that is it! Mix all of the above in one bowl. Place by the spoonful onto greased cookie sheet and bake at 385 degrees for 10-12 minutes. What a perfect time of year to have such a simple recipe! Enjoy! Have any of you ever baked with cinnamon chips? What do you put them in?