Tricky Feet!

Kendall and Riley were so excited to go trick or treating this year...or tricky feet as Kendall's been calling it lately.  We ended up getting together with some friends for dinner and then going out with the kids through the neighborhood.  It was nice because Riley could go with the older kids and Kendall could go at a slower pace with her own friends.

Both had a blast even though the weather was cold and rainy.  Star Wars was the theme for the night for the big boys.  There were three clone troopers and two Darth Vaders.

Here are my two ready to head out with their friends for some treats:

Here is Kendall and her friends getting ready to scream "Tricky Feet!"  

Kendall would come back from each door and run into my arms and tell me how much fun she was having!  I love seeing their excitement when they finally understand the joy of holidays.  

I can't wait to see what joy Christmas holds for her this year!

Hope you had a Happy Halloween!  

BTW, Andy celebrated by staying home and answering the door and watching Penn State kick some Wolverine butt!  We were greeted with screams of joy as JoePa's Lions pulled off a trick play and earned a first down!  We were supposed to watch the game with a friend and former Michigan alum, but since it was T or T night, we decided to postpone our football gathering until next year...

Mother Goose Day

At Little Man's school they don't celebrate Halloween, but the first grade does celebrate Mother Goose.  What better time to do that than during Halloween?  The kids had been learning numerous nursery rhymes and songs over the past weeks and each child was to learn a rhyme and dress up as a character from that rhyme.  My Little Man chose Yankee Doodle because it's easy and because we have a horse from his cowboy costume a few years ago that still fits.  We stuck a feather in his Woody hat and voila!

We've been practicing Yankee Doodle for about a month so my little princess had to get in on the action of learning it...she likes to say "stuck a feather in his hat and called it rock-a-pony!"  She gets mad if you try to correct her too!  What a nut!

I was a little nervous for Riley because he despises public speaking and won't sing a note in front of others...in preschool Miss Donna (his music and art teacher) use to get so frustrated with him because he'd sit there with his mouth shut and not sing at all!

Well, today he had to say his rhyme in front of his classmates AND all the parents, grandparents and siblings of the first grade class.  He's got a big class...26 kids.  So you can imagine how many parents were there with their camera batteries charged up!  He did so well.  I was so proud of him.  When he's nervous you can't hear him very well - he mumbles if he's not confident, so when it was his turn, if you didn't have a front row seat, you might not have heard his rhyme.

See what I mean:

Don't you love listening to them scream, I mean sing, their little hearts out?  They are so cute!  Wish you could bottle their energy!

Addition: Here are a couple of pictures I just found on a different camera from that day.

A Winter Wonderland...

So I realized that I just created a post just two days ago regarding all my favorite things about this time of the year...How silly of me to forget to include SNOW on my list!  It's been snowing in the mts. for a few days, but this morning we awoke to a winter wonderland!  We had about 8-10 inches of snow on the ground as the sun was starting to rise.

I made Riley come downstairs to look out the window as soon as he got up today and the poor kid was bummed that he didn't have a snow day and that it would most likely be melted by the time he gets home.  Then Kendall woke up and I showed her too.  She said "Dat 'now Momma!  Dat 'now on the trees!"

After we dropped Riley off at school, we both got bundled up and headed outside with Penton to make snow angels, throw snowballs and make a snowman!  I don't know who had more fun, my kid or my dog!  You'd never know Penton is 77 in dog years!  She ran around like a nut!  She loves to roll around in the snow and catch snowballs!

So excited to finally get a chance to wear her new snowsuit and boots!

Once she got a taste of it, she kept on eating it...I had to teach her about yellow snow...Penton had been out earlier in the morning!

Yummy!

Penton has always loved the snow...She use to beg us to come outside in it and play with her when we first adopted her!  Somethings haven't changed!

My little Snow Bunny!

Trying out the sliding board in the snow...

She couldn't get out once she came down.  She reminded me of Ralphie's little brother from the movie The Christmas Story!

Check out the dumping on the mountains this morning!  Been looking like that for the past few days.  Can't wait to hear total amounts in the canyons!

Kendall made a new friend today.  Sadly, Mr. Snowman didn't survive much longer than lunchtime.  The sun came out and he suffered from heat stroke...

I think my tomatoes might be done after this snow...unfortunately I still had a LOT of 'maters left on the plants!

I was really hoping to can some sauce and salsa!  Oh well...What can I do about it now?

My Favorite Time of Year

The smell of apples cooking in my kitchen, leaves changing colors, brisk mornings, hot cider, football, jumping into piles of fallen leaves, pumpkins, festivals and fairs, hayrides, haunted houses, sweaters and vests, our wedding anniversary, oh the list goes on....

I decided that I really need to start decorating our home...This use to be a fun task for me when we lived in the same house year after year.  But over the past few years, I've come to enjoy it less and less because not every decoration looks good in each house, or I can't find them, or don't want to spend more money on decorations that may not fit in the next house, well, you know...

But this year I decided to start small and get myself geared up for Christmas.  Here's my mantel for fall:

I made the banner out of burlap and created stencils to paint the letters and the leaves.  I hot glued it onto some thick twine and hung it from the mantel.  I got the idea for the bows around my candle holders from a shop nearby...why I never thought of that before is beyond me!

Now I've got the bug to start decorating the house.  It's just a matter of finding (or making) the extra things for this house that I didn't already have in my stash of decorations!

Look What She's Got...

PINKTAILS!

Her hair is FINALLY long enough to be put into pigtails!  Whew!  It's been a long 27 months, but we've finally got some options...since she won't let bows or hats on her head for long, at least this is a fun option.  She actually requests pigtails these days!

Health & Safety Fair

The PTL at Riley's school hosted a Health and Safety fair last week as a culmination of the week's activities relating to health and safety.  The kids were able to see fire trucks and talk to fire fighters, learned about karate, and participated in a Safe Kids program as well as discussed internet safety.  The kids had to complete a scavenger hunt by answering questions based on presentations throughout the week as well as from the fair.  Riley gets a free "dress down" day because he completed it!  Kids who have to wear uniforms to school live for "dress down" days.

The fair was fun for the kids.  They had police there who had a road course set up to teach the kids about bike and scooter safety.  Kendall flirted with a male officer for a good 45 minutes.  He declared her section of the course a "Princess Crossing" since she was blocking traffic by riding her scooter in the wrong direction!  She has mastered how to get out of a ticket by flirting with the cops by the age of 27 months!  Boy, we're in trouble, huh?

There were some dental students there showing the kids how to brush their teeth.  Kendall loved practicing with the "Nemo" doll.

Be Ready Utah also came to teach the kids about Earthquake safety and preparedness.  The guy came with a bee costume to dress in to get the kids attention at his booth...boy did he get my kid's attention!  Kendall fell in LOVE with the bee!  She didn't leave his side.  She was hugging him, holding his hand, following him around wherever he went!  She was so disappointed when he left to take off his costume.  What a change since last year she freaked out at Santa and Curious George!

What fun for the kids...I thought it was a successful program in it's first year.  Riley really enjoyed the presentations during the week and got upset when it was time to leave the fair on Friday!  Can't wait to see what next year's Health and Safety fair brings!

P.S.  I just realized that all of my pictures are of my daughter who is NOT enrolled at Grace and none of Riley!  She was entertainment for everyone at the fair!  Riley was so busy playing with his friends that he hardly stood still.  Here is one picture that my friend had taken that included Riley and some of his classmates.

Halloween Humor

I received this last year in an email and it's back around again and this time I thought I'd share it since I've been on my political soapbox on here already.

Ha!  Ha!  Hope you got a good laugh out of it too!  (BTW, if you are a democrat, I know there are tons of republican jokes out there all the time...just watch any news channel except FOXNEWS!)

Happy Halloween!

Fire! Fire!

No, there really isn't a fire, but there was a fire truck at Riley's school this morning to kick off their school's Health and Safety week/fair.  Here is a picture of his first grade class in front of the fire truck...Can you spot my little man amongst the sea of students?

That's him cheesing in front of the firefighter on the right.  What a good looking group of kiddos, huh?  I think little kids in school uniforms are so cute!

Will The Great Pumpkin Appear?

There is a family owned apple orchard up the road that puts on a great family fall festival.  They show "It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" once it gets dark and also have food (including hot apple cider and cider donuts!), a bounce house, games, vendors and a hay ride.  We decided to head over Saturday night to check it out.  Last year we had intentions of going, but the weather did not cooperate.

My two munchkins enjoying the maze

Hanging out at the fishin' hole

Riley caught something...maybe a tootsie roll?

Trying to get the bean bag into the clown while our friends cheer him on

Watching the movie while snuggled up on a blanket

Hayrides are so much more fun in the dark!

We had such a great time and ended up finding two families there that we are good friends with to spend time with too.  It's really starting to feel like home now that we are bumping into friends at different events throughout the area.  Which, if the past is any indication, we'll start to feel really at home and comfortable here and we'll get the call that the company wants us to move again...part of me has been hesitant to get too attached here for that exact reason, but I think I'm finally hooked.  This place is too beautiful and my Utah friends are so accepting and kind that I find I'm starting to grow some tiny little roots... 

Fun Down On The Farm

As I mentioned in my last post, the people of Utah embrace Halloween and spirit of autumn.  There is a working farm nearby called Wheeler Farm.  Here they have all types of farm animals, machinery, tools, old buildings, etc. to show what life was like on a farm (fortunately for Andy and I, we can pass that down to our kids rather easily from our childhoods in Pennsylvania!)

The farm offers a variety of fall-themed activities for all ages.  I was able to snag tickets for the maze, pumpkin and wagon ride for $3.50/person instead of the $7/person they typically charge.  Gotta love City Deals, Groupons, etc.!  We decided to take the kids this morning and enjoy some time in the beautiful sunshine while taking in the changing colors of the leaves with the incredible Wasatch in the background.

See how Kendall is looking away from the camera?

The kids had fun getting lost in the maze and picking out their pumpkins afterwards.  We were fortunate that the guy who ran the farm was there and offered us an extra pumpkin since we only had three, but there were four of us in our family.  What a sweet man.

Notice Kendall's tongue in this one...

Lost in the maze...while trying to terrorize a poor rooster!

After we put our pumpkins in the car, we walked around and I snapped a few (thousand) photos.  I took my tripod in an attempt to capture at least one or two family photos...If you've ever tried to capture my daughter in a posed smile, you are lucky!  She will say "cheese" while she's looking in a completely different direction than the camera.  Poor Riley.  He tries so hard to keep a smile while we're waiting for her to cooperate.

The kids love playing around in this tree, but it's a rather popular spot for photographers so we had to sneak in and snap a few while there was a quick break in the action.

After our rather unsuccessful photo shoot, we headed over to take a wagon ride.  The kids enjoyed riding around the grounds of the farm and checking out their Halloween decorations.

You'd never know by this picture that I had my daughter looking like a million bucks when we left the house...well, I take that back, if you know my daughter, you know why she no longer looks like a million bucks...check out her wild hair!

It was a fantastic day for a family outing to Wheeler Farm.  It appears that the weather may be changing this week and we wanted to get outside as much as we could before it turns colder (more fall-like weather).  It was 76 degrees and full sun at 1 pm today!  It felt much warmer than that though!  Maybe next time I'll have Kevin come along and snap the photos or learn to bribe my little girl with fruit snacks...

"CHEESE!"

Hope you and your families are enjoying fall as much as we are...Fall happens to be my favorite time of the year...apples, pumpkins, cinnamon smells everywhere, color landscapes, wedding anniversary, football games, crisp, cool air and sunny skies...What's not to love?