Halloween and Thanksgiving Season

I swear every year Halloween becomes a bigger deal. It is so fun though. I loved seeing Ellie's delight this year in all of the festivities. Eliza dressed up as Cinderella, and Miriam was a ballerina. First for our celebrations we decorated a pumpkin to put on our porch. This is totally the way to go for kids rather than trying to have them carve it. Ellie loves it.

We did a couple of Halloween crafts for preschool.

We also had a party with friends. Check out the cute kids: Princess Peach, Cinderella, Toad, and the Ballerina.

We played a game of wrapping up the daddies as mummies. We also played a game of trying to get all of the ghosts without stepping off the spiderweb tape on the floor.

We attended our ward Halloween party, which was more like a carnival with pumpkin painting, games, face painting, lots of food and treats, and, of course, the trunk or treat (during which we ran out of candy, whoops!).

We went up to my parents' house for a family party. I can't help posting pictures of the little girls in their costumes. Jane and Ellie were there a little bit earlier than the rest, and they were being so cute!

Ring around the rosy!

What a cute Cinderella and Tinkerbell!!

Poor Miriam was a bruised but adorable ballerina. 

We got a picture of all of the girls. Don't they look thrilled? :)  Wow our family is growing!

We decorated and carved pumpkins, had way too much food, and just enjoyed being together.

On the actual day of Halloween we decided to have a Halloween party just our little family. I had to take a picture of my cute little Cinderella out in the leaves. She had so much fun.

For dinner we had mummy hot dogs. I used homemade roll dough for the wrapping and mustard for the eyes. They were shockingly good.

For dessert we had monster yogurt. It was just vanilla yogurt with food coloring, with crushed oreos on top. Ellie had hers without the oreos because they are chocolate...crazy girl. Once again really good.

We played a game that I don't really have any good pictures of, but it was SO FUN! It was trick or treat. We had slips of paper in a hat with either tricks or treats written on them. If you got a trick paper, you had to do the trick (somersault, dance like a princess, sing your favorite song, hop on one leg, etc.). If you got a treat paper, you got the treat mentioned. It was so funny because there were ones geared towards our girl and tricks more geared towards each other. Of course, John got the princess ones, and Ellie got the trickier ones.

After that we made slime. Ellie played with it for a good hour. It was such a hit. Note that we didn't actually go trick-or-treating on Halloween. Too bad because John and I could have had all of the chocolate candy Ellie got. :) Happy belated Halloween!

In November John was gone a lot on the school trips. So I got used to doing things by myself. My mom and I had a big canning day with applesauce (we even included Julie). It was a big job, but fun. I really tried to focus on the meaning of the season with the holidays this year. So I tried to really focus on gratitude during November and I loved it! We have so much to be grateful for! My little family being at the very top of the list. We had a Thanksgiving dinner at Jeff and Kaylyn’s house in Tooele for the Pearson side. It was great and I learned how to make sweet potatoes, yummy! We played minute-to-win-it games there and John and I were the power couple taking first a second place. We were particularly good at moving an oreo from our forehead to our mouth with out using our hands. and stacking cans and paper plates.  That night I went to Target for a black Friday sale. Lesson learned: waste of time. I could see that it would be fun if there were more people there than just one, but for just me it seemed so ridiculus. The lines were so, so long, and I returned almost all of the stuff that I bought. That Saturday we had Thanksgiving dinner with my side actually at my parents’ house. It was really fun, but the baby cried so loudly (she can be extremely loud) that I had to move away from my grandparents’ spot at dinner. Boy, all of that food was good.

We have only a few photos from the Thanksgiving season this year, including one John's dad shared with us from the Pearson dinner at Jeff and Kaylyn's house. We love our sweet little girls!

Lake Powell 2012

I love going to Lake Powell in October. There are far fewer people around, and the weather has been gorgeous every time we have gone.  Eliza is old enough now to really enjoy and look forward to the vacation, and she really took off when it came to confidence in climbing and exploring. 

It was really fun to have cousins there to play with. However, it is near impossible to get a picture of all of them looking at the camera.

I feel like this trip was particularly relaxing and enjoyable. We spent two days going down the lake a little ways. Annie's Canyon is always gorgeous, but at this particular water level we were able to get out a walk/climb/picnic. There were even frogs for the kids (and my husband) to catch. 

There were a few too many people for my parents' little boat so on our day to stay back we explored a slot canyon right next to the Bull Frog Visitor Center. The canyon was quite a bit longer than we expected. The water got a little deep so we got creative going over it. 

This was Miriam's first trip there. She did really well, although she had an unhealthy attraction to the campfire. Despite this being the fifth camping trip of the year, this was the first one where she was really mobile and could get into mischief.

Oh I just love my girls. They did so well on this trip. One memorable thing was that Ellie was well aware that there were no bathrooms nearby so she had to do her business in the dirt. She was happy to pause at whatever she was doing, pull down her pants, and pee where ever she was. Unfortunately, this happened right next to the kitchen area and other places where there were a lot of people. For her other business she likes privacy and would just take off over the hill, yelling "Come wipe me!" when she was finished. Needless to say, Ellie sure kept us on our toes.

It was wonderful. The weather was great and there weren’t very many people on the lake. My parents, David and Patti, James, and MaryElla were also there. There wasn’t enough space on the boat for all of us at once, but we still had a wonderful time. We spent a good chunk of one day going up a slot canyon by the visitor center. And we also went down to visit a few canyons. The water level was such that we were able to get out and hike in Annie’s canyon. It was great. We also played for a long time by the huge arch on the main channel. We had a nice, big campsite in Stanton Creek that was a little tricky to find, but it was really nice. When I was trying to show David and Patti where it was in the dark, I accidentally drove into mud and almost into the lake. Whoops! Ellie loved playing in the sand, but didn’t love the boat as much this trip.