Here's the truth: I am a "Halloween Scrooge." (John's words, but true enough.) I have a bad attitude about Halloween. I don't understand why during one month a year we all have to pretend we like gross, creepy things. During one workout this last month everyone was so delighted that a dead lift + a fly = a dead fly. *eye roll* Why would anyone like a dead fly? Flies are gross when they're alive and grosser when they're dead. Nasty.
That being said, I really thought we did Halloween 'right' this year. We went to a super fun Halloween party at the botanical gardens. One of the main things that made it great was that there was no creepy or scary things. We started out the evening with a picnic in the stake center parking lot with a Costco Pizza and veggies. My mom was in town visiting so she got us the pizza. :)
Check out the cute hand/face painting.
There was a great dance party in one of the pavilions. They gave out tons of glow sticks, had fog machines, and had toys and balls to play/dance with. It was awesome!
We met Elsa and Belle on the way.
One of the best parts was the circus activities. In addition to having some cool circus performers throughout the garden, there was a section for people to try out different circus equipment. We loved the tightrope walk, stilts, plate spinning, and balancing on a rolling board.
We loved the unicorn encounter. Look at those tiny ponies!
Holland wanted to feed it her pumpkin. :)
I know this is redundant, but they were so little! My girls aren't very tall, and these ponies were dwarfed by them.
We went around the pumpkin walk which had pumpkins in fun poses throughout. These ones are playing. We saw some farming, jumping off a diving board, shoeing a horse, and lots more.
Some other great things about this evening was that each girl got to pick out a pumpkin to take home. Miriam and Holland picked tiny ones, but Eliza picked a huge one for carving. There were also discovery tables around to learn about crazy botany things. There were crafts to make ghosts, mummies, and spiders from fruit.
And on top of all of that there was the electric garden going on. Cool lights and music on the gardens. What a night!
The following evening after a day of planting our new plants, we went to the the ward trunk or treat. Here is a better picture of our ballerina, Mary Poppins, and the Easter Bunny.
On Halloween itself, we used the fun decorations Grandma brought us to make fun headbands for school.
That night there was a no more trick or treating (because we had so, so much candy from the trunk or treat. But we made eye-ball berry ice cream. It was delicious.
And we played a rousing game of "Don't Eat Pete." We haven't played that with the kids for a long time--it was a hit!
See all things cute and sweet for Halloween--no creepy, scary. That's how we do it right. :)
The first day of Fall Break our friend Becky came over to our house for a 9 hour playdate, basically all day. Her mom was going to a funeral in California that weekend so she had to come to our house for a while.
One funny thing that we did was a makeover. As you can see, some of it didn't turn out as perfectly as we had hoped. Miriam was in charge of herself, going completely bonkers over the makeup. She painted silver and pink on her forehead. She also put on really dark smudges of blush next to her mouth. In this picture we had wiped a lot of it off. I was in charge of Becky, and I have to say that her makeup turned out probably the best of all of us. Becky did mine, and I thought it turned out really well. The only thing was the eyebrows that I did on both myself and Becky were way too dark. We had also wiped off a lot of it for the photo. We painted our nails blue, and Mommy did my mascara. It looks ridiculous on me.
Another thing that we did was Cosmic Kid's Yoga. It is basically a video where the person that is doing yoga with you tells you a story while doing the various poses. The poses go along with the story. The first one we did was Moana. This was the second time we had done it, and we did Trolls. It was super fun.
Another really fun thing that we did was a tea party for lunch. We had personal pizzas, spiralized cucumbers, sliced apples and carrots, grapes, and cookie pressed cookies. We used our tea party plates and cups and our new food processor.
Daddy had the day off because he was sick so he was there too. It was sad because my teeth hurt really bad that day and I couldn't eat any cucumbers or apples. Even though I couldn't eat some of it, it was delicious.
Miriam and Becky beaded cute little friendship necklaces while I was reading that morning, first thing.
Right before the tea party, we all played board games like Chutes and Ladders, Princess Cupcake, and Uno. It was really fun. We also painted pictures, played outside, and watched Tangled. It was a busy fun day.
The day after that long playdate was the first day of General Conference. I really liked President Nelson's talk in Women's Session. I also really liked Elder Cook's talk in the Saturday morning. It was really interesting and announced a lot of things. The main point of the talk was that starting in January church will only be 2 hours, and there will be a new curriculum called "Come Follow Me" that's about the New Testament. They shortened church to two hours so that teaching would be more home based, church supported.
On Saturday we watched conference, cleaned, and went to soccer. Me and Mommy went to Women's Session that evening. There were a lot of good talks there. I really liked Sister Jones' talk about service as well. As part of President Nelson's talk he challenged us to read the Book of Mormon before the end of the year, marking all of the passages about Jesus. I am going to try to do it. I got to the 11th chapter of 1st Nephi today.
On Sunday we played a jar game, which is when spiritual words taped onto jars with little fun foods inside, that we get to take a bite whenever we hear that word. We also colored some fancy coloring pictures which turned out really well. I really liked President Ballard's talk about the Plan of Salvation. I made a list of attributes that I want work on having and made a to do list of what I want to do because of this conference.
Included are:
Listen to a talk everyday
Focus on faith and hope instead of fear in times of trial
Call the church by its full name
Cultivate and expand my talents
Follow through with impressions from the Holy Ghost
Pray to know who I can help that day
Try to do better, there is always room for improvement (we're human!) but don't let it get you down
Study RS purpose statement/declaration
Study Come Follow Me
Read the Book of Mormon
Study about the temple/go to the temple grounds
Be kinder
Work on the list of virtues
I loved this year's conference!
Thank you Eliza for helping me write about the first day of Fall Break and General Conference. She is such a wonderful girl and an amazing example to me!
I had a great experience with Conference as well. Like Eliza said, this conference was noteworthy because of the announcement of the shortened church time and a shifting to a home based teaching program. There were also a lot of messages about the new ministering program and service. There were also a lot of messages about overcoming/enduring adversity. President Nelson gave a directly worded message about how important it is to call the Church by it's real name.
I have a long list of to-do's as well from conference: (Can you tell Eliza and I wrote them together?)
-Read the Book of Mormon before the end of the year, marking passages about the Savior
-Social media (and other lesser media) fast for at least 10 days, taking note of how I think/feel
-Study the RS documents
-Make a pattern of temple attendance
-Less time on my phone
-Be intentionally kinder
-Use the real name for the church/members
-Pray for inspiration/study about ministering
-Focus on faith instead of fear, especially during adversity and challenges
-Divine discontent is good. Progress is a good thing.
-Revisit Sabbath Day observance, check the suggestions given
-Study and use the Come Follow Me
There were wonderful promises given to us to as we follow the counsel of the prophets!
We had a full week off school after General Conference. Every morning we made a list of things we had to do and things we wanted to do. Eliza is here to help me talk about them:
We cooked a lot during Fall Break. We cooked pancakes, muffins, oatmeal, and lunch everyday. My favorite thing we cooked was oatmeal. It is really fun to cook and even yummier to eat.
The general things on the 'have to' list were: piano lesson, scriptures, lunch, dinner, xtramath, periodic table studying, reading lesson, nap/reading time, get ready, clean up, dishes, laundry. A lot of things on the 'extra' list: go to the park, play a game, painted nails, played in the rain, lunch outdoors, basket making kit, cooking, painting, coloring, jewelry making, watching movies.
I did my basket Christmas color themed. I want to put in cinnamon sticks and ornaments during Christmas time. Miriam did the multicolored one. Mommy did the pink and orange one for Holland.
The actual weaving of the baskets was really fun. We wove in and out with a straw type material. Going around the basket twice made one solid layer. It was really fun to do a pattern, but it made it trickier to share colors.
Mommy here: Fall Break was amazing. The girls were all so happy. We had time to do a bunch of fun things that we don't normally get to do. It was particularly awesome to sleep in, especially for Holland, and boy did she take advantage of it! She slept in until 9:30 most days and one day even until 10:20. Whoa. This meant that the other girls got up and read and maybe got themselves breakfast. And my body just got to sleep until it felt like waking up, like 8:30. Yeah, it was spectacular.
I felt like Fall Break was everything I want mothering to be and a lovely blessing to me. We worked together and then we played together. One really fun thing was that Eliza decided she wanted to memorize as much of the periodic table as she could. Miriam helped her study, and she did awesome. Eliza is so smart and darling.
Last week we had a crazy rainy day. From what I understand the rain was a result of Hurricane Rosa. It rained through the night and all morning long. Our backyard was a huge puddle!
We don't have rainboots at this house (because we live in Phoenix...) so the puddle playing gear was flip flops, swim suit, and jacket. Good thing it was still in the 80s so it was warm enough to play. Actually, I really probably should not have given in to Holland wanting to play in the lake that was our back yard. She has been fighting this awful cold (that I am pretty sure was croup, probably should've taken her to the doctor...) and that night was the worst night of her struggle with breathing. Don't worry, Holland, if you are reading this someday, we would have taken you in if we really thought you needed it. It was just enough to stress us out (and buy a humidifier for your room, cause there wasn't enough humidity in the air??).
The water got pretty high, a few inches deep in the backyard, enough that it was coming up on the cement pad by the back door.
Those rocks that are sticking out of the water in that picture are the only ones that stayed above the water line. Guess that's the high spot in the yard.
Look at our beautiful cucumber vines, tomatoes, basil, and plumeria. Our garden/yard is loving this cool wet weather.
That is all of the plants except our saguaro!!! I can't tell you how sad I was to see this sight that morning. We dug up this saguaro in someone's yard (they were giving it away, we didn't steal it!) transported it home, got it back in the ground and watched it grow for the last 2.5 years. It has actually grown really fast (more than a foot taller for sure) and to see it felled like that was just tragic. :( We stayed up that night and stuck it back in the ground. We dug the hole deeper to facilitate it not falling over again. Fortunately it was only crushed in one particular spot. So we think there is a chance it will survive this, but I guess I would be a little surprised. That being said--there was a huge wind storm last night, and it didn't blow down. We were really nervous this morning to check it.
All this cool Fall weather meant that it is finally October, which means Fall parties at school. I was able to go to both girls' fall parties, and take Eliza to an ortho appointment because John happened to need a sick day on the day that that was all going down. Really! He was sick enough to want to rest and nap for part of the day, but not too bad that Holland couldn't hang out with him. It was pretty lucky for me!
First was Eliza's party where there was yummy treat, stem activities, games, and most fun a hanging donut game. It was fun to be there with her. :)
Next (after the orthodontist appointment) was Miriam's part which was apple themed. They were all so cute and little in that class.
Miriam loved the stem activity of building an apple tower with chunks of apples and toothpicks.
I ran the apple painting station and Miriam just kept going on that tower. :)
Look how high she got it!
I feel so blessed that my girls are in such a good situation with their school. This year has been great so far with friends, teachers, and academics. It has been a happy fall!
I love being married to this guy! This last month was particularly fun because we have had a few extra chances to go on fun dates. First, we get a free date night through the Y. We have to call at the crack of dawn on the first day of the month, but that's how we get signed up for having a 3 hour evening during which they get babysat and even fed dinner at the Y.
Second, Eliza is getting old enough that we are getting comfortable with her being able to watch her sisters for short periods of time during which they are watching a movie and have strict rules about what they can or can't do. They have a phone and know how to call and understand that they cannot answer the door for anyone or go outside. So far it has been working out great! We don't go very far and call pretty regularly, but they have lived up to the trust we have given them.
Third, it was John's birthday this last month which meant that he received a lot of email offers for free meals and activities. It was great! We could get used to eating out once a week. :)
One night, (I think for our Y night date) we went to Girmaldi's and got a free pizza. Then we went to an indoor glow in the dark mini golf place. It was really fun! One unique aspect to that date was that we played a couple of small games at the table in the restaurant. It made us laugh and feel a little conspicuous, but super fun.
Another fun evening was a shorter excursion to get a free birthday burger at Red Robin. Once again a game was played at the table. I think we played Settlers of Catan Dice Version. It was great (and delicious!).
We are still trying to do a weekly at home date too if we don't do something out and about. We make yummy treats and do unique activities, which is often a normal activity but with a twist. Like one recent date night at home when we played two different board games at the same time. It was confirmed (once again) that I am better at multitasking than John. :) It was even more fun because these were strategy games that required some thought, and it was a little disjointing to go from one game to the other so frequently.
Another date night was a temple trip to do baptisms for the dead. We haven't done these together for quite some time (maybe since right after we got married?). John has been Mr. Family History the last few months, and we have a ton of family names and ordinances to do. He is amazing.
It was a wonderful experience, of course, and we both feel a responsibility to do the work for these people especially since the first step has been done.
John has gotten me into it too just recently. And I have to say it is enthralling. You really get invested in these people you are researching. There is so much work to be done, especially in just straightening out all of the records on family search. I would say that 95% of what we have been doing is just figuring out the convoluted tangle of records and duplicate people. Let's just say that I am deleting a lot more ordinances (that are duplicates) than I am finding new to do. It is awesome, scary, and important.
On a less significant date, we picked out a new radio receiver for our car. We now have a touch screen with bluetooth and all the features. It has been fun. Bye, bye old radio!
John is also the best dad ever and is taking our little girls out for Daddy daughter dates. He took Eliza out for frozen yogurt last weekend.
I got to do a mother daughter date with Eliza when we went to the Women's Conference broadcast and browsing at Target, always a wonderful time.
John took Miriam out to get a treat of her choice. She picked Costco frozen yogurt. :) Living it up!
