My birthday, Fat Man

Here are a few happenings..  Our kids love costumes!

 
The other day, after Austin came home from school, I found him outside helping our elderly neighbor rake her leaves.  He is such a sweet boy! He even opened my door for me after church today.  He is getting to be such a gentleman.

The other night Austin decided to put on every pair of pajamas he had. Here are the first few layers...

Some more...

He then decided to put on all of Robert's pajamas as well.


He was getting so many layers that he couldn't put them on himself anymore and the other kids started putting them on for him.  All of us were laughing so hard, I was crying!  He reminded me of the scenes from Christmas Story when the mom layers out the little brother to go to school.  "I can't put my arms down!" and "He just lay there like a slug, it was his only defense."

 Then he put on Rob's pajamas as well!!  He was getting so hot that he was really thirsty.  He is such a ham, I just love it.

 Robert started getting into the act with the little he could find with the rest of the pajamas in the house.

I suppose we have a house full of sillies.  Talia ha decided that she loves wearing this little fabric house (that I have had since I was a little girl) as a hat.  I think she looks adorable!

We did some fun Thanksgiving activities for Lords and Ladies.  Here we are learning about Sourdough recipes.

 We made apple and marshmallow turkeys.

 And bow and arrows out of bamboo skewers.

 On my birthday I was showered with presents from my kids. 

  Isabelle made me about a dozen picture.  She had instructions on activities to do with some of them.  One was a cartoon that would move when I flipped the page back and forth.  She also had a butterfly all in pieces.  I was suppose to color them and put the pieces together myself.  She is so creative!

 Austin came home from Kindergarten that day and immediately ran in, gave me hugs and told me happy birthday.  He ran upstairs and brought back a little bag for me to open.  In it were 3 pennies from his own money.  He said, "This can help you buy a house mom."  He is so thoughtful and sweet!  Then he ran back and filled a sandwich bag with his Halloween candy for me.  Then, he kept bringing me more and more!  He gave me all but one piece of his Halloween candy!

After that, Isabelle was giving me candy and money, even Robert gave me some of his candy.  Now, I don't really need all of this candy, but seeing their generosity was the biggest present of all to me.

 I got a sewing machine YEA!  Rob got me an MP3 player and got me this fun tart for my cake.

As I was thinking about turning 35 this year, I decided I am not sad about my age.  I love that I have been married for almost 13 years, I love that Robert is 10 and Isabelle is 7.  I love where I am in my life and wouldn't have it any other way.  Yay for today!

Halloween

Since I can make my own schedule, and Austin's school already had a day off, we took the day off of on Halloween and just had a day of fun.  I took the kids rollerskating in the morning.  It was really cool for me to see Talia skating for the first time.  I had roller skated while I was pregnant with her, roller skated with her in a stroller, and now she is doing it on her own.  It was awesome to see it come full circle.

I found this really fun house with mega pumpkins while running, so I brought the fam back to check them out.  Isabelle was giving me advice on how we need to make our house more awesome because of this house.

Robert was really into the pumpkin carving this year.  He offered to dig the guts out of everyone's pumpkins because he thought it was so fun.  Yes!!  This is one good thing about him loving gooey things so much!

I was also really impressed by the creativity my kids showed this year.  All but Talia designed their own pumpkins.  Robert cut his own out as well.   I love the "zombie" pumpkin Robert made with the googly eyes.

Austin made this cute spider hat at school.

For Halloween this year we had Indian Jones (making his 4th showing), the Bloody Baron (think Harry Potter), a fairy, and the Corpse Bride (it's from a kid movie).  I was a little disappointed that Austin and Isabelle changed their minds about being historical characters (Abe Lincoln, and Queen Elizabeth).  But I thought they were super fun still.

KaPow! Playtime, and Party!

 Ok, I just found this pic from about a month or so ago, Rob and I went to a Jim Gaffigan comedy show together and it was so fun!

Here, we had a stake service project to pick carrots.  I found some that were in love.

This was the plan for Austin's Abe Lincoln costume.  I just can't get  Yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum out of my head when I see this pic though.....

 This is Talia showing off some of her fashion sense during Conference.  Ok, so she was just trying to get her shirt off herself.

 The kids getting high on candy, I mean, listening to conference while listening for key candy words.

 Rob went on a business trip and tried frog's leg and alligator- yum.

 He visited Utah and got to see cutie Naomi!

 This is my attempt at a Halloween version of my chicken pot pie.  Too bad it looks like Jack is crying!

 

 
 Our friends, the Ducette's, invited us to this fun murder mystery dinner.  I think the real mystery is how Rob grew so much taller than me that night. :)

Rob went to Colorado for business but still got to enjoy all of the fun Frenchness!  (Can you tell he has been traveling lately?!)

 We did an FHE on working as a team.  Things are going really well here I can tell.

 

This apple pie is from apples from our tree, hooray!!

Fall is finally here!

 We did and LDS homeschool field trip, nature walk.  Talia loved to splash in the water.  She was soaking afterwards.

 We saw cool things like frog skeletons

 and catepillars.

 Isabelle has been playing Barbie Doll beauty shop.  She was so excited she wanted to do a photo shoot for them as well. Work it Barbie.

 

This year for our Halloween party we decided to do a Harry Potter Theme.  We made our own wands one night.

 Here is some of the food and decor.  It was so nice because I planned it out with two other awesome couples this year.  The girls did the food and decor and the boys did the activities.

I got the inspiration for these cupcakes from my cousin Kim Madsen!

 Isabelle made the cool sparkly pumpkin and I made all but one of the cake stands and I made the pitcher.  Thanks pinterest!

 This is actually a calzone.  I thought it looked awesome as ribs!  I made butter beer too.
 

  Sara Swanger made the sign and I made the brick wall so the kids could run through platform 9 3/4 to get to Hogwarts!
 
 They made it!
 

   Heather made this splendiforus cake.  But I was most impressed with her Bellatrix Lestrange costume.  She actually cut the shirt and resewed it with yarn to get to that cool state!

Here the Allens showed up as Captain America and Lu lu lu Lucha Dora!  
 

 Our poor little Austy has not had a lot of luck lately.  He has gotten 3 head injuries in a matter of like 3 weeks.  Slick cowboy boots are not good for running!  Here is his latest injury...
 With all the injuries we thought he should be the Bloody Baron for our party!  He is with Caden Nelson, I mean, Harry Potter, in this pic.

I bought red hair spray for Isabelle because she wanted to be Ginny Weasley.  She was so upset after we did her hair that she was crying.  She thought it was pink!  I tried to wash it out and put a red towel on her to dry it.  Then she decided that the red towel was the best option.....  Here she is with her friend Ally, I mean Hermione.

 I tried to get Talia to be a cat or rat or something, but she just wanted to be a fairy.

 Rob and I were Gilderoy Lockhart and Professor Trelawnie.

Robert was Draco Malfoy.

Here is Vic and Heather as Bellatrix and a Dementor.

 Sara and Geoff Swanger were Quiddich fans.

 Parker, the muggle, Reagan- Luna, and Cameron- Voldemort?

Heather brought a fun pumpkin decorating activity for the kids to do.

 Vic came up with this awesome Harry Potter Jeopardy game.

 Then today we found Jennifer Harris at Stake Conference and had to have their family over for dinner.  They are the best!