Haunted House

Normally when you think of a haunted house, you think of witches, ghosts, vampires, etc. Last night Ryan took Bryce and Parker to his mom's nursing home for a Halloween carnival and trick-or-treating. They had a great time and came home with buckets of candy. Yay for them! This morning I started thinking about what is really scary to me. It's not the witches, ghosts, vampires, etc. It's losing my mobility and my mind and being forgotten in a facility ~ waiting to die. Now that's scary!

I do comedy routines when I have my strength class holding plank ~ it really helps us get through it. So I planned on making a joke out of my fear of the nursing home. I was excited about it. But today was a different day. More than half of my class was senior citizens so I opted out of my comedy routine. And plank was that much harder.

Halloweeners!!!

I was so blessed today! I have been trying to pull together Halloween costumes for the kids without spending much money ~ but I haven't been able to find anything.

Today I went to this awesome consignment store and found a

batman costume for Bryce and a robin costume for Parker. I felt extra blessed because the odds were against me for finding costumes that go together like that for boys that are almost six years apart.

Parker is thrilled with his new costume and so am I!

It's not a secret that I consider family pictures to be my personal hell. Although I LOVE to have photos of our family, I HATE sitting down to have someone take our pictures.

This morning, Bryce was taking pictures of Halea for his reflections contest. The theme is Beauty Is..., so he decided to do a portrait of Halea. He did a good job. Some were blurry, but he got one really nice one (and that's all it takes).

All the kids flocked to watch Bryce photograph Halea. And since I had all of them in one spot, I thought I'd try to get a nice picture of all four of my babies. It was a nice effort, but a better reminder that family pictures are my personal hell.

Candy Land

It's a rainy day outside, so I thought we would try playing a board game inside. Parker and Apollo agreed that we should play candyland. Everything was going well until Apollo flipped the board and then Parker took it away from him. Apollo's chair toppled over and he became even more angry. We decided to put candyland away, and try it another day.

My son the drag queen...

Remember when I was a den mother? I had a ton of glitter and other craft crap from that, and recently Apollo figured out how to get in to the drawer where I was keeping all of that stuff. After he sprinkled blue glitter all over his face, it didn't take long for the irritation of glitter in his eyes to set in~ you may notice the pink rings around his eyes. It took forever to get the glitter off, and we threw away all of my craft crap. I hate crafts.

Hypocrit

After I made such a big deal about Ryan's dorkfest ~ I had a humble awakening today. I'll just say what I did and get it out of the way. I think I seem pretty cool ~ I'm laid back, not overly judgmental of others, friendly, etc. Inside, I am not as cool as I seem on the outside. I'm not getting to the point am I? Ok, here it is. I dressed me and my four children in matching sweaters today ~ and I LIKED it!!! It was an outward expression of my inner dork.

Dorkfest '09

My sweet husband is hosting dorkfest '09 (actually it's the fourth one this year ~ but who's counting?) Dorkfest is what I call it when my sweetheart invites three boy friends over and they play Lord of the Rings Risk while watching the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy ~ very dorky, I know ~ hence the name. And while he's occupied, I have a chance to wax, pop zits, give myself a mini facial, mani/pedi, whatever. I can do that stuff whenever I want to, but it's nice to do it on a quiet night when he's having dorkfest. It started at 3 pm, and will go until the wee hours of the morning or when they put a time cap on it. So, a happy dorkfest to all!

Mom~mee!!!

I'm pleased to announce that yesterday morning, Halea said her first word. Mommy. Actually she wailed it! I was having a peaceful time reading my scriptures and I could hear her getting a little fussy, and then she exploded with crying and in the midst of it was her first word MOM~MEE!!! I just love that girl!

Whistle Blower

Parker came home with a whistle from school yesterday. It was wrapped up in it's shiny new package, so it had never been opened. Parker was thrilled to open it, and it wasn't long before he made a secret code involving the whistle being blown and me needing to meet him outside. That lasted for a little while until the whistle got lost ~ and made it's way back into Parker's school bag. We'll see what kind of fun he has with it at school.

STUCK!

I'm happy to say that no one died, or cut their hair while I was at my zumba training on Saturday. This is the only near disaster, but really not bad.

Apollo can figure out how to get almost anything he wants. We keep the pediasures, cereal, and lunch snacks (all the processed crap) in this cabinet. He stood on the dryer door to lift himself on top of the dryer. He proceeded to pull out all the stuff on the bottom shelf and climb into the cabinet.

Ryan, because he is unable to multi task, finally found where the screaming was coming from, to hear Apollo say his first sentence .... I can't get down! Of course the loving father he is, Ryan left Apollo and got the camera to remember this moment.

I'm glad everyone was ok while I enjoyed my day out.

What a day!

I don't have any pictures yet, but I thought it was worth noting. Monday Bryce came home from school early because he wasn't feeling well. He seemed to get progressively worse, and by Tues afternoon, I took him to the Dr. office. I figured we would get him tested for swine flu (which came back negative) and be on our way, with home instructions. Well, the Dr. found that he was having a breathing issue that was serious enough to keep us in the office for two and a half hours. When we left, we were sent to the hospital to get a chest x-ray to see if he had pneumonia or asthma (neither). He ended up having a bad case of bronchitis and has been home from school all week. Sooooo, Tuesday night when we finally arrived home, I noticed that Parker's hair was looking choppy. Not just in one or two spots, but all around his head. I asked Ryan if he had cut Parker's hair, and he hadn't and had not seen Parker cutting it, either. Parker 'fessed up to having cut his own hair, and he was quite proud of the job he had done. Also, I forgot to mention that Tues morning my friend from the Y asked me if our family could be interviewed for a tv promotion for the new Y on Wed morning ~ I committed to doing the interview and now it was late Tuesday night and there was no time to fix his hair. So Parker looks like our malnourished, bad haircut little boy. I did finally get around to fixing his hair and I had to give him a military cut because that's how short he chopped it himself. He does look pretty cute. I'll post picts when I get around to taking some.