Halloween {2012}

We had a very busy, fun filled Halloween this year.  Ryan and Jake have been talking about Halloween and what they would like to be seriously since about July.  I wanted to make sure we had a Halloween that lived up to their expectations or at least try to.

We started out by going to the gym, but the boys wore their costumes.  This morning was the first time I had put their skeleton costumes on them without regular clothes underneath and holy moly they were tight.  It's a good thing we didn't have to wait any longer for Halloween to get here or their costumes might not have fit.  Ryan's costume gave him a full on melvin since he wears unders.  Jake's was ok since it couldn't make its way up his butt because he still wears diapers, lol.

After the gym, we came home and I finished up Ryan's Halloween treats for school.  I found this cute idea on Pinterest and decided to make them rather than just do candy.  As I was making them, Ryan told me how much he hated them.  I'm glad I went out of my way to make something different, sheesh.

I thought they turned out pretty cute though.

All of the Frankenstein rice krispies ready for preschool.

For lunch, I made the boys mummy dogs.  They even helped me wrap the dough around the hot dogs so they thought it was pretty neat.  We also had monster eyeballs (green grapes) and monkey yogurt.

Ryan went to school at 12:30p.  Jake and I came home so I could hurry and get ready for his trick or treat party that started at 2:30p.

I had enough time to paint my nails before we had to go to the parade.  Jake wanted his nails painted, too.  I decided it wouldn't be a big deal and kind of was skeleton-like so I painted them.  He kept saying, "Oh, dad is going to tell me I'm a girl."  It was so funny.

We sent this picture of Jake's nails to Jim.

As soon as I got Jake's nails painted, he wanted the polish off.  By then, it was time to go so I couldn't take it off just then.

We made it up to preschool for the Halloween parade.  Jake thinks he's in Ryan's class sometimes.  Thank goodness Miss Tiffany is so nice and understanding.  She didn't care if he was in the Halloween parade at all.

Someone's family members came to the Halloween parade dressed up as Sully and Mike from Monster's Inc.  They looked so cute.  It was so hot outside today though; they had to be dying of heat in those costumes.

The kids walk down the sidewalk to show everyone their costumes.  On their way back they trick or treat to the parents.  I'm glad the parents had extra treats because Jake trick or treated right along with Ry's class.

Ryan's preschool class.

Miss Tiffany borrowed my dad's walker from when he was in his accident in 2007.  I had to take a picture of Trey.  He looked so cute dressed up as a grandma!  He even had his finger nails and toe nails painted and was wearing nylons, lol.

Miss Tiffany with her cute kiddos.  Ellie was sad cause Corbin wasn't so nice to her right before the picture--brotherly love :)

The boys came home from school and had to check out their loot.  They got a lot of good stuff and were thrilled to dig in :)

Jim came home from work around 3:30pm and we left for Levan as soon as he had changed his clothes.  The boys napped on the way down.

My mom had made yummy cream of broccoli soup and cheddar biscuits for us to eat before going to trunk or treat.  I also had my mom put make up on my boys faces.  That is another thing that is a lot harder than it looks :)

I just got our make up at Macey's and it was crap.  It was like spreading dried up putty on their faces.  It was awful.  My mom made it happen though.  Jake thought he could put his own make up on.

I love how Ryan was looking at my mom in this picture.

After Ryan was finished, he thought he could get Jake all made up for Halloween, ha ha.

Finally, Ryan gave up and let my mom take over.  I love the bottom picture of Jake laughing looking at my mom.  Too cute!  Notice Jake's nails are still painted, ha ha.

Ryan all ready to go trunk or treating.

Jake decided he wanted to get his picture taken, too.  They looked so cute!  

I love how Ryan is looking spooky in the picture on the right :)

When we were all ready and it was time, we headed over to the church.  We found the Eyre's right away and the kids got to playing and running around.

I wanted to get a picture of Ryan, Jake, and Ethan but Ryan wouldn't cooperate.  SO, I got some cute pictures of Ethan and Jake instead.

The church had some fun games for the kids to play.  The first thing we did was the fish pond.

Ryan and Jake both got these little bat whistles from the fishing pond.

Ethan got these way cool silly glasses, ha ha.

Bruce Rowley had the Levan ambulance out for people to look at.  The boys sat on the steps of the ambulance, but I could not get them all to look at the same time, ugh.

We also tried the bowling activity.  Ryan rocked that game.  He knocked all the pins down with one throw!   That wasn't an easy task either.  The pins had sand or water in the bottom of them so they didn't knock over very easily.  Jake did alright, too.  

We also did the cake walk.  Jake actually won and picked out cupcakes for his prize.  Ryan was SO ticked and had a little melt down after Jake won.  He threw his hood off and ran to the other side of the parking lot.  He's a little turd!

The games went on until 7:30pm and then they started the trunk or treating.

While we were waiting for the trunk or treating to start, they played music and we all danced.  We also did the hokey pokey.

These aren't very good pictures because it was getting dark and the boys were moving too fast for me to get good pictures, but they were having a ball dancing around.

Soon after, we trunk or treated.  The boys got tons of candy and had lots of fun with their cousins.  We were done trunk or treating by 8pm.

When we were finished, we went back to my parents and got the boys out of their costumes.  They had been in them literally all day long.  They had their skeleton jammies on underneath them so they were ready for bed.

We visited for a while and then made our way back to Spanish Fork.

I think we had a good Halloween.  

Hopefully it was everything the boys were hoping for :)

Carving Pumpkins

Ryan has been begging to carve pumpkins all weekend.  We had a pretty busy weekend and we weren't home at a decent hour at night to carve our pumpkins.  Tonight, we were finally home so we carved pumpkins.  Both Ryan and Jake were so excited to dig in and carve.

I love how Ryan is holding his mouth in this picture, ha ha.

Turned out, Jim did most of the carving :)  One of our pumpkins' skin was so thick I thought I was going to cut my arm off.  I tried to help, but he ended up doing the carving.  It's also al ot harder than it looks.

I had bought a pumpkin scoop at Wal-Mart this year.  It looked pretty heavy duty and it had teeth to make the scraping out easy.  Well, our new scoop lasted about 5 scoops.  Turned out it wasn't so heavy duty after all.  Gripes.

Scooping out the guts.

Ryan scooped out the guts to his own pumpkin...for about 5 minutes, then he was done :)

Ryan's finished pumpkin.  All of the marker on the left side of the pumpkin are courtesy of Ryan.

Jake wasn't interested in carving his pumpkin at all.  One touch of the pumpkin guts and he was done.

After Jim was finished with Ryan's pumpkins, he got started on Jake's.  Jake's pumpkin was the thick skinned pumpkin.  I loved it though--I love those pumpkins with warts :)

I was able to carve one pumpkin--this baby size pumpkin :)  It was Jake's favorite.

Jake is our loving kid.  He loves to give kisses and they are usually unsolicited.  He'll just come up to you and say he wants to give you a kiss. I love it.  Tonight, he wanted to give dad kisses.

We were done carving pumpkins pretty quickly since we only did 3 pumpkins.  We took them outside, put a candle in them, and lit them.

The boys thought our jack o' lanterns all lit up were pretty cool.  I didn't get a great picture though--should've got my tri-pod out.  Oh well.

We are officially ready for Halloween now.

Jaker's Pumpkin Patch

Ryan missed his preschool field trip to the pumpkin patch this year because we were on our cruise.  But I still wanted to take the boys to a pumpkin patch, even though we have a boat load of pumpkins from my dad's garden.  We had looked into going to Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point, but it seemed a bit too expensive.  We found a pumpkin patch in Springville that was free and had some fun things for the boys to do.

We got ready for the day and headed to Jaker's Pumpkin Patch.  We were there around 10:30am.  There was a small corn maze right by the parking area that my boys ran to.  They had fun running through the maze and finding their way out.

Next, there were a few farm animals for the kids to look at.  There was a huge pig, a baby buffalo, a baby cow, and a goat.  I couldn't believe the size of this hog!  It was eating pumpkins and making the most awful noises, too!

There was small school group at the pumpkin patch the same time we were there.  The school group was just loading up on the wagon for go for a tractor ride, but my boys weren't interested.  We headed to the corn box to play instead.

The corn box was lots of fun.  The only crappy part was corn kernels would get in your shoes and it hurt to walk on them!  It was fun to play in though.

Jake liked digging in the corn and making corn angels :) 

There were also stacks of huge bales of hay.  Ryan and Jake had fun climbing on them and jumping off them into the corn. 

There was a second corn maze that was shorter for smaller aged kids.  Ryan and Jake had fun running through it and finding their way out. 

Ryan jumping into the corn box.

I couldn't believe all of the activities Jaker's had for kids and it was free!  We thought we should buy a couple of pumpkins since we participated in all of the fun activities they had for kids.

The boys picked out a couple of pumpkins.  Ryan liked these Cinderella pumpkins.  He told me he knew why they were red--it was because they were sunburned! I thought that was pretty funny.

I'm glad we were able to have a pumpkin patch experience this year.  

I know my boys had fun!

Pumpkin Parade at the Riverwoods

We woke up this morning to snow!  My boys were SO excited and kept asking if it was Christmas.  Ryan was so sure it was Christmas that he was ready to forget about Halloween and put up the Christmas tree right away :)

Ryan and Jake wanted to get suited up to go outside and make a snowman.  I told them there wasn't enough snow to make a snowman, but I got them in their coats, snow boots, and gloves anyway and let them go outside to play.

They figured out that there wasn't enough snow to make a snow man, but Ryan found enough clean snow to eat.  He loves eating snow--he knows not to eat yellow snow though :)

Ryan and Jake outside in the first snow of 2012

After preschool and when Jim got home from work, we went to the Pumpkin Parade at the Riverwoods in Provo.  I'd seen it advertised on a blog that I read and thought it would be something fun for us to take the boys to.  Plus, it was free.

The festivities started at 5pm and we got to the Riverwoods around 5:20p.  There were very few people there and it was freezing cold.  We decided to at least walk around and see what there was to do.

There were games set up for the kids.  Jake tried pumpkin bowling.  He didn't really get the concept and didn't roll the pumpkin hard enough to knock and of the pins down.  But the guy gave Jake a prize anyway so he was thrilled.

Jake pumpkin bowling

There were pumpkin displays all throughout the Riverwoods.  My boys really liked this pirate display.  It was really cute.

Ryan and Jake on the pirate boat.  SO sad the sun was right on Ryan's face :(

Next, we walked down to the petting zoo area.  There was only one other kid in the cage so my boys were able to spend as much time as they wanted to with the animals.  If we would've let them, they would've stayed there all night.  They were having a blast petting the animals.

Ryan's face in the top picture says it all.  They were so excited to see the animals and be right in the cage with them.
The boys said their favorite animal was the bunny.  And yes, Ryan sat right down in the zoo area to pet the bunny.  

My cute little Jakey

More of  the displays at the Pumpkin Parade

We convinced the boys to leave the petting zoo so we could go see what else there was, but we walked into another trap.  They had bounce houses set up!  Ryan and Jake had to bounce and they were in heaven.  They also had a few carnival type games set up.  I wish I would've got a picture of Ryan doing the strong man test where you hit the hammer and see how high the gauge goes.  It was so cute, but my hands were full and I couldn't get a picture of him :(

We decided to walk down to Malawi's right there at the Riverwoods and have a bite to eat.  The food was just ok, but it was worth it to go inside just to get warmed up.  It was seriously SO cold outside.

After dinner, we let the boys go out and jump on the bounce houses a few more times.  That's literally all they were able to get in though because it started to snow so we headed to car and went home.

The Pumpkin Parade was lots of fun.  I didn't think it was going to be all that great when we first got there and there weren't many people.  But it ended up being lots of fun, and the best part was my boys had a blast!

Kristy's Baby Shower

My good friend Kristy is due with a baby boy on November 16th.  Her family threw her a baby shower today so I went up to it.  It actually worked out perfectly because Emilie was ready for me to come up to preview our family pictures.  SO, rather than making two trips to Salt Lake I was able to kill two birds with one stone--I previewed our family pics and went to Kristy's baby shower in the same day :)

Our pictures turned out really good.  I'm really excited to get them printed.  Emilie also does Christmas cards so I have those all taken care of, too.

After previewing our family pictures, I made my way to West Valley for the baby shower.  Thank goodness for GPS on phones--I would've totally been lost :)

The shower was really nice.  It was fun to see Kristy and get to chat since we don't see each other that often.  Kristy also got some really nice gifts.  There was a baked potato bar, salad, and dessert.  I'm not usually a fan of apple pie, but there was an apple pie streusel that was delish! 

Me, Kristy, and Annalisa--we all lived together in Sandy.

Kristy with her sister and mom.

Kristy with her sister, mom, grandma, and sister in law.

Kristy's baby shower planning crew!

After the shower, I made my way back to Spanish Fork.  Jim and I leave for our cruise tomorrow so I need to get the boys bags packed, take them to Levan, and then come back and get our bags packed so we can leave by 7am!