Joy School Halloween fun

Evan got to dress up in his Halloween costume for preschool on Thursday and he was so excited!!



I know he looks more in pain than excited in this picture, but he was trying to make a pirate face. :)

Arrrrrrgh


Evan's preschool class (minus one little boy who was sick):


Evan's turn to walk past in the costume parade:


They also sang "I'm a Mean Old Wtich" for us. We went trick or treating with the kids in his class at the rest home yesterday and they had a lot of fun doing that. Asher really got into it too. I'm excited to take them trick-or-treating for "real" tonight!

Mommy's little helpers

The kids were SO excited when I told them they could help me with the dishes the other day. Evan came down from his room looking like this:



He said, "I need my goggles so I don't get any water in my eyes." What a nut. :)

Here are my helpful little guys "helping with the dishes". (I made them strip down to their undies so they wouldn't get their clothes wet.)





I sure love these little guys. :)

More snow

We pretty much had a blizzard on Tuesday!

The first snow of the year!

I couldn't believe it when Ben walked out of the house to go to work this morning and there was snow on the ground!!!




I shouldn't be surprised. It seems like always snows the week of Halloween.... doesn't matter where I live (as long as it's a place where it snows).

Thanksgiving!

Yes, it's a month early, but Ben's brother, Joseph, is heading out to basic training on the 9th, so Ben's side of the family got together last night for our Thanksgiving dinner. Yummy food and great company.... what more could we ask for!

Rock Hunting

Ben got a fish tank a few weeks ago and has been trying to put together a salt water aquarium. He needed some rocks, so we went down to Stansbury Island (at the Great Salt Lake) to look for some. The boys had a blast running around and picking up rocks.





Asher had fun kicking the cow pies.


The fearless rock hunter:




The area was gorgeous!


We couldn't believe this gigantic pile of salt:


View of the salt flats from Stansbury Island:


It was a lot of fun! And afterwords, we had a chance to hang out with friends in the Salt Lake area. Zach and Ben went golfing while Amber and I chatted and kept the kids from killing themselves. :)

Family Pictures!!

We decided to attempt family pictures with the remote and tripod again this year. We did it last year and they weren't horrible, so I thought I'd try again. It wasn't any easier this year, but I'm pretty pleased with what we got. It's so fun to see how much the kids have changed in a year!









And a few of my boys. :)








P.S. Which family pic do you like the best? I need to pick one for the Christmas cards. :)

Stinker

I thought Asher was asleep in his bed.


Apparently not.

Highlights

I'm behind in my blogging, so I thought I'd do some quick highlights from the week...

Road Builders

Last Saturday, Evan and Asher took out ALL the DVDs and made roads out of them. It was such a mess, but it kept them busy for SO long. They loved it! And they were so cute playing together so well.





Getting Creative with the Fridge

The fridge latch I purchased (see this post) only worked for about two days before Asher had it figured out. I came downstairs to another chocolate covered face and decided something HAD to be done. So, I came up with this:


It's pretty ghetto, but it works! :)

The big PT!



On Tuesday, I started potty training Asher. He didn't pee in the toilet one single time that day, but he did go #2, which was a start I guess. After the day was over, I figured we'd have to give up and try again later. I tried another day, though, and he did really well! So we kept going. Today was day 6 of potty training and it's going SO well! We've only had 3 or 4 accidents in the last 3 days combined. I can't believe we might be almost done with diapers for the first time in 4 1/2 years!

Conference Fear Factor

If you don't already know, I have a calling in the Young Women's program at church, which has been really fun. This past Tuesday, our activity was "Conference Fear Factor", where we asked the girls questions from conference and if they couldn't answer it, they had to complete a challenge. Basically, it was a night where the leaders had the girls do really mature things like see who can stuff the most marshmallows in her mouth, who can stick the most cheerios on her face, or who can eat a half of a jalapeno. Yeah, it was pretty fun. Lots of laughs that night!



Pumpkin Winner

Yesterday at the Farmer's Market, you could win a huge pumpkin by guessing the weight correctly. Well, I don't ever win anything, but I guessed the weight of the 80 pound pumpkin right on the nose! I tied with a little boy, so he took that pumpkin home and I got to chose another one. This one is actually a bit smaller, but it's still huge! We'll have fun carving it in a few weeks. :)



And that's our week in a nutshell! :)

The curse of October conference weekend.

Some of you may remember this post from last year, in which I mourned the death of our old laptop. Evan dumped an entire cup of milk onto the keyboard while I was watching October's Saturday afternoon conference on it.

Fast forward to yesterday (coincidentally, the day before October conference starts), and we have me bumping my glass of milk over right onto my one year old laptop keyboard. Yes, it's ironic isn't it. I immediately turned it upside down (to get the milk out of the keyboard) and turned it off. I mopped up the mess and left the laptop alone for an entire 24 hours to make sure it had dried out completely.

I spent the entire day yesterday sick over the whole thing. A year ago, the milk completely fried the computer and I had to pay the Geek Squad $160 to get all my stuff off the poor, fried hard drive. I can't run my photography business without my laptop.... and we can't afford to buy a new one right now. What was I going to do???

This morning, I turned it on while holding my breath, saying a prayer, and crossing my fingers and toes. It turned on!! Some of the keys were kind of stuck and others felt kind of crunchy when they were pressed, but it worked!!! And now it's all cleaned up and good as new (of course, ask me in a few weeks when it starts smelling like sour milk if it's good as new :). Thank heaven for small miracles!

This little fiasco did give me an excuse to take the boys out for some pictures last night, though, because I couldn't do any of the things I usually do in the evening..... digital scrapbooking, editing my photos, etc. (You didn't think I could do a blog post without pictures, did you? :)







These are the cheesy kinds of smiles my kids give me lately:








And I can't let this post end before posting this little gem:



I call it "Trust me, I'm a doctor."

Evan got these Pink Panther glasses in his Burger King kids meal yesterday (because we all know that when you're upset about something, such as a possibly fried laptop, you have to comfort yourself with greasy fast food) and Ben decided to steal them and try them out.

Fun with friends.... and SNOW!

On Saturday, we went down to Layton to visit with friends. The guys went out golfing while Jess and I watched the kids. Afterwords, we had a yummy bbq.

Jess and I got our workout taking 6 kids to the park! It was quite an adventure, but the kids enjoyed it.

Rusty and Evan were two peas in a pod at the park.


Asher had fun riding around on the scooter. Both my boys love scooters. We just might have to invest in a pair.


In other news, fall is in full swing here in Logan. I'm getting excited for all the pretty leaves! They've already started to turn up in the canyons. I'm a little worried, though, that fall won't last long. We got SNOW in the mountains yesterday!!