Double Trouble

Here is the latest thing my babies have figured out how to do.



Then the other day Rob and I were putting up Christmas decorations and I realized I hadn't seen or heard the babies in a while. Never a good thing. Well, I found them shortly thereafter and this is what they were doing. OH MY HECK!!

"My Stupid Mouth" story by Anna, song by John Mayer

So the other night I'm putting Maggie to bed and she is going on and on about her Primary Lesson. "Mom, these guys put Jesus up on a cross and then he died for us and his body went into the ground and his spirit went to live with Heavenly Father and then a little while later he came alive again."

"That's right," I tell her. I should've just stopped there but then I decided this might be a good teaching moment so then I say, "You know Maggie that's going to happen to all of us." Maggie gets this look of horror on her face and says, "But I don't want those guys to put me up on a cross and make me get dead."

HOWLING GOOD TIMES IN OCTOBER

HALLOWEEN PARADE
Daynan had a Halloween parade at his school and as part of the pre-game show there was this guy dressed up as the grim reaper. My kids couldn't quite decide if he was mostly cool and a little bit creapy or mostly creapy and a little bit cool. What do you think?

Daynan, the SWAT police man, walking by in the parade. My pictures of kids in the parade never turn out very good because they walk so darnfast. However, I was rather proud of this one. Finally!!

SCARECROW FESTIVAL
Rob's parents came down and we took them to the Scarecrow Festival. It was really, really fun. Here are some pictures of the festivities.

Rob, Britt, Maggie, Daynan, JC, Bronson and Brooke

Brooke, Bronson, and Grandma McNeel

Grandma McNeel and Brooke

Bronson's Cheesy Smile

Maggie getting a unicorn painted on her face. Apparently only certain people can do unicorns because Maggie had to wait for this girl to be available.

AHHHHHHH!

Maggie, Austin, and Dayan.

**Side note: it drives me crazy when you pay to get into something (like the scarecrow festival which was NOT cheap) and then they charge you to do things once you get in. Like, for example, the face painting. It was like $4 per face!! Then they had these race cars that looked way fun but were they included in the entrace fee. . . no! And how about the bottle rockets. Nope, they weren't included in the entrace fee either. Seriously! I think if you are going to charge people to get in then everything should be free (except maybe the food) once you're in. Drives me crazy!! 30 minutes after Daynan got his face painted he asked for a wet wipe to wash it all off. Well, at least I got some good pictures to remember that $4.00 face with. **

PUMPKIN CARVING PARTY

HALLOWEEN
There was some confusion about Brooke and Bronson's costumes. No, they are not Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog (although that is a fabulous idea). Brooke is a pink poodle and Bronson is a turtle. Emma, Katie's baby girl, is a Lady Bug and Brandon, Ellen's son, is a Doctor.





I decided it was high time Rob and I dressed up for Halloween. So this year I dressed up as Cleopatra and Rob is Caesar. Thanks for being a good sport, Rob. Love you !!

Conference Weekend Fun and Not So Much Fun

Rob and I decided to go to Star Valley to visit his family over conference weekend. Rob's parents have a gas fireplace (they call it a stove) in their living room that they use to heat the house. Over the years they've purchased little space heaters to use instead of the stove because they're so worried about the grandkids getting burned on it. Well, conference was about to start and so Pat (Rob's mom), Brittney (Rob's sister), and I were trying to get the kitchen and living room clean so we could relax and watch conference. The next thing we know Bronson just starts screaming. I turned around and saw that the stove was on and instantly knew what happenned. His little hands got burned :( I grabbed him and put his hands under cold water while Pat filled a bowl up with ice water. Then I sat down and Pat and I held his little hands in the ice water on-and-off for about an hour. Meanwhile we called Aunt DeAnn who is a nurse at the hospital and told her what happened. She ran and got us a good burn ointment and helped us bandage him up. Poor little man. Once we got the burn ointment on, you wouldn't even know he got hurt. He was happy as ever! We all thought he would take the bandages and the socks off his hands, but he didn't. What a good boy!

At first sister was very concerned, but then she decided brother was going to be okay.

Once we got home, Bronson decided he was done wearing the bandages, but he still had big blisters. Owey . . . but the kids is still smiling.

The Wyoming cousins: Austin, Daynan, Jordan, Alyssa, Peyton, and Maggie

General Relief Society Meeting

The evening got off to a great start with the finding of a celestial parking spot.

We had grand plans for dinner at a nice restraunt, but spent too much time bargain shopping at Old Navy. Here we are modeling our $4 shirts. Mande, sorry about my head blocking yours :) love ya!

Then we were off to the Conference Center with everyone else.

Kristy's mother-in-law, Pam, is on the General Relief Society Board so every year she gets us these great seats. Thanks Pam!! We all tried to get a picture of her, but every time she kept talking to her neighbor. Finally Kristy snapped this one. She's the one in the gray jacket. Notice Elder Uchtdorf on the bottom left.

The First Presidency: Elder Eyring, President Monson, and Elder Uchtdorf

I think this picture is really cool because you can see how close Pam's seat is to the First Presidency.

The whole evening was a success. Fab Speakers, Fab Friends, Fab Food. I highly recommend the hot fudge sundae at Emmit and Ethel's. yum yum!!

Bugged but So Proud

Bugged: I just jumped on the internet to look at the new trailer for New Moon, which by the way is fabulous, and noticed that it the movie doesn't even come out until November 20th. What? I totally had it in my head that it was showing November 2nd so basically I have to wait 18 more days on top of the 33 I was already planning on?!? ARG! I am so bugged. Guess I'll have to add some more loops to my paper chain.

So Proud: Daynan scored a goal at his freezing cold soccer game today. Go Daynan!!

To Can or Not to Can

Rob is always giving me a bad time that I don't can. In fact it has become a hot topic in a joking way between the two of us. It's not that I don't agree with him; I want to learn how to can. It's just that things always go very wrong around the house when I get busy doing something that doesn't involve wiping noses, serving snacks, or some other child-centered activity. I try telling this to Rob and he just doesn't believe me.


Well the other day Rob brought home a box of peaches and they were super yummy, but we just couldn't eat them fast enough and they were starting to go bad. We didn't want to waste them so Rob and I tried to think of what we could do with them. The obvious thing to do would be to can them but seeing as I don't know how to do that, that option was out. Then I remembered my sister-in-law made some peach jam last year and it was delish. I had made strawberry jam before and it really wasn't that bad so I suggested it to Rob and he thought it was a great idea. I told him my only concern was with the amount of peaches we had left we would get a lot of jam. He didn't believe me. Oh well, I thought, if we're going to make jam, let's REALLY make jam.


STEP ONE: PREPARE SUPPLIES
Ran to the store and got everything we needed . . . I thought.

STEP TWO: BLANCHING
Ya I had no idea how to do this so I called my trusted cooking advisors for help. Evidently I must be a real slow learner because it took explanations from my Aunt Teresa, my mother and me reading a selection out the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook before I felt like I knew enough to try it out. So embarrassing!

STEP THREE: JAMMING
Everyone at my house was either sleeping or happy when we started this step. Even Rob was helping happily!



Unfortunately this happiness did not last long. The first problem we ran into was we didn't do a good job of planning in step one. I knew the peaches would make a lot of jam, I just didn't think it would be this much! I ended up running to the store not once, not twice but four times for jars and pectin. Yes you heard me, FOUR!!

The second problem was my kids went from happy to this:

Poor Kids. It's so hard to not have all of mommy's attention :(

Well to make a long story short, after cleaning up many mommy is busy so look what I can get into messes, saying "no . . .No . . .NNNOOO" to children making those messes more times than I care to admit, and trying to keep everyone calm by ensuring them Mommy and Daddy will be done soon . . . we were finally done. And what did we have to show for our 7 hours of hard jamming labor? 49 jars of luscious peach jam.

I'll be dreaming about jam tonight.

EPILOGUE:

After we were all done with the jam I asked Rob if he could now see why I don't dothis very often. He said yes. But he still thinks I should learn how to can.

A Much Needed Change of Scenery

Over Labor Day weekend we went with our cousins Matt, Andra, Jen, Bailey and Aiden to Bear Lake. Our Aunt Teresa joined us on Saturday for the boating fun and to help with the babies. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

This first picture was suppose to be just that, a picture, but somehow it ended up as a movie . . . oops! Andra's sister, Jen, had a boat and so that's where most of our time was spent.

The kids were way excited to go tubing, wait that's not true. Maggie and Bailey were excited to go tubing, but Daynan and Aiden were not. Side note, do these two look like they could be brothers or what?

Because they took so long complaining about how cold it was and that they wanted to go to the beach, the girls got the wet suits. Hey, you snooze (or in this case complain) you lose! Notice the big smiles on Maggie and Bailey's faces (ha ha we got the wet suits!)



After some pretty intense coaxing and several direct threats, they decided to go for it. Hallelujah! We get them loaded on the tube, threw the boat in drive and started to go when we realized . . . Oh no . . . We forgot to hook the tube to the boat. Sorry boys!

After a good laugh, we turned the boat around and hooked them on and were off for reals this time.

We did have a few minor mishaps while the kids were on the tubes. Auntie Jen instructed the kids that when the boat starts pulling the tube they have to lift up on the handles or the tube will sink. Yikes! Well on more than one ocassion the handles didn't get pulled up on quite hard enough so the kids got to take a little swim. BRRRRR. No worries, though, Auntie Jen was there to rescue them!

This was the first time the babies had been on a boat and they did surprisingly well! They mostly just sat on laps and took in the scenery or slept. Teresa kept Bronson entertained by letting him play with her camera. And yes, Kristy, I warned her about what happenned to your camera so she kindly took it from him when we got to the beach. I'm happy to report that no cameras were ruined on this trip. Ya hoo!

When it got to be lunch time we decided to go see Andra's brother who has a cabin on the other side of the lake (lucky). He told us to look for a big red tractor and they were right by it. Apparently a lot of people who have cabins at Bear Lake also have big red tractors because there were a ton of big red tractors. We were getting concerned that we might not find them when Jen and Andra spotted them. Phew. This first picture is of Matt holding Bronson (who is fast asleep) and all the kids looking for the big red tractor. The second picture is of Brooke excited to finally get of the boat and play in the sand!


What can I say, the beach was awesome!

It was getting time to head back for dinner so we all piled in the boat and started to head back. Bailey and Daynan wanted to give tubing one last try. Look Mom; No Hands!

For the rest of us, though, it had been a full day!