October 2016- Halloween!

October is always a busy FUN month!

 We hit cornbelly's until Baby Rae passed out. The boys and I had a good giggle when we looked down and saw Rae Rae had fallen asleep holding the blanket over her face. Thankfully she is a pretty darn good napper. Hallelujah!

 We managed to watch the pig races (my favorite) and Vance wandered off in the crowd so I had to leave Lincoln (4) in charge of the stroller and LaRae while I ran around the sea of people leaving the pig race screaming for Vance. I stood up on a seat to see above everyone and there he was wandering off half dancing/skipping like he owns the place. No care in the world. Drive me crazy....So I ran after him (about 150 feet) and gave him a what for about wandering off. We left soon after that but we had done most of the activities by then and my nerves were shot. Managing 3 kids under 4, on my own, in a public place quickly exhausts me emotionally, mentally, physically....everything.

Rae Rae likes the jumperoo. She's the only kid that has enjoyed it. She gets going pretty good! The purple lipstick picture is me showing off my Lipsense. It's the latest and greatest non-smudge "lipstick' and I sold it (for fun and too discounted to make good $$) for about a year. So now I have LOTS of makeup selfies.

Lincoln and Vance both love visiting the Living Planet Aquarium. I've had a membership there before they built the new facility. Maybe 4 years? Anyway, it's a favorite to expend some energy. I don't usually buy the green screen photo-op pictures but for $20 these were just too cute of these two brothers that hold my heart. I love them and I love how they love each other. The pic of the leopard about ready to pounce made me laugh pretty good though. It's not real people, it's not real. They are not really getting eaten by a small Asian leopard.

Not too often, Rae Rae won't sleep so Sheehan has, on occasion, taken the duty of holding her until she will finally cave in to the Zzz's. It's usually teething that disrupts her otherwise pretty good sleep habits.

The pics of her on my bed (purple sheets) were taken by Lincon. He is as smitten with his little sister as we are. He really likes to take my phone and snap pictures and video of baby Rae.

Lincoln and Vance think it is pretty cool to float in the bathtub. They still like to play with their boats and cars together in the bath. It usually ends up in a monstrous amount of water splashed up on the walls, mirror above the cabinet, all over the floor. Let's just say they love to splash and sometimes that means splashing with their whole body as they stand up then fall back down to the water. Sheehan or I usually end up yelling, "Bathtime is over. No more splashing. Everyone out!" Every.Single.Time.

We took the pumpkin Halloween train in Heber with the Johnstuns. It was a cute train and I'm glad we did it once. We have quite the collection of pumpkins after visiting two pumpkin patches and after each of us received a pumpkin with our train ticket. So many pumpkins!

Alyssa is the best Auntie my kids could ever ask for. Some days she is the best sister I could ever ask for and she takes Lincoln with her girls to storytime at the PG library. It's one of the few times he will sit through a book because he wants to be with his cousins. He still adores Kiley and Lexi.

Lincoln has a couple of little friends and one of those is our neighbor Chase. He is super quiet but when he is comfortable,he is very funny. As shown in the pics, he makes Lincoln giggle a lot.  Chase's mom and I worked it out so Lincoln and Chase were in the same Pre-K 4 class at Learning Dynamics together. Lincoln had a great teacher, Sandy Thomson, who was so patient with him and really, really loved him.

One day she sent me this text. Some teachers make all of the difference. 

 Lincoln struggled in preschool and had a lot of anxiety over participating and not a whole lot of interest in learning but he never cried about going to school.  For Halloween, they were allowed to wear their costumes to school. Lincoln wanted to be a black ninja and Chase is a black widow. 

Mike and Annie were living with us over Halloween so we had the kids all trick or treat together. Vance was so excited all month long to wear his costume then when Halloween day came he freaked out and would not wear it. Hysterically cried the entire night because he wanted to trick or treat but didn't want to wear his costume. We finally got him to put it on for a short time. 

We were invited to another Harry Potter Themed Halloween Party/Murder Mystery Dinner. My parents and Devin & Julianne were also invited. We had a great time. I was Hermione, Devin and Sheehan were Fred & George Weasley, Julianne was Fleur Delacour, Mom was Rita Skeeter, and my Dad was Hagrid. They were all good sports despite the fact that Julianne and I are the only real fans of Harry Potter. 

We were invited to a neighborhood Halloween party. Devin and Julianne were The Incredibles. Sheehan and I were Gomez and Morticia of The Addams Family. Sheehan hand-rolled his cigar out of cardboard and I repurposed an old purple dress of mine dying it black and sewing black roses around the bottom. We had a great time with our neighbors and friends. They were many costumes that outdid ours by a pretty wide margin. But there was good food and lots of laughs!

 Lincoln got this Pirate hat on his last birthday and he thought it was too funny to put it on Baby Rae. She was a happy model.

Lincoln loves the holidays and Halloween is certainly a favorite. He always enjoys being involved in the pumpkin carving. 

Rae Rae's first Halloween she was an adorable bumblebee. Grandma Bev found her this costume. She fell asleep as we pulled her around the neighborhood in a bundle of blankets in the cart. But she was a cute bumblebee even if a sleeping one. 

Lincoln wanted a picture of all of our pumpkins together including the one he painted (and got rained on-shhh!) 

Lincoln and Vance got so much candy they wanted to see if it was as long as Daddy so they lined them up next to Sheehan to measure them. They had just enough (after all the pieces they ate of course) Laffy taffy candy's are obviously not a favorite around here. 

Tamale Day

I want to make sure that I know how to make some of the traditional Mexican food. We convinced Grandma Bev that we didn't want to just buy tamales from Costco but that we wanted to make our own! So we all chipped ingredients in and made our own tamale sweatshop. Even Lincoln got in on the action and washed and dried all the corn husks for us. 

Mike and Annie were living with us when we did our tamale day. Annie had never made tamales before so we she learned the ways along with us. I think we made about 14 dozen of red and green tamales. They were delicious and we enjoyed them for months! I love passing down family traditions including good food!