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!

Kiersten's 26th Birthday!

Once again we had a great night out at Teppanyaki for my birthday! I love me some filet mignon, veggies, and fried rice! Sheehan was the only one that caught the shrimp in his mouth. I was happy to be out with some of my favorite people, my FAMILY!

Aaron moves out! Mike and Annie move in!

Sheehan and Vance watching a firework show together. Vance loves his Daddy. 

From February until mid-July Aaron Craig moved in with us. We convinced him to switch jobs and get a Real Estate license to work for Devyco's Remax Team. His family stayed in Hesperia, CA while he lived with us and did school, and trained to work for Devin. We only overlapped one week between Aaron living with us and Mike and Annie moving in. We finished the kitchen in the basement in time for Mike and Annie. Our home has been a huge blessing and we are so happy to share it and to help our family and friends when they need temporary help or a place to stay when they visit. Lincoln and Vance love Uncle Aaron and he was very helpful while we were in and out of the hospital with LaRae. One day Lincoln was playing on his tablet when he suddenly looked up and said, "Uncle Aaron, my head is Huge!" then promptly went back to playing his tablet. One night we unknowingly locked Aaron out of the house. He fell asleep standing on the porch for 2 hours and maybe fluffed a time or two. Poor guy. He had gone to a midnight movie with my Dad and we locked the front door. He was too afraid Sheehan would shoot him if he knocked on the windows and didn't ring the doorbell cause he didn't want to wake up the kids so he stood there and periodically knocked for 2 hours. We felt so bad. He forgave us. There were very many nights where Sheehan and Aaron would stay up together watching movies, giggling, and eating Oreos. They were 14-year-old boys all over again.
The boys have had so much fun playing with Makai and it makes my heart happy to see them grow a relationship with their little cousin. Now they play and fight more like siblings. We really love Mike, Annie, and Makai. We have made great memories with them! The only difficulty we've had is adjusting to having dogs around. Mako is so big and Hazel is so full of energy. Vance loves them and he OFTENtimes smells like a dog after hugging and playing with them. Vance loved Reefy dog too.

The kids and I went up American Fork Canyon with Mike and Annie toward the end of summer. Annie was explaining to Lincoln that Jesus shared the loaves and the fishes with the multitude so we should share too. He responded with, "Well, my fish is dead." I about died laughing. Lincoln was very serious. haha Sheehan has really enjoyed building a relationship with Mike. They get along really well and Mike has been really helpful with a couple of projects around the house. Annie and I are two peas in a pod. I've really LOVED getting to know her and making a lasting friendship. Family is EVERYTHING!