A is for Amazing!

Oct 31, 2011

halloween festivities-2011 style

We have had bunch of activities to go to this year. Its amazing actually, since normally halloween for our family is pretty low key. We usually just go to the trunk-or-treat at our church and call it good.

I don't even decorate.

I know, lame.

I don't know why.

Maybe I'm just not all that into scary stuff accumulating around my house. Plus, I discovered that baby girl is almost deathly afraid of all things halloween related. I took her into one of those Spirit costume stores and there was a display of a loudly moaning fake man who was half eaten by a huge rubber rat. It was pretty gross, and it freaked baby girl out...ever since then, she can't even look at a ghost without wanting to run away!

So any who, our first outing for halloween was the Boo Bash put on by the dental school. I kind of dreaded going, as it takes about 45 minutes to drive into where it was and I knew there would be some questionable costume choices and drinking. However, they had a bunch of stuff for the kids to do, lots of candy and we even got to dance. It was a pretty fun night and I was actually impressed with a lot of the clever costume ideas that people came up with.

here are a few pics of us...can you guess what we are? :)

(wheres Waldo!? ha ha)

The kids loved the big bounce house and all the candy and pop floating around. (of course)

bowling... (my kids are the witch, the storm trooper and a bat ballerina!) :)

The loot

Baternina

The boy took most of our pictures for us. He loves our little digital camera. I talked him into going around and taking pics of his favorite costumes, this is what he came up with:

He loved this one! She is the house from Up and you can barely see Mr. Fredricksen on the left. The Boy said he just wanted a picture of her. :)

We had a great time, but I sure was tired when we got home!

The next night we had our trunk or treat. I didn't get any pics of us there. :( but here are the pics I took of the kids in their costumes before hand. Some of their faces are so hilarious. And The boy totally takes the whole storm trooper thing so seriously.

We had fun, but right as soon as we got home and put the kids to bed...I got slapped by the worst cold/flu I have ever experienced!

ugh, I feel like a bus ran me over.

Plus, The Man, the boy and baby girl all have colds as well.

So we are pretty miserable to say the least.

We are hoping to have somewhat recovered by tonight to go trick or treating around the neighborhood, something we haven't been able to do for a really long time.

Though, I think Im more excited about it that the kids are!

Oct 27, 2011

exploring

When we moved here to Arizona it was sunny and 120 degrees outside...all day every day.

So, even though it was the middle of summer, it felt like we were back to Idaho winters due to the fact that we had to stay inside and couldn't really go out.

It was so crazy to me to have to turn on my car for the air conditioner to cool it off before we could get in it to go anywhere.

We had to stare out our windows at the back yard and the park right next door longingly. The kids asked if they could go outside to play ALL THE TIME. It was sad to have to say no.

Although we were told cool weather did exist here, we were inclined to not believe it. It was too hot to ever imagine it not being so!

However, during the last month or so the temperature has finally started to feel less brutal. The car thermometer has begrudgingly given up about 20 degrees and I think we are also acclimating, which helps.

The last few weeks of this October have lingered in the high 90's but a couple of weeks ago there was a rare few days where it was actually nice enough during the evening for the kids and I to venture out around the city and try out some places we had seen out the car windows during our summer hibernation.

One place we really wanted to visit was the duck pond right next to the library. Its a man made fishing pond that is stocked about every week.

(Im told residents here really do eat the fish they catch...after this post is over you might understand why I say the word...ew)

We packed a picnic dinner, some old bread for the ducks and we headed over.

I had insisted the kids wear sandals, since it was beachy and thought they might like to take them off and play in the water.

(The ducks there had absolutely no fear of the kids, they came right up to them!)

Man, was that a mistake!

After about five minutes of being there, we realized most of the "beach" was covered in duck poop! I swear about 5 feet from the edge of the water and up was pure green slime.

Their feet got covered and it was all I could do not to freak out or puke every time they tried to move around. They were sliding in it and falling. yuck! we tried to wash our feet in the pond, but it was pointless.

Oh, and not to mention the dead fish hanging out everywhere.

So after our bread ran out we thought it would be best to get away from the water front and check out what else the park had to offer. We also looked for some grass to try to wipe as much poop off as we could!

There were a few fun things along the beach. Baby girl had just biffed it in the sand about one minute prior tot this picture, so she is not very happy! ha ha

We finally cam upon an awesome palyground that was so much more fun (in my mind) than the slimy, poopy duck water.

We stayed until dark and got some Ice cream on the way home.

It was fun to hang out, but we sure miss our daddy sometimes.

He is just so busy studying, its insane.

So, we find things to do to pass the time.

Today the temperature is in the mid 70's and it feels amazing. I can finally start to see why some people would want to live here permanently. If it stayed this nice all year, I might consider it.

Unfortunately, I know too much about the hell heat to ever be so deceived. :)

Oct 10, 2011

The first thing you do....

Tonight the kids and I were getting ready to have dinner and then carve our pumpkins for family home evening, when I got a text from The Man suggesting we drive into where he attends dental school to grab some dinner with him. This sounded a lot more appealing to me than frozen chicken, green beans and a long night of trying to get every ones pumpkins done on my own, so we loaded up and headed out.

Right now, where we live is about 25 minutes outside of where The Man actually goes to school. Why did we choose to live waaaaaay out here? Well, the last few weeks I have been asking myself the same question! We really do love it here, but it sure is hard for The Man to commute everyday and for us to see our dad a whole lot less. We might be considering a move further in sometime next year.

We will see.

Anyway, after The Man showed us around campus and took us to his cool lab where he makes wax teeth, we grabbed some food and spent a few (not enough) precious moments of time with him before he had to go right back to study all night for a huge test coming up tomorrow.

He has one every tuesday and man are they killers.

I am amazed that he is still alive. I would have probably died by now from the stress of it all.

He is incredible!

(so sexy in that Blue Mist....)

So,

it was pretty late by the time the kids and I got on the road to head back home. Both girls fell asleep and The Boy and I got to have some good conversation.

We always do.

He is so smart and so sweet.

Not to mention hilarious! Take for instance this little gem:

The Boy: Mom, I know the very first thing a boy does when he meets a girl he likes and then starts to fall in love with her

Me: Oh yeah? whats that?

The Boy: *insert cat call whistle*

Me: What!? *laughing* I don't know if thats really something you do when you are falling in love with someone per se', but maybe when you see someone who is pretty cute.

Where did you learn that anyway!?

The Boy: Oh I've know that for a looooong time...

Apparently my 8 year old son has already navigated the socially awkward time of the initial "how do I let a girl know I like her?" and moved comfortably into the "how you doin?" phase.

What ever happened to flowers and chocolates!?

Love, love, love this kid

Oct 7, 2011

Baby number 4

The Man and I had gone back and forth for a long time about whether or not to have another baby.

We were just so content with three and we knew we were going to have a LOT of changes coming to where we would be so stressed out:

dental school and The Man not being around much, me still in school, a whole new place to live etc.

It just didn't make sense to bring one more crazy thing into our lives.

Our three kids we have now are just about 2.5 years apart, and the longer we deliberated on the fourth one, the bigger the gap was getting between baby girl and a potential new baby. I didn't want to feel like we had two separate families or that the last baby would be so far behind the others that he/she would have no relationship with them. I also didn't want to have another baby just because we felt outside pressure to have more. I also loved that baby girl was so independent and sort of dreaded having to take care of an infant.

Its hard work!

Of course, some of these thoughts and feeling were selfish on my part. I knew we wanted a large family. I also wanted to have an even number of children, three just felt so.....odd. :)

And, every now and then I would get small whispers and strong feelings that we were missing someone. Often we would be gathered together as a family and for a split second I would unconsciously look around for where our other child was.

I knew we were meant to bring one more sweet spirit in to this world.

I was wondering how The Man would take it when I brought up the subject once more. We had kind of decided a month or so earlier that we would be done and felt relief at the thought, but I couldn't shake this feeling.

When I explained to him how I felt I was really surprised to hear him agree with me.

I wondered where the change of heart had come from, but quickly realized that we both knew how important family is to us and the plan our Heavenly Father has as well.

We both felt that there was one more baby meant for us.

So, exactly one moth later I was pregnant. ha ha!

I thought for sure it would take longer, but it was a one shot deal.

We were obviously supposed to have come to this decision. ha ha ha.

Fast forward to 32 weeks and I am so ready for this baby to be done! I feel huge and tired all the time. I can't even bend down to pick anything up..which is a good excuse to not have to do housework. :)

We will be blessed with a baby boy on Nov. 21st and we are both so excited. I remember the Man Telling me sooooo many times between Baby Girl and this little guy that if he could have our next baby be guaranteed to be a boy, then he would have no problem having another one!

I guess it was just all meant to be.

Here are a few shots I so vainly took of myself at 31 weeks. I didn't want to go a whole pregnancy without having any pictures of my baby belly! That would have been sad. :)