Easter Weekend

We were so lucky this year to have my Mom and Dad come and stay with us over Easter. They arrived in just before the kids got home from school and as soon as they got home we colored easter eggs.

We got a baby sitter for that evening and we took them out for a night on the town. We went out to eat at a nice place and went to see "The Curious Savage". We had a great time and really enjoyed the show. (I highly recommend seeing it...it is playing the next two weekends!)

Saturday was filled with more fun. The Easter bunny visited our house Friday night so the kids were up really early to find their baskets. Then we made a fun breakfast with "Easter egg" pancakes (basically just putting food coloring in the batter and pouring it in the shape of an egg--notice we didn't make Easter bunny pancakes!)

At 9am went to an Easter egg hunt at a friends house. It was so fun to see Elijah enjoying the egg hunt.

After the Easter egg hunt, we headed home to do some planting...

After most of the planting was done we headed off to Gabe and Isaac's last soccer game of the season...YIPPEE! They played really well and Grandma was a great cheerleader! It was really handy that the soccer Games were both at 1 pm and the fields were right by each other. We basically had to turn around to see the other field. It worked out very nicely, if only all our soccer games were that well coordinated.

After that we went to the Arbor Festival at the Arboretum. There was only a 1/2 hour left by the time we got there, but it was nice to see it. That was our first trip to the arboretum.

We had dinner at home and played Ticket to Ride with the kids, they loved it.

Sunday morning my kids got to wear their new Sunday Easter outfits, probably more exciting for me than for them.

We weren't quite able to get the perfect group shot...

After church we did another Easter egg hunt that Grandma and Grandpa brought. More fun and more candy!

Thanksgiving

While Eric was gallivanting halfway around the world I visited my family in Utah. It was so much fun. The kids missed a week of school, and I had to drive all 5 kids by myself, but it was so nice to stay and see everyone and relax. I was a little worried because I got a taste of what the drive could potentially be like when we decided to take the kids down to Chuck E Cheeses for Veterans day on Nov. 11th. The drive is just over an hour and Meg screamed the whole way down and the whole way back. I was dreading the drive after that but it went really smoothly. Meg was fine, and the road were great there and back so it was perfect.

Here are some pictures of our time in Utah:

My Mom had a cute little activity for the grandkids to do. They filled ice cream cones with candy to make them look like cornucopias.



Here is Meg getting to know her little cousin Cannon She was really after those shiney overall buttons!!

Elijah was a little slow to warm up, but Grandma eventually found the way to his heart...Cars.

I took alot of picture of my little Yoga baby. She was always standing on her head and toes in a big upside down V shape also known as "downward dog" in Yoga. but all got was the "upward dog" Yoga pose.

Star Wars Halloween

This was taken after school right before the trunk or treat, I think Isaac's face paint held up nicely.

Star Wars Family

We got to celebrate Halloween for a full 2 days (Yeah). The kids didn't have school on Friday so they wore their costumes to school on Thursday. Then there was a Trunk or Treat at the school Thursday evening, followed by our ward party. The older kids basically wore their costumes all day. Then of course Friday was the real Halloween...the kids loved the extended celebration this year which of course meant more candy!!

Clone Gabe

Gabe was really excited about his costume and wanted to wear it as much as I would let him. He looked great. It was fun to have him so excited about his costume.

Darth Isaac

Isaac looked AWESOME. Luckily Eric didn't have a patient until 9am so he was home in the morning and able to do Isaac's face paint. Isaac doesn't know how lucky he was...it would have been a much simpler version and not nearly as cool.

Elijah didn't know quite what to think the new look.

Pad-Emma a.k.a Padme

She was a cute little Padme, or as Emma likes to pronounce it pad-eh-may. She really liked how her hair turned out.

Yoda-bug

Cute he is!

Just about the cutest kid in the cutest costume ever!


Princess Leia

Beautiful Girl!

Elijah needed a little encouragement to wear his Yoda ears; hence the sucker.


We had to wash Isaac's face about 10 times to get all the face paint off. For the real Halloween he opted to wear the mask. Which was a lot easier, but masks were not allowed at school on thursday.

Picking Pumpkins

The Tuttles invited some families from the ward over to pick pumpkins for Family Home Evening. They have a great pumpkin patch and all the kids got to pick out their favorite...

Elijah looked so cute checking out the pumpkins. He wanted them all!

Gabe got a really big one, and Isaac got a dark green one, good picks guys!

I think Emma's was my favorite. She picked out a white one because it looks like a ghost she said. In the bottom left picture you can see her mouth in an "oh" shape. She is making the "OOOHH" sound for the ghost pumpkin. She was really happy with her pumpkin.

It was so nice of them to have everyone over and the kids loved it. We even got to pick a little one out for Meg!

On Saturday between the sessions of conference, we found out that the Hales (some friends of ours that moved away) were in town for the weekend visiting family. They invited us to come and get some pumpkins from their parents garden too. The kids and Eric picked a whole bunch at the Hales. Then we got some more on Monday, so this is what our front porch looks like.

The only ones from our garden are the ones I circled in the lower left corner. Those 3 pumpkins represent our entire pumpkin harvest from about 4 or 5 plants, not a good year for pumpkins at our house. They don't even look like normal pumpkins. We are lucky we have such generous friends!!