Halloween Costumes

One of the blogs I like to look at is called Sew, Momma, Sew .After all of these costumes, boy, do I feel like I deserve to wear her title for at least a week! I either helped make or made nine costumes this year! There were 2 princesses, one fairy tale heroine, one Disney bad guy, one meat product, one fatality, one UFO, one animal rescuer, and one cave woman.

My nieces wanted to be Princess Tiana and Charlotte LeBouef from Princess and the Frog. Since they are the closest things I have to girls, they pretty much get what they order from me!

My sister, Abby, wanted to be Little Red Riding Hood and needed help with her costume. By "help", she meant she needed someone to take the bed skirt she found at DI and turn it into a skirt! Her roommate, Cindy, is a school teacher and so she fittingly wanted to be Cruella DeVille. I helped with her coat which I think makes it available to all family members!

Jake decided to be bacon. As I heard on the radio the other day, bacon will be his 'first love until his first love comes along'! Cam was going to be King Kong coming out of the top of the Empire State Building, but opted for Man Being Eaten by Shark once he realized you'd be able to see his feet under the King Kong suit. Please don't tell him you can see his feet in this costume!

Josh wanted to be an alien but gave up on it when I would let him wear a mask. We were on our way to the fabric store to get a dragon pattern and fabric when we stopped in the Halloween store next door. I must've done something good that day because right there was an alien costume for only $10! We took an inch off the mask and turned it into a hat and Voila! he was an alien. Perfect except for the mom-guilt that creeped in because his was the only non-homemade costume. So, we made a flying saucer out of cardboard, newspaper, an emergency blanket, and glitter. Now I felt better. This was also Josh's first year to be in the much coveted school Halloween Parade. He was so cute and he beamed through the cafeteria!

And, Sam. Sam, Sam, Sam. Sam wanted to be a fireman, a monster, a policeman, Dora, a monkey, Diego, pretty much anything he heard someone else was going to be. Even a princess at one point, but don't tell Jared. We settled on Diego and made a vest and hair, but I don't think he ever wore the whole costume all together! The best picture of him is the one above with Josh. For Trick-or-treating, it got cold and rainy so he wore a monster suit from the dress up box that Jake wore for Halloween about five years ago. He immediately got into character by chasing Manda around the front yard and growling at her. In this picture, he's wearing the box that his Halloween Potato Head came in for a hat. Lucky kid gets to go to the store alone with mom now that everyone else is in school and it usually works in his favor!

Tamales

I've wanted to try making tamales for a long time.
I was intimidated.
I tried it tonight.
They were good!
Very good if you ask those at the table that know where their dinner comes from!

When I was little, I told my parents I wanted to be a Mexican when I grew up because I loved Mexican food so much. I think I'm one step closer tonight.

Josh lost his first tooth!!

Josh's 'big' tooth has been growing in behind his baby tooth for a couple of weeks now. When I first saw it, I asked if the baby tooth was loose. He didn't know! So, we've been wiggling it for a few days now. Wednesday night we sent him to bed and told him to keep wiggling. About five minutes later, he came running down stairs with a giant smile on his face and his tooth in his hand.

In the middle of the excitement, we took a picture. Look how tiny that tooth is!We put it in a baggie until I could get his tooth pillow ready.
I hurriedly sewed his tooth fairy pillow together and ran it back up to his room, but I was too late. There was no chance of waking him up and I didn't dare leave an eyeless tooth next to his pillow for him to wake up to! (I was out of hand-sewing needles to sew on the button eyes.) Lucky for us, the Tooth Fairy leaves a dollar even if your tooth is just in a baggie!

(And, even luckier for us, if Mom is so busy sewing said pillow that she forgets to put the dollar under your pillow, Dad can quickly do it in the morning and when you wake up and catch him, you might just believe that he was 'just checking to see if she really came'!)

One Day Closer to the Sausage Factory...

Shelby has been making bad choices.
Too bad for her, she's a dog and there are no laws that say I have to put up with her.
Yesterday was bad.
Bad choices everywhere.
Bad, bad, bad.
Shelby wrapped her leash around a bar stool, pulled it over and busted the leg.
Shelby hid my shoe in her yet-to-be-found secret stash spot when I needed to take Cam to Scouts.
Shelby looked me right in the eye and went potty on my preschool rug after I stood outside with her for 20 minutes waiting for her to do her bizness.
Then, for the Grand Finale, Shelby made me angry!

We had a neighborhood party last night.
The boys helped me make a fun dessert.
We were running five minutes late, but I dashed upstairs to brush my hair.
I was fast. Lickety-split fast.
When I came back to the kitchen, I saw someone had licked the frosting off our dessert.
MANDA!!! Did you lick my frosting??
Wasn't her.
Wasn't me.
Wasn't Josh.
Sam was asleep.
Everyone else was gone.
SHELBY!!!
Stupid, stupid, dog. I swear you're gonna end up at the sausage factory!

Evidence Exhibit A

Evidence Exhibit B

Fall Break 'Projects'

I've been blog-surfing a lot lately and have realized that like a 15 year old girl, I fall in love very easily. Except, I'm falling in love with things to sew, things to paint, things to glue, etc. Funny that the more things I find to make, the less time I have to make them!
Over the mini-vacation from school, I enlisted some help from the boys and we marked a few Halloween things off my list. They are great helpers when it comes to making icky, scary stuff!

FYI: these are not crafts. I live in a house full of boys and we do not craft. We do projects.

Bubbling Cauldron

Here's the beginning of our cauldron. We just used our Dutch Oven because we didn't have a cauldron and I'm too cheap to buy one!

Josh and Jake did most of the painting. I found out Cam doesn't really like to paint and Sam likes it too much!

Halloween Wreath

Again, I'm cheap and refused to pay $10 for a hideous wreath at WalMart. So, our adventure began with looking for a cheap wreath. On the way to DI, I stopped at Big Lots. Ugly wreaths on clearance for $3.50! Score! We dipped the ping pong ball in glitter and made our cool eyeballs.

Halloween Bats

We found these bats at Crafter's Corner. It's a place in American Fork that sells lots of pre-cut metal for crafts, but also some unfinished wood projects in the back. The boys loved painting the bats and I finished them with some paper, glitter, and tulle.

Halloween Bouquet

Cam and I made this little bouquet for a friend that needed a smile. It probably could've used more chocolates, but, umm...we like chocolate and there were only so many in the bag!

Unknown Milestone & Cornbelly's

Over UEA weekend, Jake got to go on his first overnighter. It was actually a double overnighter in Heber. I'm all over the milestone thing, 5= kindergarten, 8 =baptism, 12=priesthood & passing sacrament, 16=dating & driving, so I was a little surprised when this one snuck up on me. We packed his things - I nagged about enough blankets, he played it cool and brushed me off. Amazing how well we played our roles on our first try! After he left, I wished I had thought to take a 'before' picture to go with the one I planned to take on his return. As it turns out, there are no pictures. But, he had a god time doing archery, achery-ing, whatever you call it and he did well in the basketball tournament until "some 16 year olds schooled us!" What?!? that's teenager talk! Oh, hecky!

So, anyways, the rest of needed something fun to do, especially because 2 of the 4 of us were really ticked that we weren't old enough (or male enough in my case) to go to work or go to scout overnighters.

Yay for Cornbelly's! Even more Yay! for the $5 off coupons in the school office!
There was so much to do. We were there for almost 3 hours and could've would've stayed longer if I had known you could bring food in. As it was the boys were starving and I refuse to spend $8 on a concession stand burger! We played in the corn, jumped on the giant trampoline, rode the tire horses, slid down slides, rode the train, went through a small maze, sat on pumpkins, play cornball volleyball, and went through a blow-up haunted house. The 3 little guys, or as I was told, the 2 medium guys and 1 little guy had a blast!

This was my favorite picture of the day. Sammers is such an angel when he's only two dimensional!

The boys loved playing in the corn. We spent the most time here.

Cam poured tons of corn down his shirt because he wanted to be the Cornbelly of Cornbelly's!

There was a mountain of pumpkins to climb all over.

Sam tried to hitch rides with Josh & Cam - pedaling in the dirt was a little too hard for him.

The cow train went in 5 figure eights for each ride. Cute little Josh waved and yelled "Mom!!" every time!

The bump slide was a blast!

Josh at the bottom of the bumpy slide.

All three on the roller slide

Josh & Cam kept running to the top and falling down before I could get their picture. That's them in the green stripe on the jumping mat.

Sammers jumping.

The tire swings were the first thing they wanted to try!

Halloween Cruise

We tried to Prove River Halloween Cruise for the first time this year. Thanks to CityDeals, we found a half price coupon and you know I can't pass up a coupon! Besides, it seemed like a fun way to kick off the month long celebration of Halloween! Our pirate driven boat ride was only about 15 minutes, but that seemed to be the perfect amount of time for the kids. They had lights strung up above us as we went down the river and bunches of jack-o-lanterns along the banks. At one point, a pirate swung out on a rope to warn us to leave and fell in the water. We weren't sure if he meant to fall in which made it all the better with a boat full of boys!

The boys heading to the dock.

Luckily, Jared's kinda tall and he stood up on the boat to get this picture of the pirate that tried to attack us on our cruise.

This is the picture I took of Jared and Sam. Aren't they cute?

And these are the kind of pictures Jared takes of me in return!!!

Josh took this one of me - it looked better on the little LCD screen on the camera! I'm done trying to be in the pictures!

The whole family after our boat ride.

We really wanted to pose with the haunted bone lights, but they're not so scary with the flash.

What is scary is that there are 32 pictures of these two from that evening on my camera!

Manda + Tony Baloney = Love

The ring - it's so glittery!

Mann and Tony Baloney

Her hand is stuck like that!

The awesome cake we brought home to celebrate. You'll never believe it, but we wrote that ourselves!

Early Temple Announcement

With General Conference coming this weekend, I felt very privileged to receive word of a new temple Friday morning. Sam, who we all know is saving his money to go see Mickey found a picture of this in a magazine.

Here's our conversation:
Sam : This is temple.
Me: Well, it's actually the castle at Disneyland.
Sam : No, temple.
Me : It's the castle where Mickey lives.
Sam : It's Mickey's Temple!! I take it in the car with us?

Since we had errands to run and little time for it, I gave up on the fight. So, if they announce a new temple in Anaheim in a pre-existing building, you'll know Sammers is receiving some crazy revelations!
This little boy is obsessed with temples lately! Any time Jared and I leave for Date Night, he asks if we're going to the Temple. "I come?", he always begs with puppy eyes.
Last night, we saw a moth on the wall in my bedroom. After discussing what it was, where it usually lives, and how it likes the light, he asked me where the mommy and daddy were.
Me : I'm right here and daddy is on the way home.
Sam :No, the moth's mommy and daddy!
Me : I don't know where his mommy and daddy are
Sam : They're at the temple. (very matter of factly)