Halloween 2013

Our Halloween was great this year.  We started off, as usual, by carving pumpkins last night.   

Man, in this picture, our kiddos sure all do look alike, don't they? :)

 Here is Tess with her BFF, Mari, dressed as ninjas.  They love to do everything together and Halloween costumes are no exception!

 We reused this old monkey costume (that Tess wore when she was 2) for Bree.  So cute and squishy!  (And WARM!  Which is great because it was c-c-c-cold this year during trick-or-treating!)

Miles was a cool and scary looking Darth Maul.  I love his pose!

Bryan doesn't usually love to dress up, but this year at his work they were having a costume contest with prizes.  So, he decided to give it a chance.  He has had a beard for the last month or so, for hunting season, but he's sick of it now, so he figured it would be fun to shave it like Captain Jack Sparrow.  We got the rest of the clothes from DI, and the wig from Amazon, and I think he made a great Captain Jack!  (I teased him that he needed to wear his shirt really low-cut to show off his chest like Captain Jack, but he could not be persuaded.)  And guess what?  He did win a prize at work, so it was worth it! :)

 After trick-or-treating we just had to try Bryan's wig on Bree.  I need to take photos of Miles & Tess also, but here's cute Bree as half-Captain Jack and half-monkey.

Bree, Bree, Bree... or "Sleep Shenanigans"

This little gal is giving me a run for my money... but... she is the sweetest, most precious thing.  A few weeks ago, I was sitting here at the computer and Bree was behind me chomping her cereal cutely.  All of a sudden I heard her yell, "I'm show me TWO, Mom!!" and I turned around and she was holding up two fingers perfectly.  It was the first time she could make her hand into that shape all by herself.  She was so proud!

Did I mention she's TWO?  And, boy oh boy, she acts like it!  She is super independent right now and wants to do everything by herself, regardless if it takes triple the time.  Here she is after she put Tess's bike helmet on all by herself...  Ha!

She loves having her picture taken.  I used to be concerned that we wouldn't take as many pictures of her because she's the baby, and  because we're busier than we were with just one or two kids....but with the wonderful invention of smartphone cameras, I'm taking more pictures of her than both of the other kids combined!  It's just so dang easy to reach into my pocket and snap a pic.  She is constantly asking me to take her picture when she does cute/silly things.  And of course I oblige. :)

(She put the Wii remote sleeves on her feet as shoes!)

Mom's big boots!

I had to run into a store when we were all out together, so Bryan and the kids hung out in the car waiting for me.  We like driving our new car a lot, so sometimes we all take that instead of the van.  (The kids like to be close enough to each other to play and touch and tickle, and then inevitably annoy and bug each other.)  In this pic, they are hanging out in the parking lot, being silly with the seatbelts...

.....BUT....it's not all cute faces and sweet pictures.  Ugh, that girl can make a mess!  She is in the phase where she empties everything.  The closet, the box of diapers, containers full of wipes, shelves of books, baskets of toys, puzzles, blankets, 6 drawers of clothes.....and on and on.  During naptime she is a little tornado!

(Yes, she is pulling a "ha ha, I'm a little turd, but I'm cute!" face at me.)

And she has gotten in the bad habit of removing her diaper after she poops.  We walk in her room in the morning, or after a nap, and she'll be standing there naked from the waist down and there is a poo-stained diaper somewhere in the room.  The trick is finding it quickly and not stepping in any landmines that may have fallen or been smeared along the way.  Fun times!

We have resorted to putting zip-up footie-jammies on her (even at naptime) and we stick a safety pin right under the top of the zipper so she cannot unzip it.  (If she figures out how to undo the safety pin, we'll put the jammies on backwards!)  She still makes a royal mess of her room, but that is A-OK with me--I just cannot handle the pooey diaper mess!

She can put pants on and off usually without a problem, but she can't remove shirts.   But, whoa Betty, can she ever put them on!  The record that we've counted is 6 shirts at a time.  The poor girl is constantly sweaty from her layers and layers of shirts, but she's happy as a (sweaty) clam.

(I see 5 layers of shirt and 2 layers of pants in this pic.)

I try to do her hair cute, but with her new little dressing habits she is always puuuuuuullllling shirts on over her head and wrecking her hair-dos.  But, she's happy as a (sweaty, crazy-haired) clam!

(I can't look at this picture and not smile.  This kid...)

The newest goofy thing she did was just this morning when I went to get her out of bed.  I panicked because I couldn't find her.  It was dark in the room but I could tell she was not in the crib.  I looked through her giant pile of clothes on the floor (yep, I've given up on cleaning them up) and still couldn't find her!  As my eyes adjusted, I looked over and this is where I found her...

At some point last night she apparently decided it was a great idea to climb up on her dresser (changing table) and fell asleep halfway on the changing pad.  I guess she slept there all night?  Or else woke up in the middle of the night and decided to change positions....to the top of the dresser??  What?  Who does this??  What a crazy kid.  But I sure love her.

Bowling

We have had a very busy weekend.  Bryan was off on Friday and I had a big "honey-do" list for him, along with several chores and errands that the kids and I needed to do.  Then Saturday morning was the Primary Program practice at the church, followed by a few more hours working to wheelbarrow and rake woodchips under the new playground at our neighborhood park.  (The new park is SO close to our house and it's super nice too--I'm thrilled by it!)

Anyway, after all our hard work, we decided that we needed to take the kids and do something fun.  We haven't been bowling in ages... so that's what we did!  Miles used the little "dragon" slide thing that helps roll the ball down the lane for his first turn or two, but then decided that he would just bowl the regular way and he did great!

Here's Tess, doing great too!

Bree was just very happy to play on another dragon slide and use it as an actual slide.  It was just her size and the bowling alley was practically empty, so we just let her slide over and over while we bowled.

The Mighty Hunter

This year Bryan drew out for a spike elk and a cow elk (he's still holding out hope for a bull tag one of these years...)  He went up above Heber City a few weeks ago and got his spike:

He wanted to go again to hunt a cow, but I was a little "meh" about it because we do NOT need more meat in the freezer!  (I really love the elk meat, but elk are such big animals that 2 of them would be much more than we need.)  He took a few of the steaks to share with a co-worker, and his co-worker (and his family) loved the meat a lot.  So.... Bryan finagled a plan with his buddy, that they would both take a day or two off work, Bryan would use his cow tag, they would pack the meat out together (which is the hardest part) and the buddy could have all the meat.  Win-win!

R.I.P. "The Cav"

On Tuesday night I was at the school and Bryan was home putting the kids to bed.  On my way home, I decided to go and get some gas in the car so Bryan wouldn't have to on his way to work the next morning.  As I was cruising through the green light at the intersection right before the gas station, the oncoming car turned left, smack-dab into me.  She was a young driver, only 17, and apparently she didn't see me (??)  She was in an SUV, so needless to say, I suffered the most damage.

I've never been in a wreck before (other than the occasional fender bender, going 5 mph-ish).  It was pretty surreal.  I remember the sound most of all.  The crunching of the metal.  Immediately I knew I was spinning around and my first thoughts were just "I hope I don't hit another car...I hope I don't hit into the stoplight pole."  I knew there was no way to correct out of the spin; I was just waiting and praying that I wouldn't hit anything (or anyone) else; it's a really busy intersection.  When I stopped spinning, I was completely through the intersection, facing the opposite direction I had been driving.  Thankfully I had not hit anything else.  I looked down and wondered if I was hurt, kind of checking around to make sure everything still worked, bent, and moved like it was supposed to.  Then I noticed that all the windows had shattered all over me.  I tried to grab my phone to call Bryan and couldn't find it.  I eventually found it under the passenger back seat.

Within seconds there were 4 or 5 people right outside my window, asking if I was OK.  I went to open the door and they informed me that my door was not about to open anytime soon.  (I still didn't realize how much damage the car had.)  So I crawled over the seat to the passenger door and got out.  I was really emotionally shaken (and physically shaking.)  When I walked around the car to see the smashed up side I was shocked! 

Everyone was so nice to me; someone called the police right away, and there were 2 ladies brushing pieces of glass out of my hair and sweater while we waited for the cops.  Someone went across the street and found the other driver (she only had a broken headlight and a flat tire.  She was really shaken up as well; she was in tears and just kept apologizing to me.  She really did feel terrible.)  

I was just so, so very thankful that I was alone.  I can't even imagine if I had had any of the kids in the backseat of the car with me.  What a blessing that was!  As for injuries, I got a cut and bruise on my right knee (I think I hit it into my car keys in the ignition); my left arm and elbow are super sore; my neck, back, and shoulders are sore and stiff, but that's it!  I was definitely watched over and protected.

The very sad part of all this is that our poor little Chevy Cavalier was totaled.  We bought that car in May of 2004.  It was our newest, nicest car at the time.  We loved our little "Cav" and brought 2 of our kids home from the hospital in it.  It had many, many more miles left in it and we planned to keep it for a very long time.  But alas, it was smashed beyond repair.

Here we are up at the wrecking yard to clean it out.  Right after this we went car shopping...

And, (yay!) we found a great new car last night.  We got a Saturn Aura and we love it.  We did a little research in the past few days about safety and crash-test ratings.  (Come to find out, our Cav had a 1-star side-impact crash rating.  Yep.)  The Saturn that we got has 5-stars on everything (except for a rollover, which still has 4-stars) and many more airbags, so we feel pretty good and safe in it.  Hopefully it will last us many years to come!

We are counting our many blessings.