Trick or Treat

Well, with another successful Halloween under our belts we have enough candy to last us 2 years and the kids are all worn completely out in their beds.



Grace was a turtle for her Halloween debut which turned out very cute since she loves laying on her belly and she is pulling her legs in and pushing them out. She is even rolling over (not right away, it takes her a little time) and so it is just so cute to see her in this costume. She fell asleep early and slept about half the time in the stroller.
David finally decided on Spiderman for his evening wear. It was a toss up between Spiderman, Mr. Incredible (from last year) and a bumblebee. All very cute, but I'm glad he went with spiderman just to be different from last year and it was too warm outside to be the bee. He was very polite, said "trick or treat" at just the right time and always followed up with a "thank you" and walked away with a "happy halloween!!". So I was proud of my polite little spiderman.
I was most impressed with Joey's costume this year because it cost only 4 dollars for the white sheet and the white hair and face looked really cool. The best part was that he took his scooter along and so you just saw this white ghost flying by on his way to the next house. Very fun, and fun to be out of the "superhero" stage.
Hannah decided to be a witch this year along with her best friend Kate. Kate also is our neighbor, and our other neighbor Jillian coincidently was a witch as well. Obviously originality of her costume was not overly important. :) But they all trick or treated together and it was very cute. Of course she loved the make up I let her wear:) I'm looking forward to a major sugar hangover in the morning, but Ill hope for the best. :)

Three months old

Dinner in a Pumpkin

One of my favorite Halloween traditions is Dinner in a pumpkin. Here is the recipe if you want to try it. I like how you can scoop out the cooked pumpkin with the other stuff and eat it all together. Nice and orange for Halloween. :) In this picture I doubled the recipe and used a good sized pumpkin.

3 lbs. cooked ground beef (pour off fat)
2t. salt
1 c. chopped celery and onion
1 green pepper
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 1/2 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 can sliced mushrooms
1 can cream of chicken soup
2 c. hot rice cooked

Cook meat and veggies 10 minutes on stove, Add rest of ingredients and stir all together. Put in a pumpkin on a cookie sheet and bake at 375 for 1 hour.

Camera stealers

This is the picture of Grace I took while we were talking to you on the phone tonight, Dad. The other pictures are the ones I was surprised to see when I uploaded my camera to the computer. I guess my kids got hold of my camera and had their own little photo shoot. So cute and so sassy...but I thought all the poses captured their little personalities, so I had to get them on here.

Fall Break

For fall break we went down to Fort Worth to see BYU play TCU. This is a picture of Grace sleeping in the car on the way down. We left Wednesday around 3 so we could get to the football player's fireside that they do the night before away games. That was so good! You wouldn't believe how many people showed up, we got there way early and were halfway back in the overflow gymnasium part of the stake center. There were way more people there than seats... but the players give talks and sing Army of Helaman, and Bronco and his wife spoke, it was really good. Then, we went to our hotel and the kids were so excited to be in a hotel. They always have to take turns between pushing the elevator buttons and putting the key in the door to get in. :) The next day we woke up and lounged a bit until we went swimming and lounged a bit more until we left for the alumni tailgate bbq before the game. They had face painting, cheerleaders doing tricks, dinner and byu gear for sale, Cosmo for the kids to high five and Ty Detmer was there for the festivities. He did remember me by the way, since I used to babysit for his girls when they were small (they are like 15 now). But it was fun to show him my little family now and to meet Derrick. He said to say hi to the family and asked about all of you. So here are the pictures from the tailgate and the game. We had a great time sitting with our friends the Petersens' for the game. David said his favorite part of the night was "getting cosmo on his face" (he had a paw print painted on his face) and Joey's favorite part was "when I got to high five Cosmo" We sat on the first row of the end zone so Cosmo ran by and gave high fives quite a bit. Fun fun times... I won't even mention the fact that we literally got spanked and sent home as far as the actual GAME went, or that David climbed up the stairs without us and was running to go out of the gate before the gate person stopped him and held him until we found him after a few prayers and talking to the police.... The next morning when I asked him about it he said he was going to the van to get a drink of water. You know, forget about asking mom to help out or anything, he just wanted to take care of himself I guess. Im hoping he is just a confident little three year old rather than a little run-away artist... So after the game we went back to the hotel. Swam more the next day and then got to see some old friends at a barbeque at my friend Alyssa Martinson's house. We got to see Alyssa and Gavin, Rachel and Steven Harris and Kerri and Cory Costley and their cute families. Hannah and the Costley's daughter Lorin used to play together that year that we lived in Wymount so they enjoyed seeing each other even though they didn't remember that long ago. Everyone's families have just grown and it was so fun to see them all. Alyssa and Gavin graciously opened their house to us for the night so we could get on the road to Oklahoma first thing in the morning. We just love visiting old friends, so thank you so much for that Alyssa! Such a fun fall break, however, Grace was so happy to get back to her bed, and David was happy to get back to his puppy Zoee.

The perfect day...

Derrick and I celebrated 8 years of marriage on Sunday. October 12, 2000 was a perfect day. I could not have asked for a more perfect man to marry. He is the one I always wondered about and prayed for. I am so happy knowing he is mine forever and our marriage was sealed for eternity in the temple. The autumn colors were at their "peak" the weekend of our marriage in my backyard where the reception was held. It was gorgeous. My mom said this is the first year since our wedding that the colors are even close to being as pretty as they were that perfect day.

andy alligators

I just wanted to get these pictures up of our fun time at Andy Alligators in Norman 2 Saturdays ago. Talk about a fun place... go carts that Hannah and Joey could drive by themselves... bumper boats that you squirt water at each other with... mini-bowling with mini bowling balls... mini golf.... and then everything from Chuck E Cheeses inside including tickets and stuff for the kids to "buy" with their tickets. I think Derrick liked the bumper boats best. I have never in our 8 years of marriage heard him laugh so hard for so long as David and I cornered him in our boat and squirted him mercilessly. The kids just had a blast. The looks on their faces as they drove the go karts by themselves was priceless... especially Joes face because I know he just felt so old doing it... but then another one of the highlights was when David hit the jackpot on one of those games inside and watched 50 tickets come out for him. He had been watching older kids with big bunches of tickets coming out of the machine and I knew in his little mind he was just waiting for his turn to get so many which I thought would never come, but I was so glad he hit the jackpot and he got so many. Nothing like getting them accoustomed to gambling is what I say... HA! Anyway, Hannah bought these sunglasses that made her think she was Sharpay from High School Musical... it was very funny.

Requested before hair pic

Here is a picture of my 30th birthday that I never posted but it shows how long my hair was three months ago. I don't have any more recent, but it was long and I always just had it in a pony tail. And now you get to see my very favorite kind of cake that I have every year (angelfood with cool whip and fruit) for my birthday.

Mommy's Haircut

Hi everyone, this is Grace. Today mommy took me with her to get her haircut. I slept for her really nicely in my car seat all the way to the salon, and all the way home, but I sure didn't want to miss any of the action while we were there. As mommy was walking in I decided to make my presence known by filling my diaper for all to hear. I really couldn't help it that it missed the diaper and went sliding into the car seat and down my leg. Talk about a funny feeling. But boy, she sure did take care of me and clean me up nicely. Well, I started to feel a little left out with her talking to some strange lady so I soon told mommy I needed to be nursed. That always makes me feel better. Then I got to watch while this lady combed my mom's hair really straight and chopped it all off! She looked so silly! So I smiled at her a lot and comforted her with my cooing. Pretty soon I got tired of watching her fuss over my mom so much and then all these ladies kept thinking they could get me to stop crying by passing me around. Luckily I got my mom back while she was standing (I love it when she holds me standing) and then she had to put me back into my carseat that kindof smelled bad. How dare she??? But once she had me on the road again, I decided to give her a break and look at my eyelids for a while. Now when I look at Mommy, she looks a little different, but thats okay, she is still #1 in my book.

Bathtime

Gotta love the tub shots....