Pumpkin fun

Happy Birthday Ellie!

Hmmm, who is that hiding behind the Dora balloons? A big girl who turned 2 today!

She really wants to dig in to that cake.

Weird that Ellie is so big. This birthday is the official farewell to being a baby. We had a fun day celebrating her.

Fun presents. Thanks Nana and Papa for the baby, and thanks Grandma and Grandpa for the drum set. Happy Birthday Ellie, we love you!

Camping with friends...except I didn't get to go

This last weekend we got together with some friends from our ward for some camping at Inks Lake since the kids had a 4 day weekend thanks to good ol' Chris Columbus. The sad thing is, I had to stay home with Ellie because she decided to get sick at about 3am the morning of. Lets just say it involved washing sheets, ewe. Dallas still took the kids up for the day (Friday) and enjoyed some cliff diving, canoeing, hiking and biking there at the camp site, but actually came home that night instead of staying over night. The reason for that is that the Stake had asked again for volunteers to go down to Galveston to help out some more with Ike clean up and Dallas really wanted to go, but he was going to have to leave at 4am Saturday morning. So thanks to my friend Mindy's suggestion, we extended this "camping trip" to our backyard and the kids were thrilled. They got home from Inks Lake at about 9:30pm and quickly changed into jammas and headed out to the tent in the backyard to sleep.

Yes this is Ethan jumping off a cliff. I don't know if I would have allowed this had I been there because the cliff looks pretty high in this picture, but obviously he survived to tell me all about it. So better that I wasn't there I guess. He's so brave.

Here they are sound asleep in the backyard. Did I mention I did not stay out there with them? I was a little nervous about leaving them out there alone, but I just said extra prayers and jumped in my nice cozy bed. It was soooo good that we weren't camping at the campground that night because at about 3am that night, I came down with whatever Ellie had. Ahhhh! Soon after me, Abbey got it, then Miah, and now Ethan has it. We're just waiting for Dallas to start with the rumbling in the tummy, it's not a fun one so you better keep your distance everyone!

Big stretch, good morning sleepy head, time to get up!

Wolfs and Spiders

We are so proud of Ethan, he has completed his first year in cub scouts and has advanced to a Bear. Here is a fantastic picture of Ethan receiving his Wolf award but for some reason only his elbow, shoulder and ear made an appearance. Awesome photography skills D- ha ha. Way to go Ethan.

Spiders and stringy green webs are as scary as I get with my Halloween decorating. I don't really do scary, in fact I really despise all the creepy gorry skeletons and witches out there. My kids BEG me every year to buy all the cool decorations that their friends have, you know the ones that scream at you when you go by, ugh. Well this year I just went out and bought the 2$ bag of green stringy web stuff and for family night we made these super cool egg carton spiders, and guess what? The kids were satisfied. With our string of orange lights around the front door and the invasion of these dozen hand painted critters, we've accomplished creepy in their eyes. And I'm not grossed out.

Happy Halloween everyone~