Can anyone say tetanus shot waiting to happen? This is the leg to the slide on our swingset. Hawaii air at it's finest. We replaced this last week with some wooden legs.

Halloween 2010

Minnie Mouse, a Beautiful Ballerina, and Superman made their way to our house this year. We had a great Halloween. We bought the first pumpkin we saw so as not to repeat the no pumpkin Halloween we had last year. Thirteen dollars later we had a pumpkin. Kyleigh designed the pumpkin face. We modeled it after Ridge, who has one tooth sticking up from the bottom of his mouth. It keeps getting bigger and bigger, but no other teeth have come in yet. We made roasted pumpkin seeds for the first time ever. They were really delicious until we left them ont he counter overnight and they got soggy.

We went to our ward trunk or treat/chili cookoff/carnival. I tried my hand at chili for the first time ever. I didn't win any awards, but my chili was one of the first to go. We also made two varieties of cupcakes. One with skeletons and the other was a grim skull face. You can't really see the slivered almond teeth in the picture but they are there. The kids had a great time.

We also went to the Layton Halloween lunch. The preschool kids did a little Halloween program they had been working on, went trick or treating around to each office, and had pizza for lunch. On Halloween night we did a little trick or treating with the Giles family and had dinner in a pumpkin that night at Mike and Holly's with a few other friends. The kids got an unbelievable amount of candy. I let them eat all they wanted for two days then sealed the rest and froze it. We still had 6 good sized bags of candy to freeze. We had our big candy sort for the year. It has grown since we moved here and it was just Kyleigh and Holly sorting away. More kids and more candy. We will probably have candy till next year!

One night we told Katelyn she couldn't have any more candy because she had already brushed her teeth. She disappeared for a few minutes then came back and asked for some scissors for a craft project. She specifically said "for a craft project". I told her we were going to bed in a minute and she could save her craft for the morning. She disappeared again and I didn't think much of it. We then went upstairs for bed and found Katelyn on her bed with a pair of big scissors she had found. Candy and wrappers were scattered all over her bed. We took away her candy and scissors and disciplined her. She dived under her covers like she was hurt that we weren't happy with her. Then we hear wrappers rustling under the covers. I pulled them back and found her with her mouth stuffed full of more candy. Rusty and I both had to turn our heads because we were laughing. I got blamed, of course. In this case she is my daughter and I know that. However, my mom reminded me that I came by it honestly. It's genetics. Thanks Grandpa Al.

Happy Halloween!

Fox Girls!

Kyleigh is officially in love with soccer. She played for the first time this year. Rusty was her coach. John Giles was the other coach so she got to be on the same team as her best friend Alyssa. The team voted on their name, Fox Girls. Kyleigh was number three and the Fox girls were purple. It was a great season and a fun bunch of girls. Kyleigh didn't make a goal this year, but ran around the field with a huge smile on her face the whole time. She made big improvements during the season and will be ready to make lots of goals next year. I also learned alot, like what it takes to be a snack mom for soccer in Hawaii. If I remember right the snack mom in my day brought some slices of fruit. Each mom had one week. I brought an average snack my week and it was apple slices for half time and a sack lunch for after the game with individual orange juice bottles, pb&j sandwiches, a bag of chips and a bag of cookies. Katelyn was Rusty's assistant coach and is considering being a coach when she grows up. We had a fun pool/pizza party for the end of the season. Kyleigh is already talking about playing next year.

The Fox girls.

Rusty helping KyKy put on the goalie shirt. I love this picture.

Number three in action.

In the middle of it all.

Go Fox girls.

The end of game tunnel. The girls loved this, especially when Katelyn and Abby held their arms up for a tiny tunnel.

Kilohana Train.

Katelyn had her first preschool field trip. We went on the Kilohana train ride. Katelyn's favorite part was the stop to feed the caged wild pigs and the snack after the train ride. Everyone had a great time. It was fun to listen to Kyleigh reminisce about her preschool field trip on the same train. She even remembered what they had for a snack.

Katelyn is having a great time at preschool. She loves all of the moms that teach and is so excited when preschool is at our house. She is already telling me that she doesn't want to get bigger, she just wants to stay in preschool. I would love for ALL the kids to stop getting bigger. They are growing up way to fast!

Daddy Snugglies.

We are very lucky that Rusty doens't often have to be gone overnight for work. However, on occasion the kids and I find ourselves alone at night. The girls always cry for their Daddy. One time they asked for Rusty's shirts to sleep with and I put some of his aftershave on it so the shirt even smelled like Daddy. Thus was born the "Daddy shirts." Before long they wanted one every night. A few months ago Rusty was going through his shirts cleaning out the ones that were ready for the junk pile. This was a big deal in our house. Rusty is still wearing shirts from early high school. He recycles them from his "manager" work shirts to his "I'm cutting a hole in a wall today but still need to look nice"shirts, to "pouring concrete today" shirts. Since he hasn't poured concrete at work in a couple of years and he has atleast 3x as many shirts as me, it was time to clear a few out of the closet. He still has a hard time throwing any of them away. On this particular day he cleared about 20 shirts from his closet. We had the great idea to cut them up into squares and do a patchwork daddy snuggly for each kid. The girls got to choose their fabric for the backing and we got some cute monkey fabric for Ridge. I cut all the squares and tied and sewed Ridge and Katelyn's snugglies. Kyleigh sewed all of the patchwork together and tied the blanket herself. She handled the sewing machine so well. She put together the squares and was sewing while I was doing other things around the house. The only thing I sewed on her blanket was the edges. We also added in a stitched thing she had done with Holly to the center of her snuggly. This project was a slow process. Ridge did not like being left out so we had to wait for nap time. Katelyn chose the order of the squares and sat on my lap to help sew a lot of her snuggly. She pushed the reverse button and helped guide the fabric. Kyleigh loves sewing but we discovered she doesn't love tying quilts. She did just a few ties every day. In the end it was worth it. They have been sleeping with their daddy snugglies every night.

Baby food...

Ridge started eating baby food and we quickly realized he was eating us out of house and home. We did the math and if we continued buying the cute little baby food jars we would be spending around $150-200 dollars per month on this little tank. We started making our own baby food. He easily goes through a #10 can of fruit and 1/2 of a costco sized bag of vegetables each week. That's not including the boxes of baby rice or oatmeal cereal (about 2 per week) and the pureed fresh bananas, scrambled eggs, graham crackers, etc. I put my food in the cute little jars for a week or so. Now it just goes straight into a quart jar. Maybe all boys eat like this, but we are still impressed (or scared) by what he can pack in his 8 month old stomach.

Over 30 club.

I made it to the over 30 club last month. I was sad to leave the still in my 20's club. Mostly just because Rusty, Mike and Holly weren't in that club anymore. It was really fun to remind them of that.



I got lots of nice things for my birthday including a super cute baby blue camelback and an all you can eat crab dinner. Thanks to everyone.



I look forward to the next 30 years.