Happy Haunting!

Happy Halloween Boo from us to You!

(Thanks grandma Linda and grandpa Jeff for the awesome glasses!)

Magazine Pumpkin Faces

These were a lot of fun and Naomi was happy to practice her cutting skills.
I grabbed a few stray magazines and told her to look for eyes, ears, noses, mouths for our pumpkin faces. She got really in to it. She wanted to cut out eyebrows, one pumpkin was awarded 4 eyes, some have hair and one even scored it's eyes from a picture of a washer and dryer set. She's got skills:)
Our pumpkins were REALLY cold from being outside the past few snowy days!
They turned out pretty funky, what a fun way to start the fun early and make it last.
Thanks to petit elefant for the cool idea!

We like to Party

Driving home from the party

Sleeping Beauty

All the girls (plus some little animals)

Tommy looking spooky

The Wicked Witch and Sleeping Beauty

Look at all that glitter!

First Snow

Naomi : "The snow looks like cottage cheese!"

James: (lots of whining about standing in the snow)

This is our "yard" across the drive from our home.

Snowball fights with Grandma and Grandpa

The kids and "Willy Wonker"

Pumpkin Walk

We went twice:) Naomi claimed she didn't like it. But she did.
The theme was "My favorite TV commercial" and some of the scenes were pretty creative and funny.

James in the Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial. He was loving the music.

Twol little wild things!


This silver one was Naomi's favorite pumpkin.


Doesn't James make a great little Yoda!?

Making me feel like I'm doing a good job...

Tonight at bedtime Naomi said to me "you're the best mom in the whole world"

Can it get any better than that?

Mornings with Me the Mom

(I must note that this morning I did have the luxury of sleeping in. The kids went to bed late)

8:25 Naomi announces to previously sleeping mom that she is "SO HUNGRY" and she has her clothes for the day with her. She is naked.

8:30 Convince Naomi to go use the potty first.

8:35 And to get dressed.

8:40 Inform her that she can't lift the gallon of milk from the top shelf of the fridge. By herself.

8:45 Naomi eating "those little round cereals" Kix and orange juice. Now dressed.

8:46 James awake and crying. He's still sick. Go change his mega-wet diaper, out of jammies, into clothes, some tylenol for the sad kid. Cried the whole time, wants "JUICE!"

8:55 Hear Naomi finish and put her dished in the sink (score!) She joins us upstairs.

8:56 I give Naomi empty medicine bottle to wash out in the sink. She likes to play in water, and it's a good toy medicine now for her baby dolls.

9:00 James is cleaned up (snot dried on face, ew), clean diaper, dressed and ready to eat.

9:02 Washing out a sippy cup for juice. I need to buy more of those.

9:03 James drinking his OJ. Me making toast, pouring my own juice, bowl of cereal. James decides he wants cereal too.

9:04 He does not want cereal.

9:08 Naomi still upstairs playing in the sink. Did she just say something about a bath?

9:10 Juice is all gone. James hands it to me. I refill with milk. He stares at it and then looks at me and says. "JUICE". Sorry bud, no more juice. He doesn't touch the milk.

9:15 James eats 1/2 of 1/4 piece of toast. And 5 kix cereals. He is now done.

9:20 I put James in front of PBS while I eat.

9:22 I sit down at desk to check email while I eat my cereal.

9:23 Naomi calls me up to "come see!"

9:25 Naomi is naked (again) sitting in a sink full of warm water. counter, floor and cupboards are very wet. Sigh.

9:35 Naomi dressed again, everything dried off.

9:38 James joins us upstairs, he's poopy.

9:45 finally eating my soggy cereal.

Halloween Reading List

Favorite Halloween Children's Books?

I need some festive spooky and fun books for this holiday.

I don't own that many, but I'm trying to slowly increase my library here.

On our shelves:

Piggie Pie

The Biggest Pumpkin Ever

some book I can't remember the name of, a small board book about growing pumpkins:)

In our shopping carts: (virtual/someday soon)

Frank was a Monster who wanted to dance

The little old lady who wasn't afraid of anything

Too Many Pumpkins

Five Little Pumpkins

So, that's a short list. Any suggestions? I would love to hear about your favorite books you read with your kids, or your own childhood favorite.

Also, what about adult books? I'm not much into gory stuff, or evil. So that may narrow my Halloween options a bit.

And just for fun, these photos are from Halloweens Past.

Naomi with girl friends Alayna (Snow White) and Abby (Hawaiian Princess) last year.

Naomi the Monkey with BFF Abby the Princess

Wild Things

Yesterday afternoon we went to see Where The Wild Things Are. We had 4 children with us and an assortment of adults.

I have loved this book for as long as I can remember. I don't think I ever thought about what it was "really about" until I was an adult and using it for a lesson plan at work. I had several circumstance influenced conclusions about it then.

Later as a parent I've come to appreciate different aspects of the book, it's like it's been an slowly evolving process of what this story means for me.

So naturally I've looked forward to this movie with excitement and maybe some apprehension. What if it's inadequate, or the story is too warped to be familiar or to pay proper homage to the original. Or what if it's just weird. That would be disappointing.

I also hoped it would be fun, crazy and and exciting adventure, a feel good movie about a little boy and his fantastic adventures.

Well. It's a little bit of all of the above.

The movie was slow paced and gloomy in a realistic way at the beginning. And it was captivating for the same reasons. You usually get an easy-fix Hollywood-run of the mill tragedy to deal with and the accompanying obvious easy fix. Max and his lonely little fears and sorrows were just closer to reality. Nothing horribly tragic, just regular life problems for a young boy and real life family who doesn't do everything perfectly.

Fill in the Blank

1. Where is your cell phone? nightstand
2. Your hair? wavy
3. Your mother? talkative
4. Your father? wise
5. Your favorite food? fruit
6. Your dream last night? missing
7. Your favorite drink? juice
8. Your dream/goal? happiness
9. What room are you in? study
10. Your hobby? running
11. Your fear? disappointment
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? home
13. Where were you last night? couch
14. Something that you aren't? carefree

15. Muffins? chocolate!
16. Wish list item? coat
17. Where did you grow up? Utah
18. Last thing you did? bedtime
19. What are you wearing? sweats
20. Your TV? off
21. Your pets? cheetah
22. Friends? great
23. Your life? complicated
24. Your mood? relaxed
25. Missing someone? Cassie
26. Vehicle? champagne
27. Something you’re not wearing? socks
28. Your favorite store? Charlotte Russe
29. Your favorite color? pink
30. When was the last time you laughed? today
31. Last time you cried? Friday
32. Your best friend? irreplaceable
33. One place that I go to over and over? beach
34. One person who emails me regularly? bank
35. Favorite place to eat? home
So the rules are: Copy and change the answers to suit you and pass it on. You must use only oneword answers! I'm passing the love to: Everyone who reads this! :)

Thanks Michelle for a fun idea!

Big Boy!

Isn't this the cutest little potty?
It's from Ikea, cheap and just the right size.
James loves it. Today after a shower he was still bare-bummed and he looked at me and told me "poopy".
So I took him to try out his potty. He didn't do anything more than sit on it today.
Oh how I love all that chub!

Farmtastic Fall

...at the American West Heritage Center!

Naomi and I went last Saturday with my sister Ginger, her kids and my mom.

It was cold, too cold. But we had a good time anyway! This weekend looks like it will be perfect weather. The website has a coupon for a free ride pass ($2 value) with purchase of admission ($6 for ages 3 and up). http://www.americanwestcenter.org/events/corn_maze.htm

This farm is so fun, in the Spring they have Baby Animal Days, in the Summer it's the Festival of the American West and then Farmtastic Fall.

We made our way through the corn maze, it was a little tricky even with the map! The train was fun, we rode several times. The kids learned how to press apples for cider. They played in the pen with the super cute pygmy goats, rode the pumpkin patch express, did the super slide, and rode the ponies!

Palm Tree Octopus

Naomi drew a tree trunk and branches on her paper. I cut out a template for her to sponge fall tree colored leaves on to the tree. She named all the colors to use for a "fall" tree.
When she had filled up all the white space, sponging colors all over, talking about leaves here, this color there, we took the template paper off to reveal her autumn tree.
Mom- "what did you make?!"
Naomi- "A palm tree octopus!!!"

Fancy James

While Naomi is gone to preschool, James gets full reign of the toys. Some choice items always include princess shoes and Naomi's Dora helmet.
He gets all suited up and click clacks all over the house. I love it. I took a video but it's too big to upload. We'll save that one for blackmail as a teenager!

Snow White

I'm fast adding to my princess repertoire around here.

Naomi own's a good stock of princess dresses, crowns, wands, clicky-clacky shoes and the attitude of entitlement to go along with it all.

So, most of you mommies of girls know that Snow White came out on DVD the other day.

I wanted to get it, I couldn't really justify spending $20 though.

As I was longingly holding the DVD at WalMart this morning, a fellow mom stopped short next to me.

She said "You know there's a coupon for this, right?"

I said no, and she proceeded to tell me how to get a $10 off coupon, online.

Wow, that's a great deal!

So, I am now sharing it with you all, it's good through tomorrow. TOMORROW, that's 10-10-09. So you need get yourself out to Walmart/Target soon!

Here is the link

http://adisney.go.com/disneyvideos/animatedfilms/snowwhite/couponoffer/?cmp=dmov_dvd_sno_coupon_url_swoffer

This is for the Diamond Edition DVD + Blu-Ray combo pack. You get both dvd's for $10. Nice.

Also, just a note. I couldn't print it from my Google browser. I installed the coupon printer as prompted and nothing.

I repeated the process with Internet Explorer and it worked like a charm. You can print two coupons per computer.

Enjoy!

Taylie

This is buzzing all around the blog world right now. At least with the blogs I follow.

A little girl from Richmond, UT is fighting cancer and there are some awesome fundraising efforts going on for her.

Here is her website, take a look.

http://www.tayliebug.com/Index.html

I don't pretend to know what it's like for this girls parents, but I'm sure it's very difficult.

Prayers for her...and them.

And another spot to take a look at is this blog here, A Dash of Season, she's raising money and donating a new purse as incentive! Just link and blog to contribute.

http://adashofseason.blogspot.com/

Just someone to keep in your thoughts.