Boo!

We got to go to the boys' parties at school. It was a drastic change from last year. I was a room mom for 2 parties last year. The girls did great at them. This year rather than helping out, we added to the chaos. Lydia ran everywhere, so I think it will be our last one that we go to. Oh well. They were fun while they lasted.
Ben is so cute. He is so proud of his sisters. He has no problem including them and making sure they get to do things. He was a ninja this year.
Trevor was excited to have us at his party too. He wanted us to stay right by his desk. He dressed as Optimus Prime.
Karmin was a cutey dressed as a mermaid. Lydia was Lydia. The ladybug costume ripped the other day and I haven't fixed it. Saturday was the trunk-or-treat. It was pretty sweet this year. The kids put some warm clothes on under their costumes and that was it. We could actually see their costumes.
Happy Halloween!

Pretty Lydie

Sorry it's fuzzy.

Here is how Lydia was dressed for Halloween. I picked the jeans and the striped shirt. Lydia added the tutu. I bet you didn't know that a 15 1/2 month old could have a preference on what she wears? I {LOVE} girls. Ben added the camo shirt for his Birthday party. And no shoes.

Changing It Up

We have gone to Home Depot almost every Saturday for several months now. The lady at the paint counter even called us on it when we were on our last date. So this week we took our date to LOWES! On our way there we got some Frosties from Wendys. (Frosties hold a special place in my heart. They remind me of dating Grant. Not that I ate them with Grant, rather my fabulous roommate Sheri.)
We looked at tile at Lowes, and lights. I'm finding that looking at all this stuff is hard. I don't know what color to paint our walls...I'll just decorate them when they are done. Then we spent about an hour and a half at WalMart. Luckily we didn't buy an hour a half worth of groceries. Not exciting, but stuff we had to do and easier without kids. My next date planned: start/finish Christmas shopping.
We are at the end of our month. I think we have a better appreciation for dating. Our relationship was great before this month, but I think it made us look forward to our time alone more. And we got to do stuff that would be hard to do with kids. It was a lot of fun just to be together.I found the weeks were more enjoyable because I had something to look forward to. We definitely want to keep this going. Plus we discovered a new love for eating in the car in random parking lots.

The Great Pumpkins

We have had a lot of pumpkins around our house. But first I want to update you on our date for last weekend...we kinda had one, but it didn't go as well. Trevor got another ear infection and then passed the cold onto others, so no babysitter for us. We did go to a Halloween party at the church on Saturday night, so I guess we'll count that. We came home and watched a movie. But rest assured we have a date planned for tomorrow, so we'll be back on track. Just in time for it to be the last weekend of the month! We'll see what happens in November.
At the Halloween party, there was a pumpkin carving contest. The couple who sat with us at our table (we take up so many seats nowadays that not many people can sit with us) had to leave, Ben went and carved a pumpkin with Cade and Conner, and Trevor helped the sister missionaries, so Karmin somehow gathered her cousin Savannah and her "best friend" Livi, to carve the pumpkin. Grant got them started and then they had at it. Some people worried that we were letting 3/4 year old girls carve the pumpkin by themselves, but one relaxes after having a few kids. They did just fine and no injuries to report. The sister missionaries judged all the pumpkins when everyone was done and the girls won for the most amusing pumpkin. We were so proud of them!
Sunday we carved our pumpkins. Ben and Karmin carved their own (with a little help from me in cleaning them out because the inside was "gross" and "disgusting." Trevor carved his with Grandma. And these are what the final product was: I think we have some real talent at our house.

At least there's next year

Our garden wasn't very successful this year. Lack of water will do that. But we did get these [small] beauties:

B-Ball

Our kids have been wanting to go to a basketball game that the school was putting on. They had been practicing half-time shows in PE. The third grade did The Macarena. Ben was so cute--he was SO into it. I LOVED it.
Trevor was so timid and small down there on center court. The first grade sang "You're a Grand 'Ole Flag." I know, it's like Where's Waldo. (Hint in one picture there is a flag that looks like it is coming out of his eye, and in the second picture he is being his friendly self and waving to someone in his class.)
They were so excited to go to the game. This is where I should remain quiet because if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it, right? Well, I'm not that strong today. We bribed our kids to leave early. There I put it in the nicest way possible. But at least our kids are cute, right?

3 in a Row

We had our date on Saturday night this week. I had scout training Friday night and Saturday morning (more than 8 hours, but so worth it), so it was harder for me to leave the kids this week. But I am so glad we did.
We went on a double date with our good friends, Todd and Heather. We went out to dinner to a new place. I don't remember what it is called, but it was really good.
Then we went to DQ and got some Blizzards and played a cut-throat game of Phase 10 there at Dairy Queen. I'm pretty sure I was the winner even though we didn't keep score.
It was fun going with Todd and Heather. They are so easy to be with. Hopefully we can do more with them.

Oh This Girl

My Dear Sweet Lydia...the same one that was so content just sitting on the couch for months, I think has finally realized that there is life outside watching other people. And now, my job has gotten harder. She loves to make messes. She loves pulling all the books off the shelf then leaves to go to the kitchen. There she opens the lower drawers and gets all the tupperware lids and puts them on the floor, then she finds the bowls and does the same. She leaves and goes and finds the bathroom...and so the trend continues. She likes to sleep in on the days that we need to leave the house early. She likes to wake up super early on the days I can sleep in. Suddenly she needs to feed herself her oatmeal in the morning.

She also loves to walk around the house laughing. Oh, this girl loves to laugh. And the laugh she had when she was an infant (see here) is the exact same one she still has, so she makes us all laugh. How could you not? And remember the growl? Yep, she still does that too. (Which can be quite hilarious when she is walking around the house creating messes everywhere she goes and growling at the same time. It kind of just adds to the whole affect.) And she loves to give bear hugs--I am so in love with this girl!

Next Project

I am not a painter, but sometimes I get it in my head that I am, and so I should. Grant and I painted a mural in Ben's room when he was little:

And I haven't painted anything since. Then I thought how fun it would be to paint some pictures for the girls room. Hobby Lobby saved me so that I didn't have to paint as many as I first thought. But there was one wall that still needed something. So I painted this...

So many things I would change about it. But alas, it is finally finished. Then I put this all together to fix the barren wall next to the door. Only Lydia's quilt left to finish, er, start. And then their room will be all done!

Drawn-out Birthday

The weekend that we were going to have Karmin's Birthday party, something came up and we had to cancel it--so this was the next weekend available. I've tried to talk her into a princess Birthday party, but no such luck. She has only wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese's since Trevor's Birthday. Oh well, it was much easier. She invited 2 of her cousins, Savannah and Hailey, a friend from church, Livi, and of course none of our kids could have a Birthday party without Cade and Conner--two boys in our ward who we often trade babysitting with their parents. I think everyone had fun.

(Since our blog isn't private, I have made it a rule to not put anybody on our blog that isn't in our immediate family, and we got only a couple of pictures with nobody else in them, so this is all you get--sorry)

My Turn

This week was my turn to plan our date. So what would any normal girl who had been deprived of pizza for almost 2 years do first? That was the first thing on the list--go and get pizza. I don't think I knew how much I loved pizza until I couldn't eat it. Not too many other foods got to me as much as pizza while I was on my MSPI diet. And it's kind of funny because I didn't like pizza as a kid. At Lydia's 9 month check up, the doctor asked me what was going to be the first thing that I ate when I could finally eat anything. Without any hesitation I said pizza--and we would eat it at least 3 times a week. That didn't really happen, but I think I ate enough on our date to make up for at least several meals of missed pizza. It was sooo good, and I am glad that we have leftovers.
I had planned to go eat it at a park--just like we used to do in Provo, but it got dark too quickly. So we went and sat in a parking lot at a park and ate it.
Then we went bowling. I am awful at bowling, but Grant has been teaching me, and I am sometimes getting better. I use to be happy if I scored 50. Now it is my goal to break 100. I got 99 the first game (Grant got 175), and then I got 101 my second. Look at that improvement!
No date would be complete without a trip to Wal-Mart, but I didn't get any pictures there. I'm so glad my week is over. But I am so loving these dates. I look forward to it all week--it's so much fun!

A- MaiZe-Ing

I know that was a pretty lame title, but what can I say? So I love going to pumpkin patches with the kids....remember here. Since there weren't any field trips that I could take the kids on this year, I decided to do our own field trip. I got my sister-in-law and her kids to come with us. This was my first time going without Grant, so I needed someone to fill that void! We got to go in a corn maze, go on a pirate ship, go down a giant inflatable slide, a train ride, and then pick out a pumpkin. We needed 2 more pumpkins for the boys and some apple cider for Grant. I loved it. I could have stayed longer. Karmin had fun and thanked me many times for taking her there, but her only complaint was that we only stayed "for like 2 minutes." Those 4 hours did go by pretty fast.

Second Day of School

It occurred to me that I didn't get an official picture of Karmin on her "first day of school." But I guess it is not really school, just speech therapy. But she loves it and she loves her teacher, Jan, who she calls (and shows us why she needs speech every time she says it) "Miss Jam." Jan is so sweet. She reminds me a lot of Grant's mom, and maybe that is why I enjoy her so much. She talks to Karmin like she is the queen of the world and therefore the most important person that she could ever be talking to.
Karmin has very little of my personality in her. And thinking of Grant's personality, I'm not sure where she gets her outgoing bubbly nature because he is about the same as me--quiet and reserved. Maybe she knows that we need someone to add a little spice to our family. But every time we go into the office to check in, she goes in and says in a very loud voice, "HEEELLLLOOOOOOO!" She has made friends with the secretary in there who Karmin refers to her as of course, her best friend. Sherry, the secretary wasn't in there when we got in there the other day, and so Karmin made us stay in there until she got back. She was asking where she was, "Was she fishing again?" or "Is she getting married?" Yes both of those sound very reasonable. And Sherry, as sweet as she is, plays right into it. Tells Karmin how cute her skirt is, how beautiful her flower is in her hair. Seriously, Karmin has the whole world wrapped around her little finger. And for good measure, a picture of her at dance that I had to practically bribe my way into getting:

Our Quest...

Grant and I have not been the best at dating each other. In our defense, our kids go to bed at 7:30, so we spend a lot of time after they go to bed having dates at home or just talking. It was made known to one of Grant's brother-in-laws that we only go on "official" dates about once a month. Jim quite kindly told us that we needed to repent. We started talking about it and decided he was right. We need to date more often. Our favorite thing to do is to be with each other, so why not be with each other without the kids more often? How fun would that be!
We made it a goal to go on a date where we actually get a babysitter and leave the house once a week for the whole month of October. We would say that we are going to do this for our lifetime, but we need baby steps here.
So lucky you, our devoted blog readers, get to hear about all of our dates this month because this needs to be documented. Grant came up with the first date idea, so I'm in charge for this Friday (ideas would be greatly appreciated--it's supposed to be nice outside, so outside or inside ideas are welcome).
We both love playing tennis. So we went and bought some new shoes for both of us first. Grant needed a new pair for work, and I think my feet grew during my last pregnancy. Every time I wear my running shoes my feet fall asleep. All geared up, we went over to the high school. It was perfect. The marching band was there practicing so they had all the lights on in the football field, which gave us enough lights to play. And...we were serenaded to boot.
It was great. I had so much fun. I understand why we haven't been as good about dating in the past as we should be (babysitters are so expensive), but like Grant said...it is worth paying that much a month to be together. Hey look, guys, I'm wearing shoes!