middle of October

On October 14th Christian and I went to Great Harvest so I could sign up for them to sponsor our PTA. Both my kids love the "bread store"!
We stopped by to play at lunch recess again, even though we were too full to eat lunch with Faith.

That evening, Faith had an African drum recital which the Salt Lake Tribune did a story about.

She did a great job! Check out this video:

On the 15th, we went to the Bun Basket Bakery to pick up a gift certificate that they were so generous to gift the PTA. Buddy couldn't leave without some cookies, especially this Frankenstein one.

When we got home, we collected our mail in a WalMart bag, and then Dusty decided to stick his head through the handle. Don't worry, we rescued him!

Christian got a Halloween card from his aunt Tammy, but then couldn't resist peeking in Faith's envelope, too. "I can see the numbers!" he shouted (he meant the letters of the writing). When he opened his card from grandma & pa Braegger and found that it held two dollars, he excitedly told me, "I got dollars--two in a row!"

That night Tammy & Lana took us to Black Island Farms for our second visit. Zach couldn't make it because he was in some kind of gun class. Who schedules classes that take up precious evenings in October???!!? Only December would be a worse time! Here, Buddy's putting animal food in a little cup contraption that you can send up to the goat that likes to be king of the mountain.

When Christian got tired of the teeter-totter, grandma filled in. I wonder if she could walk the next day? ;)

Grandma even bought the kids light sabers. What a fun night!

On the 17th the kids and I went to Faith's soccer game and then helped Joy & Jordan move for a bit. Tony had been invited by my dad to a Weber State football. I teased them that if I wasn't busy, I would have made them matching wrist corsages and get pictures since they were going to homecoming together! After moving, mom took us & Joy's family to Arctic Circle for dinner. Here, Buddy's just showing how much he loves to play at the Circle.

On the 20th it was "Wild Hair Day-because we're WILD about being healthy" in connection to red ribbon week where they talk about saying no to drugs and alcohol. I braided sparkly pipe cleaners into her ponytail and she looked really cute.

On October 23rd we had a Halloween party with our friends. Ann came with her kids, but Natalie had a sick little girl and had to miss out :(

We made white chocolate ghost suckers,

tissue paper pumpkins,

and gak! This was the hit of the party. They loved mixing it in the bags

and they loved playing with it even more.

Gross!

Even baby Bronwyn couldn't resist the goopiness.

That night Faith & Buddy went to the Dinosaur Park with Tammy and had a sleepover at Braegger's. Tony and I went to Ruby River and then the Haunted Hollow with the Jewel's and the Johnson's. It was so fun to have a night out with friends!

The next day, we went to Gardner Village with Tammy, Lana & Zach. The kids were so excited to do the pony ride!

Christian insisted on riding the biggest one, so Zach kindly waited for the next round.

Buddy had stayed up too late at the sleepover the night before and kept throwing fits.

We promised him something, and he perked up just for this picture!

Tammy bought us a delicious lunch, she even got the fried green tomatoes and fried avacado appetizer that I love! Face painting was a hit, as always.

We had a fun time until Buddy got so ornery that we had to head for home.

Get working on a Thanksgiving craft!

While searching for crafts to post on my preschool's blog, I came across a site called Tampon Crafts--for any time of the month. How awesome is that? Here's a turkey centerpiece for your Thanksgiving table :D Enjoy!

first part of October

On September 30th I decided that it was officially fall, or at least very fallish. That meant it's time to break out the soup recipes!! (or in this case, the Bear Creek soup packet) I also did fresh rolls (not homemade though, just dough from Bowman's bakery). Christian has a new ambition to make crazy faces in as many of my pictures as he can. Good on 'im that he has goals so young.

The morning of October 1st, Christian found a slug to play with. A few days later, after a rainstorm, he collected up a slew of them and put them into a tupperware container with a few plants to keep as pets. I had a ton of errands that day and Buddy insisted on bringing them with. Every time a passerby or cashier asked what he had there, he proudly answered, "Swugs."

Faith went to her friend Kelsie's birthday party at the DATC and ended up with a very beautiful, curly hairdo. She also got her nails painted! What a fun girlie party.

Christian has been doing so-so with his potty training. I think it's hilarious that every time he pees in the potty, he calls to the family, "Come here and see my yay-yo (yellow)!"

On October 3rd we went to J & J Nursery for a free hayride and pumpkin picking. Faith got an invite to it from school, and all you had to do was bring canned items for the Utah Food Bank.

Faith made sure she found the perfect one,

and Christian changed his mind about which was the perfect one about a hundred times.

My dad gave us his old, old laptop so that the kids could both be on the computer at the same time and Faith has been having fun with it. She likes to set up her little office in the family room or the kitchen and play Webkinz or look up ads for ZhuZhu pets.

Faithy painted this at school with watercolors and was so excited that many of her classmates oohed and ahed over it. It is gorgeous!

I was putting sticky dots on some googly eyes to get them ready for a preschool project on the morning of the 6th and Buddy asked if he could play with a set. He went right to work giving our produce some personality.

I read this book called "The Biggest Bed in the World" to my preschool kids for B week a few weeks ago. It's so cute! My favorite part is this page that just says that the mom has another baby, but it shows the baby breastfeeding. Nothing is mentioned in the text about it, it's just a picture of what happens when a tiny newborn joins the family. LOVE IT!

Faith made us this cool jack-o-lantern decoration . . .

boo!

Christian took this picture of Crumpet the other day, right after he woke her from a nap. Love the hair! I definately feel (and look) like this some days!!

Some Thursdays Christian and I return to school to have lunch with Faith after volunteering for her class in the morning. Faith loves to show me how good she is getting on the monkey bars

and Christian has a ball on the playground, too.

Faith wrapped up this soccer season by being goalie twice! She was too frightened to do that last year. She is doing so much better at not being afraid of the ball and all the crazy kicking.

Here was their Lowe's craft on the 10th, a ball toss game.

That afternoon, I got busy making cupcakes for the cake walk at our ward "harvest" party. They usually go all out on a "Halloween" party, but they couldn't get the building any later in October, so they went with more of a harvest/fall theme this year. I tried a fancy new frosting, chocolate mousse buttercream (recipe here). I didn't see that it called for unsalted butter, so after I tasted mine and it was too buttery tasting, I added some powdered sugar to it and it came out quite delicious. I'm not a huge fan of chocolate, so it wasn't my favorite ever, but everyone who tried it gave it rave reviews. Still, if I make it again, I'll probably still use salted butter, but lessen the amount to 3 or 4 sticks (!!!!). Oh! Another thing! This recipe makes a TON, so halve or quarter it. I heavily frosted 48 cupcakes with my batch and still had some left over. These had a peanut butter filling in them,

and I also made some with a marshmallow creme filling. This picture shows my inspiration (because I somehow forgot to get a pic), but mine just had the graham cracker crumbs over the chocolate mousse buttercream frosting and two of the toasted mini marshmallow on a pretzel stick decorations on the top. They were some of the first chosen by the winning cakewalk-ers! (you can check out the directions for this one here)

Tony was sick and missed out, but the kids and I had a blast!

They had all the games that they usually do, minus the spook alley.

Both kids ended up with plates of cupcakes--Christian's had Reeses mini peanut butter cup/pretzel/Red Hot spiders

and Faiths were brownies in cupcake wrappers with gum strip mummy wraps and M&M eyes.

Here's Buddy's haul-

and they had square dancing with a caller.

Check out my video of the kids doing the chicken dance:

The next day when we walked into Sacrament meeting a few minutes late and had to sit quite far back in the gym, Christian looked around and screamed, "Where that fishing booth, aaa-aaahh-hhhhh-hhhhh!!!!!" Poor little guy, he thought they finally figured out how to make church awesome ;)