Blue

It was just one little Dum Dum sucker. I think it was 50% food dye and 50% sugar. I am the best mother in the world! And at 9 AM, no less.

Joseph's 4th Birthday

Somehow it happened, I'm still not sure how, that Joseph turned 4 years old on Sunday! I tell you, I sure love that kid. He is so much fun to have in our family. He is Sarah's best friend and is so stinkin' smart! He also talks constantly. (I could use a break from that.)

As his birthday approached, starting in about July, Joseph would want to know if his birthday was before Halloween or after. I have no idea how many times I answered that question!

Thankfully, his birthday finally arrived. He had been looking forward to getting called up to the front in Primary to pick his scripture pencil and bookmark. Chad and I were in there that morning because Leah had a talk, so I got to see the huge smile on his face. He was so excited, that he started inching out of his seat as he anticipated them formally calling him to the front. And then he stood there stoically while we all sang. I loved it.

I had started the cake two nights before when I made the top of the decorations. I baked the cake Saturday night and slapped all the frosting on during a quiet time Sunday afternoon. I don't think it turned out too badly. In fact, it's my best Butter Cream Transfer to date! (I still have room for improvement.)


I bought some Toy Story sugar decorations to put on the cake. I made sure there were exactly 6...for obvious reasons.


I also picked up a game for everyone to play. I am just not a birthday party kind of mom. Daniel had the most parties, Nathan's had one and Leah is looking forward to her first one in January. So we had a party game for our family time. It seemed to work. :)

The kids were sticking on shields or sheriff stars, depending on their height. Here is Joseph, trying to get Buzz Lightyear's shield on his arm.


Sarah's blindfold slipped off, but we didn't force the rules on her. It's a good thing she's such a favorite around here!


Leah did NOT want to do a shield, but she consented to help us keep the peace (Rebekah did not want to do a shield, either). Leah is usually the one that helps us work things out. I am so thankful for her! But does it look like she's cheating??!?


Here is Rebekah putting on the first star. It looks like poor Woody is about to be
gagged.


Nathan's turn was next. He got it a little closer to the target.


Knowing Daniel, I'm pretty sure he felt his way to the right place. I would suspect him of peeking, but it doesn't look like the blindfold was cooperating.


Next it was time to open the presents. There are always a lot of helpful suggestions when it comes to opening birthday presents in this family! Sarah is trying to get Joseph to take the next gift from her before he finishes checking out the one he just opened. (I guess the dining room light was off. I promise there were some lights on somewhere when I took these pictures!)


I made Joseph a shirt with my Silhouette. He wore it the next day. :) The vinyl was fuzzy, so he spent the whole day feeling his shirt.


I think Joseph's favorite present was a backpack full of tools. He still claims that he knew he was getting tools. He didn't but he's so smitten, that he can't stop talking about them. I think that means I chose well.



Daniel and Joseph found some of their things that they could wrap up for Joseph. I love it when the kids made that kind of effort to celebrate each other. Leah didn't have anything to give Joseph, so she decided to give him a hug. It brought the biggest smile to his face!


After presents comes cake. I don't know when we got out of the habit of having ice cream with the cake. It would be delicious, but I guess the extra sugar isn't really needed.

OK. The lights were out for this shot. We wanted to see the candles! Joseph got the candles out in 2 breaths. The first breath got the candle the farthest away and the second got the closest three. Such talent! ;)


As I've said before, the birthday person gets to cut the cake. That often means we get some creative cuts on our plates. Thankfully, Joseph let me cut the rest of the cake once he dished up his own piece.


Leah was our videographer for the cake this night. It seems a little abuse of power was going on here!


It gets quiet around here when the kids start eating something they like.


Sarah really got into her piece of cake! Hmm...it looks like there was a bit of black frosting on her plate.


Joseph's eyes were bigger than his stomach. Once he'd had his fill of cake, he was gone to the living room to play with his tool set. I wish I could walk away from food like that! (Sadly, I found the best, untouched piece of cake from his plate and ate it. I can't stick to my own food!)


Joseph wasn't the only one who wanted to play with his tools some more!

At the end of the celebration, this was what was left. Joseph, Sarah and I had a little for lunch on Monday and then Chad and I finished it off (before it got stale)!


Happy Birthday, Joseph! We hope you felt special on your special day. We sure love you tons!

Elementary School Costume Parade and Trick-or-Treating

The kids spent the morning of Halloween getting dressed up; some in their costumes and some only partially.

We tried to make the boys' hair dark to match their Angry Birds costumes. It kind of worked.

But not real well. They will be dark like their daddy someday, but it wasn't going to be this day.

We sprayed glitter into Rebekah's hair to go with her princess costume, but it didn't show up against her blond hair in the picture.

Daniel's too old for Halloween parades in middle school, so he went to school with his costume and took care of everything all on his own. It was a pretty easy costume so I knew he would be fine. Nathan's costume was the same, so I left him to it, too. And Leah's wasn't too involved, so I was grateful to let her take care of herself.

Rebekah's costume was a little more involved, so I had to help her get ready. I left Joseph and Sarah sitting on some chairs at the other end of the hallway. They were such good kids and each stayed on the chair I put them in for the 5-10 minutes I was out of sight.

Finally, the parade began. First came the youngest kids and when the first-graders came into view, we quickly found Rebekah. Yikes! This girl does not wear lipstick well! :) But such a cute princess anyway.


When Sarah first saw her big sister, she ran right up to her. It was very cute. And Rebekah made sure she went back to where she belonged.


Leah, ever thinking of horses, was a riding champ. We found this costume at DI a couple of years ago and have been holding on to it ever since. The little cowgirl in front of Leah is a best friend, Ariyah. She is just as bad over horses as Leah, if not worse!


Nathan was an Angry Bird. He just doesn't look very angry!


I had a giant spider web waiting for the kids when they got home. Joseph thought it was pretty fun. They had to climb through the bottom to get up the stairs to their bedrooms. It was fun until after dinner when it had to come down so Chad could put them to bed!

We (of course) had a Halloween dinner. It started like this.

And ended like this.
It needed more cheese. It also needed to cook a little longer. I guess it's lessons for next time! I thought it was yummy, but my kids don't really like meatloaf. I tasted good as a sandwich a few days later.

In addition to the Mummy, we had swamp creatures out of mac 'n cheese. It didn't turn out exactly the way I'd hoped, but we were running out of time. Besides, it's mac 'n cheese; that's not really gourmet food.

We were finally done eating and ready to go out trick-or-treating! There was a trunk-or-treat at the church, but we rebelled against the mass candy this year and turned the night more personal. We picked particular places to visit and then headed home for our own special treat.

Here we are in our costumes (for the 3rd time). What a crazy looking bunch!

We had to go to Daniel's teacher's house. We had to drive to another town to do it. We hit four houses in that neighborhood, one of which was an old neighbor we'd known before we moved the last time. I was a little concerned with the realization that Daniel looked like a thug from the back!


Daniel's teacher came to the door to see who it was that she was supposed to recognize. I think that was a fun thing for Daniel. :)

It was quite a chore to get everyone in and out of the car. We can't do that without fighting...even on a night that we are getting candy!

Then we had to go to Joseph's Primary teacher's house. She was so good to make all the kids feel special when we got there. (Who doesn't like being made to feel special?)

From there, we had one last stop to make. A friend told us to come by her house a week or so before the big day, so we made sure to include that house. She gave the kids a piece of candy on the way in and on the way out...something that Joseph remembered even a few days later!

Then it was home to shed our costumes and warm up a bit. I'd made a cake with food tint...hoping it would be really crazy inside. I didn't get exactly what I'd imagined, but it was still fun. I figured a piece of cake would be better than a bucket-load of candy.



It took some time to wash all that grey paint off of Joseph's face. I think the boys didn't get a shower until Saturday (remember, Halloween was on a Monday) and they still saw the water turn black from their hair paint. Even after Rebekah's shower, I saw glitter in her hair. Whew! Halloween is a big job!
We have a year to recover...thankfully. :)

School Halloween Carnival

We only had to dress up in our costumes 3 times this year! (Sheesh.) The first time was for the school PTO Halloween Carnival. A night of crowds and playing 50 cent games. Sounds like fun, right?

These kids were looking forward to it. Well, maybe Sarah wasn't.

Ah...that's better. She just needed to be in a picture with her sisters!

We went to the cupcake walk. We cheated the system (unknowingly) on this game. When we did this last year, they let you walk until you got a cupcake. So we kept on walking even though it was only supposed to be three turns per ticket. They finally called the number of our last kid just to get rid of us. Oops!

This was a golfing game. I can think of SEVERAL ways this game could have been improved! I think Joseph and Sarah (and maybe Rebekah) still had fun. Me; not so much. I had to keep picking up the "targets" because they would fall over with the slightest pressure.

The night also involved a benefit sloppy joe dinner and lots of people. There was a lot of stuff being raffled off, too. We left at 8:30 and were surprised it wasn't closer to 10! We are not good with crowds. Really.

Halloween Decorating

A holiday means decorating. I just can't help myself. I'm not big into Halloween, really, but decorating for it is a lot of fun.

I did put some vinyl on the front door. That was fun. The only picture I took of it was on my cell phone to post on Facebook. Hmm. I'll have to get that somehow.

I did make a bunting. I used my Silhouette to do this one (of course). Too bad I don't have a good place in my house to display buntings. This wall is the best I can do. Someday...


We had the necessary spider that drops from the ceiling when the door opens. (Leah took this picture.) This is one of our favorite Halloween decorations. Occasionally, we get a big spider on the head when the door opens and we forget to look up!


I tried something new this year and painted the front window. The bats are of vinyl and the moon is just paper, but the rest is painted on. I only had black tempura paint to try with. I learned the hard way that tempura paint is not good for painting on windows. It looked great a few hours after I finished painting. It still looked OK when we left for church the next morning. But when we came home, huge pieces of paint had peeled and were fluttering in the wind. It really looked like a haunted house then! I got some washable acrylic paint at the craft store and repainted it. Yeah...that worked! I grabbed a warm moment shortly after Halloween to get a bucket of soapy water and wash it away.

Want one more scary picture?

Here's a preview of our Halloween costumes! :)