Halloween!!!

This week leading up to Halloween has been a blast! My mom came out to play with us, which added to the excitement. :) We made Jeremiah a wolf suit like Max, from Where the Wild Things Are, and created bat wings to go with Isaac's ninja costume (um, he decided he wanted to be a "bat-ninja"?--apparently they sneak up to people and pull down others' pants, but we vetoed that action), and decorated Danielle's turtle shell, for her "little bitty ninja turtle" costume. We carved pumpkins and turned them into jack-o-lanterns, for the first time! We've decorated pumpkins and painted them before, but not carved. The kids were ecstatic to look at their jack-o-lanterns at night, all lit up. The boys had a kindergarten Halloween party and costume parade on Friday, and we went trick-or-treating and had carnival games and dinner at our church tonight. We've had a lot of fun!

And now....for pictures!


Three sweet children looking longingly into the flames of their jack-o-lanterns...

Ninja-Bat with his creation.

Max, making a scary face like his SCARY jack-o-lantern. :)

And, a Little Bitty Ninja Turtle with her very happy pumpkin!


More, perhaps better, views of their cute costumes. (Have I mentioned that I LOVE that these kids like to play together??)


At our church's Halloween party, while waiting on Daddy to serve us dinner. (If you really think staying with three kids while the other parent is getting dinner is the better half of the deal, you might want to think again!)


Jeremiah with his Sunbeams teacher! She's so great!

Ooohh! A ScArY math test! Run away! (John has wanted to be a math test for Halloween for years. :) He finally got a chance!)


Supermom! Here to save the day!

Trip to Utah

We went on a road trip to Utah earlier this month. We ended up leaving several hours later than we had intended on somehow. One of our rest stop stops had Jeremiah in heaven with the rocks and sand to play with. And Isaac was thrilled with the viewing scopes. We were stopped (resting?) for a good 15 minutes, and those boys seemed perfectly happy to be there all day long.

While we were in Utah, we celebrated Bill's wedding!, played with cousins and visited with family, and I took the kids to BYU. It was a great weekend!

On the way home, we camped just outside of Zion National Park. It was beautiful. Enjoying my children enjoying nature is right up with teaching them to love books, two of my absolute favorite parts of my life.

The Button Bag

Jeremiah brought home the Button Bag. He sorted the buttons by color.


And then he took a picture of his buttons. :)

Jeremiah's Birthday!

Here are Jeremiah's birthday pictures, just a couple of months late. Though he HAS been trying to convince us that his birthday is on Halloween. :)



It's always a bit tricky to get him to cheese it up for the camera...especially when there are infinitely more interesting things to be doing, like:

BUZZ LIGHTYEAR!!!

And, feeding Buzz the brown cake with brown frosting which was specifically requested and left uneaten by the birthday boy.


Opening his birthday presents! Very exciting. :)



And, lastly, blowing out his candles. Watch for the victory arms in the darkness.

Bed-Time

I think things are going to be changing around here. I get really cranky around 7:25, which makes our hopeful 8 o'clock bedtime...well, not the happiest time.

But, for some reason, our kids absolutely adore reading in their beds, which I discovered last night. So, if they can stay in their beds, they can read for a few minutes. I was originally thinking maybe for 10 minutes, at 8.

Now, though. Since they seem to like reading in their beds so much. (No other reason, of course!)

Maybe, if they wanted to read for say, half an hour, why not? They can go to their beds at 7:30, and then read for 30 minutes. I'm okay with that.

A good, solid way to encourage avid readers would be to let them stay up later with a book. Which is pretty much the same as going to bed earlier with a book, right?

I melt when I listen to little voices reading. And hearing three little voices at the same time? Priceless.