Good Times!

We have had a busy week between a birthday, canning, Halloween and church talks! Tuesday was Jaylee's birthday, Wednesday we had a ward Halloween Carnival, Thursday I canned apple pie filling with my aunt Cathy, Friday was a school Halloween Carnival, Saturday some of our friends invited us over for dinner and then trick or treating, and Sunday (today) Luke and I had to speak in Sacrament Meeting. Needless to say, I'm exhausted, I can't even believe that I'm blogging right now because I can barely keep my eyes open!

This is canning proof! I did it! I learned to can apple pie filling with my Aunt. She is an incredible canner so I'm excited to learn a lot from her. Next month we are going to can black beans, northern beans, and pinto beans. One awesome trick that I learned from her the other day...you can actually heat your seals in the microwave. You just have to make sure they are covered with water. Microwave them for approximately 3 minutes and they're ready to go. I watched it with my own eyes! Metal in the microwave! Great trick though, then you don't have to have another pan on the stove.

A couple of nights ago, the kids were being so silly. We probably spent 30 minutes taking silly pictures of them. We were all laughing and having the best time.

This is trick or treating. We hit a few more homes after separating from our friends. It was raining so we sat in the back of the van with the hatch open while Luke drove us from one house to the next.

Yep, you guessed it, Jaylee is just Jaylee for Halloween. This is the 2nd Halloween in a row that she wouldn't wear her costume on Halloween. She's such a stinker sometimes. She wouldn't let us put a shirt underneath her princess dress to make it modest so she didn't wear it at all. Oh well! Sabree is a witch and Oliver is a ninja.

Jaylee actually worked hard on her pumpkin. She really did carve it with very little help. We drew lines on the pumpkin and she traced it with the little pumpkin carving knife. A little scary but what else do you do with an independent 3 year old!

Oliver and Luke carved this pumpkin. Luke loves carving pumpkins. It's funny to watch him carve because he gets so into it just like the kids. Anyway, Oliver and Luke carved Darth Maul. It turned out really cool.

Sabree did this pumpkin completely on her own. I thought it was really creative and it turned out great! She wanted to do hair on her pumpkin. I didn't think it would show but when we lit it up, it looked awesome! She did a great job!

Jaylee did dress up for the ward carnival. She got this skirt and wings from her cousin Annie for her birthday. She loves it!!! She's worn it 4 times since she got it last Sunday!

Oliver and friend Davin. Sabree and friend Gwen.

Happy Birthday Jaylee!

A few cute pictures of Jaylee throughout the year.

Today is Jaylee's birthday. The day started out crazy, trying to get ready for her party and everything, but it ended up great! Grandma Adams came in town yesterday afternoon and brought Gracie, Ellie and Addie (cousins). We went to the pumpkin walk on Monday, had pizza for dinner, and had a crazy night trying to make kids sleep. Today, we had a great breakfast and I started getting ready for a birthday party. Jaylee had 4 friends come over to celebrate. We had the best time. We played lots of games.

When the girls first arrived they colored Halloween pictures. After that we danced to "The Monster Mash" and every time the music stopped, the girls had to freeze. It was actually quite funny!
After dancing we went on a ghost hunt. I had ghosts hung up all over the house so we searched for them. On the back of each ghost was a Halloween picture to make a matching game. We played the matching game twice. The girls loved it! After the matching game I had hidden 1 Halloween treat for each girl so one at a time they went and found their treat. Next we played "Don't eat Pete"! This was a blast and of course the girls loved the Skittles. Next we played "Hot Pumpkin" the same as "Hot Potato" and each girl got to keep a little pumpkin.
You'd think that would be enough games but we kept on playing...Next we played pin the nose on the Jack-O-lantern. Then we opened presents, sang happy birthday, ate cupcakes, then decorated sugar cookies!
I love my little Jaylee. She is a fireball! In fact, she's a hard little girl right now but there are times that she can be so darn sweet and those short glimpses keep me going and remind me how special she is. Hard stages too shall pass! She's my cute little baby and I love her to pieces! Happy Birthday Baby!

Pumpkin Walk

I went to the pumpkin walk 3 times this year. The first time was with Kelsey and Jamie (previous post), the second with my little family, and the third with Grandma Adams and cousins. It's pretty cool! If you haven't ever seen it, you should come next year. It's funny, Luke and I went to the pumpkin walk many moons ago...before we were even married. It has improved 100 times and everyone says it gets better every year. Here are some pictures. The first few are at the end of the pumpkin walk. They have a bunch of character boards that you put your face in. The kids loved it! I had to take a picture of each of them in every character. At the end, I had 101 pictures. CRAZY FUN!

Luke makes a pretty good Harry Potter!

Sabree, Jaylee, Oliver

Oliver as his favorite character!

This is the movie UP

Sponge Bob! This one was impressive. I couldn't believe how much it really looked like all the characters.

The Flintstones and Ollie

Winnie the Pooh. This was only half of this scene.

YEAH! I love my Young Women

This last weekend was so fun! I had Kelsey and Jamie Beckstrand (2 of my Young Women) come into town. We hung out on Friday night, they slept over and we spent 1/2 of Saturday together. We had so much fun. I miss all of my Young Women and love them so much. Here are some of the pictures from the weekend with my girls!
We went to a pumpkin walk that North Logan sponsors. It was incredible. They had 30-40 different scenes with the theme "animation". The scenes included a lot of Disney movies and cartoons. All the characters are created with mostly pumpkins and squash. People are so creative!

The background on this photo was "A Bugs Life". The picture doesn't do the background justice but the girls look cute!The FlinstonesJamie as Snow White!Kelsey makes a good Cinderella. I should have had her try out her skills on my kitchen floor and bathrooms!

Reflections and Basketball

We have been busy lately. Sabree and Oliver participated in this year's reflections. They did a great job and it was a lot of work! Both kids came up with their own idea. They were very clever too, I thought. The theme was "Together we can...". Sabree chose "together we can make our world a better place". Oliver chose, "together we can conquer the dark side".This is the beginning of the paper mache light saber and world. I forgot how much work paper mache is...super messy too!

Painting is the fun part. Sabree's had a lot of detail. She did a great job. She first painted the whole earth blue. Then she painted all the land brown, then she used a sponge brush to add green on top of the brown, then she mixed yellow and brown and sponged that on top of the green. It looked really cool.

Oliver painting his light saber. He added quite a bit of detail too. He loved it!

These are the finished products. Sabree's world holder is a pot. On the outside she colored pictures of ways to make the world a better place.

Both Sabree and Oliver's projects made it to the next round. It will be sent to "the council"! They are really excited about that.

Now, basketball! Luke went with a buddy to play basketball and came home injured! While he was playing basketball someone jabbed him in the eye. It scratched up his eyeball pretty bad. He had a hard time sleeping all night. He was in a lot of pain. First thing in the morning I called and got him an appointment with an optometrist who was quite concerned about his eye. It was scratched badly in 2 places. He was worried that it may have damaged the flap over the center of the eye. Fortunately it didn't otherwise he would have had to go right into surgery. Anyway, he was given prescriptions for 3 different eye drops that are administered every 2 hours. Today he went back to the doctor and his eye is already improving; however, his vision in that eye is not back to normal. He has another appointment on Monday and hopefully we'll have good news!

You can't tell because of the flash but the room is really dark. Even in the dark, most the day he wore sunglasses too. His eye was really sensitive to any light at all. Poor guy! He's much better today though.

Great Weekend

This past weekend was really fun. My sister Jana came to visit. We got to shop and we made hair flowers. It was great!



The other great part is that while we were making flowers Luke straightened the entire garage. It looks awesome! Oliver was his little helper. It is so cute! He loves his dad and wants to be just like him.
Last, we drove through Sardine canyon to see the colorful leaves. It was really pretty, I love that canyon. We also went to Brigham City to see my grandparents. Anyway, just a great weekend with the family!

I sure love these little ones. They are so sweet!

Love Ollie's ears when he wears a hat! He makes me laugh!

Jaylee coloring in the car. I love the crossed legs!