More Happy Halloween and other Randomness

We had such a fun time at the Ivins Halloween Party this past weekend. Doug even one a prize for the Craziest Costume. No one could really tell what he was unless he was holding Lilly. I thought it turned out pretty cute. His family goes all out at these parties and it's so fun. Here's a picture of Lilly enjoying a cookie before the party.Here's the contest winners. Notice the Man in the Yellow Hat from Curious George. His costume was awesome. Doug's aunt that's standing behind Doug was Hannah Montana. Her costume was great too.Doug's aunt and uncle were nuns and his grandma was a cheerleader. Their costumes were hilarious.Before the party we pressed apples at my parents. That's always a great time. Thomas did a good job manning the press this year.
Last weekend we watched Doug's sisters kids. I found Doug reading them all a story and couldn't help but take a picture. What a great guy.A few weekends ago we went down to the old red barn in Santaquin to go to the pumpkin patch. The girls had a great time on the hayride. We came home to eat cheesy broccoli soup in these yummy pumpkin bread bowls.We also welcomed Doug and his brother JD home from the hunt last week. I think this is one of Doug's favorite things in the world to do. Here's what JD came out with:We made Doug a welcome home sign and Sophia did a great job helping. It's kind of hard to see (maybe you can see it if you enlarge it) but she added and H and i before and after the we and she did a pretty good job writing "daddy" (or drawing musical notes?).
Here's some more randomness:
The cute Lillers with two piggies!
Lilly has also discovered she loves the Elmo chair and could stay in it for hours. Thanks again Lissa!We had a Halloween party for Activity Days last week and had a fabulous time. We have a crazy but fun group of girls.And finally, this is not part of my Halloween costume. This is what happens when you edge the grass with flip-flops on. Not a good idea. At least it wasn't the lawnmower!

Amazing Restaurant Deal

So I'm going to post pictures of our fun family Halloween party over the weekend but that will have to wait. I had to post quick about this amazing deal we found for restaurant coupons. The site is www.restaurant.com where you can chose coupons to restaurants (there aren't too many from many well known restaurants from around here but it is a nationwide website so you may find something awesome in your neighborhood). Anyway, they have $10 coupons for $3 and $25 coupons for $10. Also, until the end of the month if you enter "TREATS" in the discount box you get an extra 80% off. We just ordered some and got about $150 worth of coupons for $10. It's really that amazing. Enjoy!

Say Click!...Take a Pic!

My very talented little bro Jeffy took some pictures of us up the canyon yesterday. I love how they turned out! Thanks to cute Lexie too for being his assistant and putting up with us! You might notice that I changed my hair again. I cut the bottom layer off and dyed the whole thing brown. I like how it turned out. The day after I cut it again I came out of the shower with it all fixed and everything and Sophia said, "Mom, you look hot! Hot like my eggy pieces!" Well thanks Sophs, you sure know how to make a mom feel good. Enjoy the shots (sorry there are MANY of them)!
Here's the talented photographer himself with his cute Lexie
Jeffy later took come pictures of Lilly enjoying her dinner.
Could she not be the perfect poster child for Ikea?

More Halloween Fun!

Sorry I've been so blog happy lately! I had to post a few quick pics of my silly Halloween kids. When I went to pick up Sophia from Preschool yesterday she looked like this:I laughed so hard. Apparently they had learned about spiders and she spent the rest of the afternoon singing "The Big Crawly Spider" to the tune of the itsy-bitsy one. It was hillarious. Her preschool is the best and we are looking forward to the deer hunt... I mean "fall break" tomorrow!

The real reason why I had to post was because Lilly's costume came today:Is she the cutest million dollar baby you've ever seen?!

Here's a bonus of the Lillers. I found her like this yesterday. Apparently she's learned something from watching Sophia color so much. I love how big she thought she was while she was "coloring". She just scribbled and scribbled over and over. It was so cute. She is definitely growing up too fast.

Let the Halloween Fun Begin!

I love FHE in the Fall. We had a fun time last night carving pumpkins followed by sipping hot chocolate while munching on pumpkin donuts (thank you Macey's for only making these once a year - they are too yum that I eat too many!) Sophia and I had fun making a turtle pumpkin (made from a green pumpkin and fun ornamental gourds) and Doug had fun carving a Dora pumpkin. He did a great job and it looks awesome. Thanks for the great pumpkins Grandpa and Grandma!Here's what our cute house looks like now.
The girls and I also had a fun day at home yesterday and hanging out with grandma on her day off! In the morning they had a fun time eating popcorn and drinking water. I love that Lilly is getting so big and good at doing things by herself (like taking off her pants repeatedly).I've had such a fun time with decorations this year. I made these paper mache pumpkins to compliment my cheesecloth ghosts. I just put the paper mache newspaper around small balloons and then painted them once they hardened. I looked for paper mache paste base everywhere and then realized it's made with 2 parts water to 1 part flour with a little bit of salt. No wonder we did it so much in elementary school!
I love this little Halloween outfit. My little niece "Cakes" wore it last year. She was only 3 months old and Lilly is 10 months. I love my little kids! I think Lilly and Kate look so much alike too. Not so much in these pictures but in real life.
Last but not least, I got my haircut this last weekend. Don't mind the triple chin. I hat taking pictures of myself by myself. I'm working on the double chin though. After a VERY LONG hiatus I finally went jogging again yesterday. I made it 2 whole miles! I finally have regained some energy back (maybe the suction cups worked after all). It felt so great to go. Fall is my favorite time to jog because it reminds me of playing soccer in high school. It really is my favorite time of year!

I think I spoke too soon

So my first visit to the chiropractor was wonderful and I was really feeling good about things. After a not so great time yesterday I'm not so convinced. I got there and they did the 7 minute massage which totally killed. She kept pushing down on all the knots in my shoulders for about 10 seconds. It hurt so bad! Then he came in and did some stuff and then put these suction cups on my back to "pull the knots out". What a crock. My back now looks like this but he said that it should go away in 3 to 5 days. He then massaged the inside of my mouth because he said my jaw is too tight (he said he should be able to flap my mouth open and shut without any resistance from me. Can anyone do that?). He totally massaged around my mouth and now it hurts to even smile. It was really weird to have him massage the inside of my mouth (pretty much the underside of my lips and cheeks). It totally killed while he was doing it. After that he put an oxygen mask on me and had me do deep relaxing breathing for about 5 minutes. I'm not saying all chiropractors are bad but I'm pretty sure this ones a kook. I then went to an ear nose throat doc because I've still been really dizzy. I told him that I went to a chiropractor and he asked if it helped. I told him that I thought going and getting a good massage would pretty much do the same thing and he just smiled and didn't say anything. Anyway, so no offense to any of you that are sold on chiropractors. If you know a good one, let me know. And Jen, don't fell bad that this didn't quite work the way I thought it would. I totally appreciated the suggestion and maybe I'll have to go to St. George to see the guy you saw!

Here's a Halloween bonus. I remember making these cheesecloth ghosts in elementary school and thought they'd be fun to make again. You mix 2 parts water to 1 part sugar and then dip pieces of cheese cloth in them and then drape them over a vase or cup. I put aluminum foil on top of the vase to make the arm shapes. I thought it turned out pretty cute.
Also a big HUMONGOUS THANK YOU to my sister-in-law Jenna who showed my Activity Day girl's some cake decorating tips the other night. They had such a blast. I know it was a lot of work for Jenna and I appreciate her so much!

Picture Purge!

Man what a weekend. It started with an awful day Thursday when I took Sophia kicking and screaming (literally) to preschool (she calmed down after 5 minutes and had a fabulous time like I knew she would). I then came home to find our tub filled up again with sewage. I called the plumber but he said he couldn't come until Friday. I called Doug and he said he'd come home and I told him I was fine but my sweet husband came home anyway. He's the best! We went and picked up Sophia from preschool and then went for a nice drive up the canyon to pick leaves and unwind. It was great. Then we came home and did some harvesting and decorated our house for Halloween! I am so excited for the upcoming holidays! This time of year is my absolute favorite! The little pumpkins under the cornstalks say "Boo" in case you can't tell. They were fun to make.We planted these fun little ornamental gourds and they're cute and fun but really small. These ones are about the size of oranges and grapefruits.Friday I went to a chiropractor (thanks again for the suggestion Jen and thanks for watching my kids Erin!) to see if he could help with the headaches and dizziness that I've been having for the past 5 months. He said that he could pinpoint about 5 things that are wrong with me that he could work on over the next few weeks. I am still a little weary of chiropractors but I seriously felt a lot better after that first visit . The massage part alone was totally worth it. Maybe all I needed all this time was just a good massage!

After that I went with Erin to this incredible scrapbook sale in south Provo (they're going to have it again on Nov 6 and 7). The company is DCWV and it's in East Bay kind of by the post office. I got a cute metal sign that says "Bon Appetit" for my kitchen that was $2.50 and packs of 10 cards for $0.50. They really had some good deals. After that I came home to the plumber who spent 2 hours fixing the problem. He said if we wanted a permanent solution we'd have to replace all the plumbing to the main sewer for about $5,000 - $7,000 or we could pay them $140 every 6 mos - 1 year to clean out our pipes. So fun. I then hurried and canned a bucket of peaches and made a batch of raspberry jam and then packed up and headed to Wales.

We had such a fun time there relaxing and listening to conference. It was so nice. The girls had a tremendous time with cousins as well. Sophia and Bridger and seriously joined at the hip and it's nice to not worry about entertaining Sophia when Bridger's around. Here's a spooky spider that greeted us (Bowzer said he missed you Leda). We usually see these down there and they're seriously big and nasty. Fortunately I've only seen them outside.
Lilly had a fun time playing in the playroom upstairs. Her and Sophia loved this rocking horse.Here's Lilly in her tiny bed. Can you see why we needed to get her a bigger crib?Later that night while the guys were at the priesthood session (they also enjoyed a fun morning in the cold hunting for Elk - they saw plenty but didn't get one) we went and played in the barn. We had a fun time taking the kids around for a wagon ride until we saw 3 black widows. We quickly headed to play pool in the cabin and had a great time there instead. It was a weekend for creepy bugs. When we got there we found a wasp nest in the dining room filled with about 50 wasps. We pretty much spent the weekend swatting them. We're glad no one got stung!On Sunday we had fun eating caramel apples (it was the first time I'd eaten a caramel apple off the stick. It was good) and playing tug of war (this was taken right before Sophia got smacked in the mouth with the rope).
Sophia also spent the weekend showing off a good amount of her famous "tude".Finally, here's some more shots of the best of friends cousins. They are too cute together!
They had a fund time making these spooky cats. I love that Bridger's was pink too. Pink and purple are his favorite colors. He is too cute!
Hopefully someday these two will be good friends like their siblings are with each other.
Okay, here's the really finally picture. Lilly wanted me to take this because she thought her daddy would be proud. What a good counter she is. Just like dad!