Oh Christmas Tree!!

Our Christmas tree experience was a little different this year than years in the past. For the past three years we have gone up the mountains or in the forest somewhere and cut down our own tree. This year however because of several reasons we were unable to do this and had to buy a pre-cut Christmas tree from the local grocery store! It was beautiful and had a wonderful evergreen fragance, but it still wasn't the same as cutting down our own tree!

Caleb and Carder helped me put the lights on the tree! 

Carder was fascinated by the brightness which tangled him up! 

Then it was decorating time! It sure was nice to have good helpers! 

Little Miss Christmas herself! 

After the tree was decorated we read stories by the tree. 

Oh how this little boy loves books! He could read books all day long!

He just loves to read and read!! He was excited to find new Christmas books in the Christmas boxes!

November News!

It is Christmas Eve night, Santa is on his way, I can't believe how busy life gets! Where did the entire month of November go? As a quick recap of our month here are a few pictures from the past few weeks.

Colored rice?! Who knew a bucket of rice could be so fun?! It looks like a mess, but my kids love playing in rice. Carder hasn't quite grasped the concept and likes to dump it everywhere but it sweeps up quick and goes right back in the box!

 Speaking of in the box Carder thought it would be more fun to get in the bucket! 

And while we are at it why not get in the ball box too?! Actually Carder had a little help from daddy on this one! 

Popcorn time at Grandma's! 

Sleepover at Grandma's! 

Snuggling with the cousins! 

Playing in the leaves! 

Carder didn't really like playing in the leaves! It really wasn't his thing!

 

 

 Another home improvement project done! We took on a few rooms in the basement! We finished the guest room and bathroom!

 I love the new carpet, makes this room feel new!

 Love this Caluba!

 I find random pictures on my phone all the time that my kids have taken! Wacky pictures really, but it does give me a little perspective from their point of view! This is of me getting ready for the day!

 Yum! Blue suckers!! Messy but tasty!

What a bunch of turkeys!! Cute cute! We painted turkey masks at Mimi's on Thanksgiving! 

Oh look at those darling turkey kiddos! 

Then at Grandma Lewis's we went on a turkey hunt and found this turkey! It was full of supplies to make turkey hats! 

 Some more cute turkey kids!

More messes...

Yum! Oreo cookies!

"What happened to my hand?!" Carder is cute when he is messy!!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween this year was a lot of fun! The kids were so excited about their costumes and about being STAR WARS this year! I was super excited because the total cost of all four costumes were less than $20! That's pretty good for an entire family! We had Princess Leia, Darth Vader, Yoda, and Obi Wan Kenobi! (Excuse the poor pictures off my phone! I left my camera at my parents!!)

Our first Halloween Celebration was at the church for our soup and bread night. 

Such cute kids! Oh man are they not just the perfect Star Wars characters?  I love how they all turned out!

Caleb's Preschool Halloween Party! I sent Caleb down to get his Halloween costume on and he came up dressed like a ninja! Cute! 

 

School Halloween Carnival: doughnuts on a rope! 

 

My sweet baby yoda! I love his costume! Thanks to the sweet ladies at the church who helped me sew his costume at sewing class!! 

Halloween Party at the school! Obi Wan and Yoda! They sure are darling little guys! 

My little Princess Leia! It was fun seeing her in the parade! 

Ty's class at school! I was able to help out in Ty's class on Halloween. Caleb and Carder joined in on the party and had a great time! 

Trick-or-Treat! We bundled up and went to all the neighbors and most of our ward! Carder loved the walk around the neighborhood and had no idea about all the candy we were getting!!

Ty as Darth Vader! 

Princess Mara as Princess Leia

 Obi Wan Kenobi as Caluba!

 And Nate and Erica?! Well, this is what we were thinking we would go as!! We even found the box and wanted to go for it! But realistically we knew it would not be possible to take care of four kids and us stuck in a box! 

So instead I was STARS and Nate was WARS!! I love it! We kept forgetting to take our picture when we had our shirts on! So this is as good as it gets! My favorite thing about our costumes was this was Nate's third Halloween in a row that he used this black shirt for his costume!!

Caleb's phantom pumpkin! 

Mara's personal design pumpkin! 

Ty's Grim Reaper pumpkin! 

Carder's cute decorated pumpkin!

Cornbelly's Corn Maze!!

The second day of our Fall Break we spent it at Thanksgiving Point at the Cornbelly's Corn Maze! The best part about this activity was being with our cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents! Blake and Maren flew into town to visit and it was so much fun seeing them! 

Princess Mara riding her beautiful pony! 

Three Princesses riding in their carriage!

They had a perfect place for girls to dress up, ride in a carriage, and pretend to be princesses!

Ty and Caleb were thrilled with the life size chess board...the only problem was trying to set it up with a bunch of little kids around! By the time they set it all up other kids came and took the pieces away! They were rather disappointed!

Carder loved the slides and doing what the big kids did!

The giant trampoline was lots of fun!

Even Carder loved to bounce!

Mara and Anna had a fun time jumping!

Ty had all the right moves!

Next it was the bouncy houses and slides!

These are Caleb's favorites!

Ty liked riding the tractors! 

Captain Caleb driving the fire truck!

And then we entered the corn maze....never to be found again! 

Well, at least that's how we felt! It was pretty tricky even with our map, GPS systems on our smart phones, and trivia papers! Several times we felt like we were never going to get out!

Ty and Anna led the way! Everyone took a turn being the leader! I think we finally had to cut through the middle of the corn maze to get out, otherwise we would have never gotten out!

Playing in corn is one of my kid's favorite things to do! I have a box of corn at home that I let my kids play in, but it is nothing like this!

It was a huge room of nothing but corn kernals! Carder thought it was great!

They could have played here for hours, but because there was so much to do we kept hurrying them along!

Caleb was buried in corn!

Ty was so excited to do the rock climbing wall! He made it to the top!

Papa and Caleb had a race on their gunny sacks down the slide! I think Caleb won!

Mara wasn't wearing the right climbing shoes so she went barefoot instead!

Caleb is sure a good little climber! Everyone was impressed how high he could climb!

We all cheered him on to reach the top, he almost did!

Who's Papa's buddy?! Carder! One of Carder's new words is Papa!

Kate, Mara, and Ty going down the slide. I thought it was cute Mara and Ty went down together!

Love this Caleb boy! We almost lost him at Cornbelly's! I'm so glad we found him. It is a terrible feeling to lose a child at a busy place! Grateful he was watched over and protected!

Two rule breakers taking a time out!!

Fun fun family times! It was such a great day! We could have spent more time here but glad we had the time we did! We loved going on the hay ride and seeing all the fun fall festivities! It was a beautiful fall day and a perfect way to celebrate Fall Break!