Pizza! Pizza!

Who loves Federal Holidays? MEEEE!!! Yesterday we honored our service men and women who proudly defend our country by celebrating Veteren's Day. I love any holiday that allows my husband to be home with us! To celebrate daddy being home we went to Rockaway beach to buy a few souvenirs at Flamingo Jim's. We stopped at Pizza hut on our way home to redeem another Book It pizza coupon for Ty! Way to go Ty on your good reading!

"How can you have a sad face when we are eating pizza?"

"But I wanted sausage & olives!"

"Thanks dad! Much better!"

"BIG bit Mara!"

"Where is my pizza?"

"What a pouty face! I guess it's nap time!"

Doctor! Doctor!

Monday Night:

Daddy arrives home from work. I'm busily getting dinner on the table. We are moments away from eating when THUD! WAHHHH! BLOOD! TEARS! AHHHHH! Mara was playing under one of the kitchen chairs and pulled it over on top of her. She bit through her bottom lip and needed to go to the ER. So much for a nice family dinner together and Family Home Evening. Nate took her to the doctor and luckily it wasn't too bad she only needed ONE stich. She was a trooper and thanks to a kind and loving daddy he held her close and took good care of her. After the doctor stitched Mara up Nate took her to the store to pick up her perscription and let her pick out a treat: fresh rasberries! yum!

Tuesday Afternoon:
Caleb has been sick for over a month now with ear infections and 'bright red beefy 3x's the size tonsils' (as the doctor put it). He has been on three different antibiotics. Our doctor refered us to a Ear, Nose, Throat doctor near Portland. I went expecting the worst: surgery, probably tubes in his ears. The doctor came in went over Caleb's chart asked a few questions and then looked in his ear. It looked fine. Looked in the other ear, again fine. Gagged my poor kid with a long tongue depresser to check out his throat: looked great! WHAT? How could this possibly be?
The Power of the Priesthood and the Power of Prayer! On Sunday I asked Nate to give Caleb a blessing. There is no other explanation than divine intervention! I am indeed grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who hears and answers my prayers. I am also grateful that He would be so kind to bless Caleb and heal him. I am grateful for the priesthood in my home and for a wonderful husband who holds the priesthood and blesses his family with it. This was nothing short of a miracle. Miracles do happen. God is real. I am grateful for my faith that allows me to trust in God. He Lives and He loves all his children.

Halloween Traditions

I know! I know! How many Halloween posts can one blog have?
Well, when you celebrate the holiday for a week--that's seven!
But this will be the last one I promise!

Traditions are funny! We just do them why? Because it's a tradition!
And carving pumpkins is a great tradition!
It's ooohy and gooohy! And allows us to be creative.
Plus we like to bake the seeds and eat them! Yum!

Ty is ready to carve his pumpkin!
Both Ty and Mara drew on a paper what they wanted their jack-o-lantern faces to look like. Then Nate helped them carve their pumpkin to look like their drawing.

Grandma Lewis helped clean out the pumpkins!
Mara is smelling the pumpkin!
There's something about the smell of carving pumpkins that takes me back to my childhood days! I love that smell!

And here is the finished product! Ta-Da!!

Ty's Jack-o-lantern!

Mara's Jack-o-lantern!

Another tradition: Trunk-or-treating at the church!

This is a great tradition!

And it sure beats going door to door in the cold and rain!

These are my favorite costumes of the week:
We have a knight, who is saving the princess, from the dragon! Perfect!

We even had hot-dogs and chili at the trunk-or-treat.
What is that on my face?
Part of my costume! That and I wasn't feeling very well and didn't want to pass along my germs!

Here is the Knight pumpkin bowling!

Looks like the dragon stole the knight's sword! Watch out daddy!

Now Caleb looks like a dinosaur with a dinosaur bone!

Here is the gang:
The couch, the knight, the princess, the dragon and...."Just say NO to SWINE FLU!"
Not only was I trying to keep my germs to myself I was also preventing myself from getting the swine flu at the party!

Ty was so tired at the end of the night he couldn't possibly walk out to the car!
His grandma had to give him a ride!
Where is the Knight's horse for a time like this?

I must say we had a VERY VERY FUN Halloween this year!
I think we have too much candy but hay~Halloween only comes once a year-or several times in one week for us!
It's all fun and good!

Costumes, Costumes and More Costumes!

I know! When are the costumes going to end? NEVER! It is so much fun dressing up the kids!

Here we have our cute little dragon! I stuffed him in this darling outfit--it's actually two sizes too small! But I was determined to have a dragon on halloween!

Well it's actually a dinosaur--and speaking of too small: Ty said when he tried on his dinosaur costume "something is wrong with my costume, the legs won't stay down!" He sure has grown in just one year!

'How much is that doggy?'

Mara the little lion!

Princess dancing Mara
Hula-Hula- Ma-ah!
These teeth Ty is wearing is actually a noisy whistle he got from the library. Cute but kind of obnoxious after a while!
Here the gang is ready to go out trick-or-treating! Grandma and I took the kids to the downtown Tillamook to all the businesses to do some trick-or-treating.
I think Ty only said 'trick-or-treat' one time! He just showed them his bag and wouldn't talk to strangers!
So glad Grandma was there to help us! It was pretty crazy but lots of fun. I especially liked running into friends and people I knew and seeing such cute costumes!
Caleb wasn't much a fan of trick-or-treating! He looks happy now, but some of the costumes scared this little doggy and he wanted to be carried most of the way!

Field Trip: Canceled!!

Thursday was also a special day because I was able to spend the afternoon with Ty's kindergarten class. They were suppose to go on a field trip to the pumpkin patch but it was canceled because of the rain. (I know! Hello?! It's Tillamook people!) Ty was extra disappointed because his grandma bought him dinosaur boots that he was so excited to wear to the pumpkin patch--he wore them to school anyway! We still were able to have a pumpkin party in the class room and did lots of fun activities!

The pumpkin man (a teacher from the high school) came and brought a few pumpkins and talked all about pumpkins--how they grow, their genes, research of pumpkins! It was a little over the kindergartners heads', but still interesting!

This is where Ty sits! It was so fun to see him in action in his class room! He is one smart little kid and it was fun to watch him sing the songs and interact with his class mates!

Here are three pumpkins the teacher brought. He cut the pumkins in half and had the kids count the pumpkin seeds to see if the big pumpkin and the little pumpkin had the same number of seeds. The results: pretty close to the same number!

It was fun counting pumpkin seeds, but glad I only have to do that once! Our pumpkin half had 178 seeds!

And guess who came for a visit: Smokey Bear? What does he have to do with pumpkins? We don't know! It was kind of random, but oh well! I guess he just decided to show up! (And NO--it isn't Nate in that costume although he's done it before and YES that is Ty's teacher Ms. Swisher!)

One of the activities the children did was to make pumpkin pie. Well, not an actual pumpkin pie! A pumpkin treat! With pumpkin pie, pudding, spices and put on a graham cracker! Pretty tasty!

The next thing we did was make ice-cream. They put cream and sugar and vanilla in a ziplock bag with salt and ice. Each of the kids took turn shaking it around until it was ice-cream! Delicious huh Ty?! They also made butter: shaking a container of cream with a marble in it. Each table had their own container that they passed around shaking it until it turned to butter. Then they spread the butter on a cracker for the kids to taste--I think I prefer cheese over butter on my crackers but it was still fun to watch the kid shake-a-shake-a!

Last but not least was the pumpkin patch on the school grounds. It was cute to see all the pumpkins out on the grass and watch the kids go around and search for their perfect pumpkin!

Which one is Ty going to choose?

Kennedy found a very dirty pumpkin!

They each put their pumpkin in their sack to take home. Then the teacher had them each put their pumpkins in their backpack! It was hilarious to watch a bunch of little kids with pumpkins on their backs weighing them down! They could barely walk!

What a fun day at school! Two happy kids found their pumpkins!

"Arrg Matey, Bob, Miss Lady"

Another fun day of dress up! Thursday the kids dressed up again for story time at the library, only this time mommy and Caleb stayed home while Grandma Lewis took the pirate and lady bug! It was bliss! Caleb took a great morning nap and I enjoyed having a little quiet time getting ready for the day and cleaning up the house! It was so nice and quiet! I love it! The kids had a fun morning with their grandma!

Bob the Builder!

Miss Lady Bug!

Pirate Ty & gang!