Reward... Lost inner blogger to facebook! Will reward anyone that can find her :)

My goodness it has been nearly two months since our last blog!! So much has happened since then, so many activities and good pictures, I will do my best do get all the details in!

Prepping for the festivities is always the fun part. Olivia and Ethan went with their Nana to the farm to pick pumpkins. These ended up too small to carve but what pretty decorations with my mums out front. So for FHE (Family Home Evening) we went to Wally world and picked the biggest pumpkins we could get. I found a kit for E that he could shove pieces in to the pumpkin, it was great, Josh and I had free time to help the older kids carve, and actually Riley D did all of his this year. We had carmeled apples, and I roasted the seeds in the oven, it was messy and tasty! My kids are obsessed with The Nightmare Before Christmas, so Riley carved Jack and Olivia carved Sally, they were very scary ;)

I so wish I had more pictures for this event... Uncle Nathan's Heaven Day... it has been four years since Nathan moved to his new home in heaven, and every year we do our best to recognize that day, usually Josh hikes Stewart Peak, and we try and do some outdoor activity, which was far easier when we lived in Portland (not so cold). This year we were tempted to just skip over it, but on that day I was really inspired to do something fun with the kids on that day to teach them life does go on here, as it does there. So we pitched our 8 man tent in the basement, made a Halloween themed dinner, bat tongue soup, guano guacamole, jack-o-cheese sands, etc... we watched a movie complete with whoppers (Nate's faves) and popcorn. We then sacked out for the night. About 9pm I got a fever and a sore throat, it was yucky, my lungs filled too, so I was zipping the tent open and closed most of the night (why did we do that it's not like bugs were going to get in, oh well!)... sometime around 3am I came in and looked at all my babies sleeping peacefully, Ethan and Olivia to my left and Josh and Riley to my right, I felt so blessed to have them, and that memory.




The next morning was go time we had a Halloween party to be to stat! We always try and stick with a theme, so this year we picked Ethan was our dragon, Olivia was our princess on a flying dragon (complete with lipstick and eye shadow!) and Riley our brave knight. It was so fun! As I said before I was sick, and Riley got home from school and his ear hurt, come to find out his ear tube had fallen out and his canal was full of infectious fluid, or cherry bomb puss balls as his doctor put it mildly. So trick or treating was a quick stint around the block, and finished by dinner at Red Robin. We crashed shortly after 10pm from blood sugar levels plummeting and exhaustion. The important thing is we had the cutest little passel around, and they got eat sugar like it was going to illegal soon.

A Knight would not be who he is with out a lady to rescue!



Ethan doing a jig at the Hayden Meadows Parade, the whole crowd was laughing, what a ham!


November was interesting month. Josh went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for work. We got red taped by Avista Utilities because our furnace had a flame jumping from it, and we were sick the entire month! Even with all the yuck, we were so glad that we had the month to reflect on all of the things that we are thankful for. I decided to make a tree on poster board and the kids would fill a leaf out each day saying what it was that they are grateful for, us too. We filled the whole tree, because no matter how bad one of our days was, we had at least one thing we could say thank you for. I loved that Ethan was always grateful for Jesus, and God, and Grant, his friend in primary!

The event that I most grateful for although is the kids Primary program. It was so wonderful to be a part of something so special. Olivia had a small part in it, and everyone said that you could hear above all the other kids most of the time singing. Riley was asked to give a talk about faith. He read the story of Jesus calming the seas, "Fear ye not." He said how the disciples didn't have faith enough to calm the seas themselves, but they did have faith in Christ. He then went on to say, "You have to think about faith. If you want miracles to happen you have to have faith. I have faith by believing in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ name Amen." I couldn't have asked for a better gift on my ten year baptism day!

We spent Thanksgiving this year with the Stevens and the Pearce's. It was wonderful, the food was so good! We ate and played Scrabble, and ate and talked, and ate! Ethan was the only one unfortunately unable to sit with us, as he had a bad tummy ache from all the anti-biotics, from his very own double ear infection! Other than that it was great, Josh took the kids, Kim, Don, and Mabel down by the creek for a walk and an adventure, while mom, Sandi and I looked through the ads. Yes the ads, Black Friday! Mom and I got up at 4am and went to Wal-Mart, not necessarily to shop, but to watch the people go crazy. We ended up at Michaels three times, and shopped until 2pm! It was some what of a Murphy's law, I saw someone I knew from junior high or high school every where we went, OF COURSE, on the day I didn't show and had gotten only 2.5 hours of sleep, oh well, it was worth it, I loved spending the day with my mom.

It was a fun packed weekend! Now we go on to the greatest event of the year CHRISTMAS...