A Pirate's Life For Me

Jensen's pre-school Halloween party was on Wed. He has such a great teacher!

She has been teaching for over 20 years, and she really loves these kids! Brooklyn & Brittany both went to her and loved her (and still do) and Jensen loves her too! She really knows her stuff! I am so thankful for such a great lady! She has has such an influence on so many lives in this town!

For their party this year, they got to go on a field trip to the grovery store. TThe bakery gave them HUGE cookies to decorate, a small pumpkin, and an orange halloween shirt! The cookies were gigantuous!! Jensen brought his home to share. (What a nice guy!) We cut it up like a pie, and he has given each of us a piece of his cookie pie each night after dinner. I still can't believe that the grocery store was so generous!! It just makes me realize again how lucky we are to live in such a great place!!

Jensen was a pirate for his party! (He loves pirates and reading pirate books!!) When he was a pirate on Saturday for the carnival, his shirt was really bugging him! The front of it opens up (kind of like it is missing buttons). It drove him crazy! He held it closed almost the entire day Saturday. He wouldn't put a shirt on underneath it, and I wanted to draw hair on his chest, but he didn't like that idea either! He opted to hold his shirt with one hand and play carnival games with the other. Well, for his party, I asked if he was going to wear a shirt underneath his costume, and he said "No way mom , pirates didn't have enough clothes to wear a whole bunch on the same day." So, again, I suggested we paint hair on his chest. He still wasn't too sure that was what he wanted to do. We painted his goatee on, and then I asked if we could paint his chest - and he consented! I was amazed!! We put little marks, and then drew on some curly little lines! It was so funny!

He is in these pictures, and I tried to zoom in, but it is pretty late, and I am not going to keep adjusting it. I tried!! I don't think pirates are suppose to be cute, but I sure think this one is!

Pumpkin Carving

So . . .on Monday for family home evening we had our traditional pumpkin dinner and carved pumpkins. The kids had been asking for about 2 weeks when they could finally carve their pumpkins, so we carved them Monday, (although we knew they would look decayed by halloween). Every year when we carve pumpkins, we have our dinner in a pumpkin too! It looks kind of nasty, but it really is good, and you really eat the pumpkin too! (Go figure - it tastes just like squash . . .hmmm...) We carved pumpkins while our dinner was cooking in the oven. I don't know how, but we ended up with a lot of pumpkins this year, so each of them carved at least two. They carved one fancy, using stencils, and then they carved a traditional one that they drew the face on. They turned out really cute, and they have been lighting up our porch ever since! Brittany didn't really care for the part where she had to scrape out all the goop, and Jensen just wanted to get the seeds out and not the rest. We had a lot of fun!! After the pumpkins were done, we lit them up for pictures, and had our pumpkin dinner!!

I don't know what happened - but somehow the video part got messed up and it is just blurry!! Sorry!!!

Halloween Carnival

We were so excited last weekend to have Grandad, Just Grandma, Gayla, and Dash come to visit!! It was so nice just to visit and hang out. On Saturday, there was a carnival at the college, so the kids got dressed up so we could go. It was great that my parents got to see the kids in the costumes (since they usually just see pictures). The carnival was more fun that we could even handle. The kids all had a really great time! The funniest part was the pumpkin smash, where a person was blindfolded, and then guided by someone else's voice, to a pumpkin where they got to hit the pumpkin 4 times with a bat. They had fun at the fish pond, limbo, duck pont, music walk, ring toss, and tattoo booth. Too much fun!! Thanks guys for coming to visit!! We had a good time!

Fall Round-up

So, I have really been a slacker lately and haven't posted for a really long time - so I have a lot of posts to make up for. Here's one of them.

During the first two weeks of October, life is a little bit crazy! BJ goes to Colorado for fall round up. For the first ten days or so he helps Ivin's gather their cows, and then him and his brothers gather their cows. They get them all down in the lower valley so they can get them to the corral to sort. From there, they separate the momma cows from the babies, and the babies get on big bull hauler trucks to be shipped off to feed lots (usually in Kansas). Then the moms are preg tested to see if they will have babies in the spring.

These weeks are crazy, and I am pretty much a widow during that time. On the weekends we try to go out and stay at the mountain to help with what we can (usually cooking) and to see BJ. It was nice this year, because he took Jensen for the whole time, and Jensen got to be more involved, and Grandma LouAnn really helped take care of him. The cowboys get up really early, have a good breakfast, then are on their horses from dawn till dusk (or later). Sometimes we get to take them lunch and see them for a minute, but then it is back to work!! When the cowboys get in, it's usually time for dinner, and then it gets serious - it's card playing time!!

There are so many people there - family, friends, sometimes strangers, but we all have such a good time! Although it is a stressful and important time because it is the only paycheck these guys get in a year, it also makes for some of the best memories and traditions!!! Although it is hard to have BJ gone so much, the times we have out there are priceless!!

Halloween Time Warp

We were looking at pictures, and thought it would be fun to post our halloween pictures from the past. We had fun looking at how much all the kids have grown up, and talking about their favorite costumes. We had fun looking at these, and hope you do too!