Holiday Preschool Party

This is the teacher gift Clay ended up giving his teacher. He really liked all the crayons lined up in rows. He gave it to her yesterday. He was so excited to she if she liked it. He said she did.

We had alot of fun at our Holiday Party at Preschool today. Melissa brought supplies for super fun cupcakes.

We made Santa Faces and had fun playing Christmas bingo.

Clay was out of school early for Christmas break, so we held preschool later in the day so I could attend his class and he could participate at the preschool party.

These boys all love hanging out with each other!! It is really funny to hear them talk to each other sometimes!

Happy Holidays

Justin has a goofy smile on his face in this picture, because he is concentrating on the M&M's I gave him so he would sit still. The gingerbread man he has is actually a candle holder. Minus any candle at the moment, but equipped with tasty M&M's. Using the timer option on my camera, placing it on top of my upturned ottoman, and balancing it on a writing desk of Clay's, I was able to get a good holiday picture for us to use. Nate was funny and kept telling me, "You just need one, just one good picture that's all." I really think he just wanted the photo opt to be over with!!

Tooth out!!

Clay has lost his first tooth!! Ok, really it was lose enough that he wanted me to pull it for him. He first brought me these HUGE pliers and I laughed and asked him if he really wanted me to take his tooth out with them. His nervous, confused look was hilarious! I showed him the needle nose pliers and he agreed to use those ones instead. We wiggled it around a bit with me saying "Is that ok? How about this? Are you good?" After three tugs it was out and an amazed/surprised 'It actually happened' look was all over Clayton's face. Such a fun first for him and me to watch him be so excited! He was visited by the Tooth Fairy and received $5 for his very first tooth and also because is was very clean. The Tooth Fairy said all this in the note that she left with such fancy handwriting. She thanked Clayton for such a nice tooth and instructed him to keep brushing!

This all happened November 12th (a Friday night) and since then he has lost another one eating an apple at school (another bottom tooth), and now has one really lose on top!

HA HA HA...says Justin

Look what Justin thinks is sooooo FUNNY!! For almost an hour, this was the most hilarious game to Justin. He would pull down his pants and get a reaction from me and then try to "run" off!

Watching him waddling down the hall with his pants at his ankles, made me laugh so hard, which made him try to get away even faster!! What a hilarious kid, our J J !!

How was your Halloween fun??

We had such a fun time this Halloween. We had a lot of fun things to go and do even though our family decided not to go trick or treating on Halloween this year because it just so happens to be on a Sunday, and that is when all the trick or treating fun here in Illinois is happening. The boys were really good about this and understood that there are a lot of fun things to go and do, and somethings that are more important that we should focus on. Clay even took it upon himself to tell our neighbors that we would not be visiting their houses on Halloween for trick or treating. Oh, great (insert sarcasm)!! I guess when he was asked "Why not?" He replied, "On Sundays we go to church, and church is VERY important to us. It's kind of like a family day thing." I find this out from one of my neighbors, who is really nice, and she thought it was all really cute, but probably thought we were a bit strange but that is OK, strange I guess can be good sometimes. We really didn't miss out on any fun for Halloween though. Here is some of what we did:

We went to a Halloween Carnival, where we played games to win treats and went on a hayride with friends and sat by the cutest Strawberry Shortcake (Hayden W), her pet turtle (Cole W) and their ever so fun mom, Carli W. Although, Justin was being harassed a little by a socially challenge photographer who took multiple pictures of him and didn't talk much. I couldn't even understand which newspaper he was actually working for. I might have to do some research on that one. There could be an overly cute lobster picture out there!! ;)

We attended a magic show at our library, where Hayden was picked to be a little witch volunteer. He had a cheesy smile on his face the whole time!! And there was one trick that magic man still has me stumped on!! Ask me about it sometime. It was crazy, and I was watching his hands the whole time...still confused!!

Our ward finally held a TRUNK OR TREAT!! YEA!! This made is possible for my boys to have taste of trick or treating for this year. Although, you could tell it was even better being there, and getting to play with all their friends. Such a pretty day for it as well and the kids were running around the church having freeze tag games.

My nephew Jordan along with his mom and dad came for the fun too!! Jordan and Hayden are so much fun to watch together. I really digged Jordan's multi-colored hair to complete his Clown look!!

So after all our fun activities our own BATMAN has just one question??

HOW WAS YOUR HALLOWEEN FUN?????

Because I promised!!

Two more pumpkins are carved because I promised Hayden we would. Again they are shrivelling up really fast so if any of you have tricks to keeping carved pumpkins fresh, let us know please!!!

I just want to EAT HIM

Is that not just the yummiest LOBSTER you have ever seen!! I know I could just gooble him right up!

I just love me some Felt, such useful stuff. I was stumped for a while for what to use for the eyes, till I found some good ole white socks to use, two black pom poms, and some batting.

Here is the back side of his glorious Lobster Tail!

Looking good Justin!!

Look out, it's SUPERMAN

Hayden loves Superman!! His hair has gotten just long enough to put a curl to it to complete his look!

Hayden's muscle shirt was fun and crazy to make. I kept getting mad at my zipper foot on my sewing machine. It kept bunching up the thread on the bottom. I checked my tension and that was ok so I tried again and more extra thread!! I finally found out that my thread had looped itself around the top of that little silver bar you need to guide thread up and around. It was looped a good five or six times all hidden like, so there was the extra tension problem I had, sneaky thing. Anyway I found a tutorial here for making the muscle shirt. Although I made adjustments for myself. The tutorial says to use NU FOAM to make the muscle shirt. Well, after finding that at JoAnns and seeing that it would cost $7.00 for about a 12x12 piece, I improvised. Found some flip flops of Clays that were too little and broken, so I cut them up and I had muscle material that cost me nothing. Doing the freezer paper trick to this shirt was just that TRICKY, because of all those great big muscles to get just right, but no mess ups and we have a unique Superman Shirt!! Look at him go!! I just crack up when I see his little legs, covered first in tight blue, almost too small, pj bottoms with too short, red, pj shorts on top!!

Pumpkins!

Carving Pumpkin Time!!!!

These two were carved a week ago, because no one in my house could wait to start carving into those big orange Pumpkins!!!

And now that they already have been thrown in the garbage because of the scrunched up skull face and sunken in bat body, Hayden informed me that we NEED to carve two more just to make our stairs Halloweenee enough !! Good thing I already told Clay and Hayden that we will not be carving them until next week, they (and me) will just have ot be patient!

Didier Farms Pumpkin patch!!

I love, LOVE fall festivals, pumpkin patches, and the beautiful colors all around. So when Clay was out of school Monday for Columbus day, I gave an out of the blue call to some friends to see if they wanted to join us at Didier Farms. Melissa M. Carli W. and Shylo M. all came to enjoy an unusually hot fall day at the pumpkin farm. Me, and the kids always have a great time when we can get together with friends and enjoy the day. I thought the spray painted hay bale tractor was some fun scenery. Tractors will always remind me of home, even if it was a John Deere (Dad is loyal to the Red Case Tractors)

I had to say sorry to little miss Avery, my friend Melissa M. daughter, once Justin sat down and tried to push her aside. I mean look at him trying to stare her down, his hand even looks like its made into a fist. You can't tell he has two older brothers and trying to make his own mark with the group. Goodness, Gracious Mr. Justin.

Look at all those cute veggies!! I have to say that Melissa had the best smile in the whole group though!! Left to right: Hayden W. Melissa M. Clayton C. Avery M. Hayden C. *****Hayden, Lochan, Anika, Clayton, Celtin.

The kids thought the tepees were fun to hang out in.

Besides all the free things that we did: Tepee, bunnies, baby chicks, piglets, and pumpkins to see galore, Didier Farms had a lot of activities that required tickets to participate with. This kind of made the place seem like it was trying to nickel and dime people, but the admission and parking were absolutely free and even with telling the boys "No, we are not riding the dinky rides, or the camel (yes they did have an actual camel to ride), or buying the biggest pumpkin in the place", We still had a good time. OH, minus the fact that Clay did get lost for about 10 minutes. Shylo and I with our kids were looking at the camel, and then went on to the piglets. Apparently, Clay was having a lot of fun during our visit with an old camera of mine and while taking photos of the camel, he lost track of where we were at. After looking for us for a bit, a worker found him and took him to the country store and called my name over the intercom. They said he did really good giving his first and last name, my first and last, providing them with my phone number, which is my cell (that's all we go by) that was in my back pocket, but with all the noise around I didn't hear it and I must have not worn tight enough pants because I didn't feel the thing vibrate at all. Both Clay and I came up with the same conclusion for the day: Being lost is NO fun!! So besides that little hiccup, we bought three small pumpkins and a good carving tool, we made out of there spending $3 and all kids a counted for!!

Thanks to all my friends who came and we could have fun together!!!

Preschool outing

Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10-12 my friend Melissa and I have preschool time for our preschool boys Hayden and Ethan. We have had a lot of fun already with a space day, celebrating seasons, nursery rhyme day, and a some bug fun on bug day. Since Clayton didn't have any school this last Tuesday we decided to visit an apple orchard/pumpkin farm and learn all about the letter A and have an science experiment with our apple seeds from some yummy apples. Five boys total, that always have a blast together. Blake, Ethan, Hayden, Justin, and Clayton. They really loved the MOON JUMP place. You could do some pretty high jumps there.

We had three leaders: Clay, Ethan, and Hayden to direct us through the corn maze, which for a while we did get a little turned around and were in there longer than we had planned, but still fun.

Who doesn't love a huge bin filled with corn to play in!!

It was a really fun preschool outing and each boy had a great time.

9 years

Sept 7th, Nate and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary!! We were able to spend it in Louisiana, which was great because Nate's parents took the kids for us so we could have an entire afternoon to ourselves. We went downtown New Orleans to walk around for awhile and have a nice lunch that ended up being at the Hard Rock Cafe. There were crews everywhere downtown putting up a huge stage and booths for the big kick off of the new football season and spotlighting the Super Bowl champs the New Orleans Saints. Too bad we didn't have tickets to the big game that week but they were completely sold out. After a great dinner of Salmon for me and a rack of ribs for Nate, we had a bit of time to shop before we got the rare chance to see a movie together. In a REAL theater, with great surround sound and stadium seating to die for. No wonder the place was called AMC PALACE!!

Before we left on our trip Nate found a watch that he really liked and was a steal of a deal, so we had that count for his anniversary gift. And then he suprised me with these two beauties for my gifts!

The best gift of all that Nate and I have gotten being married to each other are these three beauties!!!

Love you Nate!! Looking forward to many more years to come!!!

Louisiana Pets

We found many Louisiana pets all my boys wanted to take home and keep. There was a lot of pleading going on with these cute baby pets, but in the end the boys thought it was best to leave them in Louisiana because it was their home and they might miss it. Little Baby lizard. He was so fun because he would crawl around everywhere. Clay said it tickled.

Baby turtle. Justin had fun with this little guy. We gave him stay in the blue bucket hotel, equipped with a king size rock, for a few days but then set him free.

Baby toad? frog? I don't quite know. I guess this one can't really be called a baby because technically he would be still swimming with a tail in the water as a little tadpoles as a baby.

I can't forget to talk about the awesome Cable Trolley Cars we took to go to the insectarium. Hayden was in heaven! He couldn't wait to get on this thing and was almost in a trance during the entire ride, watching the tracks, the people getting off and on and thought it was funny that this type of train had to stop on the Red lights just like cars do. Hayden said, "We have to wait our turn, huh Dad? But, if we were on a Train-train then everyone would see those black and white stick things go down and they would have to wait for us to go fast fast by them"!

Justin was quite content sitting with Nathan gazing outside his window at the passing cars.