Halloween Week

WHOO-EE! This is a lot of photos for one blog post!

Festivities began on Thursday night with pumpkin carving. Chancho did the most work for sure. Here he is carving the face on String Cheese's pumpkin. I think String Cheese liked the guts of her pumpkin a little too much! Deedle liked the guts a little bit too little.
Loumy tried to draw a picture of how he wanted his face but then just got out a book and showed us instead.Friday morning Loumy dressed up in his Mace Windu costume for his preschool party. After dropping off Loumy, we raced up to the school (late of course) for Deedle and SC's Halloween parade. Patti held my little skeleton while I took photos of the girls. I also snapped a shot of friend Jenna...... and this cool "old man". I think any parent who would cut their son's hair like this for Halloween must be super cool (I know her and she is).The kids were thrilled to basically have two Halloweens since they partied all day Friday and still had the best-still-to-come on Saturday (the trick-or-treating, of course). The weather was very cold this week, even with some snow. This morning, however, we woke up to sun and a little higher temperatures.

The highlight of Halloween week for me personally was going for a bike ride down on our trail with the entire family! Chancho spent quite a bit of time fixing all of our flat tires and hooking up the trailer for Finn and that type of thing. And if you are wondering whether or not Loumy is riding a girls' bike, he is NOT. It just happens that it used to be his sisters bike and it is purple (just like Mace Windu's light sabre). But it no longer has any girl stickers, rather is now be-decked in Star Wars stickers and is a full-blown Star Wars bike for a BOY. And don't any of you dare tell Loumy otherwise! It was so gorgeous on the trail with the sunshine and the fall leaves and the river...but after about one second I dropped all of the batteries out of my camera and could only find 3 of the 4 so these are the only shots I got.

When we got home, it was FINALLY time to start putting on costumes and makeup. String Cheese would not allow me to do her face white again, but she still looked awesome. The kids were amazingly patient while I took their photos, even though they were super anxious to get their trick-or-treat on.
Deedle, by the way, is an Ice Princess or a Snow Queen. But not an Ice Queen. All month people have been asking her what she is going to be for Halloween and when she told them, "Ice Queen", much to her dismay they would respond, "An Icecream? How cute!" The "icecream" accusation inevitably led to much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. So, I convinced her to call herself "Ice Princess" or "Snow Queen" instead (depending on her mood) and that helped us avoid the "icecream" landmine. I thought the geisha was quite original for SC this year, but at the parade at school I saw 4 of them in second grade alone. Funny how that works. SC didn't care one bit, so I didn't either.

At last the kids were off. Finn and I stayed home to pass out candy while Chancho took the kids around the block. I snapped this shot of one of our neighbors. She always dresses up cool to take her grandkids around for treats.

We finished off the night by going over to Chancho's parents to visit and do a little more trick-or-treating with Uncle Brian (aka Cookie Monster) and Myely-the-amazing-Lobster-dog.
I hope ya'll had as happy of a Halloween as we did!

We Miss You

I first met Diane Pugmire 15 years ago when I took a "Math for Elementary Teachers" class at Weber State University. She was a wonderful teacher. I have never been a math fan, but I truly enjoyed that class. Diane was funny and beautiful and strong. She always greeted me by my first name when we saw each other on campus and several times told me I was going to be a wonderful teacher. When Chancho and I moved to our home here almost 8 years ago, I was thrilled to find out that Diane lived nearby. I would often see her out walking or at church. She was in the Stake Relief Society Presidency. Whenever she came to one of my lessons, she would give thoughtful comments and after wards would always come up to me and say kind things. I don't know of anybody who didn't love and admire Diane. She will be sorely missed. Please pray for her family. They are strong but miss her terribly.

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

About Finn

I can't remember if I've ever posted about how much I love my baby or not, so I thought I should do a little post about him. :) He's had a few rough things this week. First, he got thrush AGAIN. The purple you see is not ink from a pen, as one individual at the store asked me. Rather, it is gentian violet. It works well but is messy! I think Finn has had thrush at least a dozen times. Oh, and speaking of people at the store...an old man stuck his dirty old finger in Finn's mouth. Yep. Finn was sticking out his tongue and the man thought it was so cute he came right over and pushed it in with his finger. I didn't even say anything, I just made a whimpering sound. What else could I do? Another sad thing that happened to Finn this week is the same thing that happens several times every week. He likes to do this "leg-slam" thing. The first time he did it about a month ago, Chancho and I were in bed and thought somebody was banging on the door or something. Finn lifts both legs up high above his head and then just slams them down onto his mattress as hard as he can. Its the funniest (and loudest) thing. He does it over and over again and gets himself turned around and...often...when his legs come slamming down one of them gets caught in between the rails of his bed. I can never let him cry himself to sleep or back to sleep at night because I'm always afraid his leg has gotten caught again. It is often wedged in there really tight and is painful and red when I carefully lift it back out. We were talking about it at dinner and the kids came up with a few suggestions of how we could avoid this problem. First, Deedle suggested we line his crib with plastic. Then when we gently shot down that idea, Loumy brightened up and suggested we use sheets of metal. Hm...do any of you have any other less deadly suggestions? After one of these episodes, Finn will often need a little snuggle time watching sports with dad.

Finn hardly slept on Thursday or Friday night. I didn't know what the problem was. Saturday he started running a fever and I was cursing the dirty-old-man-finger from Walmart. But then I noticed that he would cry when he tried to lie his head down on my chest. I tugged gently on his earlobe and he screamed. Yep. Uncle John took a look for us and sure enough, bad infections in both ears! So, the little man has had a rough week. Poor baby. I think I may have said that a few too many times. Tonight Deedle came up to him in a soft voice and sweetly said, "oh, my little baby! you are so so so poor!"

And now I have a question for you. A few days ago Chancho found an old picture of me being held by my older brother, Aaron. He was amazed at it. He said that Finn looks exactly like me. He said several times the resemblance was "uncanny", which I think is a little overboard because, after all, I am his biological mother. But then the very next day my nephew Adam said, "Finn looks EXACTLY like Chancho. I mean EXACTLY. Its weird!" And that, is not uncanny or weird, either, because Chancho happens to be his biological father. But the vote seems split on who he looks like. Either Finn looks exactly as I did as a baby or exactly as Chancho does as an adult, apparently. So, what do you all think?

SIX YEARS OLD!

It is birthday season around our house. Deedle turned six yesterday. She made it easy on me. She wanted to go out to eat for dinner, so I didn't have to cook. We went to Chuck-a-rama (her choice). For her cake, I just had to bake a mix and she wanted to decorate it herself, which she really enjoyed doing.Her favorite gifts were her "Baby Alive" doll, a hula hoop, and gum ball machine. Here are a few pics from the "friend party" she had on Friday. It was a Halloween/Birthday party so the kids all dressed up.Her birthday turned out to be a happy day. I was very glad about that because she has been going through a bit of a difficult time. She has a lot of frustration and anger issues and I am not sure how to help her. I am praying a lot and am going to try a few things that I hope will help. I just want her to be happy. She has always been rather feisty and my little spit-fire. She is hilarious and makes us laugh. I love to hold her and snuggle her to my heart. But recently she has become more and more unhappy. She is angry and fighting and having a difficult time controlling her emotions for a large % of the day. I am hoping that it is just a phase and that along with some other things we are trying, she will be happy and enjoy her childhood. Here's wishing you a wonderful year, sweet heart! I love you fiercely!

FIVE YEARS OLD!

Loumy turned five on Friday. Because Chancho had to go out-of-town for the weekend, we had a family celebration on Wednesday. We let him choose anywhere to eat. He chose Mcdonalds because he had seen on TV that they had Bakugan things in the kids meals. I don't even know what Bakugan is, but apparently he does. It was followed by presents and a cake that I actually made myself. Can you tell what it is? Hopefully you can detect the light sabre. The brown and red thing is a little cake of Obi Wan and Anakin Skywalker fighting by the lava. It was nothing professional but Loumy was delighted.

I tried to pull off a "friends" party on Friday. Deedle's birthday is tomorrow and they both were so badly wanting to have a "friends" party this year, so I decided to brave it and let them each invite four kids. It stressed me out really bad and I will never again plan to do something like that with out another adult or at least an older-than-seven-year-old-child to help me. Actually, String Cheese was a great help as I called about frantically trying to find somebody to come save me while little kids screamed around the house and Finn screamed in fright in my arms. Luckily after about 45 minutes my niece Jasmine showed up and took care of Finn so I could tie scarves on kids to play "stick the stem on the pumpkin" and the likes. In the end it turned out good, I think. Everybody seemed happy when the party ended.

The next day Loumy scored seven goals in his soccer game. His team won 8-1. It is great that he is so athletic and naturally gifted. Its a little tricky, too, because even he seems to feel a little bad that none of the other kids have many scoring opportunities. I want him to be a good sport and not a ball-hog but at the same time, you can't constantly tell him to hang back because how does that help him develop his talents? Anyway, when it was his turn to sit out he came to snuggle under a blanket on my lap and I whispered, "You are amazing! Did you know you scored seven goals?" He nodded and said calmly, "Well, I think its because I'm five now." Loumy also came up to me this morning and said, "Mom, listen..." and he proceeded to count to 30. I swear only last week he still got confused after 13. This turning five business is major!

Loumy, I love you so much. You are such a light and a joy! The other day you came up to me and said, "Mom, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"
Me: "Um, how about the good news?"
Loumy: pause..."well......actually....I only have bad news."
I started laughing so hard that I don't even remember what the bad news was. I love you, Buddy! Happy Birthday!