Halloween...bleh

Ugh. I don't like this "holiday" much. Just call me a Halloween Grinch (thanks to my cousin Lorna and Dr. Seuss for the name).

I don't like the blood, gore or general mayhem. There are a few things I love about the day, though.

I love the treats. I eat way too much candy. Maybe my stomachache is adding to my grumpiness. These are the Gingersnap Jack o' Lanterns I sent to Kelly's class party.

I love carving pumpkins. Thanks to the Elder's Quorum who threw a fun party Friday night that included a pumpkin carving contest. My owl won me a big chocolate bar :)

I also love seeing the kids dressed up and having fun. I usually (except late at night while I type, apparently) suppress my bad mood and try to have fun for their sakes. Aren't they adorable?

Naomi the Princess

Michael the Knight

Kelly the Cowgirl

Gwen the Moon

Heather the Greek Goddess

Rachel the Hippie

From the Last Few Weeks

Bertie loves these little whiffle balls. He loves them to death. He has destroyed at least five and the time from destruction to destruction is getting shorter. Last time I went to the bird farm, I asked how much a case was. They gave me a 10% discount of the per ball price.

Stan's sister Marcia and her boys came for a visit. Heather took pictures one afternoon in the front yard.

Alex

Cameron

We had craft night for FHE and Rachel made this lovely charm bracelet out of my bead stash.

I like how it coordinates with her manicure!

While I'm on the subject...

A couple of things I wish I'd known about Pinterest before I started:

You don't have to follow all the boards of the people you follow. If you are not interested in that particular board, go to their name and unfollow just that board.

It isn't rude to change the description of the pin if you repin it.

To "mention" someone, just type the @ sign into your description and them their name. They'll be notified, so if I want to show Summer something, that is what I do. It is also good to mention a pinner if you are pinning their work.

My favorite tip - when you pin something from a website, select the wording from the original site you want and it becomes your description text - easy peasy.

Finally, make sure if you pin something from a website that it's a permalink. It is frustrating to come across a fascinating project, follow the link and it goes to a blog post that has nothing to do with the pinned project. I also try to remember to be thorough and check the things I repin before I add them to my boards to make sure the link is good.

Happy Pinning :)

Our New Addiction

Rachel is probably the least into it. I'm not saying who is the most addicted, but we are all having fun! You can tell a little bit about each of us by looking at our boards. Leave a comment if you want an invitation :)

Amy

Summer

Rachel

Heather

Gwen

Kelly

Heather the Scholar

Heather's principal sent her this note -

We are so proud of her :)

Michael is Seven

Happy Birthday Michael!!!

Our big boy is getting bigger :) He asked for fish tacos and nopales tacos for his birthday dinner. Since I was not feeling very adventurous, we stuck with canned nopalitos. Unlike fresh nopales, they were, well, canned, so Stan fried them up with some chicken. You can see the chicken nopalito taco filling in the lower right hand corner above. It was delicious.

Rachel baked his cake, made the frosting, and then I took over and decorated it, if you can call it that! That is a sugar "M" in the middle. I think I could submit every one of the cakes I have ever "decorated" to Cake Wrecks and get some kind of lifetime achievement award :)

We added seven sparklers, lighted them as fast as we could and quickly realized that his nifty candles cheated him out of the "blow them all out and get a wish". They blew themselves out!
It was still fun :)


So, just a quick update on Michael. His favorite color is shiny red, he has lost two teeth, he bought himself a pocketknife with the birthday money his big sister and grandparents sent him, he is good at figuring out how things work and his favorite parts of school are the art classes and the field trips!

Friends

Last week, Michael, Naomi and I met some friends for lunch and a trip to the museum. Here are all the kids on the marble stairs. It was so much fun to spend time with Victoria, Issac, Rebecca and Benjamin :)

Saturday, Kelly had some friends over to work on a school project. They have the assignment to write and perform a puppet show. They have two scenes, and they finished the backgrounds.

We are so grateful for friends. They make life sweeter :)

L.A.County Fair

Last month, Michael, Nomi and I went to the L.A. Country Fair. It was well into the hundreds and one of the hottest days of the year, so they are sweaty in every single picture. We stayed until the two big water bottles that I brought were empty and we then left :)

We saw some bees and bought some honey sticks.

The kids got up close to a baby alligator.

This display was my favorite exhibit at the fair :)

The fair had these picture boards ALL over. After my two compadres caught on, they had to stop at every single one they saw. here are my favorites (out of many). Enjoy!

Camping

Here's my last August catch up post. Early in the month, we drove through hours of traffic to go camping at the beach. Someone in the back seat took this while I was driving on the PCH.

We set up camp Thursday night, ate Dutch oven enchiladas, and cheesecake I made at home. We sat by the fire a while, packed up all the food and went to bed. I was really glad we were careful about putting dinner away, because some raccoons and...

...either an army of rodents, or one very persistent muddy squirrel came looking for food in the night.

One of the days we were there, I took Rachel and Naomi shopping and Stan took the other kids hiking. I think Heather took these pictures -



Friday night, we had another, bigger fire and roasted things. Hotdogs, sausages...

...marshmallows...

...bananas stuffed and wrapped in foil...

(before)

(after)

...and pickles! (that was not my idea)

We spent as much time as we could on the beach.






We missed having Summer with us, but it was a fun trip.

Heather's Photography

Barefoot Croquet for FHE

Now that I am caught up for July, I am working on August. One evening during that hot month, we took advantage of the long daylight hours and played croquet on the front lawn. Rachel, Heather and I took these pictures...