Halloween 2012

We love Halloween!  I am the crazy type that talks about Halloween for months.  I usually have costumes planned out well in advance.
We carved pumpkins Monday night.  I have enough Halloween books with Jack-o-lanterns in them that we just tell the kids to look through the books and tell us which face they like and then we make their pumpkin look like that.  Not super creative, but they turned out really cute!

 Devin did Tinkerbell for Anna.

The kids had a good time going to Devin's work.  They love all the candy they get and I love hearing people say how cute they are.

We were lucky enough to have another warm Halloween.  Devin took some great pictures of Frankenstein.

This is his monster pose.

 Can you see him saying, "RAAARRRRR!"

Anna was our cute little witch.

Both costumes turned out cute.

Here they are ready to go trick-or-treating.  You see, NO COATS!!!!!

They had a great time.  Devin took them around the neighborhood.  They met up with some friends on the way and had even more fun.  I enjoyed the quite time and being able to see all the kids in our neighborhood.
We found the perfect place for our pumpkins.  The flowerbeds.  That way people can see them, but they are not in the way.  They looked great!

Happy Halloween!!!

And don't worry, we already have our costumes for next year planned out and they are going to be AWESOME!!!

Anna's 4th Birthday

Anna had a great 4th birthday.  It was more like the 7 days of Anna's birthday, which I am sure she didn't mind at all.  I guess that is what you get with your birthday being so close to Halloween.
We had Anna's friend party on the Saturday before her birthday.  She has talked about this party for months.  She is a party planner!  She picked Blues Clues for the theme.   It was very important that we have fancy napkins and party hats.  I am so glad that she is easy to please.

We picked some simple but fun games.  (Yes the teacher in me gets really excited and plans and organizes so everything can run smoothly.)

We played Pass Blue, just like Hot Potato.  Rather than have the person be "out" if they ended up with Blue, Anna wanted that person to get a treat.

Then we played Blues Clues.  Thanks to my sister-in-law's awesome design I made Handy Dandy Notebooks for all the kids.  They loved looking for clues and then drawing them in their notebooks.

I was smart and made one for Nicholas too.

After that we played Blues Clues Bingo.

Nicholas, who should have been sleeping, was sometimes "really helpful."

It is a good thing Devin was there to help out with Nicholas.  It is also good that Nicholas is so cute!

Our last game was with Shovel and Pail.  I dumped my fuzzy balls out and all the kids had shovels and the scooped them into the buckets.  The object was just to get all the fuzzy balls into the bucket.  They loved this!

We then opened presents and had cake.

It was a really fun party.  I am so grateful that Anna has so many cute friends.  I wish we could have them all over to play more often.  They really are a fun bunch of kids.  I can't even imagine how much fun primary is with all of them.

Anna's birthday was the following Monday.
She was excited to open her presents.

We met Devin at the temple at lunchtime to take her temple birthday pictures.
Anna was being herself.

 Yes, that leaf is in her mouth.  Oh silly girl!

Devin took some great shots.  It was tricky because it was Monday and the gates were closed because the temple is closed on Mondays.  They were also doing some work on the exterior of the temple.  It was pretty interesting watching them rip up a tree.  Even with all the distractions we have some great pictures.

The last two were pretty funny.  I had the thought too bad we couldn't put her up on top of one of the pillars.  Well, Devin had the same idea, and the guts to do it.  I love these two pictures.  I am sure the people driving by thought we were crazy putting Anna up on top.

It is fun to think that she is 1/3 of the way to being able to go into the temple.
That night we had Anna's favorite dinner Hawaiian Haystacks.  Then we had more cake.

The next day Grandma took her to lunch for her birthday and then they celebrated her birthday on Thursday in Preschool.  It was a busy fun week.  She enjoyed every second of it.  Happy Fourth Birthday Anna!

First Snow

We had our first snow storm the week before Halloween and the day after Anna's first field trip.  The kids were so excited to play out in the snow.  We had lots of fun.

 Yes, they think they should eat the snow.

 Anna tried to teach Nicholas how to make a snow angel.

We made a snowman.  The pumpkin head and cornstalk arms made a nice touch.

 Rather than leave one of our pumpkins on the snowman we switched and just added some awesome hair.

All the snow was gone by the afternoon.  Funny Utah weather.  I am glad we dropped everything and just played in the snow.  Hopefully we will get lots of snow this year.