Halloween Fun!

For such a unimportant holiday Halloween sure does take up a good chunk of our October!

While I was at Time Out For Women Rich took all 5 kids and braved the Fall Festival at the school.  Everyone said that they had a good time.

The next week Rich was out of town so I took the kids to the ward Chili dinner and trunk-or-treat.

William went off with his buddies while the other three boys stuck together and trunk-or-treated.  Lydia was content to sit near me and pass out candy.  But then she realized what was going on and that she could get candy.  I took her to about 5 cars and she was content to sit and eat her sweets.

A few neighbors decided it might be fun to throw a block party.  It was a fun time to let all the kids run around and play games while the adults chatted.  Henry helped me decorate our corn hole... he painted the ghost and wrote "boo!" all by himself.  I painted a spiderweb on the other one.

On the last day of the season we took the family back to the Orchard for a tractor ride.  William decided he didn't want to join us so we left him home to do chores.

We also carved our pumpkins.  This is one of my favorite traditions--especially now that the boys are old enough to do most of the work.  Even Lydia helped out!

On Halloween I got to help with Henry's class party.  We had a great time!

For dinner we had our traditional jack-o-lantern pizza.

Rich took the kids out trick-or-treating while I passed out candy.  Lydia only went around the cul-de-sac before coming home to bed.  She did munch on some cheese puffs (her favorite these days) and help me pass out treats.  In fact, she is so cute that when a group of kids from our ward knocked on the door she held out her bucket to show them her loot.  Several of the kids then put a treat into her bucket!  Only such a cute little girl would manage to get trick-or-treaters to give treats.

Phew!  I'm so glad that Halloween is over for another year!

Time Out for Women

I have been looking forward to going to Time Out For Women for months.  I got the opportunity to work the event which was nice since it came with free tickets!  A few weeks before the event Amy decided to fly out and attend with me!  Since I was volunteering I had to get to the venue really early.  Amy was a good sport and came with me and just hung out while she waited for me to be done with my responsibilities.

Rich was a good sport to take care of the kids while I was gone Friday night and all day Saturday.  (And it was a busy weekend... Fall Festival, a Boy Scout merit badge clinic, and a flag football game!)  There were so many good messages shared over the 2 days--and I'm so glad that Amy was there to enjoy it with me!  It was fun to have Amy here... even if it was short!

Happy birthday, sweet Lydia!

Oh, sweet, silly little Lydia.  Where do I even begin?  Lydia loves her big brothers and tries her best to keep up with them.  I'm sure that she picked up on making silly faces from them.

She has also started to say their names and likes to make them laugh.  She loves playing at the park in the morning but often thinks that she needs to follow the boys to school.  She has a mind of her own and knows what she wants.  I'm sure she thinks she is big and yearns for the independence that her brothers have but the difference is that they won't run into the street at the playground or wander past mom's invisible boundaries.  But thank goodness Lydia still loves to cuddle.  I can't get enough of her snuggles or even just the way she touches my arm as I sit next to her on the couch.  Life just wasn't complete without her in our family.

Since Rich was going out of town on Sunday we decided to celebrate a day early. It's hard to believe she is 2.  Time needs to slow down just a little bit. Lydia loved opening her gifts but her brothers were in much more of a hurry than she was.  She really was content to sit there slowly ripping off the wrapping--the boys, not so much.

 It was fun to get her some more girly toys--which she loved.  She has had fun wearing her new dress-ups (from Grandma) and jewelry.  And carries her ballerina bear (from Aunt Amy) all over the house.

We also got her a Little People house which turned out to be a huge hit!  I find her playing with it all throughout the day!

After presents we did cake.  Lydia wasn't quite sure how to blow out the candles so it was a good thing she had some helpers!

Happy birthday sweet girl!

Pumpkin Patch

After looking at the calendar we realized that this past weekend was going to work best to head to the Orchard for donuts and pumpkins.

Our first stop was apple cider donuts before the line got too long.  This is my favorite treat in the fall.  They remind me of apple picking when I was growing up.

Everyone had a fun time in the straw maze.  The boys all said it was better than in years past.

Then we picked out our pumpkins!  We always seem to go at the end of the season and there is not much selection.  But because we went so early this year there were tons!  The boys had a hard time picking the "best" pumpkin.

All the boys helped Lydia get a small pumpkin for herself.  And Henry was so sweet to hold her hand while they looked!

Once we filled up the wheelbarrow we headed out.  We had a full Saturday ahead of us!

We had to grab a quick picture with the tractor... and we will be back later for a tractor ride around the orchard!

Rose Garden Fairy

I went outside to take a picture of all our roses to show my mom.  I didn't realize that Lydia had followed me out with her fairy wings on!  It just seemed perfect to have a little fairy in with my roses.

Scenes from Conference Weekend

We love General Conference weekend!  It is so uplifting to listen to the Prophet and other leaders of our church for an entire weekend.  This is a little of what conference looked like at our house this year.

(Between sessions outside getting our energy out.)

Lydia just thinks it's awesome to take a thousand pictures with our phones.