Raking Leaves

It's that time of year again, when many, many (but of course, not all) leaves fall to the ground. There are 9, yes 9 large, mature trees in my front yard, which I really love during the spring and summer months (except the pears - I don't love those- ever).  But come fall, all of those trees drop a lot of leaves and then it is time to rake.  Of course, I expect my kids to help in this little endeavor. This morning, when the task was presented to them, you would have thought we told them we would be hanging them from the trees by their fingernails.  There was a lot of crying and yelling and even some hitting, I think, because of the fear that someone might end up doing more work than someone else. Seriously, it was ridiculous.  However, I did not give in because, as I tell my kids all the time, I expect them to do hard things and, what do you know?  They survived.  I don't quite know what Samantha planned to accomplish with a shovel, but at least she was out there "attempting" to help.  And Jonas was actually quite useful.Once they remembered the fun of jumping in a leaf pile and burying each other, they realized it wasn't so bad.  Here's Samantha in the pile.
Can you find 3 Stringhams in the leaves?  (Clearly I was doing most of the work at this point, since they were all in the leaves.)
I had to convince them that the leaf pile could only get bigger if they actually helped me rake up the leaves.
Finally, Duffy got brave enough to join in, so here's 4 kids buried in the leaves.  You have to look pretty closely to find Samantha and Jonas.
Too bad there are still some leaves in the trees that are just waiting for the lawn to be clear again.  I am still so grateful for these beautiful fall days!

Fall Fun

We have been enjoying this beautiful fall weather. I am finding it hard to stay inside, since I know its only a matter of time before it will be too cold for me to want to venture out at all. So, when our friends, the Dunfords, invited us to join them at Sugarhouse Park we jumped at the chance. The girls all enjoyed playing on the playground and feeding the ducks and geese.
(Anyone know what I have to do on my camera to get rid of the blue hue that all of my photos seem to have lately?) Never mind, I think I found it.

Ironic

I am finding humor in the fact that Shawn, as Young Mens President will be attending Standards Night tonight, and then will leave to go play with his band at Liquid Joe's (a bar). He's calling it missionary work, I call it funny.  Anyway, I have tickets if anyone wants to go and hear them play at 9:00 tonight.

The Disneyland Miracle

Warning: Long post

Now, there are a couple of reasons why I call this post the Disneyland miracle. First of all, Shawn has always been anti- Disneyland.  I really didn't think we would ever go.  It's not his sort of vacation.  (Of course, I use that term very loosely because going anywhere in the car with 5 children really isn't a vacation no matter how you look at it.) But anyway, no matter how many times it was brought up I knew it was something he didn't want to do.  Then one day, out of the blue, he said, "I've got a couple of days where I don't have anything scheduled.  We should go to Disneyland."  What??!! This is his very busy season at work, and he has sometimes gone for days without seeing the kids because of his schedule.  I think he decided this would be a good way to spend a little time with the family.  Believe me, I wasn't going to argue with him.  So next, we asked the Boydens if they wanted to go with us, because they are always fun to do things with and I knew my kids would enjoy going with them. Plus, there was a pretty good chance they could pull it off on short notice.  Then we also invited Rob and Michelle thinking there was no way they would come on such short notice.  (I clearly underestimated Rob's hatred of all things Halloween.  He was more than happy to leave costumes and trick-or-treating behind. I'm pretty sure if it were a different time of year he might not have been so willing.)  We also invited Matt and Anne and Jake, hoping they could come but on short notice what can you expect?  So with the Boydens, Marshes and us, we had 18 people heading to Disney land. (Sadly, our camera was out of battery for the big group photo, so you'll have to check with Katie or Michelle for that shot.) The next reason for the miracle, is that my kids whine and complain so much about how long they are in the car just driving to St. George we thought we could never make it all the way to Anaheim alive.  They surprised me.  They were great travelers, both coming and going!  (And no vomiting even -which tends to happen altogether too often on long car rides with some of my kids.) And thirdly, we all had a great time.  And that was a miracle in and of itself.We all found rides that we loved. The teacupsThe Maliboomer. Rob, Rob, Shawn and Samantha loved this one but Jonas and I didn't like it so much.All of the kids liked these sit in a vehicle, go up in the air and fly around rides - even Megan.And of course, who doesn't love Splash Mountain?My personal favorite was the California Screamer. Rob, Shawn and I rode this repeatedly and loved it every time.  I have always loved rollercoasters.Of course, a lot of these rides wouldn't have been possible if not for the willingness of Katie, Josh and Michelle to take care of our kids while we rode.  So thank you to all of you.  (It was great to be there with other people so we all could have fun.  Although, I think the Stringham family tended to slow everyone else down  - so we apologize, but thanks anyway for all the help!)

There were lots of character pictures...

 The girls with Tinkerbell:

The boys with Pluto:
Peter was fascinated with Dale's nose and everytime he touched it, Dale reached up and touched his nose too. He didn't quite know what to make of it, but it was cute to watch.When Shawn and Michelle took the girls to wait in line to meet princesses, I expected a lot of photos like this:
But why wasn't I surprised to see these photos of Shawn and the princesses?I always thought he liked Belle, but he's smiling pretty big there standing next to Cinderella.        

Our kids are not the most resilient, and later in day 2 they started melting down a bit. (As seen by this photo of Jonas.)  

There were lots of tears from Megan and a full on smack- fest between Jonas and Samantha that we didn't capture on film. There just wasn't enough magic in the kingdom to keep everyone happy, so we took off for the beach. (I'm pretty sure this was also because Shawn couldn't stand the thought of being that close to the ocean and not going there.  Deep down, he was really meant to be a surf bum.  Too bad he has a family to support.)
The Boydens joined us, and the kids were thrilled.  They loved playing in the sand and the waves.  Lauren and Amelia both got soaked.  Shawn bought a boogie board and Lauren especially enjoyed using it. (My deepest apologies to Lindsey, who did not want to go to the beach and wanted to stay at Disneyland.  I probably owe her some donuts for ruining her day.  But we still had fun.)

After the beach, we put our tired kids to bed at the hotel and then Shawn and I returned to the park with the Boydens for a few last rides and to say goodbye to the Magic Kingdom before we had to leave in the morning.All in all, we had a great time and we're glad we went ahead and did it despite our reservations. Thanks Marshes and Boydens for joining us in our adventure! Now did someone mention Hawaii for next Halloween?

Halloween

Since we made different plans this year for Halloween, there was no trick-or-treating and I thought we were off the hook for costumes, but it turned out that there was still at least one party for each of the kids to attend.  Megan was a witch for her ballet party.
Peter only got dressed up because I love this little spider costume and figured if he didn't wear it now, we might never use it again.  All the kids since Samantha have worn this as babies.


And somehow, though Amelia dressed up as 2 different things for both a ballet party and a primary party, I didn't get any other pictures.  (What kind of a mother am I?!) She was a green dinosaur for one and I can't remember what else.  Jonas was a graduate, and Samantha was Alice in Wonderland.  And again, no photos.  Ah well.  We still have memories.  So here are the pictures from Halloween Day.For the most part since we spent the day at Disneyland and at the beach with some of our favorite people, I'd have to say we didn't miss out on too much. (Except, there are no little candy bars for me to steal from my kids' stash - and I definitely am missing that!) More on Disneyland in the next post.

Pumpkin Carving 2009

One of the best things about living in our neighborhood, is all of the fun neighborhood parties.  One family hosts a neighborhood Easter egg hunt and breakfast, we have our Summer Solstice Party, sometimes there is a 4th or 24th of July parade and dinner, a fall dinner around Labor Day, a Halloween party and generally a Christmas open House.  (It's a good thing we like our neighbors, I guess.)  Anyway, last night was the annual Halloween Party at the Murdock's house.  They set up their garage and yard  for pumpkin carving.  They fill their garage with leaves and some of the coolest Halloween decorations around, set up tables and chairs, provide carving tools, and big bins to dump all of the pumpkin guts in.  There's a fog machine, a dry ice bubble machine, etc.. etc...  Another neighbor brings their soft serve ice-cream machine so everyone can have cones, and this year they also showed up with a hot chocolate machine.  Of course, there is also a delicious dinner of baked potatoes, with homemade chili and a variety of other toppings plus whatever the rest of us bring to share.  My kids generally put a little "big and strong food" on their plates and then promptly begin filling up on ice cream and other desserts. 

 After the pumpkins are carved, they are put on display with numbers and everyone votes on their favorites in different categories.  Needless to say, it is a fun party and we all look forward to it (except maybe Shawn gets tired of helping to carve the kids pumpkins.)  Here are the results from this year. 

 Amelia's pumpkin with googly eyes and teeth as per her request:

Samantha's pumpkin complete with marshmallow teeth:

And Jonas' award winning pumpkin.  He allowed Samantha to pick it out knowing she would choose something kind of ugly.

Here is the trophy awarded for the wildest carve.  (I flipped this photo the right way several times in iphoto but for some reason it will not transfer to my blog that way, so you'll just have to turn your head to see it correctly.  Sorry.)
All in all the evening was a success especially since the pumpkin carving mess and dinner remnants of the entire neighborhood were not left at our house for us to clean up.
Pumpkin

Preschool Field Trip

Today we went on a little field trip with Megan's preschool class. We went to Engh's Gardens to enjoy the Halooween and fall decorations.  Fortunately, the weather was beautiful.  Here are Megan and her cousin Charlie waiting for the tour to begin.  (She thinks it's pretty fun to go to preschool with 2 of her cousins - Charlie and Ainsley.)They started out by sitting and listening to a Halloween story told by a pirate.  Then they were allowed to see the rest on their own.  They were given a little paper with pictures of different Halloween items on it, that they could look for as they walked around.  A lot of the decorations were pirate-themed, but not all of them.  Here's Megan as a ghost.
There was a haystack maze that the kids could walk through.  Megan couldn't get out fast enough because she did not like the smell of damp hay and was making the funniest faces about it.  

Here are Ainsley and Megan checking out some of the pumpkins. 
Lots of cousins: Charlie the werewolf, Megan the ghost, Ainsley the witch, and Clara as Frankenstein.
This tractor was a big hit.  All the kids enjoyed sitting on it and pretending to drive.
I tried and tried to get Peter to look at the camera, but he was so fascinated by the pieces of straw, that I couldn't get him to acknowledge me.
He looks a little like a farmer here, chewing on a piece of straw.  Don't really like to think about that being in his mouth, but oh well, the damage is done.
Here he is sitting in front of the big measuring stick.  If we ever go back, I can see how much he's grown - as long as he's sitting down I guess.
And Megan by the measuring stick.
At the end the kids could choose a pumpkin to take home - the most exciting part of all.
This was a fun little trip but it is definitely geared toward the younger crowd.  The maze isn't even 4 feet tall so any one over about the age of 6 would be able to see exactly where they needed to go.  Still, for $2.50 there was plenty for the kids to see and do.  There was also a big pirate ship they could climb on which most of the kids seemed to enjoy but Megan wanted nothing to do with.  Although, really she would have been happy with just the pumpkin.