Halloween

We love a good Halloween at our house! This one seemed like it went on for a week with all the parties and things we dressed up for. This is Alex and Ella dancing around in their skivvies after painting their pumpkins.

Here are our pumpkins. Tanner and I choose the 2 lame-o patterns marked "easy"

Here's Woody and the fairy princess. I guess my kids are old enough to have opinions about what their costumes should be cause they weren't letting me choose. I had some good ideas too. I even saw a really cute pirate costume for Ella, but Tanner said I had to give her a choice and she chose the frilly pink princess dress. I thought I made a pretty good argument for the pirate. Well, they turned out cute anyway, I guess.

"Princess":

Woody:

The fam--Tanner and I were Napolean Dynamite and Deb.

Alex's 4th Birthday

Alex was so excited he got to go to preschool on his birthday. They were having their preschool Halloween party that day, so he got to wear his costume and take these cookies to share. He was very proud of his costume!

We had a "Monster Bash" on Alex's birthday. He was very excited to have his friends come over and play. We played ring toss on the witch's hat, musical eyeballs, and pumpkin roll with broomsticks. Here's the (not so) scary crew:

These were his monster cupcakes:

This was his monster hand punch:

This was his most favorite present of all. He's been asking to put the Christmas tree up since, well, since we took it down last year. In about August I started telling him we would be putting the tree up after his birthday, meaning his birthday would come first, then Thanksgiving shortly after, and then we would put it up. He started taking that literally and asking to put it up right after his birthday. I thought it would be a good idea to just give him a little tree for his room to hold him over until we could put the real tree up. He's definitely obsessed with Christmas like his mommy!

The Rest of So. Cal

SEAWORLD:
Impressed by all the Shamus:

Boozer:

SAN DIEGO ZOO--the kids' favorite part of the trip:

Ella had a weird connection with this snake. Pretty sure she was speaking Parseltongue to it.

"Are they twins??" The question we heard all throughout the trip.

Too bad we didn't plan a whole day at the beach, probably would've been the best part, minus the fact that it was stinkin cold while we were there.

San Diego Temple: Note to self--temple grounds are closed on Sundays, so this is the best picture you can get. Still gorgeous!

Dinneylan

We went to California a couple months ago. We had a blast! I'm a little slow with posting pictures, but here we are at Dinneylan (that's how we said it the entire time).

On the way, couldn't be more excited!

The only ride Alex wasn't scared of, including "It's a Small World" (which he cried on the ENTIRE time). Oh wait, I was scared of that ride.

Who doesn't have a pic like this?

This is totally their personalities (Tanner's personality is "cute")

On our way to the hotel for naptime. We we were all tuckered out.

Daddy/daughter date to the "princess parade":

Random Summerness

We decided it would be fun to start taking the kids on little dates to spend some one-on-one time with them. This is from the first one I took Ella on. We went to feed the ducks at the nature center. I think she ate more bread than the ducks.


Alex loves making forts with the couch cushions, and I love when he falls asleep--those days are rare now!


Gotta love when the fair comes to town and you can be a little white trash. I have a weirdness about petting zoos (or maybe just fairs in general), but the kids really loved it. I think I used their complimentary hand wipes after they touched every animal.


This was definitely the weirdest thing I've ever done...and most disgusting. I have some weird fascination with farms. It's not like I'm from a big city, but I know absolutely nothing about farms and they're so interesting to me for some reason. For a while I was trying to find someone to let me come work on their farm for a day so I could see how things work, but nobody really took me up on that offer. Luckily I married a man who has a suspiciously large knowledge about farm life, mostly because he basically went to high school on a farm and they were required to take FFA and other farming classes. He denies this, but it's really the only thing that can explain his plethora of knowledge about farming. Well, I took my chance at the petting zoo to milk a cow. My face says it all--yuck! I don't like the feeling of that in my hand!


Alex started preschool this year! I had a big internal struggle about whether or not to put him in this year or just wait til the year before he goes to kindergarten. It seems like nobody down here puts their kids in til the second year, but I really felt like he needed some kind of outlet. The minute I signed him up I felt so good about it. He LOVES it! He asks to go back to Ms. Dianne's house every day, which is good because he usually has a hard time leaving us. He's been learning so many things I never thought he could learn at his age and he's already made lots of friends. The other day he started doing the alphabet in sign language. I never would've thought to teach him that. Isn't he a cute little student with his wee little backpack?!

The Narrows

We're grateful to Tanner's parents who came down to give us a much needed break and watch our kids while we hiked the Narrows in August. It was the perfect time to go and we had a lot of fun. We did the hike in one day (most people camp overnight and split the hike into 2 days) and it definitely took a toll on the old joints. I think by the end I'd sprained both my ankles from walking on rocks in water for 16 miles (12 hours), plus I had 4 open blisters on each foot. Tanner had much better shoes than I did and ended the hike feeling much better than me. We were racing to get out of there before it turned dark, but it ended up being so much fun and so beautiful. Unfortunately I thought I'd be smart and take a disposable waterproof camera, but the crappy pictures don't do the hike justice. We only have 3 that turned out well enough to scan, and they're not even at the really narrow parts. Despite all the scrapes and broken joints, it was fun to get out and do a hike without the kids!

Left-Brained

Alex definitely gets his artistic abilities from me.


Maybe he could be an artist for "Rugrats" someday.

Last One--I Promise

Hiking at Red Cliffs. I remember loving this hike in college. This was the perfect distance and difficulty (AKA really difficult) for my little ones, and the water was definitely relieving in the hot sun. Alex keeps asking to go back to "hike on the slide."






Alex has been saying some funny things lately. Remember me talking about him trying to act/talk like a grown-up all the time? Well, it continues. Some of the phrases he's been saying lately:

What time are you going today?
Is you hair getting longer?
Tanner, how's your iPad?
Mom, how's your plants? Are they dying? (Yup!)
Mom, how's your work?

He's also been obsessed with numbers. He always says he wants 5 of everything. One day he was saying he wanted balloons. He started out saying he wanted 1 balloon, then he said he wanted 2 balloons, then 5, then he held up all his fingers and said, "No, I want MANY balloons." Another day I heard him talking on his play cell phone. He said, "This is Stacy Smith. My phone number is...." And he rattled off my whole phone number, area code and all. What the heck? I think I've talked to like 2 people on the phone since he was born!

Tanner was holding Alex one day while he was growing out his sexy 'stache. While Alex was examining Tanner's face, he said, "We need to cut my hair. We need to cut your face."

They're a handful, but it's moments like these that remind me how much I love em!

HAPPY #2 ELLA!

The nice thing about having your birthday around a holiday is that you seem to get more than one party. Such was the case with Ella again this year. We were in Logan on her birthday, so she got to celebrate with cousins and grandparents and then with just us when we got home. Nice excuse for Mom and Dad to eat 2 cakes. We had a hard time finding her a present this year. We walked around several stores and couldn't see one toy we didn't own. Now that's pathetic. We settled on the only thing we didn't have--a play kitchen that is almost as big as our real kitchen. Looks like it's time to move again...

Ella entered the Terrible Twos exactly on her birthday. I kept blaming her attitude on her "not feeling well" because she had a runny nose, but we're more than 2 weeks out and the runny nose has stopped. The tantrums, however, have gotten worse. I guess this is what we're in for for the next 2 years (through the even Terribler Threes). We're hoping on Alex's 4th birthday he exits that stage as quickly as Ella entered it. Despite her sassy attitude, she's absolutely hilarious and super smart. We love all the weird things she says and does. She's a joy to be around, even if she is drawing on my arm with a pen at the moment.

Good Times with B&D

Summerfest and sugar overload via Nana


Riding Papa like a pony during fireworks

What We're Doing This Summer:

*Cross-dressing

*Gardening

*Camping and swimming at Sand Hallow

*Exploring around Dixie Rock

*Splash Padding and having a BLAST!


In the "garden" picture, my mother-in-law and I were filling containers with soil and planting seeds. We turned around and saw a pot sitting there with all these leaves in it. I think we both stared at it for a good minute trying to figure out just how those seeds sprouted so fast before we realized Alex was cutting leaves off the bushes and putting them in there. It was pretty cute. He's definitely got a greener thumb than I do--that's the best my garden has looked all year!

Overdue Congrats

Happy Graduation, Daddy (yeah, in May)! Tanner has 2 graduations down and 1 or 2 more to go. We're very proud of him and all his hard work. He's going to be starting a Master's program in September. We'll miss him for the next 2 years!

He also ran the RAGNAR with his brother and a few other business geeks in June. I wish I had a picture of all their mustaches...then again, maybe not. They were disgusting and I was sure glad to be able to kiss him again after weeks of refusals (from me). Even though he's sworn off ever doing that again, we're still proud of him.