Halloween Happenings of 2011

This year proved to be just as chaotic (if not more so) than previous years.

Saturday, we realized that we needed to cram in a lot of fun, and fast!

We went out to a pumpkin patch, conveniently located near Lagoon (the girls have been loudly hoping and wishing all year long to go..) because, well, we didn’t have pumpkins.

We went on a search for just the right pumpkin for each girl.

(It wasn’t as easy as we thought, especially for Peyton.)

Then we spent the day at Lagoon.  We thought we were surprising them, but there wasn’t much surprise expressed.

It was such a fun day!  Peyton is finally tall enough to enjoy a lot of the rides.  She giggled more than I think she did at Disneyland, and that is surprising!  She loved the skyride, rode it twice in a row.  She also loved the Tidalwave.  The second time she rode it, she whispered to me, “This make my tummy feel a bit funny.”

Ashley also hit a new height that allowed her to ride more rides.  Colossus and Wicked are her two new favorites.  (They are a definite tie.)  We rode Colossus (walked-on tow in a row) and she wasn’t done!  The kid would have kept going.

Lynn also rode wicked for the first time and loved it.  She was a bit nervous, but she loved it.

We also enjoyed the family trunk-or-treat the weekend before Halloween, got a good jump-start on the sugar high. 

Pumpkin carving was a joy.

(Seeds are still drying out.)

And then there was the day of.

There is a smaller, “B” story if you will to the Halloween festivities of 2011.  I will call it “The  Great Costume Conundrum.”

Peyton started out the season with the plan to be Bo again.  I wasn’t complaining.  Lynn wanted to be a candy corn (or a bag of twizzlers, seems there is a candy theme constantly running through her head..  remember last year?) and it was great to re-use a costume.  And Ash, well, she is obsessed with Mulan lately..  so guess what she wanted to be?

Well, the genius mom that I am, while ordering Ashley’s Mulan costume online, I could get free shipping if I ordered one more item.  With the costumes all being on sale, I thought it would be really silly if I didn’t order Peyton a Pocahontas dress-up for her birthday and totally be ahead of the game for once.  So , I did.

Good thing, because as Peyton and I were going to procure the necessary items for Lynn’s candy corn costume, she reveals to me that she really wants to be Pocahontas for Halloween, and could I please make her a Pocahontas costume?

Haha!!  So ahead of the game.

So then, she was going to be Pocahontas.

“But Pocahontas doesn’t wear any shoes mom.”

THEN, I got out the great bin of costumes from Halloween’s past.  Lynn’s Old Navy dragon costume was lying in there, the perfect size for Peyton this year (not to mention super warm), and Peyton fell in love with it.

The girl wore the costume every day, it was the first thing she wanted to put on every day.

She was going to be a dragon.

Until this morning.

She watched Pocahontas, while wearing her dragon costume.

Then she was going to be Pocahontas, again.

Until it was time to go and run errands, and then she was going to be a dragon, again.

Silly kid.

(Doesn’t Lynn look so happy?)

Today, we went to the girls’ parade at school, where I discovered that Ash is student of the month in her class (again.), and she knew, but never told me.  After school, we went to the ward trunk-or-treat, then off to visit grandparents.  We only found a couple of those grandparents though!

The girls would tell you it was a successful night, they got their fair share of candy and a slightly later than usual bedtime.

ryker and drake (part 2)

love these silly little guys!

you will remember them (won’t you?) from here…

well, I got to take more shots of these cuties..

boys are so fun!

back to our regularly scheduled life.

we just got back from a lovely and very fun-filled vacation.

we did disneyland.

it was awesome.

I think everyone who lives in this house, is a little homesick for all things disney.

but I now realize that this transition from vacation to real life is a lot harder than I thought.  it is also made more difficult when I realize that there are a few things that I neglected to do before we left..

like plug the latest product releases from jessica sprague. 

so, let’s rewind, pretend that it is last monday, and instead of getting ready to surprise the kiddos, pack all of their stuff, clean the house and all that junk, I will do what I am supposed to, and show you what I made:

first up I will show off jodie lee’s latest water color paper..

I saw this dreamy stuff and was transported to last fall, when we hiked the “u” near our house.  the colors were too perfect.

(click on layout for full credits.)

I have been dreaming up some hybrid projects to use this stuff on, print it off on linen look paper..  it would be lovely, I am sure.

then there was the big one.

I based ashley’s birthday party around this next one.

splendid fiins “trick or treat” practically yelled my name, winked, and then grinned at me.  it knew it fit the bill for our halloween themed birthday party.

invites:

(click on image for full list of credits.)

a little lesson learned, that I will share with you for free:

don’t put names (even though it is so fun, personal, not to mention stinking cute) on a first grader’s birthday invites.  you are better off to leave those babies blank, that way, your child doesn’t distribute them a child with a different name and thus, have a buttload of confusion on your hands when parents are calling you and asking if their child was really invited because their invite doesn’t have their name on it.  oh, an then you get to make more, because a few kiddos don’t get their invites due to the whole, “not give them to the right kid” issue.

we had a great time though..

we put together goodie bags with fun stuff from target’s dollar area, candy was a necessary addition, and I put together these little notebooks using splendid fiin’s “trick or treat” line.

they were pretty darn cute.

I added these little tags for ashley to sign, a little thank you to all her friends.

(splendid fiins again, and I used the font mtf “jotted”.)

In the way of decorations, I used my old felt ghosts..

some balloons (which all the right colors were sold out, should have anticipated that one..), and this banner that I threw together the day of.

(polka-dot paper from splendid fiins, some good old cardstock, ric-rack, and letters I cut out with my cricut + storybook cartridge.)

I employed the old dry ice + rootbeer in the plastic cauldron trick.

played “pin the eyebrow on frank”, ashley’s new boyfriend.  we made him out of foamcore, and vinyl.  his eyebrow was some black felt with double stick tape on the back.

this game was also a last minute add, but I saw it on a local tv program, and had to do it!

I took three kiddos inside, and wrapped them up with crepe paper, just like a mummy.  as I wrapped, I hid three cards with one letter on them, in different places in the wrapping.  as their teams unwrapped them, the found the cards, and the first team to spell their spooky word, won!

I used words like bat, boo, and cat.

(I got the idea from this fun mom blogger who has a ton of fun ideas.)

and what’s a party with out cake and ice cream?

I prepared cupcakes and frosting a head of time, portioned out the frosting in little disposable cups with a plastic knife, and put out candies for them to decorate with.

I found a genius idea for ice cream serving at a birthday party on pinterest, and I will be using that one again and again I tell you.

before your party, like an hour, you take your regular old cupcake liners, place them in your muffin tin, and scoop your ice cream into them.  pop the tin, with the portions of ice cream in it, back in your freezer and when it’s cake + ice cream time, bring them out, and give one portion to each child.  it was a breeze!

ash had a great party, and I must confess, it is the first birthday party I have ever thrown.  I will do it again.  it was so much fun, but next time, I might just request no gifts be brought.  I know, I am so mean, but we are seriously overrun here.

I sense a theme here..

here’s two layouts.

can you tell what they have in common?  it’s quite obvious, once you really look.  it took me longer than the average person though.  I will blame that on my head congestion.

well, they both feature peyton, and they are both photographs from behind.

see, pretty obvious.

maybe they both feature her because she is on my mind an awful lot lately.  maybe it’s because she is the only one around enough for me to take pictures of?

the kid is in size 4t now.  the 3t stuff looked kind of floody on her.  it’s fun, but a bit sad at the same time, to see her grow so much.

(as always, you can click on the layouts for list of full credits.)

but just some fun things I did with these:

the top one, I used liv.edesings washi tape as masks for my patterned papers.  I wanted some thing a little more interesting than just a scrap of paper and I love the jagged edges.

on the bottom one, I used products primarily from jessica sprague’s newest designer, samantha walker.  she is so fun!  I can’t wait to see what other fun stuff she comes up with, and to share it with you.

now I am off to try some more pinteresting things.. I will let you know how those work out!

family prayer is not a contact sport.

at least at our house.

so twas the night before ashley’s birthday, and all through the house, the family was gathering, for family prayer, of course.

peyton was snuggled all up with her dad.  watching some blather on fox news. so sad.

lynn and ashley were wild, rambunctious you could say, and I, as their mother, was having it in no way.  I started to yell, get after them a bit, but little peyton, so sweet and so small, started to cry.

I wasn’t getting after her at all!

but that wasn’t the issue.  nope, not the yelling at all.

“my thumb!” was the problem with our child so small.

but what with the thumb?  that was quite the mystery.

she’d let not I or her father examine it, even gingerly.

so at five to nine (when the instacare doth close), we gathered her up and I dashed out the door.  sped down more than a few blocks to the instacare we did go, got there just in the nick of time, just as the nurse was about to lock the door.

“do you need to be seen?”  she asked cheerfully.

“yes,” I replied, “the er co-pay is far too obscene.”

the staff happily, willfully took care of my child.  I was made happier to see our favorite doctor there..  my mind went quite wild.

(yup, the rhyming is starting to suck..)

“tis’ not broken.”  he said, “methinks it just a sprain.”

so we left with a splint, and orders for x-rays, just in case.

the point of this story, as I have so artfully told to you, is that I still have no idea how peyton hurt her thumb, but it is feeling better now.

(yes, I have given up.)

I think it had something to do with her subconscious knowing that the next day was ashley’s birthday, and that ashley would be hogging all the attention.  (as is her right.)

not saying it was intentional at all, just that she knows, subconsciously.  or something.

as we went to see the doctor, the most amazing doctor of all time, it was close, but we got there.

he told us that if it still hurt the next day, was swollen and she couldn’t move it, then to take her directly to the hospital for x-rays.

then he asked us what happened.

that was funny.

as I told him and the nurse, they laughed.

“family prayer was never a contact sport in my home..  family home evening was.”

she really is doing better.  the splint came off today.

you should also hear how cute it is to hear her say splint, with a cold.

bottom line, I am so thankful that we were able to get there, just in time, and that the doctor who was best able to care for us (in my opinion) was there too.

and they keep growing up.

ashley turned 7 today.

I know.

I thought I had made a deal with these kids.

a deal that entailed their not growing up anymore, and I would keep up on the laundry, cleaning, feeding them and whatnot.

they totally aren’t living up to their end.

ashley is in a current phase.

a phase which includes these questions, daily.

1) what is your favorite color?

2) what is your favorite dinosaur?

3) what is your favorite princess?

I can tell you all of her favorites today.

1) brown

2) mammoth or allosauarus (it’s a tie)

and

3) mulan

so at first this birthday was going to revolve all around our extinct friends until, while rummaging around for the jurassic park dvd, she came across mulan, and, well, the rest is history.

let me tell you how hard it is to find anything mulan.

nevermind.  I am still tired from finding the few mulan things I did to tell you how tiring it is.

I have never been more thankful for amazon prime (free 2 day shipping!!), or rather the fact that I forgot to cancel it after my trial period (ordering easter goodies that I couldn’t find locally).

her birthday presents (well, at least the bulk) arrived today.

(see, SO thankful for 2 day shipping.)

but look at how happy she is:

think she might be even happier when she gets her dress-up.. 

(shh!!!  don’t tell her!!!)

she also asked for a mulan cake.

I will say that I did my best, but this weather, and a time crunch today left me less than pleased with how she turned out.

(my dad would reassure me that it looks fine, and that it will just turn into poop anyway..)

I think she turned out looking more hispanic, maybe even polynesian.

I will blame it on:

a) the time issue

and b) the weather.  my hands are killing me with this new cold air and all the rain.

and now that I have read through this post a couple of times, I sound not so chipper.

I guess that is why I usually compose happy birthday posts (heavy on the happy) a day or so in advance and plug in pictures the day of?

not so tired then, are we?

so here goes 7 happy things about my 7 year old girl:

1) you have quick wit.  I mean seriously, where do you get that from?  one thing can be said, and there’s ashley, following through with a zinger to tack on the end.

2) you can’t seem to go to the bathroom with the shower curtain open.  you also can’t seem to spend less than 15 minutes in there either.  I think that is hysterical!

3) you cannot go to sleep unless I have tucked you in.  sometimes you need to take one of your famous (aforementioned) trips to the bathroom, after the initial tucking-in, and you cannot settle down unless I re-tuck.

4) you make up songs in the shower.  then you sing them repeatedly and get them stuck in my head.

5) you eat anything and everything!!  well, except for school lunch, and well, I can’t blame you there.

6) you read like it is the easiest thing in the world.  homework this year is a breeze!  and you love to read.

7) everyone (including the random kids we meet at random places like mcdonald’s in page) are your new “best friends” and everyone in our neighborhood/ward/grade/school, are also on that “best friends” list.

happy birthday sweet ashley. xox

Scary

one of today’s new releases at jessica sprague is from carina gardner.

raven scary paper set:

(click on layout for full list of credits.)

last year at frightmares, we teased lynn relentlessly about one of these guys being her boyfriend.  she was such a good sport about the teasing.  the last night for frightmares, we kind of sort of convinced her to let us take a picture of her and her “boyfriend”.

go check out all the other new releases today!

the only thing scary that I will really be doing today is tackling my craft/scrap/sewing room.

if I ever dare share pictures of it’s present state, you’ll see why it is so scary.