Halloween Week

 It was quite a week, this week of Halloween. Drumming up costumes, visiting Cornbelly's with Gramma and Grampa Fern, Halloween Feast, trick-or-treating. We had a lot of fun. 

What I wrote in Instagram about this month: "This October felt like an epic mom fail. We've been so busy living life 😅 we did approximately half of the traditions we normally do. We didn't fully decorate. We didn't bake and decorate Halloween cookies. My in-laws carved pumpkins with the kids, so we didn't. We barely scraped together costumes for everyone (which we never got pictures of, btw). And this is the closest we got to taking pictures at a pumpkin patch. 😒🙄😭 We did, however, have an epic chocolate chip cookie taste test for my birthday. We DID hit Cornbelly's a few times. We DID go trick or treating (on Saturday), which was so fun. We DID go to a totally awesome Halloween party. And I DID actually dress up with my kids. A lesson in motherhood: you win some, you lose some. (Note: Jack wearing Christmas jammies on Halloween, while he and the girls are sorting through their Halloween candy. 😆)" It ended up being kind of a different month of October this year. 

I got sick right at the beginning of the week, likely partially due to the stress of the week before being over. So we had to cancel a lot of our plans at the beginning of the week. Mom and dad were here visiting, and they were supposed to stay with us. But they didn't want to get sick, so they stayed with Denise and called us every day to see if we were feeling better. 

We finally invited them to come to Cornbelly's with us. I was feeling much better on Friday, and I wanted to use our last tickets and take the kids. We went in the Giant slide, saw the pigs race, did a little bit of the corn maze, and played some of the games. 

When we got home, we jumped right into preparing for Halloween Feast. We'd invited Brian and Sammy's family to join us as well. On the menu this year: graveyard dip and dried mummy wrappings, bones, witch's brew, graveyard pudding, spider cookies, blood, mummy dogs, and spider/zombie pizzas. 

Saturday, we had 2 soccer games, the last games of the season for the girls. They both won their games, which was fun, and Gramma and Grampa came to see Brooke play in her game. 

Camille's team, the Lollipop Gang, and coach, Steve Sabey

 

Blurry picture of Brooke's team, the Red Robins, and coach, Scott Sabey.

Immediately after Brooke's soccer game, we went to Denise's for a fun Halloween party. The kids played games and everyone dressed up, and it was a lot of fun. Jack and I dressed to match, him as Jack-Jack and me as Elasti-girl. 

Our neighborhood voted on Facebook to trick-or-treat on Saturday, because so many of us wouldn't trick-or-treat on actual Halloween (it falling on a Sunday this year). So we took the kids trick-or-treating that night, and it was so fun. We went with friends, and we brought one of Brooke's friends, Lydia, to come with us. She was dressed as a witch, and Brooke was a black cat to match. The streets were just filled with trick or treaters and families, and it was fun to be out with so many people. 

We walked out to trick-or-treat, and our neighbors, the Thomases, had their boys dressed exactly the same way as our boys!! 🤣🤪 What are the odds?!

Today was a pretty chill Halloween, therefore, because we'd already done all the festive things in days prior to actual Halloween. It was a fun month! 🎃 👻 🎃 

The Rest of Birthday Week

 It was a busy week, full of all the fun things we could squeeze in. 

My birthday was absolutely delightful. After a quick shopping trip to get supplies for birthday things (and the weekend), we went home, put the baby down for a nap and I turned on "Calamity Jane" while I made a couple of batches of cookie dough. 

Then. I took my kids to Thanksgiving Point Farm in the afternoon, after Sawyer woke up from his nap. And Sarah dropped off cookie dough truffles for me. ❤ I'm eating them all by myself. 😂😂 And DeAnna dropped off a bag of Buffalo pretzel bits, which I am also eating all by myself. 🤤🤤 

Daniel came home. We tidied and made dinner. Then we went on a long (probably too long) family bike ride. I ended up with Jack and Sawyer both in the trailer, and it got increasingly hard for my legs to pull that load. We rode to zupas to get birthday dessert, and then went back home to do dinner, dessert and presents. 

Daniel kept asking me what I wanted for my birthday, and I had a really hard time thinking of anything. He got me the only things I ended up thinking of: exercise sliders and a shoe storage box. I now love having a neat and organized closet, now that my shoes are nearly organized. 😍

Friday, I took the girls to get hair cuts in the morning. They finished sooner than I thought they would, so we drove all the way out to Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake city to drop off the coloring kits we'd made for Brooke's birthday party. It was time to get them out of my car and where we wanted them to be! It was a long drive, and my kids had to be patient (which they really were). But we did it. 

The lady we talked to, who took the kits from us, told us that they use coloring a lot at the hospital; sometimes when kids are confined in their rooms, or if they are nervous to meet with a doctor. It was cool to hear how they'll use the kits we made. 

When we got back home, we had lunch and the girls had art class. We went to the park later in the afternoon with Mary Beth Christensen, and then we had to get down to cleaning the house, having dinner and baking up 4 batches if different chocolate chip cookies!

The Christensens and Freis came over that night for cookie taste test and "Coco" movie night. It was so fun, the perfect party for my 35th birthday! 

Saturday, we had primary program practice at the church in the morning. 

Then preparation and Camille's birthday party. We had a tie dye party. We invited 9 or 10 girls, and decorated some paper bags (for the in house trick-or-treating we were going to do later 🤷🏽‍♀️ Camille insisted on doing the trick or treating). Then while the bags were drying, we went out to the garage to dye shirts. We gave the girls a miniature lesson about tie-dyeing (not that we know that much about it 😂), they tied up their shirts, and they had fun picking their colors and dyeing. When we were all done, we did our trick or treating, opened presents, decorated cake (I cut the cake into quarters, and a group of girls decorated each quarter) and that was it! It was a weird combination of things, but still pretty fun. I think Camille was happy with it. And she got so much stuff from her friends!

That night, after we recovered a bit from the party, Sarah came over and helped me make treats for the primary kids for FOUR HOURS. It took forever. I chose popcorn balls. Never again! It was so time intensive. We still had fun because we were together, but dang. It was a lot of work. 

Our primary program was Sunday, and it went much better than I thought it would. I was very pleased and proud of them. My kids did so well with their lines, too. It was so sweet, and it's always more fun when we're in the middle of it. We had a fun and easy game for singing time during 2nd hour. We all deserved a little fun and break. 

Camille's Birthday

 Camille: Mom, you know what's good about me humming? 

Mom: what? 

Camille: I can just pick a song and then hum it super great! 

😂

We were having a conversation the other day about chickens. I was calling all my children chickens, and Daniel asked, "are chickens mammals?" which began a conversation with Camille about whether chickens are mammals or not. They concluded that chickens are not mammals, but humans ARE mammals, so children couldn't really be chickens. Then, Camille said, "Well, Brooke was born with chicken legs, so she's not a mammal." Whereupon, I did this: 🤣🤣🤣🤣.

Camille is always saying things that crack us up. She's so funny! She's also very quick to jump to the absolute worst conclusions. I'll say something, and she'll just blow it way out of proportion. Yesterday, she was being difficult about something or other, and I said, "I think you'd be cooperative if you want a nice birthday tomorrow." She immediately threw a fit saying that I told her we were canceling her birthday. 🙄🙄🙄 Stuff like that happens relatively often. 

Camille loves to craft and do art, I think partially because Brooke loves to do those things. A couple of Sundays ago, we watched a video and learned the basics of crocheting, and she made the longest single chain ever, just trying to practice the stitch (after complaining long and loud about not being able to do it). She tends to like doing what Brooke likes to do because she spends so much time with Brooke. I'd actually like to see her take to something on her own. 

I guess she sort of did, when we were in Alaska. The girls went rock climbing with the men, and they said Camille was super good at it. But it's kind of an expensive hobby, so we'll see. 

Camille is our least cautious child. She's not really afraid of things much. But she also has good common sense (for a kid 😂). 

Camille like purple and blue. Cool colors, she says. She likes watching TV, but nothing in particular these days. (Honestly, we've been so busy living life lately that we haven't been watching much TV in a while. Today, for Camille's birthday, I let the kids watch something educational. They watched "unlikely animal friends".) 

Camille likes to play "hatchimals" with Brooke in her little doll house. They don't play dolls much in that doll house lately. Camille is developing a love for reading and she loves "princess in black" and "owl diaries" and "narwhal and otter". 

Camille is my snuggler -- she feels best when I'm giving her some love. When we do school every day, I usually get snuggly with her, and she's much more likely to cooperate when I'm scratching her back, or giving her a squeeze, or play with her hair. 

Camille and I have a special kiss, and it goes like this: kiss one cheek (usually she kisses my right cheek first), then the other, then she kisses my chin, nose and forehead (in that order), Eskimo kiss, butterfly kiss, she rubs her chin on the top of my head, I rub my chin on her head, then we rub chins. It's evolved over the past year or 2. I love it. ❤ 

She had a nice birthday I think. Balloons all over the house. Crepes for breakfast. Presents -- a plush owl craft and a new book series by the author of "owl diaries" called "unicorn diaries". Watching TV and playing with her siblings. We went to the craft store to get supplies, and then we came home and did crafts together and with Gramma Holbrook, who came over. And Gramma Fern sent her a 152 set box of crayons! She was in heaven. She wanted a box of 90 crayons, so it was perfect. She said it was "120% of what she wanted". 😂🥰 Homemade pizza and snap peas for dinner. Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting with sprinkles for dessert. 

I love this girl, and I can't believe she's 7 already. It simultaneously brings me so much joy and so much sadness to watch them grow up. Camille's picture banner (that I put up for birthdays) is so good, so many adorable pictures of Camille over the past several years. I love looking at it, but it also makes me kind of sad. Those fun, sweet, slow, simple stages are behind me, and a big part of me wishes for them back. 

 We had a fun family day yesterday. After doing some chores and things at home, and Daniel going on a bike ride, we packed up the bikes and the kids and drive down to BYU. 

We started by biking around campus and showing the kids some of the buildings and telling them things about campus. It was a perfect fall day, cool and crisp, and biking around was so lovely. Jack had a hard time keeping up on his little bike, and he kept yelling at us when we went ahead of him at all. In the end, I put him in the trailer with Sawyer and he rode for the rest of the time that we biked. 

After putting the biked back in the car, we walked over to the Fine Arts Center to see the room where Daniel and I first met, for the music history class we took. We walked around and looked at some of the art displayed in the building. Then we walked over to the bookstore and the Wilkinson Center to look around. There was some cute BYU gear for kids that we wanted to get them. And the BYU game was playing on a big screen in the bookstore. 

We headed over to the library and walked around inside and showed the kids places we used to study. We looked through some of the bookshelves. We told the kids they needed to be quiet, because there were students there studying, and it was cute how they whispered. 

We concluded our day at BYU getting dinner and ice cream at the creamery on 9th. Daniel and I asked the kids who was going to come to BYU for school, and they all yelled, "Meeee!" I think we're doing a great job "indoctrinating" them to love BYU and want to go there for school. 

It was a lovely day, and we all had fun.