Jake's first touchdown!

Jake plays wide receiver and he made an awesome catch in the game today and ran it for a touchdown! First one of the season!

GO JAKE!

Too bad they have a "no celebrate" rule cause I know he was iching to spike that ball.

Halloween

I was so lazy when it came to costumes this year. I'm not creative or talented enough to make anything but I usually care enough to spend money on them. But this year I told the boys that I wasn't spending any $ on costumes and told them to wear their football uniforms. Surprisingly they didn't argue!

Jaxson was Spongebob, again. I didn't even bother getting the costume out of storage until about an hour before trick-or-treating time and thank goodness it fit (it was a bit snug).

This was the first year Haley didn't dress up, she just wanted to hang at home and pass out candy. We only trick-or-treated a couple of blocks and then the boys pooped out. I couldn't believe it. I think they were tired from their game earlier that day.



This was Jaxson's pumpkin that Larry carved for him.

We had this really cool bubble fogger that my brother-in-law brought over. It was a huge hit. It blew bubbles with fog inside so when you popped them the fog sort of floated out. I think the kids liked the bubbles more than the candy we were passing out. We even had one guy say that our bubbles were better than the haunted house down the street (I'm not so sure about that though, I went through the haunted house and it was pretty cool).

After we ran out of candy we headed over to a friends house and ate yummy soup, hung out around the fire pit and had a great time.

I LOVE HALLOWEEN!

A Spooky Birthday!

Nate turned 10 today. What a great day to have a birthday. We always tell him how lucky he is that everyone dresses up and gives him candy on his birthday. Today was even more special because his dad was home to celebrate it with him. He hasn't been home on Nate's birthday since he started flying. We started out early with breakfast at Bill Johnson's. The whole family joined us and we ate way too much food.


He ordered the smiley face pancakes. YUM!

He got to open his present from mom & dad. Larry thought it would be funny to make him work for it.

First a big shipping box.

With a football added for some weight (this wasn't his gift) and lots of packing material.

A small square wrapped several times in duct tape.

And finally an envelope that was pretty easy to rip open.

All for a new Pokemon game. Just what he wanted!

After our tummy's were overfull we came back home and carved our pumpkins.

Then it was off to the football game. I'm not sure what he's doing here. Maybe it's his impersonation of a crazy football player.

The coach dedicated the game to Nate for his birthday and I made cupcakes for afterward to celebrate.

The final score was 25-0. Kings win!

Then it was back home for trick-or-treating. The next night we went to Grandpa's who was also having a birthday and celebrated some more.

The fun's not over yet. This weekend he's having a sleepover/campout with his friends. I'll post pictures if I survive the night.

Volleyball is Over!

For now. She wants to sign up for club volleyball (if she can earn enough $ for it) which starts in December but for the next month at least we'll have a break. The last game I went to with my camera she sat the bench for most of it. She had a small wrist injury, nothing serious, just a bruised bone, but it was pretty painful so she took it easy. I got lots of great pictures of her sitting!



Not very exciting but it's all I got. She was so sad to turn in her uniform. Hopefully she'll be wearing Mesa High's uniform someday soon!

Fall Break

Last week the kids were out of school for Fall Break and we were lucky to have Larry home most of the week. I tried to keep the kids busy and out of the house as much as possible. It gets pretty crazy when my kids are home all day on top of the eight daycare kids I have.

We started out our week of no school by going to the Mesa High Homecoming football game. I took the older two boys and a friend. Mesa High is my Alma Mater and I haven't been to a football game since I graduated. I think I did more people watching than game watching. Were we really that "idiotic" (the only word that accurately describes it) when we were in high school?


These boys have never ending appetites. They went through a whole bag of popcorn, half a bag of Cheetos, half a bag of Doritos and snow cones. All in two hours!

We got a little crafty. On Monday we made these cute lanterns out of jars. They have battery operated tealights in them. I got the idea from a friend's blog, thanks Nicole, we had fun making them.

On Tuesday we made pumpkin tie-dye t-shirts.

Jaxson's shirt was on backwards in the first picture. Here's what the front's supposed to look like.

Haley helped me make a spooky Halloween tree. I've seen this idea on several different web-sites and really wanted to make one. She knocked some branches out of the tree in our front yard and then spray painted them. I didn't originally plan to hang anything on the branches but I found these little signs at the pumpkin patch and thought they were cute.

Wednesday Larry took the kids to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and then we went to Mother Nature's Pumpkin Patch that night.

Thursday we headed up to Camp LoMia for our ward campout. I absolutely love the fall colors in the forest. Haley made us stop so she could take a picture of this tree. It was beautiful.

The zipline.

Friday we went to Fossil Springs to do some hiking and ended up swimming in the Spring instead. The water was so clear we could see all the way to the bottom. It was pretty warm by the time we got down to the bottom of the canyon so the cold water was refreshing. The men shed their shirts and some of the smaller kids shed more than their shirts and in they went.

My little mountain man.

This next picture is him throwing a stick. He was across the road up on this little hill and he kept yelling at me to take a picture of him throwing the stick. So I did, too bad my camera's so slow, I missed the stick.

We rushed home early on Saturday to make the boys first football game. It was over 100 degrees out and miserable but the boys were troopers, decked out in all their equipment. They lost by one touchdown but overall played a great game.

The Kings

This is Jake making a great tackle (he's the gold jersey on the ground)

Did I mention it was REALLY HOT!

Poor Guys!

The week was over before we knew it and the kids were back to school and Larry back to work. Why is it that the fun times always fly by way too fast!