We Love Josh

Since Neal has been working in the mornings, I have been playing Christmas music for about a week while we are getting ready. Neal bans Christmas music until after Thanksgiving. During breakfast, Halle gets totally absorbed in the music and I finally caught one of her performances.

This video is actually during lunch on a day we were snowed in, but Neal still let us turn the music on as a temporary exception. Notice Dillon just sitting at the table. We actually do feed him, but he had his lunch done and over long before Halle could distract herself enough from the music to eat. I'm not sure why he came back to the table after he was finished.

Family Pics - 2010

Papa's Leaf Pile and Trick-or-Treat

I hope everyone had a fun Halloween. Ours was filled with all kinds of school parties and carnivals and work gatherings to literally fill the whole weekend. We all got to dress up this year, and despite Neal's extreme hesitations, he probably got the most comments/ compliments on his costume thoughout the weekend.

While most of the children usually walked wide around him, many of the adults were helping him brainstorm how he could be even scarier next year. Mary thought this mask would definitely do the trick and I have to agree.We stopped at my parents house on Saturday for an early trick-or-treat and the kids discovered Papa's leaf pile in the backyard. They always beg Neal to throw the piles in the air for them because he can get so many up so very high.

Here is Halle's meager offering as she begs him to do it another "one more time."
And the squeals of delight are more than enough to keep him going.

This is at Dillon's school carnival. We only stayed long enough to get through the kindergarten and first grade rooms and then Halle and Dillon's parents were total party-poopers. Actually, our kids were fabulous. They were complete angels compared to some of the monsters having melt-downs around us.

Hole-in-one for Halle - way to go!

And a couple of bull's-eye's for Dillon. Awesome job for a meager token.

The weekend rule our community has for the 4th of July also applies the same for Halloween. If it falls on a Sunday, everyone celebrates on Saturday. The kids got to do some trick-or-treating to our immediate neighbors last night and they came home with way too much candy.

Dillon was content to count and sort once I banned the eating since it was nearly bed time.

But kids better pay attention to the lesson Halle learned when you eat too much candy. It will turn your teeth green. Gross! ;-)

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Grandma's Play Dough Party

Grandma has all kinds of fun play dough toys like a food factory, ice cream maker, cake maker, and a hamburger and hot dog stand. One evening when we were there with Abbie and Nick, they got to spread them all out on the table and have a play dough party.

They all took turns trying them all out and making all kinds of wonderful creations. No fair though. Grandma let them mix the colors (turns out brown and red really does make it look like a hot dog). She must be getting soft for her grandkids because we never had that luxury.

Then after baths, they got to sit and watch a Thomas train movie - well sort of. That darn Nick kid wouldn't just sit still :-)

That's his red arm, if you're wondering.

Thanks for the fun "late night" at Grandma's.

A New Friend

Dillon has many kids his age on our street so we have been trying to help him make friends with some of them by inviting them over to play. Not to be left out of the fun, Halle is always there to play too.

This is Dillon's friend, Josh, that came over one night to play. They had a lot of fun playing dodge ball on the trampoline, so I took this video.

Pictures at the Gardens

My sister wanted me to take their family pictures for them this year, so we all headed to the gardens at the college. It's really a great place for backgrounds, and we got some pretty cute pictures despite the kids' usual goofiness. I'll save the family pictures for her Christmas cards, but here are some of the others.
What a cute picture of the four of them, all walking in an "airplane" train.

Wait, Nick, where are you going ??

Mr Muscles taming the children, two at a time, which was quite impressive for the arm that was holding Dillon.

We had Halle hold Nick's belt to keep him in this picture. He's such a free spirit just like the rest of them.

Camping Trip 2010 - Take 2

Neal's brother's family planned a camping trip to Island Park and Yellowstone last month over Labor Day Weekend, and we thought it would be fun to join them. It was likely that my weather charma brought the bitter cold nights with us (sorry Dave and Em), but I think we still redeemed ourselves from the last camping experience.


These pictures aren't really in an order- just a collection of what we did. We visited the Discovery Center in West Yellowstone which was very educational.

We also walked down to the river from our camp site and the men showed the kids a thing or two about throwing rocks really far into the water.
Halle and Uncle Dave had a snoring contest during nap time.

We collected leaves and did leaf rubbings and found other various activities to keep the kids occupied.

We also stopped at Big Springs to see the fish.

And we still ended the adventure as friends. We had a really great time. Thanks for letting us tag along.