Monday, October 31, 2011

Halloween 2011

 Samuel as Darth Vader
 Christopher as Spider-Man
 Emilie as a giant eyeball
 Benjamin as the Joker (from Batman)
 Timothy as himself... though he said we were pretending he was dressed as a spider.  With a pirate hat.
 Blue's Clues won over Snow White by a wide margin, for Liberty
 Nathanael as the Emperor from Star Wars
Michael as Two Face from Batman.

It was a fun night, even though we almost didn't go.  Kids all came up with their own costumes... and yes, that's Michael's real hair.  He couldn't get the half to lay down flat, so we did half a haircut.  Really.

October 31st 365 challenge

10/31/11

Liberty in the aftermath of Halloween... growling and putting two Reese's Pieces in her mouth at once!

October 30th 365 challenge


10/30/11

Liberty and Ilyena!  Girl cousins :)  and polka dots. 

October 29th 365 challenge


10/29/11
The newlyweds!  My beautiful new sister Jennifer, and her husband, too :)  Just kidding, Abram, you look great!

October 28th 365 challenge


10/28/11

Funny faces on the way to Illinois!

October 27th 365 challenge


10/27/11

Benjamin's room is now upstairs... so Charlie the hamster has a new home.  It'll probably be warmer than where we used to keep the cage!

October 26th 365 challenge


10/26/11

Samuel had a serious reaction to some sort of bite... it took a few days for this to go down!  He was mostly positive about it.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Christopher-isms.




One of his latest favorite sayings is asking what's for dinner or what I'm making and then saying "Oh, that's my favorite!".  Sometimes this backfires...
Dad: Time for family home evening treat!
Christopher: What's the treat?
Dad: Dried onions!
Christopher: (with great excitement in his voice) Dried onions, my favorite!
(he changed his mind after Dad let him smell the container...and no, that wasn't really the treat-we had fun-sized snicker bars)


And almost every day, I get "Mom, I like you.  And I love you."  Usually with a hug around the knees.

I love having a Christopher.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Kansas City Missouri temple October 23rd, 2011




Beautiful fall day!  Pictures of our temple today, note the finished windows, etc.  And, here's the new building, almost done, that we will start our meetings in in November.  Exciting stuff!

Winter Quarters temple trip 10/22/11

We haven't been to the temple in a while.  When we were first married, we went quite often.  This was when we were at BYU and lived in the Provo temple district.  Now, we would be in the NEW Provo temple district.  (I think...)  We also visited the many other temples that were there at the time.  We found ways to go after Michael was born, too.  Having a temple less than 20 minutes away was wonderful.  We then moved to the Cincinnati area.  The closest temple was in Columbus, Ohio, and we moved there just in time to attend the Louisville, Kentucky temple (and the Palmyra temple remotely) Open House and dedications.  (only a few weeks before Emilie was born, by the way...)  I know Tom went on youth trips but I don't think we had the opportunity to attend together often.  We did take a trip, shortly after Joseph was born and died, to Atlanta, Georgia temple specifically to attend the temple.  We then moved to Eastern Ohio, near the West Virginia border.  The closest temple was once again in Columbus.  We knew that we were in a different season of our lives, and we would be able to attend more often in the future.  We moved to Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh, and we were in the Washington D. C. temple.  Attending the temple there was amazing, and brought back good memories for Tom.  We again weren't able to go often, but we did our best.  After Pennsylvania we moved to Amarillo, Texas, where all of a sudden we were only 2 hours from the Lubbock temple!  While we didn't make it every month, I was too busy being pregnant non-stop, we did make it to the temple more often than anywhere else we had lived, especially after some good friends moved to Lubbock and we were able to have a great place for kids to stay.  We lived in Texas for 6 years, and have now moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where, just days after we learned we were moving here, they broke ground for the new temple here.  Since moving here we have been able to watch this temple being built from the ground up.  However, we haven't gone to the temple since moving here, until yesterday.  We kept making plans for St. Louis, but they kept falling through for many different reasons.  We took the opportunity to drive to the Winter Quarters temple, which is an hour closer but smaller, with friends from our ward who needed room for another of their children anyway.  It is still a 3 hour drive, but the temple is worth sacrifice.  We traded watching kids while the adults were actually in the temple, exploring the grounds, the Pioneer cemetary, and the Mormon Trails Center, and dodging rain.  It was a good day.  We are thankful for this chance.  We will probably try to go again before our very own temple, in our ward boundaries, next door to our church building, that we see every week, less than 5 miles from our house, is dedicated in the near future (near meaning most likely within the next year.)




Anyway, here are pictures from our trip yesterday.  It was a long day!  The missionaries were very patient with us, though not sure what to do with 14 kids and 2 adults with them while the other 2 adults were in the temple!  We were called a Primary group before we left...

October 23rd 365 challenge


10/23/11

And there's our beautiful temple.  Look, the windows are in the towers, landscaping is getting done, the parking lot is getting paved.   Wonderful!

October 22nd 365 challenge


10/22/11

Another Samuel picture!  Guess what Samuel was doing when he lost a tooth?  Eating an apple.  I have never actually seen that happen before... !  Oh, and this was on our trip to the Winter Quarters Temple in Omaha, Nebraska... more on that later.

October 21st 365 challenge

10/21/11

My Samuel boy.  6 1/2 years old, 2nd grader, mostly happy.  Here he's wearing Benjamin's spy watch and wearing newly unpacked winter-y clothes.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

October 20th 365 challenge


10/20/11

My kids are funny.

I wonder if Pooh has ever considered being Darth Vader before.

October 19th 365 challenge

10/19/11

Spent the day yesterday organizing little guys' closet and seasonal clothes... boy were we tired!  We rearranged furniture in there today... this is a picture of church shirts and suits...

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

October 18th 365 challenge

10/18/11

Happy birthday to my brother Tim!  And... Samuel had some saved up money and he wanted to buy this Lego set, which is an alien ship complete with mind control alien creature and common civilian businessman who has a happy face which can be turned to reveal a scared, screaming face.  It's great.  Samuel's fun time with alien abduction is here.  :)  We found this in my new Lego catalog and then looked online... lo and behold, it was 5 dollars less at Walmart and in stock at our local store!  Oh, the wonders of the internet world.

Monday, October 17, 2011

October 17th 365 challenge

10/17/11

Clearing the tomatoes off the bushes before anything freezes in the next few days.  Can't believe we're still getting this many this late in the year!  They'll redden up nicely and we'll have fresh tomatoes for a while!

October 16th 365 challenge

10/16/11

Emilie is just an expert at catching caterpillars.  This one we actually let go, because it needs to go into hibernation as a caterpillar before transforming in the spring.  We've got two caterpillars in a cocoon state, one that died, and one that she found AS a cocoon that hatched into a butterfly.

October 15th 365 challenge


10/15/11
Liberty loves princesses... and Aunt Sherri sent her a princess dress.  Happy girl!

Saturday, October 15, 2011

October 14th 365 challenge


10/14/11

Christopher, being literate.  :)  Not sure what Timothy's face meant.

October 13th 365 challenge

10/13/11

I make this much bread every day to keep up... sometimes I throw an extra loaf in the bread machine...

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

October 12th 365 challenge


10/12/11

What do you know about our temples?  Would you like to know more?  Liberty found this and was showing me the temples.

Temples

Kansas City Missouri temple October 11th, 2011

















Again, we chose to walk around the temple for Family Home Evening.  We went before dinner so it was lighter!  I had so much fun taking pictures.  They have the west tower windows in.  Plus I got some fun pictures of the temple with the new trees being planted and the fences being put up (and chain link being taken down!)  Oh, and our FHE wasn't Monday night because we were all very drained from a long day Monday and FHE wasn't happening that night... Here's for being flexible!