Halloween 2013

 John as Russell from "Up"

Took Nathaniel's merit badge sash, spray painted a white hat yellow, and made some felt Wilderness Explorer logos for the hat and flag. Added our backpacking pack and a square of yellow fabric for the sash and there you go. I thought he looked great.

 Elementary school activities 

 Will was not impressed with the costumes at the parade and clung onto John or I the whole time. He got into costume later.

 My crazy cute kids.

Peter lights up the pumpkins and Will checks them out.

 Rebecca as Darla from "Finding Nemo." 

As you can see she had a different theme going on here than her friends. 
Way to be yourself Rebecca:)

We tried a few different forms of fake braces and head gear for her but none of them were comfortable and so we decided to go without.

The minion and his mama.

 Checkin' out our Halloween-crazy neighbor display.

Will is cautiously curious.

This being his first Halloween he was participating in I think he did pretty good. I took him to several houses. He'd pat the door (but not knock on it) and then when they'd hold out their candy bowl he'd place his hand on the candy (but not take a piece). 
Peter said it was as though he were pronouncing a blessing the candy-- "go forth and multiply!" I thought that was a good way of describing it.
At first he was scared and cried when Peter put on his traditional Halloween sounds cd. Then he thought it was funny and stood at the door and yelled to the trick-or-treaters. He got tired of knocking on doors pretty fast and never wanted to leave any of the candy in his bucket so he spent a lot of time just wandering up and down the sidewalk by our house while I tried to keep him from wandering into the street. 

 He eventually came inside and sat by dad on the couch and read his scriptures:) Because of our regular semi-regular family scripture study Will likes to take out one of Book of Mormon copies and pretend to "read" it out loud. It is just one more thing his mom finds ridiculously cute.

I spent some time tonight cutting into pumpkins we hadn't gotten around to carving just so I could eat the seeds. Pumpkin seeds and I are exceedingly close. They are absolutely one of my things ever. 
Their roasted perfection borders on sacred for me because this is the only time of year I get them. (I think store bought ones are nasty.)

Decided to go with pumpkin soup for dinner for the festivities. I don't really have a specific tradition for Halloween dinner except for simple.
This was sautéed onion and garlic, canned pumpkin, half-and half, a bit of brown sugar and some spices. Rebecca said it looked like poo but tasted pretty good.

Note: If this looks like a typical-perfect-mommy-blog-post don't believe it. I spent last night on a stress-induced fog of kids harassing me to finish costumes and trying to get a grip on the house in preparation for today. When I asked Peter today about why I was getting no help from anyone last night he said "no one wants to be around you when you are on a yelling rampage."

*cue crickets and thoughtful pondering.

I sent John to school this morning and then crawled back into bed and slept for three hours only to awaken and realize I had missed the activity I had planned for John's class because I slept right through it. (Can you say "loser?") 

Just saying, it's real life around here.

Aaron came!

My long lost brother Aaron I haven't seen in almost 2 years came through Salt Lake for a business tour with BYU Hawaii and got to spend Conference weekend with us.

We only got to see him for about 36 hours but we made the best of it!

Aaron's killin' it here proving his masculine security.

Lunch at Mongolian Stir Fry after hiking to Stewart Falls

As a teenager I wasn't overly excited to find out my parents were expecting a little surprise baby. I was sure a lot of the responsibility was going to be left to me and I thought things were already overwhelming at our house as it was. The fact is I was right. I ended up being very involved with many aspects of Aaron's care. The thing I didn't expect was just how adorable and curious and funny and wonderful he was going to be. Especially knowing what I know now after five babies I swear he was the best baby there ever was. And OH SO CUTE. My gosh he was cute. There was never a bad picture taken of him he was so sweet and smiley and precious. 

He's still the nicest guy you could meet. Everybody who does adores him. Just for fun-- and because he loves to tinker in different things-- he's not only taught himself a lot of the things he has learned about computers by spending a lot of time ripping them apart and building them up again but he's also taught himself to work on cars, make ever-more-elaborate fox costumes for his crazy conventions he goes to, and this summer he spent time chatting it up with the people in Turkey in their language because he studied it before he left (in his spare time between school and working on all the computers at the BYU Hawaii campus.) 

He's rockin' things over on the island right now getting ready to graduate in December and bring happiness and joy to some company out there who is looking for a stellar computer whiz to keep their computers all nice and secure and smoothly working. 

Some people, huh? 

 Peter and Aaron get leaving for the Priesthood Session

A couple of funny things-- 

When he was here I went through his wallet just to see what kinds of things he keeps in there. Among assorted things there was one dollar and this student ID card for BYU Hawaii:

I don't even know what to say to this.

I asked him about some of the free stuff he got from the companies he visited here. Along with the sunglasses and nail polish that change color in the light he got three free t-shirts. 

"Wow, that's pretty good," I said. "You think you'll wear them?"

Only one he said "because the others are ones they would tell you not to wear on What Not To Wear." 

I laughed myself silly on that one thinking of Lily and Linda setting him down to watch that show while trying to get him to dress half-way decent. One thing about Aaron is he is not easy on his clothes. 

When he left I found an almost empty bottle of cologne and this solitary black sock:

You have to know Aaron to understand the significance of this. Linda calls them slugs. He has been wearing black socks for as long as I can remember and they end up everywhere. This is one of the things she has had to learn to live with as his mom. 
He will probably never change, and at this point I'm not about to ask him to.