Halloween Festivities

The kids have been having a very good time with all their Halloween parties and things. Us parents have gone along for the ride and had varying degrees of fun with them.

The school had large slide and a smaller slide for the kids. The girls enjoyed those the most. I loved seeing these 2 come down the slide together.

Marian leaped and bounced all the way down. She looked like she was having so much fun!

At the smaller slide, Rylee scrambled right up with Delaney and then zoomed down all on her own. Then she did it again and again. What fun!

The Fall Festival had some fun booths in the gym. I had purchased 50 tickets, and we were unable to use them all up despite going through a lot of different activities! Here, Callie has used 2 tickets to paint a pumpkin. (Delaney spent a lot of time here and painted 3 pumpkins.)

Marian is a Cheetah. She painted her own face, with a little assistance from me.

We carved pumpkins on Saturday. I love that Marian is wearing her ears to do this. She picked out a bat and carved the easy parts, and did a nice job, I must say.

My two littlies at the Ward Halloween Party! I love that they grabbed their Easter buckets because they couldn't find their Halloween bags!

This is my new favorite picture! This is Delaney having a total meltdown because she didn't win the cake walk. (Nevermind that there were 5 million treats and eventually everyone won!)

Joshua was unenthusiastic about getting his picture taken, but he was much happier about doing the cake walk.

Marian was good at the pinata. She figured out she could stab it with the stick, and the guy holding the rope had to be pretty quick!

Dan took Rylee around for the Trunk or Treat and she seemed to enjoy herself.

Somehow, despite the number of kids still circling the parking lot, mine all ended up inside the van scarfing down candy. I told them to get out and get some more candy! But they didn't. Now what am I suppose to pass out on Halloween night?!

Blast from the Past

Blogger does not want to upload my pictures and I'm tired of trying. So, you only get 3 pictures instead of the 5 I wanted. If it makes you feel better, It has taken me 2 days and switching computers 3 times to even get this far! I hope you appreciate the effort.

I have realized that my life use to be a lot more interesting. I am still (sporadically) working on organizing my letters written during the year 2003 and wow! I am so glad that part of my life is over! I love my children, but yikes, the work of caring for children while having no clue what I was doing was so not fun. I still don't know what I'm doing, but since they are older, I find it much less physically and emotionally draining. I expect that will change as the teen years hit. I guess it starts off physically miserably and ends with emotionally misery?

I'm just really happy that the kids are great and doing well. I'm so glad I don't have the sleep deprivation and illness issues. Everyone sleeps all night and they rarely get sick. If they are sick, they are good enough I don't have much vomit to deal with. Plus, the discipline and tantrum issues are so much better now. Someone told me a long time ago that if you teach the first one right, the rest will follow. SO true! The little kids see what the big kids are doing and they are so much easier to deal with. Thank goodness for good big kids. As I said, life is good!

It doesn't make for good blog fodder though. I lack the motivation to blog, and with nothing interesting happening, I have not been bogging as faithfully. To tide you over till I can come up with something of actual interest, here is our growing family back when I thought I'd go nuts with lack of sleep and cranky babies.

I know, we are SO adorable! This was summer of 2006. Callie would have been 1, Marian 3, and Joshua would have been 4. Gosh, they are so cute!

Perspective

Last night I watched TLC's "Say Yes to the Dress" and I saw women paying gobs and gobs of money for their wedding dresses. I don't know why I love that show, but I do. I think because it is such a foreign concept for me. Why, oh why, would you spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a dress you will wear once. ONCE! Sure, it may be the most important day of your life, but is the dress really the most important thing? I have to say no, it isn't.

Today I got to be at the Temple sealing of a sweet couple. The bride wore a lovely, but simple dress. The cost of the entire wedding was probably less than what the least expensive dress at the tv show's bridal salon would be. The bride didn't mind. She was marrying the right person, at the right time, in the right place. In the big picture, the dress doesn't matter at all. The who and where matters. To be sealed for time and eternity to someone you love, who is faithful..... that is what matters. It was such a privilege to be there to see them married.

I feel very blessed to be married to my husband. To have married him at the right place at the right time. He was, and still is, the right man!

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

This week I went out and was social. We also finally, FINALLY got some cooler weather! I can't tell you how excited I was. It was 86 degrees on Tuesday and Wednesday's high was 66. Whew! About time Fall showed up! So we took advantage of the lovely, gorgeous, crisp weather and went to the Zoo. We did see lions and tigers and bears. The bears were quite uncooperative and I couldn't get a picture. Delaney was also a stinker about pictures, but I was able to coerce her into quite a few decent shots. And I have documented the awesome time we had!

Rylee was stylin' and ready to go in her sunglasses. She wore them the whole time. It was adorable!

The elephants were out and as close as could be. And Delaney was feeling picture perfect for me.

The white tigers were so beautiful! And check out those ginormous paws.

Yeah, Delaney only wanted to make silly faces. But I did get the white tiger in the shot with her and Rylee.

Yep, he's King of the Jungle.

The Orangutans were my favorite thing. They were so funny and cute! This was the mom and she did some fun climbing and playing with the little guy.

The light and shadows were terrible, but these two were so sweet!

And this big guy came creeping out of the cave holding a big box over his head. It was too funny. He dropped the box for just a minute before picking it up again.

Then he sat himself here and wouldn't budge. The box thing just cracked me up!

We went to the Zoo with some friends. Here is the crew of kids together.

The Reptile place was my second favorite part. I'm not sure why I am suddenly fascinated by the snakes and lizards, but they were so cool!

Ha! I got Delaney AND the rhino together here. She so did not want to turn around for me. Little pickle.

Sigh. I only got her in a picture here by promising she could do a silly face. I guess that works okay, since she is a silly girl.

We had a great morning at the Zoo. I even learned how to get there all by myself now, so we will be sure to go again. The really funny thing is that the same day I went, Marian came home from school, having won a set of 4 tickets to go to the Zoo! We have a year pass, but it might be nice to have 4 extra tickets for when family or friends come......

And while on the subject of animals, I have been introduced to a new one. The canal by our house has an interesting animal called a "nutria" that lives there. I thought it was a capibara at first, but it has a nasty rat tail. So it looks like a big beaver with huge teeth, but it has a naked rat tail. They eat the grass by the canal. I got a picture of one the other day so you could see it.

Its a big animal. The size of a mid-size dog, but bulky. And that tail. Ewwwww.

Child Labor

Joshua asked if he could earn some money by washing the van. I thought that sounded like a good idea. So off he went to collect supplies and he got to work.

He was in charge of the hose.

Marian wanted to help too.

Joshua reluctantly gave up the hose position and let Marian use it while he suds up the van.

Oh yeah, he had lots of helpers for that!

Some suds is good, but more is better!

Whoo hoo! Having a lot of fun with the soap!

Er.... maybe TOO much fun with the soap?!

(I love Delaney in this photo.)

Okay, that's definitely too much fun with the soap!

Hmmmm... and then it isn't so much fun when you are all soaking wet because somebody sprayed you with the hose.

Surprisingly enough, the van looks about the same, except now the windows are all streaked after being "cleaned". On the plus side, the kids had a VERY good time doing it!

Follow Ups

I forgot to mention that we came back from Florida with a little souvenir.

So the question is, is it worth it to call usaa and get it fixed? I'll mention that I didn't do it and no other cars were involved.

And now, as to the housing situation..... Because I'm more of a passive-aggressive person, when the housing people call and tell me stupid things, I just smile and say thank you for letting me know. Then I ridicule them here. However, this week, I decided if they were going to knock me on stupid things, then I could return the favor. I took pictures and went in with notes to document these dreadful issues.

This picture went in with a note on how the landscapers came through in the interest of "uniformity" and removed a bunch of offending trees and shrubbery. They removed some unsightly item from this spot, right below our drain spout and this is what it looks like still- 6 weeks later. Call me crazy, but this does not look better. On the other side of the porch, they uprooted a little palmy looking tree and just left it there. And they have the gall to call me to complain about a chair I don't even leave on the porch if I'm not sitting in it?!

And this was to document the state of my bathtub. It had a few rusty looking spots when we moved in, but as we have used the shower, it has washed away the white stuff they painted over it with. I know they will not fix it, but I by-golly want it documented that this is what it looks like. I am not going to be responsible for it when we move out.

So those were my mini acts of rebellion. And sure, it is pretty annoying. However, for the most part, I enjoy heckling them about it and mocking the silly people who feel it necessary to do these things. And all things considered, I am happier to live here. We could live off base. Then I'd either have to drive my children to school (which I never want to do), or go to a questionable school. And if we lived off base, I would not have the other freedoms I have here. Where we live right now, I can send the kids out to play and know they will be safe. The street is quiet and no cars drive by. The playground is right there. And today, Callie was out there all day long. There are kids here and its a nice place to live, aside from the natzistic tendencies of the housing management company. If I had to live somewhere where I could do what I wanted to my house, but the kids couldn't roam freely, I would rather be here. So I can't complain too much. It is a choice and this is the better one for me.

Aslo, living here, we get to take advantage of some fun stuff. MWR held a little Halloween Festival this weekend and we were able to just walk on over. They had some fun booths where the kids could win prized and get candy. The kids had a good time.

They had free food too. Hotdogs, drinks and chips. I'm not sure how many bags of chips the kids grabbed! Rylee enjoyed her hotdog and then diligently went to throw her wrapper away. Such a cutie pie!

Marian worked hard to ring the bell on this. She did it too!

Oh yeah, the girls didn't like any of our costume options, so I drew cat faces on them. I love Delaney's face here!

And here's Callie at the bean bag toss. She really had a marvelous time.

And here is Marian. She wanted cheetah spots to go with her whiskers and nose. So, she is a Cheetah!

Dan was not so thrilled to be there. But he came and was supportive and was happy when we left. It was a good family outing. (In his defense, Dan had a really really long and draining day in court, so he was tired and that's why he wasn't enjoying himself so much.)

Boring vacation pictures

We had a long weekend last weekend. We took a little trip to Destin Florida and Joshua says we had Too Much Family Time. I was sick the whole trip, so I mainly lay around with my eyes closed.

I think they look adorable here. I woke up Saturday morning to see this. 4 kids crowded around Dan's iPad watching The Black Stallion on Netflix.

Dan took them to the pool. It was cold, but the kids all got in anyway.

Delaney lasted longer than everyone else. She is impervious to cold!

Dan took them all down to the wharf. They had a good time.

They also went to the park. Again, Dan took them out, while I wished for a faster death than the slow agonizing misery I was suffering.

I love it when they play nice together!

There was some great stuff to do and they had much fun.

And when in the room, they argued over who's turn it was to play the DS. I did like that Callie's favorite thing to play was scribblenauts which is a spelling game.

Oh yeah, the jacuzzi was a big hit too. Next time I'll have to bring bubble bath!

Yep, Marian dove in with her goggles on. It was a nice feature to have!

I love this picture! Yes, Dan took the out to play and he took this shot. But I rarely get pictures of the girls getting along like this. Love it.

And they rolled down the hills. So fun!

And since we were in Florida, Dan did take them to the beach. What did I do? I stayed at home and packed our bags while they went to the beach. Good thing Dan took pictures!