Happy Halloween-ish

I say Halloween-ish because the H1N1, Pneumonia and Sinus Infections have come to visit right now so we won't be Trick-or-Treating :(

Rachel was getting super excited for Halloween and would ask almost everyday this past month "Is today Halloween!? Can I wear my Fairy Princess costume?!"

Well now she can and we won't be going anywhere, but who says you can't wear the costume at home...all day long? Right?

So today this is what my kids will look like if you dare come visit us...which I hope you don't because we don't want you to get this stuff :)

Rachel is our Beautiful Fairy Princess.

I know her dress isn't very "Princessy" but it is her FAVORITE dress ("Because it's twirly!") and she would wear it 24/7 if I let her. So naturally it became her Fairy Princess dress.

Benjamin is our little Frog Prince.

He is having a ball running around in it right now and you know what he did while we were taking pictures? He said "Cheese!" Clear as a bell!! :) So either that means we take a lot of pictures and ask the kids to "say cheese," or he has added another word to his vocabulary. Which consists of : Momma, Nanna, Do (door), Moe (more), Ma (Marc), Bue (Blue-yes he can pick out the color amogst others too), Yay, Wow, Baby and now Cheese.

Pumpkins

So we finally got around to carving pumpkins for Halloween. Benjamin LOVED getting into the pumpkin and 'helping'. Rachel on the other hand HATED the entire carving process because it was messy! She kept freaking out whenever Benjamin would get any bit of the inners on himself or anywhere near her.

Rachel chose the face and shapes for her pumpkin and helped us choose for Benjamin's pumpkin. Marc and I got 1 BIG pumpkin to share between us and I carved out a picture of a wolf. I think it turned out pretty cool. What do you think?

Halloween Treats

So what do you do on a Sunday when you are home with a sick kid and your husband is attending church meetings? You make make Halloween Sugar Cookies!!! I know, I know your thinking: Cookies? Sugar? Sick kid? Probably not the best combination, but hey we needed a little variety from just sitting around.

Rachel enjoyed helping and telling Benjamin what to do.

We learned from our sprinkling disaster last year and did a great job at not spilling the entire container on one cookie. ;)

And of course we enjoyed eating them too!

Saturday is a Special Day

Dad Came up this weekend to help us tackle the many holes that came as the result of getting new plumbing. I would have taken more pictures but:

1. I was busy making more apple butter

2. I was taking care of the kiddos

3. I scared dad so bad when I took this one picture, I didn't dare do it again. (He thought he had hit an electrical line when the flash from the camera went off! SORRY DAD!!)

If you remember my friends and I got 8, 5 gallon buckets of apples for free. Well this last week I spent A LOT of time making 26 pints of apple sauce, 12 pints of apple butter, 1.5 gallons of dried apples and 15 quarts of pie apples. Can I just say I'm all appled out!! I don't want to see another apple for a while. :) Now many of you might be thinking: "Is it worth it?" And my answer is: YES! Here are my reasons why:

1. I know exactly what has gone into my apple sauce/apple butter/pie apples

2. I can look at everything I did and feel good

3. I have saved us money! I broke down the cost of each jar and here it is:

$.55/pint and $.72/quart...deal or no deal?

Drawings

I just had to show off Rachel's cool picture (hers is on the right) that she drew today. She has really come a long way in her picture drawing skills and writing her own name. Her favorite thing to draw lately is people. I love the eyes! They are the best. I was tracing Benjamin's hands and the next thing I knew he laid down with his head on the paper, so I traced it...well he thought that was great and kept laying his head down wanting me to do it again and again. Gotta love the drool marks :)

The Anson 2-Step

Yesterday the kids discovered the music cards my mom sends for their birthdays again and proceeded to dance together. It was adorable!! Looks like we have 'built-in dance partners' for the kids. Now all we need to do is work on rhythm :)

What I have been up to

Besides dealing with plumbing problems, holes in my walls, playing with the kids, teaching a pre-school, and well every day thing I've also been making costumes for our Wards roadshow. I made a Snow White costume and a Prince Charming costume (I only made the shirt and pants for the prince). I had never made anything remotely close to that before, and it was certainly a learning experience. They turned out quite well, if I do say so myself :)

I've also learned how to knit hats, and now I'm addicted. (as if I didn't have enough to do, right?) And today I started making applesauce, apple butter and pie apples with ALL of those free apples I got last week. 1 bucket down, 5 more to go...

Free APPLES

Through our Relief Society we had an opportunity to pick as many free apples as we wanted! Who could pass up on an opportunity like that?

Jenny and Brittany braved the ladders and picked apples from the top of the tree...well most of them anyway.

Benjamin, Shayla, Rachel and all of the other kids loved finding all of the rotten apples on the ground and filling their buckets with them. After a while Rachel decided to go on a "Rock Adventure!" and filled up her bucket with rocks. :)

And of course the kids couldn't wait to eat the apples!

This is the load we left with. 8, 5 gallon buckets full of apples!! Can you say applesauce, dried apples, apple pie filling, apple pies, apple crisps....

Construction MESS!!

So here are some pictures of the construction that went on at my house today for 11 1/2 hours. The plumber came, made holes in my walls and ceilings, made a huge mess, replaced all of the plumbing, cleaned up and is finally home with his family. He had such a long day I hope he sleeps well.

There wasn't as much hole cutting as he thought there would be so that's a good thing. He also said that it's a really, really, really good thing we did this instead of getting central air. When he opened up a few more areas he found pipes that had been leaking slowly for a while, black mold, and a few pipes even broke off in his hand!! Can you imagine what kind of disaster would have occurred if one of those pipes burst behind the walls!? Man I don't even want to go there. So now there is just the re-construction left to do, and hopefully we can get some family help with that. Are you scared yet dad? ;)

A new Investment

*Above: Our old, rusty time bomb of a water heater
*Below: Our new, non-rusty, trusty water heater
*Amount spent: Not gonna tell ya!
* New problem: Leaky pipes...
*Solution: Replace all of the pipes in our house. To do so we get to cut holes in our walls and ceilings...yippee. :/

Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

A few weeks ago I went to the Zoo with my friend Kaylnne to see the new baby elephant, giraffe and tigers. This is the first time I have ever seen a baby elephant in person, they are super duper cute!!

I was pregnant with Benjamin the same time this momma elephant was pregnant with her baby...only her pregnancy was much, much longer than mine. :)

Rachel kept calling the girl elephant "Dumbo" and Benjamin kept saying "wow!"

They were feeding the penguins when we went this time. This was the first time we have been there to see it and the kids LoVeD it! I thought it was pretty neat too. When the penguins were swimming at the surface they looked like ducks with their heads poking out of the water.

The baby giraffe was cute, but I think he was tired because he didn't do much else than lay down and pick at some grass.

This was also the first time we were able to see the wolf.

Near the entrance there is this ball that spins because of water pressure. The kids had a blast playing with it and splashing in the water under the ball. At one point Kalynne and I tried to stop the ball and get it to spin in the other direction. We were successful and several kids thought we were so cool they wanted to try it too :)

Before leaving we went the little playground area where Rachel and Benjamin had a blast burning off their last bit of energy. Rachel was even brave enough to try this l o n g snake tunnel slide.