Leaves leaves and more leaves

Well we finally got around to creating the crazy critters that we collected the sticks and leaves for. I helped the kids some at first but then their friends came over and they went crazy creating all kinds of fun little guys. These are just the first few they made, I didn't get pictures of the rest.
I hate our trees!! In the spring they drop seeds everywhere, in the summer it is sticks and in the fall we have leaves. Now don't get me wrong, I do love the shade they provide, but when you have 14 huge elm trees, that is just a little bit too much. I have no idea what to do with all the leaves after I rake them up, there are just too many. I will spend hours raking and the next day there are so many leaves on the ground again you would think I hadn't done anything. I don't think we knew what we were getting ourselves into when we decided to buy this house, some days I miss our tiny yard in Magna with its one tree.
On a positive note it has been great weather so I have loved being outside. To bad today is not shaping up to be a great day for Halloween, I just hope it doesn't rain.

Halloween, Death, and Dogs

Crysania has a fascination and fear of death. Every time she hears about someone dying she asks a million questions. If anyone ever dies in a movie she will always close her eyes or leave the room. Last week there was a baby born in our ward that died after only living for a day. Since I am the compassionate service leader in our ward I was helping at the funeral for several hours. Every time I would see Crysania she would ask me question after question about the baby. Most of which I couldn't answer since I didn't know the family and wasn't aware of what happened.
So I was just wondering if this is a normal thing for kids of this age or is it just her?

On a happier note, santaquin has an annual halloween party that we went to on saturday. They had blow up toys that the boys played on most of the time. They had games for the kids to play, along with a spook alley, costume contest, and food to eat. I think the kids had a good time and it was beautiful weather so it felt nice to sit out in the sun while the kids played.

Our dogs are escape artists!!! we just spent a week and over $100 to fix their pen, thinking that they would not be able to get out anymore. So we put them in the newly fixed pen for the first time monday night. Tuesday they both got out. Moroni fixed the spot where he thought they were getting out when he got home that night. Well this morning one of them got out again. I looked all along the fence and could not see anywhere that he could have gotten out of. UGHH!! now what are we going to do, keep them chained up all the time? Did I ever tell you I HATE DOGS!

Santaquin Canyon

In the family fun magazine they have a really cute idea of using sticks, rocks, leaves, and other natural items to make some cute little critters. All you need is glue and googly eyes. So I decided to take the kids up the canyon to collect the stuff we needed. And being the social bug that my kids are they wanted to invite some friends, so we called up Tami Gause and invited her family to come along with us.
I thought the kids would have fun looking for stuff to bring home, filling up their bags with treasures, but Bowen only wanted to get rocks and Elijah didn't want to get anything at all. Crysania only wanted to get pretty things so she just got a couple of leaves. Well so much for moms great idea, Oh well. I threw a few things in their bags any way and tomorrow we will see if they will help me put together some cute little critters.
The kids did have fun exploring around the little area we were at and looking at the river, so it wasn't a total bust. Plus it was beautiful and great to get outside in this wonderful weather.

When it was time to go, we started back up to the car up the super steep hill that the kids kept sliding back down, when Elijah got a bee on his face and just stood there crying and I had no idea what was wrong. Then Bowen hurt his toe somehow and just sat down in the middle of the path so no one could get past him. Then when we eventually got back to the cars there were bees or wasps or what ever they were flying all around the cars and the kids were freaking out. Aren't kids great!!

Here are the kids going down the hill


And here they are going up

Pumpkins and Blocks

We had a fun time in school today. This morning the kids got the blocks out and were building block towers.
Later on I was reading the family fun magazine and they had some fun ideas for decorating pumpkins, so we decided that now would be a good time to get our pumpkins decorated. The boys just had fun painting their pumpkins but crysania and I used the ideas from the family fun. (Yes Frankenstein is actually a spaghetti squash)
I have been going to the every day food storage blog that I have listed here on my site and getting a ton of great new recipes, tonight I made the sweet and sour meatballs, the kids didn't really like it but I thought it was good. It is not something I would make all the time but if you like sweet and sour you would really enjoy this recipe.

Sarah Clapping

Sarah is so cute, when ever she would do something cute I would clap and say Yeah!!! so now when ever I say yeah she will start clapping. So I had to get it on video.

Vacation

I have not been able to log into my account using my computer so I have not posted for a while, I was finally able to get on using a different computer. So I will update on what has been going on.

Week before last, I decided I wanted a vacation, so since we do homeschool and I don't have to worry about taking the kids out of school, we packed our bags and headed to St. George on Thursday morning to see Liz and the new baby.
We had a good drive down, the kids watched movies the whole time and I listened to a book on my mp3 player. Sarah was content to just sit and watch the scenery, I am glad she is such a good baby. We got to Lizzy's house at about noon. At the parks down there, they have these fun water pads there that the kids can play on along with the normal play ground. My kids loved it and got soaked, which probably felt great since it was about 90 degrees down there.
Then we went to beaver for a night to visit my sister Melynda and her kiddos. That night Von was taking Caleb on an overnight campout so we went with them for dinner, but not the sleeping in a tent. Of course we had to go to the cheese factory for icecream and we went to the park again.

I have been wanting to hike to timp cave for a while and since it will be closing soon for winter, I decided it was a good time to go. I didn't know if the kids would be able to make it all the way but they were real troopers and didn't complain at all. I had to walk as slow as the kids because I had to carry Sarah in the backpack. We all had a good time but my legs were killing me the next few days.

All these fun things and we forgot the camera for all of it :(

Sick

So I have been sick for 5 days now and don't seem to be getting over it. The kids have been slacking of on their school work because I just don't have enough energy to make them do it. Its days like these that made me not want to do homeschool in the first place. I just have to remember the days when it does work out and that I won't always feel this crappy.

Bowen hates to write in his journal but he does like to type so I decided to set up blogs for each of the kids to use as their journals. If you would like to see them, crysania's is crysaniaclub.blogspot.com and bowens is bowen2000.blogspot.com.