Halloweeeen! Trunk or Treat.

The kids wanted to do a trunk or treat so bad this year.  J being the little miss organizer had plans to put one together on her own.  I was so happy to find out the branch already had one in the works.  We love living out of the country, but sometimes you have to cash in your "normal life" and traditions for other new things.  Well not this Halloween season.  Our wonderful branch had a little Halloween carnival and then a trunk or treat.  Filled with American candies and sugar cookies!

You may not recognize C.  He is the one with the skull face and blood running down it.  He was so excited to scare all the little kids with his gory mask!  It was pretty creepy.

J is so funny, she loves dressing up for these things, 

but doesn't like it documented. 

 She wasn't thrilled with  me taking a picture of her.

(sorry J, your makeup looks so good I had to post).

She put this zombie vampire costume together all buy herself.  

Even made the earrings out of some bracelets.

This is one of her good friends from the Branch.

One good thing about having three boys in a row is we have a ton of costumes he could pick from.

He had a different costume on each day for about 3 days. 

Batman, Superman and Power rangers one with muscles one without.

He wore the one with muscles trick or treating. He loved playing the games  his favorite game was the ring toss because he won a little plastic bat, that was highly coveted from his brother.

M played and played the ring toss until he finally won a bat.  We came home with about 10 pencil erasers from him trying to win a bat.  Don't get me wrong we really needed some pencil eraser's so it was a win win.

We got to the carnival and all the kids decided they didn't want to wear their masks. 

That is me in the background holding different parts of people's costume's they didn't want to wear.

R fulfilling his duties as a member of the Elder's Quorum.  

They were in charge of the fish pond.

M doing so pumpkin bowling. 
Nice form huh!  Yeah he gets is from his mom.

M was a Skylander.  He broke his mask within the first 2 minutes of wearing it,

 I was stuck holding that too.

Delicious Donuts

 One of my favorite traditions during the Halloween season is making donuts with my hubby.

We pick a day, usually one where we will be going to a party so we can spread the love.  It makes around 65 ish donuts and they are so yummy!

 It takes a good half of the day, probably adds a few inches to the waste line because, you know we have to taste test them..quite frequently.  The kids are running in and out of the kitchen begging for just one more mom...I promise just one more.  

I think we even passed up lunch this day because we were all stuffed full of donuts.

We took them to the trunk-or-treat and they were a hit!  

FUN TRADITION, and one we can take with us wherever we are living.

Character Assembly

 We had a good surprise this morning watching the Character Assembly put on by C's class.

Each month they study a character trait, this month's was thoroughness.

  C was 1 of the 2 kids chosen in his class who exemplify thoroughness. 

 

This is the 2nd award he has received at the Character assemblies.  

The first being cautiousness and second being this one.

Can't wait for the day he applies those two character traits in our home life;) 

 At least I know he has it in him. 

C we think you are great just they way you are.  Whether you are thorough, cautious, fun loving, kind, compassionate, or a little bit of a tease.  We LOVE YOU!

Batman Super Hero

 This little guy is too much fun!

This is how he has been chasing through the house the last few days.

 Showing off his "BIG MUSCLES"

 Notice the Elmo at his feet.  We have had this since C was little. R babe just found it, we put in new batteries and now Elmo is his little playmate.  He does the hokey pokey and shakes it all about.

 I really need to get a picture of him trying to drink water with the batman mask on.  

Hilarious!

 What would I do without this fun little guy?

Birthday boy turned 9

 Every year, as we call it, the "decorating fairy" comes to our house the night before some one has a birthday and decorates the family room with the birthday persons 

favorite color of balloons and crepe paper.

My sister has a fun tradition that we now use in our birthday morning fun!  We drape the doorway with crepe paper, usually we put as many streamers as how old they are turning and they have to run through them in the morning for their big entrance.   The kids love it!

 This was C's big entrance,  He ran so fast that the shot was blurry;)

 I can't believe he is turning 9. 

 What a lucky little guy to be able to celebrate his birthday in

 Utah with his best friends and cousins. 

This year C wanted a I pod shuffle with headphones.  

He also got some fun laser tag gun's, lego's and a skylander. 

 We let the kids pick a fun activity to do on their birthday. 

He wanted to go bowling with his cousins and friend, but since the friend was closer to where we were staying we took him bowling.  He was so happy to spend the afternoon with his best buddy.

Instead of cake we had donuts from Dick's, one of our family favorites.

C you are FULL OF IT!

We were so blessed to have such a kind and gentle first boy!  

He is so good to his brothers and sister and is such a good example to them.

He is usually, always willing to give up what he has for someone else.  

He Loves to play soccer and is quite good at it.

He has loved learning how to play goalie this year.

We are always impressed at how he can pick up the correct intonations

 and accents at the languages he is learning. 

He is learning mandarin.

He has met so many new friends at school this year and loves to be with them.

He has started scouts in Shanghai and loves it.

He has enjoyed reading and watching some of the Harry Potter books.

His favorite foods to eat are dumplings, pizza and popcorn with coconut oil.

He is quick witted.

He is good at math and reading.

He loves to ride his rip stick.

He was saving up for a hamster, once he had all the money he needed, he decided he didn't want to sink all of his money into something that might die.

He currently still has his money and is hamsterless.

He loves to watch the Discovery channel.

He loves to try exotic foods....chicken hearts, jelly fish, fish eye, octopus, bull frog.

It is so funny to me that he doesn't like processed foods like graham cracker's, cheese cake or moon pie's, but give the kid a skewer of chicken hearts and he is a happy man.

C is so much fun.  We just love having him be apart of our family!

Wedding Bells, but mostly just pics of the fam.

Here are some fun pictures we took at the wedding.

How funny is it that this is the only picture we got of the bride.

The kids preparing things at the signature table. 

My boys looking rather handsome in there new dress shirts.

Didn't quite make it to Strawberry but we still had fun!

 One of the big things on the to do list on our visit to Utah was to go fishing at 

Strawberry Reservoir  or Raspberry as the boys called it.

As we planned out the days, the to do list got longer and longer and days kept being crossed off the calendar.  We did go fishing, but kept it close to home.

All that matters was the fun that was to be had was had.  We bought our favorite junk food that we don't have access to here.  Things like Beef Jerky, licorice (those tasty red ones that pull apart),  capri suns, and trail mix.  We ate the treats, enjoyed the company of cousins and SIL, and caught fish.  All of which would have been done at Strawberry. We just didn't have to drive as far.

What a great Dad the kids have! 

The big 6th Birthday Celebration

 R's sister got married October 5th so we flew home to join in the festivities.

 That meant that the 2 older boys would get to celebrate their birthdays in Utah.

 M wanted a skylander cake.  I was so lucky to find this plain white cake at Walmart. I put the skylander figurines, 6 candles on it and called it good.  I loved how it turned out and it was so easy!

Eating cake with cousins. 

 The inside of the cake was a burst of rainbow colors.

He was so lucky to see so many cousins on his birthday.

 We usually leave up the decorations all day, 

but he wanted to dive onto them and pulled them all down.

 He had a great day!  He played with his little cousins all morning and  

we celebrated by going to build-a-bear in the afternoon.  Then he 

slept over and Grandma R's house, with all his others cousins.  R and I went to Tiff and Adam's wedding dinner.  I was a little sad leaving him on his birthday night, but he thought it was so cool having a sleep over on his birthday!

M is a whirlwind.

He loves to play wii with his Dad.

He loves his friends.

He loves to ride bikes and kick a soccer ball,

Oh man does he love sweets!

He has lived on three continents

He loves to sit down and read books with mom.

He has a good imagination.

He loves to laugh and have a great time.

He likes to be at home.

He likes to sing songs, we always find him walking around the house

 singing songs under his breath.

He like playing with legos.

He likes dogs, especially Ranger.

He has a one track mind, if he wants something he won't quit until he has it.

He is very shy around adults he doesn't know.

 He loves to eat, especially pizza and dumplings.

His favorite color is green, for now.

 He is such a fun little guy and we just LOVE him so much!