Halloween!

I must admit, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. We decorate the house the very first day of October, bake and decorate sugar cookies, eat tons of candy corns throughout the month, and this year we did the Pumpkin Run. For the Pumpkin Run we got together with three other families and had dinner. Each family brought a carved pumpkin, a plate of cookies, and a poem to drop on someone's doorstep anonymously. We went after dark, left the stuff on the porch, rang the doorbell, and ran and hid as we watched them open the door. In the poem we left for the family we chose, we told them they had to sing their ABCs before they could take their goodies inside. It was so cute to watch from the bushes as these five little kids sang their hearts out.

We had our ward dinner and trunk-or-treat the Friday before Halloween, and then we went around the neighborhood Halloween night. Maryn and Luke both went off with friends, and I took Gabe and Ian around while Daron passed out candy. It was the warmest Halloween I think I have experienced in my entire life, and we had a great time.

Citizen of the Week

Every week at school, each class will announce the Citizen of the Week to much applause and fanfair. Maryn was named the Citizen of the Week the last week in October. The teacher always writes a poem about the person without the class knowing who it is, and as the poem is read they try to figure out who it is. The poem for Maryn said:

There is nothing spooky about this gal
For she would never play a trick on a pal.
Candy can't compete with this sweet treat!
Her compassion and kindness just can't be beat.

All I Want for Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth

Luke lost his two front teeth in the same night. They were very loose at dinner, and Daron graciously offered to pull them both. Daron LOVES to pull teeth. He does it so well that kids rarely even realize it's gone until he shows it to them in the palm of his hand. We have neighborhood kids and kids from his office come to the house to get their teeth pulled! Anyway, Luke went to bed, decided he couldn't sleep with his teeth so loose, and pulled them both out himself! The tooth fairy rewarded him for his hard work.

CALIFORNIA

We went to California for the kids October break. They get almost three weeks off in October, which I LOVE, because it is such a perfect time to travel. The weather is nice and places aren't crowded and the kids are ready for a break from school. We stayed at the house in Carlsbad and the weather was PERFECT! We spent two days at Legoland. Legoland is great for kids there age because they can go on all the rides. Gabe has to be with an adult most of the time, but he can still ride, and Maryn and Luke can go by themselves. I think this is one of the best amusement parks for kids ten and under.

Daron and the kids spent one day at Sea World while Ian and I went shopping and went to visit a friend. Their aim was to get as wet as they could and they said mission accomplished. They sat in the splash zone at all the shows and rode the rides that go them the wettest over and over.

We spent a day at the beach and the kids had a great time digging in the sad. We met a nice older couple and realized they were LDS when we saw him reading his Book of Mormon. Turns out he was a Catholic priest in Ireland before he converted to the church about 7 years ago.

The big crash

Poor Gabe had his first bike accident. He and a friend were riding home from a neighbors when his friend got a bit too close to Gabe and Gabe lost his balance. I was outside on the driveway when it happened and ran to pick him up. He had a bloody nose, bloody mouth (luckily all the teeth were fine), a scraped up forehead, and gravel embedded in the inside of his lower lip that Daron had to pull out with tweezers. Luckily, Daron had just gotten home from work because he deals with blood much better than I do. Gabe was such a trooper. He was back on his bike the next day and had completely recovered within a week. Thank goodness, little kids are so resilient.