Adventures at the Cabin

Tyler has to have regular trips to the cabin. If it's been a while since we've been there, he will make a special request to go and remind us each and everyday until it happens. One of his requests came a couple of weeks ago while Grandma and Pawpaw were up there. After listening to a week's worth of reminders, I packed us up after church last Sunday and headed up that night. Of course Tyler was exstatic! (Billy said he wouldn't be able to join us...something about "work.") Allison also greatly enjoys our trips to the cabin. She knows she gets to be treated like a gueen by her "Me-maw" and is eager for adventurous and silly times with her "Pawpaw" (not to mention all the special treats and goodies she gets from them)!

Here are a few pictures from our visit.

Our little "cabin road" is in the process of being widened and will be paved this coming Spring. We're movin' up with the times! Pawpaw has been monitoring the progress of the road each day and has made friends with the workers. Tyler got to accompany Pawpaw one morning and even got to drive the bulldozer!

Here he is hard at work! His only complaint about the experience is that he didn't get to "dig dirt." He was too small to reach the controls. :(

Pawpaw also got Tyler a ride on Misty, the neighbor's horse. I wasn't there for that adventure and forgot to send the camera with them. However, the next day we visited with Misty, we took her some pears from our pear tree in the backyard. Tyler and Allison both got to feed her. She was so very thankful!

**There are more pictures from our visit to the cabin in my next post: "Fall Leaves"

A Little on the Random Side

Here's a little glimpse into our regular day-to-day lives! These are just some random pictures that have been taken over the last few weeks. Enjoy!

With the recent cooler Fall weather, Billy has been bringing in wood from the woodpile to keep by the fireplace for our warm, cozy fires. Along with these pieces of wood have come many lizards seeking shelter for the winter. One morning I was reloading the fire and I see this little guy perched on one of the logs. I immediately called for Tyler to come and rescue him. He quickly grabbed him, named him "Noggerhead," and got to keep him as a pet for the day. I'm not sure how he came up with the name, and no, he didn't hold him ALL day - he has a bug catcher that he keeps little guys like this in for observation.

Little Diva in Training

Last week I hosted a Premier Jewelry party. All the guys went out to dinner, while the girls got to stay home and try on jewelry - including Allison! She had a blast!

Here's a little further glimpse into this diva's world as she listens to music with Daddy on "her" ipod. (Billy said he bought it for Allison since she loves music so much. ;)


And I saved the best for last...

Introducing Mrs. and Mr. Potato Head!

This face just cracks me up!

A Season of Thanks

For Family Home Evening tonight, we talked about the upcoming holiday and its purpose. We looked up scriptures and Primary songs that relate to the topic of being thankful and having gratitude, and we discussed ideas of things we could do throughout the next two weeks to show gratitude for all that we have been blessed with. To conclude, we made a "Thankful Chain" to count down the days until Thanksgiving. (I always try to be very conscience of giving credit where it is due, so I have to give my friend Tiffany props for this idea. Thanks Tiffany!) We took turns naming things that we were thankful for and then wrote each of our thoughts on the chain links.
Tyler's responses included the following:

• Family - He named off each of us individually, but we condensed it into one since there were only 17 links to share. Plus, I wanted to hear what other types of things he would come up with.
• Home - Anyone who knows Tyler well, knows just how sincere this is. I love that he refers to it as his 'home' rather than his 'house.'
• Hot Wheel cars - Boys will be boys!
• Turtles - He frequently thanks Heavenly Father in his prayers for being able to find turtles. I just can't believe he didn't mention dinosaurs or T. REX!
• Waffles - This is Tyler's most favorite food (without syrup). He would eat them for every meal if I would allow it!

Tyler helped us come up with these responses for Allison:

• Books - Allison definitely loves books, especially "Lift-the-Flap" books. You will find her sitting, looking at books on a regular basis.
• Mommy
• Daddy
• Tyler
• Fruit - This is Allison's most favorite food - grapes, apples, bananas, cantaloupe, watermelon - you name it, she loves it. Allison is to fruit as Tyler is to waffles!

The Best of Halloween '08: HALLOWEEN NIGHT!

This is a LOOOONG one!

My sister and I decided to do a spooky Halloween dinner to surprise the kids this year. We received some inspiration for this dinner from a few online sources and were very excited to put it all together. A couple last minute interuptions got thrown at us that day, so we got a little bit of a later start on things than we wanted to. However, most everything turned out the way we wanted and it was certainly well worth the time and effort. It is definitely going to be a new tradition for us!

Mummy Dogs

Pumpkin Burgers

Creepy Crawly Banana Bug and Monster Mouths

Graveyard Dirt Desserts

The first look at the Spooky Halloween Dinner.

Tyler's favorite part of the whole dinner was the "Spider Juice."

This Mummy Dog sure is good!

After enjoying our spooky dinner, we headed out to do a little Trick-or-Treating. Allison took a little while to warm up to the situation. Luckily, she was content with holding my hand so I didn't have to carry her around from house to house. She did have one mishap as a result of running down a VERY steep driveway. Uncle Jon did his best to get to her before she toppled down, but she was cruisin' too fast. She ended up face first on the concrete and received a small scrape on her cheek and nose, and two very LARGE scrapes on her pretty black shoes (thank goodness for shoe polish). After recovering, Allison decided she no longer needed moral support from Mommy and did her very best to keep up with Tyler and Lana the remainder of the time. She said "Tee Teet!" (Trick-or-Treat) and "tay too" (thank you) at almost every house, and stayed as possesive as ever over her pumpkin! I especially loved the way she carried her pumpkin on her arm in total girl fashion. She is a natural! Tyler had a blast and enjoyed the opportunity to roar at any and everyone he came in contact with! He greatly enjoyed seeing all the festive Halloween decor, especially all the spiders and webs (I'm not sure what his facination with spiders is lately). At the kid's request, we headed home after only about an hour of candy collecting madness. Tyler told me, "I'm cold. Let's go home." I responded with, "You don't want to get any more candy?" "Nope," he replied, "I'm done!" So until next year...

The whole gang - T. Rex, "Buddy's Bones," Sleeping Beauty, and the sassy Black Cat.

Trick-or-Treat!

Tyler just scared the pants off these unsuspecting souls with his BIG Tyrannosaurus Rex roar!

A purrr-fect pair!

Hey guys, WAIT for me!!!

Checking out the Halloween decor.

Tyler said this was like the car wash.

Checking out his earnings.

Let's do this Trick-or-Treat thing again real soon!

The Best of Halloween '08: Family Pumpkin Carving

Another one of our yearly family traditions is to carve the pumpkins we choose from Bert's Pumpkin Patch. Last year, Tyler had a smaller one that we carved in addition to the large family one. But since he chose a green one this year, he opted not to carve it so that it will last longer. When it comes to pumpkin templates, I am more in favor of the traditional pumpkin faces. Tyler, however, was very persistant about doing a spider this year for some reason. Since I am not a big fan of spiders, I wasn't so excited about the choice. I had already talked him out of a spider template at the Pumpkin Carving party we attended, because our pumpkin wasn't the right shape for the particular one he wanted. I told him we could save the spider one to do on our other pumpkin, hoping he would want something different by then. No such luck...he was dead set on a spider! I have to admit that it turned out looking pretty cool!

Billy and Tyler opened up the pumpkin and scooped it out.

Allison wasn't too enthusiastic about the opportunity to experiment with the top of the pumpkin. After touching it once, she made a "this is disgusting" face and pushed it away!

The inside of the hollowed out pumpkin seemed to be very interesting!

Tyler helped me with the carving.

I must say that this just wasn't my year for carving pumpkins! I completely butchered the bat template that we chose to do at the Pumpkin Carving party by cutting a line that I shouldn't have. As a result, the large bat came out with the moon, leaving a huge hole instead. That's the reason I didn't post a picture of the finished product in my last post. I ended up letting Tyler decorate the back of it with plastic pumpkin face pieces! So after this mishap, I was determined not to make the same mistake twice. Tyler even reminded me ahead of time. "Don't mess this one up like the bat one!" Well I didn't cut in the wrong spot this time, but I still managed to "mess it up." The design was supposed to have the spider holding on to a small Jack-o-Lantern (hence the big hole in that spot in the picture above). Things were going great - even with the skinny spider legs - up until I reached the little Jack-Lantern. When I tried to pull the pieces out from around the Jack-o-Lantern, he broke right in half and I had to cut him completely out! In my defense, it was a very thick pumpkin, but I was disappointed nonetheless! The spider looked pretty neat on his own, but I just wasn't satisfied. So the next morning, I cut out a new pumpkin from the back of our messed up bat pumpkin and attached it with toothpicks. This is the way it was intended to look...

Now that's better! (The cat is the Quan family pumpkin.)

The Best of Halloween '08: Costume and Pumpkin Carving Party

We were invited to a friend's house this year for a Halloween Costume and Pumpkin Carving Party. Tyler eargerly awaited this party, since it was one more opportunity to wear his beloved T. Rex costume! He was also very excited for the pumpkin carving and asked each and every day leading up to the party if it was time to go and carve our pumpkin.

On the day of the party I went down to my parents' house to rummage around for some old costumes I had, in hopes of convincing Billy to join me in dressing up for the occasion. I found Pinnochio, a Scarecrow, and a Pirate. Of the 3, I figured he would be most willing to go as a pirate (he would at least get to carry a sword, right?!). On my way home, I called and told him I found a pirate costume for him to wear and I think I got a chuckle or something. To make a long story short, I have proof that he actually wore the costume! He made a pretty good looking pirate if you ask me. He even won 2nd place for the Best Male Costume award!

Billy added the gun (unloaded, of course!) accessory himself - go figure!

Hard at work, scooping out the pumpkin!

On to the best part - carving!

The Best of Halloween '08: Trunk-or-Treat

Despite the cold and rainy weather conditions on the day of our Trunk-or-Treat at church, there was still a great turn-out! We had a chili cook-off and pie contest, and the lines to get dinner wrapped all the way around one side of the gym! It was decided to go ahead and do the Trunk-or-Treat outside even though it was still quite cold and misty. The water spots on my lens in all the pictures show proof of this! Our scary, roaring T. Rex and sassy Black Cat still had a blast and collected quite the stash of candy!

Favorite moments from the night:

• Even though Tyler had been wearing his costume since the beginning of October, he acted as though this night was the first time he had seen it and eagerly put in on with excitment and anticipation!
• After remembering to say "Trick-or-Treat," Tyler found it necessary to ROAR at each and every unsuspecting candy-passer-outer! (And he came up with this all on his own!)
• Many cars had fun music playing and Allison just couldn't resist the urge to dance!
• Upon receiving a pack of M&M's - one of Allison's most favorite types of candy - she exclaimed, "WOWWW!" and then was given a 2nd pack just for being so cute!
• Allison was very enthralled and excited about the fact that every person she came in contact with freely offered her candy and other goodies. So much so, in fact, that she kept both hands full of candy and if we so much as layed a hand on her pumpkin she began to scream and wail!

The dynamic duo! And they both decided to look in the right direction and smile at the same time!

Allison collecting another one of her favorites - "pops"

"Alright, filler up!"

This was one of the cars with music playing and Allison was bustin' a move! Also, notice what's in her hands - M&M's and a "pop!"

Tyler showing off his loot!

There will be several more "Best of Halloween '08" entries, so stay tuned!