Halloween Bones

Since all the costumes and the sewing maching and all the halloween supplies are still in California, we went the easy way this year. The make-up lasted about 30 minutes. Then they all looked like they were wearing black eyeliner & mascara. They looked so pretty! (And not one of them would let me near them with a camera)

Fall Music Concert

Blake playing the bells. I wish we could have gotten a picture of him playing the

bass drum - he had such a look of complete concentration, but he wasn't off a beat.

Brayden in the 7th Grade Band

Brayden's Music Class

Red Ribbon Week

Benson was telling us about Red Ribbon Week at school

(Say no to drugs)

We asked him if he had ever done drugs.

"Yes" he said

"What drugs?" We asked, (a little concerned)

"You know, smoking...

you know, tobacco sauce!"

At our home now it is

Say no to Tabasco sauce!

Bradley's Food

Bradley took the snack for preschool today.

Ghosts & White were the theme.

One of the boys favorite after-school snacks is popcorn.

The boys had already made a couple bags,

but Bradley wanted some more.

So he got out another bag and popped his own.

"Is it popped yet mom?"

He had put the bag in the microwave still wrapped in plastic.

We took off the melted plastic and tried again

and it actually worked.

(A little better this time)

Pumpkin Patch

What a good looking crew!

That scarecrow is doing a good job too!

Grandma & Grandpa took us to the Pumpkin Patch by their house.

It was a good time!

Somehow Grandma only ended up with 1 pumpkin,

We have 5.

I'm trying to convince the boys that

we don't have to carve pumpkins,

we can use them for Thanksgiving decorations.

They're not buying it.

Framers

I'm glad I don't have that job!

That's Jeff -

he's one of my favorite people in the whole world right now!

I've got to go make more cookies for that crew!

Rewards of Begging

Have you ever seen a grown man beg?

It is not a pretty sight.

First he rationalized,

"We'll need it for all the snow."

Then he decided on several other ways to use it,

"We'll go camping, take the boys out,

you & I can go for a picnic in the mountains"

(yea, the date-thing usually works pretty good-and he knows it),

"We could use it to plow the church sidewalks,"

(The Young Men have that responsibility

& he's the Young Men's President)

"Anything can be home storage or part of the 72-hour kit or something like that, right?"

Then he actually tried to talk himself out of it.

"It's not as good of a deal as we think it is, right?"

"Maybe I would rather have blue."

Then, he decided that it would be his

birthday & Christmas present

(for the next 6 years)

But finally...

he's happy.

Of course, he could have just bought it,

but it was nice that he discussed it with me.

Now it's going to kill him when he realizes that since it's his only Christmas present, he has to wait until Christmas to use it!

Ha ha ha. (That's where the begging comes in)

Compost

Saturday Bradley was helping Grandpa.

Bradley is always with whoever is outside,

grandpa is almost always outside too,

so Brad is with grandpa, lucky Grandpa.

Grandpa has an awesome garden

(green thumbs are unfortunately not hereditary!)

Bradley asked grandpa what he was doing,

"making compost," says grandpa.

"What's that?" Asks Bradley.

"It's to feed the plants." Says grandpa.

So Bradley jumps on the trampoline, visits the cats, checks out the pile of rocks, has snacks, then later that day...

Bradley was walking around the garden dropping handfuls of dirt on the plants.

"What are you doing Bradley?"

"Feeding the plants!"

He was walking back and forth from the compost pile to the plants,

grabbing handfuls of dirt for each plant. Busy boy.

(Just wash those hands really good!)

Temple Trip

Friday night, Bryan & I got to go to the

Ogden Temple.

That alone was great.

But to make it even better, we can leave the boys at my parents house - no babysitters or 7 hours away - my brother Mark did supervise (thanks, Mark), but Brayden usually does a pretty good job for short babysitting stints.

But to make it really neat, we were walking into the session and my

mom & dad (who are temple workers) were standing there

welcoming everyone.

How cool was that! Very!

Here comes the snow!

This is the view out my front window right now.

I've got to go get a snow shovel!

Update: Sunday, October 12th

Not only did we have our first Wyoming snowstorm, we left town on Friday and got snowed out. They got over a foot of snow in town. By the time we made it back this morning they had piled five feet of snow in the middle of the road in places. It is stinkin' cold too! Boy this is going to be fun!

Tub Time Again

One bath just wasn't enough.

You think Brett would learn

not to do this

(yes, it's happened before)

because he hates getting dressed!

Conference Weekend

Last weekend was so great!

on Friday we picked out our flooring and

cabinents and lighting,

and hit Chuck E. Cheese for Bradley

(that potty training bribe).

We spent the day Saturday & Sunday at my parents house near Ogden.

We enjoyed a fabulously rainy day Saturday.

But, of course, the very best part was getting to hear

General Conference.

Brayden & Bryan got to go to the Priesthood Session in the Conference Center. Brayden said it was "totally fun!" He said it was awesome when all those men sang.

I especially loved President Monson's message about

Enjoying the Journey.

It was also fun to hear about the 5 new temples.

I was very interested in the ones in Rome and Kansas.

The boys were so great with their conference activity packets -

it was funny though,

we didn't hear "Pioneer" for Bingo Blackout until

Sunday when Sister Dalton spoke.

It kept them listening for much longer than I expected!

Bryan, Brett, & Bradley jumping on Mark's trampoline.

First Day of Preschool

There was an opening in Miss Glenna's Preschool - so Bradley got to start today - Yea! He was so excited - all he has wanted was to go to school with his "pack-pack."