Halloween 2011

This may be Oliver's 3rd year as black spider man - but who's counting?

Grandma DeEtte found these cute tutu's for the girls.

We had a super fun party at Grandma DeEtte's and Grandpa Rich's house.

Grandma made each child a bag and they got to decorate them.

My puking pumpkin and mini pumpkins. I love pinterest!

Lindsay's amazing Carmel apple nachos!

Uncle Eric won the best Uncle of the night award by carving pumpkins for the kids.

Our kids have loved getting to know Bankston, Gracie, and Ellie (or Ellie Bug as Violette calls her).

For the past few years I have been the candy Nazi - this year I said whatever you want. I was really hoping they would eat it all and get sick. I found Violette hiding under the bed chowing down. Oliver and Penelepe rationed theirs for several days - Oliver's may have lasted a month. Violette's was gone in a day or so.

Crazy Hair Day

It was Crazy Hair Day, not Gang Affiliation Day

Grape Harvest

Have we mentioned how much we love our yard! We juiced a bunch of grapes to make some delicious grape juice.

This girl ate more than she put in the box, but that's ok.

What have we been doing the past few months?

Even though time flies, the past few months felt like years to me. Ryan spent about a month and half up in the Salt Lake area while the kids and I stayed in St. George. I can honestly say I am a HORRIBLE single mother! I have a new found respect for all single mothers out there! How on earth do you do it???? It's not like I was alone either, my parents were in St. George and Uncle Chris, but I'm so glad we are a family again. We finally moved up to Bountiful the 1st of Oct. We were waiting for the house we moved in to be cleaned out. We love our new place - even though it is OLD and needs a lot of Love (and flooring, and counter tops, and new paint, and lots of other things) we love it. The yard is just as amazing and needs just as much love. But it has an apple tree, 2 peach trees (hopefully they live), an apricot tree that is half alive, raspberries - which hopefully will get better, strawberries, and grapes - both green and concord! I know right! It's our own secret garden. We have been so busy both inside and out and I am exhausted every night. The kind of exhausted that your bed looks so good and you could almost cry to get in it. We are still not completely unpacked but oh well it will get done some day, and if it doesn't - I think we'll survive. We are a little sad we couldn't stay in St. George, but Bountiful is second best and so close we could be there in a couple hours. Also I take comfort in the fact that the kids can walk to school (it's only 2 1/2 blocks away) instead of having to drive 3 round trips like I was in St. George. And honestly could we have that many fruit trees in St. George? (ok probably) but I like to think not. If anyone wants to visit us we would love it - or if you need a bomb shelter we have one!

Crawdad Canyon

We had a great adventure with our old vecinos, the Felsteds, from St. George. The kids loved it, and even though it was super hot in St. George it was perfect weather in Veyo.

Every time Violette sees this picture she says gross! I must agree with her, they are ugly. The kids had so much fun catching them.

Beware of the claw...

Is there anything more fun than a river and crawdads?

She was demonstrating "how to eat them". Just like that!

Lexi must have shown Penelepe some of her rock climbing skills.

I loved both of these pictures so I had to do both of them, sorry they are basically the same.

It was amazing how fast they turned bright red.

Jeff showed us the proper way to experience a Crawdad boil. I will admit that I've never been much of a seafood lover. But I managed to open my crawdad get the yellow mustard strip thingy off and all the hard shells and claws and all the gross stuff and chew as fast as I could to get it down. The actual "meat" part wasn't that bad but getting to it was horrible. Penelepe liked them, but Oliver and Simon missed out due to the Wii. We tossed quite a few back in the river, thinking we had plenty - next time we'll keep em all. Thanks Felsteds we loved it! We miss you already!

HOt Summer hike

We hiked behind Grandma DeEtte's and Grandpa Rich's house this summer. It was a good little hike.

Us girls had to take a break while the boys climbed higher. They did really good for how steep some parts were.

Snow Canyon is in the background - I love the black lava rock.

Penelepe's first day of school

Kindergarten started a week later - and Penelepe was upset about it. She was bored without her brother.

Since it was a special day we let her wear her hair down.