::cookies and stuff::

Halloween cookies are one of our things. We love to do them.  All sorts.  But lately we've just struggled to have time to do anything.  Max saw an old photo of he and I making these Nutter Butter ghosts before Sandy was even born a while back and he remembered how fun they were.

So when I realized we needed cookies for Max's school party and the church party I resolved that we would dip ghosts again.  Max was delighted.



Classic picture face!

These cookies are so stinking good, you could eat like 10 of them in one sitting without even realizing it.



So speaking of halloween parties, on Thursday Sandy and Max both had school parties, so they got to wear their costumes to school.  Lucy wore the downgraded version of her Tinkerbell costume.  She likes to suck on the skirt.



Sandy had a fun time, but he was most psyched up that he got to go to Max's school party.  The night before he said to me, "I won't be four for THIRTY YEARS, but I still get to go to Max's party??!"  He was happily incredulous.

Max's school is in a new location across the parking lot which has a large fully fenced outdoor area which is GREAT.  It about triples the functional space of the school.
Max was inside playing halloween bingo and Sandy was outside running and playing with the kids.  He was really shy when we first arrived but after about 10 minutes he was having the time of his life.

And Max was having a lot of fun too.  He's in a good spot here at this school.  It's been great for him.





When it was time to leave Sandy started to cry--real true sad and miserable tears because he wanted to stay and play.  It was pretty cute, but no I'm not enough of a softie that I let him stay.  But I told him he can go to school there next year and he was pretty excited about that.

::pumpkin hunting::

(cute pumpkin faces on the board at Sandy's school.  so dang cute.)

We tried and tried to find a time where we could all go and pick out our jack-o-lantern pumpkins, but no matter what we did, one of us was gone. So the kids and I went to do it while Kris was gone.  we made sure and picked out a good Daddy pumpkin for him though.

For the last few years we've gone to a big church nearby that brings in tons of pumpkins as a fund raiser for their youth programs.  I figure it's the next best thing to a real pumpkin patch since there are so many to choose from.

Basically, my role was just to make sure nobody picked a pumpkin that was too big.  I don't want to spend hours scraping out the inside of an immense monstrous pumpkin this year.  And that's a harder job than you'd think.

Everybody found the prefect pumpkin after a lot of fooling around.  Sandy especially was way more interested in fooling around and dancing and spinning and tripping on pumpkins than picking one out.  Shocker I know.
But he picked a great one.





And Lucy was there, watching it all.  So I thought she deserved a selfie with pumpkins.



She was serious about all this.  At least one of us was.


Now to see if we can find time to actually carve these dang pumpkins.

::this and that::

Here are some "this and that" pictures from my phone that I took the last couple of weeks.  They're a little random, but way too cute not to post.

I'm feeding Lucy some sort of mash up of green vegetables and Max says, "What're you feeding her, wasabi??"
Ew!



Here's Sandy playing with his new set of Octonaut toys donated to him by his friend Emily who suddenly found herself too mature for them.  He's in heaven.  I love his cute little tie dyed shirt too.



Kris laughed at me the other day because he came in the room while I was putting Lucy down for a nap or something, and there she was, gazing into my eyes.  He said something to the effect of "Yes, and I can't go to sleep without gazing at you the whole time either."  Haha funny, but really she has to stare at me until she sleeps.  Little stinker.  She's very intent on making sure I'm still there.

Sometimes I wish it was me in the bed going to sleep and by the time I get her to sleep it almost IS me in there.



Sandy says to me "Look Mom, I did it!!!!"  And I look over and there he is.



Now that's a skill that's going to get you into college someday.
Well, maybe the skill won't be the smile might.



Sultan joins Lucy on her blanky.  She was pretty excited that he came over.  She loves to feel his fur.
It doesn't get much cuter than that.



And there you go.  All my little randoms gathered up, just for fun.

::hike::

We went on a hike this afternoon after doing the normal Sunday afternoon stuff--such as dishes, eating, laundry, trying to nap.  We forced Max to go and Sandy bounced along happily.  Lucy was all in.
Max had a blast once we got going.  He found a "hiking stick" and poked it into everything possible.



Within the first 10 minutes Sandy compared the hike to Thunder Mountain and Cars Land.  That was after on the way over when Kris and I were talking about the hill near our house named Sun Mountain.  Sandy asked what ride that was at Disneyland.



Lucy rode along in the carrier and sang pretty much the whole time.  She was very cheery.



We were right next to the little Santa Fe River on this hike, and the smell really reminded me of our yard growing up.  There were cottonwoods with leaves all over the path and it was wet and fresh smelling.  I was happily reminded of the smells of fall in my parents' yard.  I loved it.



Sandy is all adventure and pretending right now.  Not sure what he was doing here, but I do know we kept him from completely falling in the water--no small feat.



Lucy is way aware of everything that's going on.



And that's the end.  We went home and ate dinner and read scriptures and did laundry and put everybody to bed.  Busy days.  It's always nice to get to breath the fresh air and enjoy the vistas of our beautiful place.

::disney with the fam 3::

It was a really fun trip, like I said.  Cousins got to hang out together, we got to watch some fun shows, ride lots of awesome rides and eat treats.  Boy are there ever some great treats there.  You've got to be careful not to try all of them or you end up driving one of those scooters around and not being able to fit into the seats at Soarin.

One day Max got a big rice crispy treat shaped like a mickey head.  Sandy got a cake pop that looked like Olaf the snowman.  There are always the mickey head ice cream bars that are one of our favorites--don't think we got any of those this time though.

We all shared a bunch of ice cream sundaes at Ghiradelli's and boy they were good, despite the confustion of 10 people trying to share and trade around 5 sundaes.   I guess we're lucky we're all still healthy with that sort of heavy duty germ sharing.

On the last day we ate lunch at the Mary Poppins place which is also a bakery, so we got a couple of cookies there.  How can one resist?  I got a huge coconut macaroon called a Matterhorn cookie.  I should've taken a picture, it looks just like the mountain.

Sandy got a HUGE mickey head sugar cookie.  And he loved it.



Loved it with a deep and tender love.



But the love wasn't deep enough to keep him from devouring it, luckily.





I spent a lot of time the last day sitting with sleeping babies and saving seats and etc.  It was pretty low key which was good for me because I'm just tired right now.



And everybody was always very happy to see us when they got done with their various exciting activities.



Max and Scooter both got to picked for the Jedi training academy so that was pretty exciting.  Max is pretty much an expert by now.  But evidently it never gets old.  Maybe next time he'll actually strike down one of the Darths.



There they are, the Utah Valley Marathon Randles!!



At one point we were waiting for our fast pass time to come so we could go on Soarin and Dad found this great little lookout spot by the splashy rapids ride.  The kids were having so much fun.  It might've been the most fun they had the whole entire trip.



Even Gigi was having fun because she was going up and down the stairs over and over again.



And then of course they were all totally drenched and got very cold when we went to Soarin, but oh well.  I guess the whole point was everybody having fun and that was accomplished.



Sandy got to go on Soarin with me for the first time and he was pretty scared but enjoyed it quite a bit once it got going.  Best ride ever still as far as I'm concerned.



These two crazies had a ton of fun together, they stayed out later than anybody else and rode all sorts of big scary rides.  They're good company for each other, neither one of them ever really wants to be done.



So since they're so crazy and can't ever really be done, we'll just have to do it again.

::disney with the fam 2::

Cars Land!  The first thing that we did was get in line for the new Cars ride.  The big kids went with most of the grownups, and Grandpa and I stayed with the little ones.  We found a nice spot at a nearby cafe with a view of the ride--kind of loud as the cars drove by every 2 seconds--but a great view and some shade.  We had fun playing with the little girls and feeding them.





Bryce and Nancy dropped by and Gina got to a little Lucy time.  We sure do like little girls.



More Grandpa and Lucy.  We took all the little ones for a while so that Cammon, Lorri and Gram could take Scooter and Max on the Tower of Terror.  Evidently everybody loved it.  We had fun going on Monsters and checking out Bug land with the splashy leaky faucet.  Lucy once again just loved hanging with Grandpa.



At one point I forced Gigi to stay in my arms long enough for a selfie.  She was so unimpressed.  She'll figure out that I'm cool eventually.



Here we are at the Aladdin show.  It was really fun.  I didn't even know it was there!  It was definitely nice to have a break from the warm sun and sit down for a while.



Look how insane I look in this ride picture.  I haven't had a good ride picture for a while.  But this is crazy bad.  It looks like my hair is trying to run away or something.  I like how Sandy's covering his ears.  Once again he was super brave and had a ton of fun on the rides.


And now, prepare yourself.  Here are the 3 million pictures of Lucy in here little Tinkerbell outfit.  You'll be shocked to know that I actually only picked the best ones, so yes, there were MORE taken.  But she's so dang cute I had to put a bunch up here.



You can see that she and Mom have something special going on.  They understand each other somehow.















And Lucy loves me too.  It makes me pretty happy that she can't look at me without smiling.

Here are the rhyming cousins.  Sandy and Andy get along super well and had a lot of fun together on this trip.  I can't remember exactly what precipitated this hug, but it was a good one.



See, they're still hugging in the background.  Impressive!

And to end this day, here's my silly son looking ridiculously silly in Grandpa's hat.  When doesn't he look silly though?