::sandy's birthday part 1::

Oh, wait, that's the wrong birthday!
A year ago today our sweet little guy was born. We feel so lucky to have him here in our family.
Today was a great day for him. He started out by eating pancakes made by dad--one of his favorite things in the world.

Max helped him open a present or two and then we got ready for church.
After church and a nice long nap, Max brought Sandy his best and biggest gift--a walking toy that's also a little cart for blocks. He was very very excited about it--almost as much as Max! Max was a model brother today--helpful, enthusiastic and excited about the birthday, but never jealous pushy or unpleasant. (Though incredibly obnoxious, as per the usual.)





More of the day later.
Mostly it was just a good happy day and such a lucky one for us. We're so grateful to the Lord for sending us our sweet boys.

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This this sweet little guy has any idea that his birthday is tomorrow?

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This is my run from last saturday--9.5 miles and on the treadmill no less! (Weather was really bad that morning, so I was glad to have a treadmill to use.)
I'm pretty proud of myself and my running training. Though like I said before I use the word running loosely. I'm definitely running, though not all the time during my runs. Plenty of walking happens.
Though today I ran a whole mile on the treadmill without stopping at a relatively fast pace for me. I was very proud. I'm making a lot of progress.

Can't wait for the half marathon in January! And I'm really excited to be actually seeing some improvement in fitness after my weeks and weeks of hard work.
So I'm bragging on myself a bit I guess. Yay me.

::the rest of halloween::

Last sunday was so nice. Our chapel is being remodeled, so for now the sunday school hour is eliminated. Church was only two hours and it started at 10AM instead of 11AM. So after church we felt like we had all day long to do stuff.

We always make delicious fabulous halloween sugar cookies every year--sometime around halloween. Sometimes after. So we went to work making those. And while we were doing that Kris and Max started working on Jack'O'Laterns.
Lots of pictures:



Are those TEETH or what?! He looks a little like a snaggle-toothed pumpkin face himself.


Lots 'o guts in those big pumpkins. Can't you just smell the slimy smell?

Not sure if Kris is giving commands or about to sneeze here.

Max picked out a very cool pumpkin, and luckily for him it wasn't especially hard to carve. I was afraid it would be for sure.



Yes, Kris is making the best pumpkin ever.

And my work. It was a ton of cookies becuase we gave some away. I got pretty tired by the end.


Sandy was sleeping for most of our escapades, but eventually he woke up and was HUNGRY as usual. He wanted cookies. Instead he got cheerios.


Cheerios and water. Mmmmmmm.
More of my finished product:

And some of the boys' finished products:

All of them:

Sandy's on the far right--Kris made it. Awesome, right?
Mine is next. Kris cleaned it for me and I carved the face.
Then Kris's of course. Love it!
Max's is on the far right but you can't see it in the picture. It was almost impossible to get a candle to work in there because the gourd was so short!
So here's a photo of the huge candle from my pumpkin trying to light up his adorable one.

And there you go. That was the rest of our halloween--besides the eating dozens of cookies and lots of candy part.
We were pretty proud of ourselves for getting it all done. Happy Halloween!

::i see by your outfit that you are a jedi::

"I see by your outfit you are a jedi too....we see by our outfits that we are both jedis, if you get an outfit you can be a jedi too. Duh duh."

Anyway, here are our outfits.
These are pictures from the ward "trunk or treat" on saturday night.
We had loud star wars music and we used our big black car that reminds us all a bit of a spaceship.

Max is very serious with his obnoxious blaster as Luke the x-wing pilot. He still hasn't seen much of Star Wars, so don't grill him on any details. But we're working on that.


The whole family's theme was built around one thing. That Sandy had to be an ewok. I saw the costume online at some point and knew we had to do it.
And it was perfect. He was the most adorable ewok I've ever seen.



If you want to squish him and squeeze him that's ok. I don't know how you could want to do anything else!
He was a pretty good sport about his hood and only started pulling it off at the end of the night when he was pretty cranky. He's just a good sport generally--we're lucky. And he's adorable of course.

So that's us. We have some more halloween fun to report on tomorrow. But HAPPY HALLOWEEN tonight!

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Happy Halloween weekend!!!


(What is that face exactly?)

We're busy busy with all the mandatory halloweeny activities. I'll try to report on some of the tomorrow!

::pinata::

In my family, we always broke a pinata on my birthday--that was the only time we ever did it, and let me tell you what, it was awesome. Our friends the Williams always came over and we sometimes made the thing by hand and it was impossible to break. Joel (the oldest kid) always hit it way too hard and broke it off the string or sent something flying somewhere, and since my birthday is in the middle of winter, we were always inside trying not to break something.

Anyway, awesome memories inspired by a recent pinata experience--one more report on when the Wildes visited.

When we were buying the chiles we went into the little latin market there. And there (along with cokes from Mexico) were a bunch of great big pinatas, all different sizes and colors and characters.
So Kris and Blake chose Woody to bring home and beat the heck out of. I guess it was just too fun to resist.


I love the above pictures with the dads preparing the pinata. They look so serious and earnest. The funniest part is that I had to step in and redo all of the packing in the end because they didn't pull all the newspaper out of Woody's insides, so there wasn't a lot of candy getting stuck in there.

So anyway, the kids waited very impatiently.


We BBQ'd some hamburgers too--though I can't remember if it was before or after. Sandy is amazed and perplexed by all the crazy kid action going on all around him.


Of course, as usual we had to use some bizarre thing to hit at the pinata with. This time it was the gross stinky machete that Kris brought back from his dental mission to Nicaragua forever ago. Sheathed of course--it's not very sharp anyway.


Sandy thought it was all very interesting and fun until people started whacking Woody in earnest. Then he didn't like it at all and screamed!

Annie didn't ever make the baby scream though, she's way too gentle!


I took a bunch of fun video and then sadly I deleted it in getting to know my new camera. Don't tell Max, he'll be much too bummed. But anyway, Max sliced off Woody's body and released all the candy and then the dads took turns going at the rest of him.
And that's all the fun for now. We had a blast with the Wildes and the kids had so much fun playing together. Wish they could come every weekend!

::buggy::

Max's class at school was studying insects way back at the beginning of the year. At that point his teacher told the kids to look for bugs and bring cool ones in.

So several weeks ago when Max found a cool bug he and Kris caught it and he insisted on bringing it to school. I told his teacher that he had a bug and she said "Of course he does!! The kids won't stop bringing them!"

So I guess the bug pulled some hijinks in the classroom that day. He escaped from his little jar and crawled and flew around the room and Max and friends got in trouble taking too long capturing him before lunch.

After the bug's second day in his jar I said it was time for him to go free. I forced Max to take his jar outside so he could go free. There were many tears and sad statements made. The bug was his BEST FRIEND! This was the ONLY TIME I've EVER let him keep a bug!! He LOVES THAT BUG!
But finally I convinced Max that buggy needed his freedom. Buggy hung out in his jar for the evening (happily for Max) and then left for the wild.

It's quite the nature story. Nature Max loves nature.