Come to my Shoe Party!

I am going to have a shoe party next Wednesday the 29th. It will be at 7:00 P.M. here at my house. Everyone is welcome to come. Check out their link below, they have some really cute shoes.

http://www.shoeparty.com/

Salem Pond

I have to admit that I love to read all of your blogs, but sometimes I end up feeling a little guilty. Let me explain. I see all of these wonderful activities, crafts, and parties that you do with your kids and I start to think that maybe I am a boring Mom. Now I am not fishing for a compliment on how you feel about me and my mothering abilities, I am just sharing my Oprah light bulb moment with you. Instead of feeling envy and guilt while reading others blogs I decided to be inspired by all of you awesome Moms. I have been inspired to share the way I am feeling at certain times, inspired to spend more quality time with my kids, and to realize that we all have different talents. Thank you for sharing a glimpse of your lives on your blogs, and inspiring me to do better. As most of you know it was Fall break last week and I was reading someone blog (I don't remember who's) that was talking about how much they enjoy beautiful fall days. The kids had cleaned house all morning so we decided to get out and enjoy the beautiful fall day at Salem Pond.

We weren't sure if there would be any ducks to feed, but soon found out there were plenty.

I couldn't believe that they would eat the bread right out of their hands.

These are some smart ducks! This one decided that he would go for the whole slice of bread instead of the small piece.

Lilli was so funny, she would start to get a little nerves when the ducks would get close.

After feeding the ducks and playing on the playground we decided to go for a short walk. Lilli thought it was a little hot so Jade gave her this branch to shade herself. Even though McKinley wasn't to excited at first to go feed some dumb ducks, in the end we all had a great time.

National School Lunch Week

Last week at school it was national school lunch week, so Lilli and I headed to school to go eat lunch with Jade and Gavin. On our lunch calendar at home it said we would be having corn dogs, but it was tacos instead.

Lilli thought it was so cool to eat school lunch with Jade and can hardly wait to be in elementary school. Jade eats at 11:30 and Gavin doesn't eat till 12:00. When I sat down with Jade all of her friends were so excited to sit by Jade and her Mom. I was very impressed with all the different healthy choices the kids have; apples, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, and corn. Of course they also get the huge doughnut for dessert.

It was a little different story when Gavin came into lunch. It was Gavin and myself eating together, Jade and Lilli had headed outside to play. I asked him if he wanted to go eat with his friends but he thought it was OK to eat with Mom. I know the day is fast approaching that I am not longer cool in my kids eyes.

Blankets

I am calling this my blanket post because I have a couple of stories that I wanted to share, and they both involved blankets.

I have a sister-in-law that is going to be having a baby boy the end of this month, so I decided that I wanted to crochet around a blanket for her. Well I have a really cute nephew that I love so very much, I won't mention his real name, but Matt calls him Lil C, and I was watching him for a day. I had moved the blanket form off the couch to a chair by the window, thinking that it wouldn't be bothered. Enjoying one of my favorite hobbies, reading blogs, I didn't notice this cute nephew had stop watching his show and started playing with the blanket. It wasn't until he was running into the kitchen with the thread wrap around his shoe did I realize what was going on. Of course it didn't unwrap from the spool, it unwrap from around the blanket and I couldn't resist taking a picture. No matter what I will always love you Lil C.

I am sure that everyone has either been attached to a blanket or, has a child who has a blanket they can't go without. This blanket was given to me by a high school friend when McKinley was born 12 years ago. Jade became very attached to this blanket and would cry at night if she didn't have it. In the past she has been given new blankets but, they could not replace this one. As you can see it has seen its better days, and really needed to be replaced. We had gone to Wal-Mart as a family one night and they had some of their fabric on sale. I asked Jade if she would like to pick out some fabric to make a new blanket and she loved the idea. She promised me that she would throw away the old blanket after we made her a new one with the fabric she got.

Here she is with her new blanket that she loves. Jade brings such a special spirit to our family and I love her so much.

Spooky Crafts

My sister-in-law Bonnie wanted to make some Halloween decor for her house so she put together a fun craft night. The best part about it was that the crafts were cheep, only took a couple of hours to do, and I think they turned out really cute.

For this one Bonnie collected some branches from different trees around her house, and we found some birds at Roberts Crafts and JoAnns Fabric. We removed the leaves from the branches, attached the birds and then spray painted them black. Totally easy!

The other craft that we did used paint canvases that were seven dollars for three, also at Roberts. Bonnie found some spooky images off of the Internet, that we traced on the canvas, and then painted black. Thanks Bonnie for planning the fun and easy craft night. I will provide the house anytime.

Annual Passes Expired

Matt really wanted to go to Disneyland one last time before our annual passes expired, so he and the kids have been selling fruit each Saturday at the Murry Farmers Markets to earn the money to go. Matt has also said that we are going to be Disneyfree in 2009 so we headed to California last week and had a great time.

I love this picture because it looks like the goat is even smiling, only in the happiest place in the world.

Mom has become a regular at Disneyland also and it was fun to have her come with us.

It was pretty hot so the kids were cooling off in California Adventure.

Waiting for the parade.

If you look close you can see that Lilli has her eyes closed and is sticking her tongue out. This became her staple face on every ride that would take a picture.

Pumpkins Pumpkins and more Pumpkins

You have probably noticed that I have not been doing a good job of blogging lately, so these pictures are a little late. We actually picked almost all the pumpkins last Friday. In the beginning we thought that we would try a pick your own pumpkin patch or sell them at different farmers markets, but we changed our minds when we looked at our busy schedules. Matt and the kids did sell some at the market in Murry, and Craig went with the boys to Provo one Saturday, but most of them were sold to a local farmer. We do still have some set up outside of Craig and Stacy's house for sale.

On a Sunday afternoon the kids and I were collecting leaves for one of Gavins school assignments when we noticed that one of our pumpkins plants had vined up this tree, and as you can see growing a pumpkin. We thought that it was pretty cool. It's still getting bigger but has not turned orange yet.

Gavin had to dig deep and find muscles that he didn't know he had to carry some of the pumpkins. It was a lot harder to pick the pumpkins than I thought it would be. The kids would come home with scratches and cuts after picking and hauling them out of the patch.

There favorite part was loading the pumpkins in the bins, especially if it involved the four wheeler.

We would cut the pumpkins from there vines with pruners and haul them to the side to be picked up. It has been a great project for the kids and we hope that they have made some good memories and learned the value of hard work (and some money of course).

Lilli's goes to Payson Junior High

McKinleys first period of the day is her CTE (career technology something) class. There are several different units taught in this class, like sewing, cooking, finances, childcare and much more. Recently the class had two days where they were suppose to bring a preschooler to class, and Lilli was so excited to go. The kids read books to the preschoolers, made crafts, and had snacks. As I mentioned before it is McKinley's first period, so it was really early, but alot of fun.