Halloween 2012

This year for Halloween we had a Minnie Mouse, a Vampire, and a Morgan Horse:

 This year the kids agreed to doing something fun instead of trick-or-treating. We went to dinner at Olive Garden (where the kids got to eat free) and then went to the dollar movie theater. Morgan and Brynne watched Brave in 3D while Melissa and I wandered around Shopko being glad we weren't going to have tons of candy in our house. :) The other part of the deal was a trip to Lowe's Extreme Air Sports (stay tuned for a blog about our time there).

Morgan also decided she wanted to have a Halloween party this year. She invited several girls from school and a new friend from Orchestra. In a moment of weakness, I agreed to a late-over party which meant it went from 6:00 all the way to 10:00. One of the activities was racing to wrap each other up in toilet paper like mummies. (The toilet paper may or may not have ended up on the trees at the neighbor's house...) Here is a picture of Morgan with her mummy partner, Shandey.

 The girls also played a white elephant game. Here is a picture of all the girls with their gifts:

I must admit I had my eyes opened during Morgan's party. I was shocked at how much time the girls spent texting, sometimes even to each other during the party. I was also surprised, although I shouldn't have been, at the discussion about who likes which boys. It suddenly hit me that Morgan is less than a year away from being 12 years old and entering Young Women in church. She is going to be in Junior High next year! She's also probably going to pass me up in height next year. Crazy!!!

More Halloween Fun

 Here are the promised (albeit late) pictures of our sweet bumblebee. And in case you were wondering, yes, bumblebees do have white feet! :)

 

 

 Melissa and I went to the girls' Halloween parade at school. Morgan and Brynne both loved the chance to show off their cute sister!

Brynne decided to dress up a few of her animals for Halloween too. She probably won't forgive me for forgetting names, but you can see she has one animal as a bat and one as a spider web. Very creative kid!

Happy Halloween

What do a bee, a kitten, and the Bride of Dracula all have in common? They are all proud members of the Roberts Family! A huge thanks to Ashley for providing the bee costume for sweet Melissa:

 I think Morgan's favorite part of her costume is that I let her wear make up. I think she was surprised to find out I knew how to apply make up, given that I rarely wear any myself. Let's hope the next time I see her as a bride she is at least 10 years older and opts for a little different dress and hairstyle!

 And this is the cutest kitten I've seen in a real long time!

This year we are passing out Halloween tops and flying stretchy frogs & lizards instead of candy. Morgan has opted to turn her candy in for a month-long pass to Jumping Jacks (a fun place with lots of bouncy slides, castles, mazes, etc.). Brynne plans to keep her candy. And Melissa has requested I sugar load with grapes and kiwi instead of candy.

And can I just talk about the weather for a moment -- 60+ degrees? Seriously!?! Talk about the perfect weather! And sometime after midnight the temperature drops 20 degrees and we get rain or possibly even snow. Oh yes, this is indeed a happy Halloween! :)

(Check back tomorrow for more cute pictures of our little bumble bee!)

A VERY Quick Catch Up

I debated doing lots of little posts about things from the past year, but I decided it would be better to do a quick review. If I do more in-depth posts later on, great! If not, at least I hit a few highlights from the year...

The first "big" thing is that my girls convinced me to cut bangs for them. I was worried because I have a cowlick that makes bangs go weird for me, but I decided they should have the chance to try them for themselves. Morgan was extra lucky to have Aunt Ashley here to curl her hair for her before school one day:

To show off Brynne's bangs, I decided to post a picture of her with her teacher Mrs. Peterson at the end of the school year. Hard to believe Brynne will be a 2nd grader, and Morgan will be a 5th grader!!

On the last day of school before Christmas, Spanish Fork got so much snow that school was actually closed. We made the most of it and went outside to play. Brynne wanted to make a snowman, so she and I made this guy. Then Lee brought out his pilot stuff so we could have a pilot snowman! :)

Since Halloween is so important to kids, I thought I'd post a picture of each of the girls in their costumes. Brynne was a cheerleader:

And Morgan was a witch. This year I even somehow convinced the girls to trade all their candy for a gift. They each chose a $5 gift, and I got their candy to get rid of. One thing I didn't plan on, though, was Lee being home. He was kind enough to take care of ALL the candy for us! :)

A major highlight of the year came when Ashley's little Elise was born. When it was apparent Ashley was in labor, I hopped in the car and drove as fast as I could. Unfortunately, little Elise was born an hour before I arrived. No worries, though, I still got my snuggle time!

Brynne played soccer last fall. She liked playing goalie and liked hanging back waiting for the ball to come to her. I once said to her, "You know, Brynne, it's okay to go right up to the ball and try and get it." Her response was, "No way! That's how you get hurt!" :)

We took a really fun family vacation to California last September. For various reasons, we had free tickets to Disneyland for one day and four free nights of hotels. We went to the beach with Ashley and her family, went to Disneyland, went to a few science centers and museums, and went to SeaWorld. It was lots of fun! The day we planned to go to Disneyland ended up being the hottest recorded temp for LA for that day (117 degrees), so thankfully our plans were flexible and we went to the beach that day instead. Here is our family just after arriving at Disneyland:

Morgan was extra excited that she was picked for Jedi Training. Brynne was not the least bit interested in being in front of people, but we all had fun watching Morgan!

Funny how the temperature in LA can be 117 degrees, and only three days later it can be only 60 degrees in San Diego. The first day we went to SeaWorld was freezing cold and rainy. Once again we were thankful our plans were flexible, and we were thankful SeaWorld was willing to let us return the next day instead. I hadn't been to SeaWorld since I was much younger (12 or so??), and neither Lee nor the girls had ever been there before. It was a really fun vacation!

Lots and lots happened this year: Brynne learned to ride her bike, Lee quit his job flying as an air medical captain in Nevada and got a new job as first officer for SkyWest, Morgan somehow grew up and started being interested in hair and wishing she could wear makeup; but the biggest news of all........is that a new little girl is due to arrive in our family any day now! You never know this kind of thing for sure, but I'm really thinking she'll be here soon. If so, that will be my next post. :)

Pumpkin Painting

I have never been a very creative person. I've also never been much of a mess person. For this reason, there are certain "tasks" I like to hand off to Lee. Pumpkin carving is one such task. I think it's a fun thing that the kids should definitely get to do, but it's not my thing. I was very disappointed a few weeks back when I realized I let Lee go back to Ely without carving the pumpkins with the girls. I was really, really, really not in the mood to carve them myself, so I came up with a great Plan B: Paint the pumpkins!! Thankfully, the girls loved painting them. There was still a mess, but I survived it. And aren't their pumpkins cute! :)

Halloween -- Part 1

On Thursday night, I got a call from my sister Alyson. She invited the girls and I to come to her house in Layton for the long Halloween weekend. I happened to have a sore throat and a fever of 102 at the time, but she still invited us -- very nice!!

We drove up on Friday afternoon and played for a bit before taking the kids to watch "Up" and "G-Force." We split up adults and let the kids choose which to see -- Morgan and Brynne watched "G-Force", while I ended up watching "Up" with Lindsey and Aly's youngest twins.

After getting the kids to bed that night, Aly got a babysitter and all the adults headed off to a comedy club in Centerville. One of the guys in the club is in Aly and Brad's ward and had told them that would be a good night to come. It was definitely enjoyable being able to laugh without wondering if/when the humor would turn inappropriate. As they put it, the humor didn't go anywhere near "Bed, Bath, and Beyond!" I enjoyed it until my neck started getting super stiff at the end (thanks to my sickness...). Definitely a fun thing to do together!

On Halloween day, Alyson and I took Morgan, Brynne, Adam and Isaac to the Bountiful Recreation Center pool. I didn't get in the water because that was a sure way to pass germs. Instead, I took pictures. :) I got some decent pictures of the girls coming off the water slide. Can you guess what Morgan likes to do to keep water from getting in her nose?

After a while, Isaac took a liking to Morgan and wanted to go everywhere with her. Alyson and Adam stayed close by.

Adam loved posing for pictures as I sat on the deck to watch him. My favorite was when he showed off his amazing flexibility (both twins do this craziness with their legs!) by putting both feet up to his head:

It took me the whole 1 1/2 hours to get everyone together for a picture. We finally managed this one at the end.

I learned that it's actually enjoyable to not get in the water. It sure makes it easier to get everyone washed up and dressed afterwards, too. It helped that it was a really slow day so it was easy to keep an eye on the kids!

Halloween -- Part 2

Just as we pulled onto the freeway to head back to Alyson's after swimming, I got a phone call from Lee saying he was in Salt Lake City. He thought he'd be there about an hour waiting for the medical crew to return from getting a patient to the hospital, and he hoped we'd be able to come spend that time with him. Unfortunately, we had to get home for several things that still needed to get done before trick-or-treating; fortunately, the adults agreed to watch my kids while they did those several things so I could go see Lee. I only got to see him for about 15-20 minutes, but I got to see him plane and meet the medical crew that was with him.



I took advantage of the opportunity to try out Lee's new headset and "pilot" the American Medflight plane...

...While Lee took advantage of the opportunity to sit in the roomiest seat on the plane (where sick passengers are transported):

This is what the plane looks like from the outside. It's the same size as the plane he flew in Salmon, but with lots of upgrades.

I got back to Aly's house just in time to eat dinner and help the kiddos get dressed for Halloween. Can I just take a moment to say that for dinner Alyson and Brad made some of the yummiest steak I've ever had! Not to mention the potatoes and yummy veggies -- delicious! I was so sad to be rushed up from the dinner table to help anxious children who did not fully appreciate the great meal!

We went trick-or-treating with Adam and Isaac. All Aly's kids were dressed as basketball players from "Team Farmer", which it said on the front. On the back, they all had numbers along with their first names. Alyson was dressed up as a referee -- very original and cute!

Morgan chose to stay with her fairy costume, but Brynne decided to skip the princess dress and wear her unicorn outfit for one last Halloween (she's outgrowing it):

My favorite costume of the night was my sister Lindsey. She was dressed up in a BYU shirt with red long sleeves underneath. She decided to dress up as the "scariest" thing she could think of -- a BYU and University of Utah fan! (She is a University of Wyoming graduate and is a devoted fan of theirs!). :)

So thanks to two sisters and a brother-in-law who were kind enough to invite me to their house even though I was sick, we had a wonderful Halloween!!! Thanks Linz, Aly & Brad!!! :)

School Halloween Parties

We had a really fun Halloween weekend at my sister Alyson's. I have pictures and hope to blog all about it tomorrow. In the meantime, though, I thought I'd post these pictures of the girls all dressed up for their school Halloween parties last Thursday:

Morgan had told me she wanted to dress in her karate outfit for Halloween, and Brynne told me she wanted to dress in her unicorn costume. The night before the party, however, both girls were busy digging in the dress up clothes for different outfits. No prob -- as long as I don't have to buy something last minute! :)

Halloween Cheerleaders

I feel like I'm way behind in my life right now somehow. I went to post pictures of my girls from Halloween and realized I'd forgotten to take any pictures of Brynne. I had no trouble getting her to put her costume back on for me, but she didn't want me to do ponytails again. Instead she just held her pom-poms up to be her ponytails. Very cute. Brynne told everyone she was a "Victory" cheerleader because there was a "V" on her shirt. (And no, the belly button is not part of the costume!) :)
I took this picture of Morgan before she headed off to school Halloween morning. I took a few other pictures of her with my new camcorder, but I have yet to sit down and see if they turned out and figure out how to transport them to my computer. Things to do, things to do... Meanwhile, don't you love Morgan's new glasses! :)

Happy belated Halloween to all of you! Here's to hoping I get my head screwed back on soon...