Carving Pumpkins 2011

Because the weather is so warm around Halloween you have to wait to carve your pumpkins. We were lucky my mom was in town for Halloween and got to help out with the mess. 

I'm really proud of the kids this year they did a great job carving and mostly did it on their own. Of course they love carving so much that they had to carve both sides of the pumpkins.

 Plus we had fun giggles at them being a little silly. 

Carving pumpkins is one of my favorite things to do at Halloween. Hope you enjoyed the finished products. 

Spencer's Spooktacular Monster 7th Birthday Bash!

I can't believe my little man is SEVEN. Where does the time go. He has really made me feel old this year with going to 1st grade, playing baseball and now turning Seven.  Spencer is such a creative boy with an outstanding imagination. He loves to build things and do all kinds of art projects. 

The lucky thing about being born in October is that your birthday is close to Halloween. Spencer and I both love Halloween. So this year we decided to throw a Monster Birthday Bash for this party. The nice thing is the decorations were easy because the house was already decorated. Plus it is a good way to get some extra use out of your kids Halloween costumes. I'm glad that Spencer has been able to make some friends at school and at baseball so he could have a nice party. Usually we do a friend party and a family party but since the move a family party wasn't possible this year. 

The invitations turned out pretty cute. I took ribbon and made the card look like little mummies. They took a lot of work and I wish I had one for his scrapbook but we ran out. Everyone seemed to think they were really cute. 

I was surprised by how many parents we had stay for the party. I'm not used to that. Usually parents just drop kids off and come back later. Me being a bit shy was a little nervous and hoped everyone would have fun. We actually had more adults at our house than kids but everyone helped out and the party was a big success. Plus I had plenty of cake and snacks.

We started off the party making pumpkin monsters. The kids got to decorate mini pumpkins anyway they wanted. We had some pretty creative kids. I love the ones that used a lot of the eyes.   

It was so fun to see that every kid dressed up. I was hoping everyone would but made sure everyone knew it was ok if they didn't want to. 

For snacks I had popcorn, candy corn, chocolate pretzel eyeballs, cream cheese chocolate chip dip with gram crackers, and of course we made witches brew. I forgot to get a picture but we did the whole thing. I had the witches Calderon and I mixed some punch up to be a muddy purple color and we used dry ice.  (Finding the dry ice is another story completely. Apparently it is not sold at very many places here in Arizona. When asked sell people at some stores would roll their eyes and say, "Why would we sell that?") 

For our game we decided to play the mummy game. We had the kids get in teams of three and each team would choose who was going to be the mummy. Then the other two would take a roll of toilet paper (two if you were on Brendan's team) and wrap the person up as a mummy. It was so funny to watch. 

The kids had so much fun with it we did a couple of rounds. There was so much toilet paper everywhere by the time they were done. I think we used close to 20 rolls of toilet paper.

So how is the fastest way to clean up a gigantic toilet paper mess? Easy! Tell the kids once it is all cleaned up we will got hit a pinata. All that toilet paper was in garbage bags within 2 minutes. Too bad they couldn't clean up all the dust left over. Oh well they had fun.

Ok time for the pinata. I bought a cheap mummy pinata at Walmart for like $10 bucks. I was worried when Doug wanted to use Brendan's metal baseball bat to break it. I thought it would be broken on the first swing (especially since some of these kids were on Spencer's baseball team and really know how to swing a bat). Well to our surprise the thing didn't want to break. We had like 12 kids and all of them had at least 3 turns hitting the pinata 3 times each turn. The thing still didn't want to break. It kept making a dinging sound like metal hitting metal (actually it was the jawbreakers) but it didn't want to break. I think Doug ended up helping it break by ripping a hole in it and letting Spencer continue to hit it over and over again. By the time it broke all the candy was pretty much broken inside too.  Good thing I had some gummy candy in there or all of it would have been broken. 

No party is complete without presents. Spencer was so happy and thankful for everything he got. 

A monster bash needs a few monsters. So for his cake I made a very special monster cake. Complete with Frankenstein, Mummy and Dracula. It was a lot of cake and a lot of work. If you would like to see details on how I made it please check out my baking blog Delectable Addictions.

I really hope everyone had a good time. Spencer loved it and that is what is important to me. 

Here are a couple of pictures from his birthday that were not part of the party.

My mom was able to visit about a week later and brought him his presents from the family. He was happy because it meant he got to celebrate again.
I love my baby boy. I am so proud of how hard he tries at everything he does. He is a great student and always (well almost always) willing to help out at home. Happy Birthday Spencer!

Pumpkin Patch 2011

October just isn't complete without a trip to the pumpkin patch. And just so you know pumpkin patches are not as easy to come by here in Arizona. Back in Salt Lake you could pretty much find one on every other corner. Here there are only like 2 or 3 in the whole Phoenix area. It's strange to have to google pumpkin patches to find one. I love fall. We had a lot of squinting eyes in the pictures so the smiles aren't the best but still fun to see. 

Home Sweet Home

Now that things have settled down a little I thought I would post some pictures of our new home. Since most of our family and friends haven't seen our new home and might not be able to visit for a while.

 I have been meaning to do this for months. Sorry I have gotten a little behind on my postings. We really love our new home. It is a very open and spacious floor plan. We also love that we are located in a circle that they boys can play in without worrying about a lot of traffic. 

The boys are enjoying sharing a room and love their new bunk beds. Sometimes they have a hard time going to sleep because they can't quit talking to each other but they are loving being together. Instead of just picking one of the boys themes we actually used both in their rooms. So we have an airplane/firetruck room.
Right now the 3rd bedroom is being used for toys and for quests when they come. I didn't take a picture of that room or the bathrooms. 

 

The master bedroom is really nice. I love the planation shutters. The master bathroom is so nice and spacious. It is definately the largest bathroom we have ever had. I don't know how we will ever be able to downsize from this bathroom next time we move. Plus both Doug and I have our own closets. 

 

The living room, dinning area, and kitchen are all open. We have high ceilings with pretty planter shelves (yea fun decorating for me). I think it is funny that we finally have a large enough living room for entertaining but all of our family is hours away. Guess people will just need to come visit. 

The kitchen is really nice for me. If you remember my last kitchen was a little corner with hardly any counter space. I love that I actually have room in this kitchen for all of my baking projects. I wish I had double ovens but oh well, that can be in the next house right? 

Our backyard is all rock. You would think that would be easy maintenance but we actually do have to have landscapers come every month to rack the rocks so they stay looking nice. I do wish we had grass and maybe someday we will change that. The kids don't seem to mind the rocks. Brendan runs all around the backyard everyday in his bare feet (ouch to me).

We have two garden boxes and the boys have loved watching everything grow. Yes you can grow things Arizona. We planted carrots, greenbeans, peppers, strawberries, tomatoes, watermelon, and pumpkins.  The watermelon plants kind of exploded and took over the rocks a bit. 

We are enjoying the warm weather and are adjusting to all the changes. We miss our family and friends and hope to visit and have visitors soon. Love you all.