Halloween Weekend

     This year Halloween is on Sunday so we celebrated Halloween a little bit early.  Festivities started on Friday Oct. 29.  The kids wore their costumes to school and that morning they had a costume parade.  In the afternoon they had their class parties.  That night we decided to have a movie night.  We decided since it was the Friday before Halloween, a fun movie to watch would be Freaky Friday.  Katie and Joey Cannon came over to watch it with us (Grace had a soccer game).  The kids loved the movie and I spent the time baking cupcakes and cakes for the Fall Festival and the Trunk or Treat.
     This morning is when the real craziness began!  I went over to the school to set up early for the Fall Festival.  The Fall Festival is what our school calls it's Halloween carnival.  It was crazy!  It started at 11a.m. and ended at 2p.m.  Daren ended up running a booth the whole time because the girl who was going to run it got started to feel really sick right after she got it set up.  There were lots of games, a cake walk, a costume contest, a haunted house, and the firefaighters came and brought their smoke house and a fire truck for the kids to explore.  It was so much work and we were so worn out, but the kids had a great time.  Daren took them home and I stayed to help clean up.
     When I got home, it was already close to time to leave for the Trunk or Treat.  We got together the stuff we needed for the cupcake walk and a couple of other last minute games.  My parents helped by running the extra games-a golf game and a donut game we put together using leftover Krispy Kreme donuts from the school.  I ran the cupcake walk and Daren took Kelsey around to trick or treat at the cars.  A very tiring day, but lots of fun for the kids.

 Haylee and Natalee were at recess when I showed up so I got to take a few pictures of them before the costume parade started.

 Natalee and her two best friends, Ryan and Katie

My friend Julie Ann Pennix-such a good costume I had to take a picture.

Kelsey wore her bumblebee costume (from when she was a baby!) to watch the parade.

Mackenzie in the parade!

Natalee and Katie

Mackenzie in the fire truck at the Fall Festival

 Haylee at the costume contest

Kelsey wore her kitty costume that she just inherited from Audrey for the Fall Festival and the Trunk or Treat.

 Haylee playing the golf game-Dad running the golf game

Haylee just looks so pretty in this picture.

 Nathan wore a little lamb costume to the Fall Festival but I never took a picture of him in it.  Then he had a diaper blow out so we had a costume change for the Trunk or Treat and he came as a cute little duck.



Cakies

     Amy sent me a text this evening asking me to text her the recipe for Cakies (Cake mix cookies).  By the time I read it, about 9:20pm (12:20am Virginia time), I figured it was probably too late to text her the recipe.  Since I know the first thing she does every morning is check to see if I blogged the night before, I thought the best way to get her the recipe was put it here.  So here you go Ameskerbob:

CAKIES

1 cake mix (any flavor)

2 eggs

1/3 cup oil

1 can frosting

Heat oven to 375 degrees F.  In large bowl, combine cake mix, oil, and eggs.  Stir by hand until thoroughly moistened.  Shape dough into 1 inch balls.  Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake for 6 to 8 minutes or until edges are light golden brown.  If desired, spread frosting over warm cookies.  Makes 3 dozen cookies.

Wind Storm

     There was a horrible wind storm last Sunday night and for the second time, the wind knocked over our playground.  This is what we woke up to Monday morning.  We haven't had time to put it back up yet so we'll see if we're able to put it back together again.

Our plum tree had to be straightened out a bit.

I was most impressed that for how horrible the wind was, bad enough to knock over our playground even, not one shingle flew off of the shed that Daren just put together.  Way to go Daren!

Call Me Senator - From David Zucker

     Aaahhh, elections are coming and the political ads are here!  Since we don't have cable or satellite right now, we are blessed to not have to watch all the ads.  But when my mom told me about this one and I watched it on You Tube, I found it incredibly enjoyable and definitely worth sharing!

Little Man

     I just love getting Nathan dressed for church on Sundays.  He looks cute in all the little outfits I put him in.  But there is something extra cute about little boy Sunday dress clothes.  He wore this little outfit to Stake Conference this morning.  And of course I had to take a ton of pictures.  He is so smiley and he is starting to laugh too.  It is so exciting when we get little laughs out of him.  He'll be 4 months old in just a few days.



Apple Picking in Tehachapi

     We had so much fun picking apples last year that we decided to do it again this year.  So yesterday we went to Tehachapi and had a wonderful time.  It turned out that there was a pumpkin patch across the street from the apple orchard so we picked out a pumpkin too.  After picking our apples and pumpkin, we went to a place that sells homemade apple treats.  We were really hoping for this yummy apple bread that we bought last year, but they didn't have any that morning.  We bought some apple turnovers instead.  Then we got some lunch and headed home.  Tomorrow's dinner is going to have homemade applesauce on the side and sour cream apple cake for dessert!

 Originally I was just going to add the picture above because it is the better picture.  But then I decided to go ahead and include the silly one too because it needed to be in my blog book also.  The look on Natalee's face just cracks me up.  And for some reason Kelsey has been closing her eyes and just showing her teeth when I tell her to smile for pictures.  Luckily she isn't doing it for every picture.

 I couldn't choose between these pictures of Kelsey.  One gazing off into

the distance and the other with a big smile.  She's still chomping on her apple too.

Week of Changes

     First of all, I got a brand new camera!!!  I am so excited about my new camera.  It's a Canon and it has 20x optical zoom so I am hoping to get some really amazing pictures.  I have been having lots of fun with it.

     Second, there have been some major changes in our goat family.  We have been worrying about what to do about 2 pregnant goats over Thanksgiving break.  It wouldn't have been any better if they had their babies before we left because we still wouldn't be able to leave them with new babies.  The two goats that are pregnant are the ones that we had to bottle feed their babies last time.  We thought about asking the Riedel's to watch them for us but we didn't want to leave Calypso (the one that didn't get pregnant) alone either.  Goats don't do well when they are alone.  So when the Riedel's called us and said they knew someone interested in buying a pregnant goat, we decided to just do it.  It turned out they were even interested in both goats!  But then we mentioned being worried about Calypso and that we would need to get a friend for her.  Stephanie told me that the people we had sold Calypso's baby to were getting rid of all their goats and still hadn't found a home for Breanna.  We immediately called them and went and picked up Breanna that night.  Then Friday morning, the Gates family came and picked up Luna and Andromeda.  It was sad to see them go, but we are so happy that they are going to such a wonderful family that will love them and adore them.

     Natalee was very emotional that morning so I decided to pick the kids up from school and let them come home to meet the family and say goodbye one last time.  They hardly paid any attention to the goats because they were so busy playing with the Gates girls.  It made it a lot easier that they got to meet the family and they were telling the kids how much they were going to love these goats.  So now we just have 2 goats-Calypso and Breanna.  Did I mention that we had already sold Casper?  We sold him when we couldn't keep him from getting in with the girls and getting them pregnant.  We bottle-raised Casper and Andromeda and we got very attached to Luna, especially during her birthing drama.  So it was sad to see them go.  But I think two goats is a better number for us.  Natalee is trying to talk us into getting back one of Luna's babies for her to remember Luna by.  I'm hoping she forgets about it in the next month or two.

Since I never blogged about selling Casper, I thought I would include this

picture of him with Natalee from back in March.

Natalee saying goodbye to Casper- July 15, 2010

 I took this picture of Luna and Andromeda to send to the Gates family.

 Andromeda stuck her head through the fence while I was taking pictures.

 Natalee with Luna

 Natalee with Breanna.  We're so happy to have her back.  The girls are calling her Princess Breanna now because the people who bought her changed her name to Princess.  They think going back to just Breanna will confuse her. :)

 Mackenzie and Andromeda right before the goats left.

 Natalee and Luna

Natalee 'riding' Andromeda.  Andromeda was our biggest goat so the girls would sometimes 'ride' her.  I didn't like it but I thought they would like to have a picture to remind them of doing it.

Conference Weekend and More Fun Stuff

     Every once in awhile, the girls get a hold of the camera and I find some entertaining pictures that I didn't know were there.  I recently found these gems that Haylee and Mackenzis took of themselves and their 2 younger siblings.

 This was defiitely my favorite!

     Kelsey has gotten a lot of attention from her older sisters since she was born.  I was very worried that this would change when Nathan was born.  Thankfully, I can say that it hasn't changed one bit.  Nathan also gets lots of attention, even from Kelsey, but Kelsey still gets her share.  It's obvious from these pictures that the girls still adore her a lot.

     Mike and his family came to Ridgecrest to visit for General Conference weekend.  Mike is in the bishopric now and so it's hard for him to visit on weekends now.  This was the perfect weekend for them to come.  Mike's birthday was a few days before, so we had a little gift for him.  It was just a book that I've been meaning to give to him for a very long time.  It was one of his favorite books growing up so I figured he would want to read it to his kids.  A couple of them are already a little grown up for it probably.  So we gave him Tikki Tikki Tembo.

     While the guys went to Priesthood session that evening, the kids made cards for Jeff and Amy.  Jeff is in Afghanistan now, and Amy just had her gall bladder taken out.  My mom got out paper, stickers, glue, crayons, markers, and cut out shapes and let them be creative!  There were all sorts of stickers:  fun stickers, religious stickers, etc.  Mackenzie got VERY creative with the stickers and made an interesting combination.  Here's some pics.  See what you think!

 Jacob holding Nathan.  Jacob really liked Nathan.

Mike reading Tikki Tikki Tembo to Audrey.

 Natalee's card to Jeff.

Haylee's card to Jeff.

Mackenzie's card to Amy.  And in case you need to see a close-up

of the bottom right hand corner, you can find it below:

      Yes, she did put pictures of Jesus on top of light sabers...but she's only 5 years old and she's never seen Star Wars so she had no idea what those were.  :)