The girls were so excited to wake up to snow!
It wasn’t much (at least at our house, some of our friends farther east got a lot more!) but they had fun!
Sandy also got to wear her Halloween costume for the first time. She went with her friend to a dance class. So here is Sandy in her cowboy costume:
Who is her mother? Yup, she got into markers and went around like this all day.
For family night, we decorated pumpkins:
I found these Mr. Potato Head pumpkin decorating kits at Target. It was fun. The pieces were really just like Mr. Potato Head pieces (not sharp at all) so after many different attempts, we finally figured it worked best to make a hole with a nail and a hammer in the pumpkin and then push the pieces into the pumpkin.
Here are the finished princess pumpkins – we grew our own pumpkins this year. The light green color worked well with the princess decorations, I think.
Tonight, Bill went to a Young Men/Young Women Murder Mystery Dinner. They were asked to come as 1930s gangsters:
And once the girls saw the camera was out, they needed their pictures taken too. So we took more pictures with the princess pumpkins.
A couple of stories.
The other day, Abby took a nap while Sandy played. After awhile, I fell asleep. Then Sandy came and joined me. So, when Abby woke up, Sandy and I were both sound asleep. She came in and I asked her to go play and let us sleep. She came back after a few minutes and I had a great idea.
“Abby, let’s play a game. You be the mommy. Me and Sandy will be the kids and we are taking naps. Shh! You don’t want to wake us up.”
She left for about 15 minutes then came back in. I told her we were still sleeping.
She went and got her stool from the bathroom, turned on the light, “GOOD MORNING!!”
“Abby, shh! We are still sleeping!”
“It’s morning! Wake up kids, it’s time for school!”
How can you argue with that? So I got up and played with her and Sandy got to sleep a little longer.
I realized I never posted about General Conference earlier this month.
Sometimes there are those moments where one of the girls will look up from what they are doing and comment on something one of the speakers said and I think – oh, they are listening!
There was only one of those this time. When Sister Dibb told the story of 19-year-old Brooke who died and her parents were comforted that she had lived a good and righteous life, Sandy said, “Mom, I’m coloring this picture for you so that when I’m dead you can look at it and it will make you happy.” Hmm. So we had a talk about how usually – not always – but usually parents die before their kids and hopefully none of us would die for a very long time.
Luckily when they asked everyone what their favorite talk was in Primary the next week, Sandy said “About the boys on the bikes!” Elder Nelson’s talk about the missionaries was a good one and I’m glad she really was listening to some of it at least.
I carefully prepared several quiet activities to use during conference. Abby found my change bucket, though, and playing with the coins entertained her through most of the first session. Whatever works, I guess.
We drove up to Logan for a Pumpkin Walk.
On the way into the pumpkin path there were several of these photo boards. The girls liked getting their pictures taken as Disney princesses.
Then we walked through the exhibits. The path was lined with hay bales and jack-o-lanterns.
There were many scenes made out of pumpkins. Here is the Bachelor. The heads are made of pumpkins, even the rose was made of a small gourd painted red.
There were several scenes from The Hunger Games:
It wasn’t just pumpkins, I was amazed at this dinosaur made of gourds:
Pumpkin spiders:
Even a pumpkin snowman (the pumpkins are painted white and stacked to make his body).
On the way out, there were more photo boards:
Another fun, free fall activity that I would do again next year. I found out about this (and the Scarecrow Festival last weekend) from Enjoy Utah!
Bill wanted to take the girls fishing, so after the pumpkin walk, we went up Logan Canyon to find a little stream we could fish.
The girls were excited about fishing for about 5 minutes.
Until they decided it was more fun to throw rocks in the water.
We didn’t catch anything.
We went to the Scarecrow Festival at The Homestead Resort in Midway. It was fun, I’d do it again next year.
Free admission, free wagon rides. There was food and pumpkins to purchase if you wanted. The fall leaves were spectacular.
There was also a scarecrow contest. We voted for our favorites. The girls loved this little purple girl:
I thought this was pretty impressive:
The Wicked Scarecrows – Elphaba and Glinda
