This is Halloween, Halloween, Halloween

The kids got to dress up for school yesterday, but this year they didn't do a parade or any kind of school activity that involved the parents. So basically the fun came at 6:30 in the morning when we put the costumes on and took pictures.


When we got home from school we decided to go to the neighborhood Trunk or Treat. I really didn't want to go through the whole dressing up routine the next day, so I convinced the kids to celebrate Halloween on Friday and then they could hand out candy on Halloween. The Trunk or Treat was really fun and the kids loved seeing their friends.

Turns out Livi and Whitney had the same costume,
which Andra and I didn't plan.

They both looked so cute!

Livi Bug

This is the first year Livi really understood dressing up for Halloween. She chose a lady bug costume, but insisted it was a bee. She went around the store making bee noises. She asked every day if she could wear her costume, until finally, she had a Halloween party at school.

I must say, she is the cutest little lady bug bee I've ever seen!

While posing for pictures, I asked her if she was a lady bug and she kept saying "I a bee...see..." and would show me her stinger on her little butt.


Then it started snowing and she would no longer look at the camera and just kept yelling "Snow!"


Then it was off to the party. These kids are all such great friends and had fun trick or treating for the first time.

California Dreamin'

Jeremy's line of work requires that he travel a lot. Sometimes I get a little jealous of the places he gets to go, mostly because he gets treated to hotels and activities that we would never do on our own. As much as I've wanted to join him in the past, the timing just never worked out.

A few months ago he told me he was invited to a conference in Newport Beach. When he showed me the website where he would be staying, it took me a whole two seconds to decide I would make the timing just right on this one.

Jeremy left on Thursday to attend the required meetings and also went to the Yankees/Angels game.

I flew in the next day and when I arrived at the resort and saw the parking lot, I knew this was going to be much different from our usual experience at the Marriott.

Seriously.

Jeremy had to work most of the time. I felt kind of bad watching him work while laying out at the pool.

Okay, not really that bad.



Then Jeremy worked some more and I was forced to find something to do on my own.





It was really rough.

Luckily, we did get to go out one of the nights. It was really nice to meet his "work family" that he has known all these years. I can definitely see why Jeremy enjoys spending so much time with them.

Although it was a short weekend, it was really relaxing and exactly what I needed to get through the upcoming winter. I love California.

Landon's Birthday!!

My first born is nine years old!! Wow, it seems like just last week I wrote this post about him turning eight. Crazy.

Landon is still an amazing boy with a great sense of humor. He loves his sisters, his parents, and his friends. He is at the top of his class at school and loves to read and learn. He absolutely loves scouts and soccer. His favorite food is pizza and his favorite show is The Simpsons.

The kids have a birthday party every other year, so this year he got a special date with the family and then later with just Mom and Dad. Right after school we took him to Red Robin.



Both of his Grandparents sent gifts in the mail, which was greatly appreciated. He got some pretty fun stuff!




Then afterwards, the restaurant gave him a Chocolate Cake. I think Livi enjoyed it the most!


That night, Jeremy and I took Landon to see Star Wars in concert. We didn't tell him where he was going and made him think we were going to a haunted house. He didn't want to go (he hates being scared) and he was reluctant to go into the building. He was definitely surprised and really relieved.

Happy Birthday to my favorite son!!!

Another Crazy Week

I've known all month that Landon needed to complete his Wolf requirements for scouts before his birthday, but with school, soccer, homework, house guests and every day life...I just didn't get to it. On Tuesday (yes, 2 days ago), his leader told me we had 16 things to complete by tomorrow.

One of the things I had been procrastinating was building something like a birdhouse or bookends (you know, stuff I build on a daily basis). Tonight Landon and I decided to make a toolbox to hold his new screwdrivers. This is why I love scouts. I would never otherwise sit down to teach my son how to use a hammer and nails. I'm so happy to have these experiences with him, even if it adds one more ball for me to juggle.


With all of the chaos of trying to get his stuff signed off before his birthday, I forgot to plan his actual birthday. Thankfully Jeremy came home from work tonight and took them to soccer practice while I ran to Walmart to pick up some gifts. I have such a love/hate relationship with Walmart. I love saving money, but sometimes the stress of actually shopping there isn't worth the savings. What's with the people there? Seriously?!

I digress.

Anyway, I'm excited for his birthday. I love how excited kids get to be another year older. He only gets a party every other year, so this year we are just celebrating as a family, but I hope to make it special for him. He's such a great kid!

Oh, and by the way, we totally completed all 16 items as of 8:15 this evening. Boo Ya!

Mail Time!

Landon and Emma are always writing messages to each other and taping them to doors and bed posts. Most of the time they are really sweet messages telling the other they miss them or to meet at a special time and place. Every once in a while there will be a message about how mad they are at the other person.

Rather than have paper taped to various places throughout the house, I set up a little craft project so the kids can make their own mailboxes.


They turned out so cute, but I think the project back-fired on me a little bit. I asked Emma if she would do something for me, and this was her response:

"Sure Mom, just write it on a note and put it in my mailbox. Then I'll get to it when I have a minute".

So I guess all my requests have to be formalized in writing first!

The Week of LOSING!

I wish I could say this week I lost weight and that's why I called it the week of losing. But, just the opposite I put on a few 'Stress Pounds' this week from my comfort foods. Yes, that's right...I'm an emotional eater. Don't judge.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we had three pressing things going on this week:
1) Landon's book report
2) Student Council Election
3) Pinewood Derby

Let's start with the Derby. Landon and I found someone to shape our car and we took turns sanding it, and Landon painted it and put on some decals. I knew nothing about wheel balance and weight distribution, so I figured we'll just make it look really cool.

Landon was really excited to attend his first Derby and had a lot of fun with his friends.


The races began and Landon was excited to be able to put his own car on the track for each race. They make it really interactive and all the boys had a lot of fun.




Even though we came in last place, we had a lot of fun. I looked at the winning cars afterward to try to get some tricks for next year, but I couldn't see anything they did much differently than us. Oh well, at least we looked cool!

Then on Friday Landon got the word that he didn't win Student Council, and then just to add insult to injury, he had to re-do his book report. So, all the things we worked on this week didn't exactly work out like as we had hoped.

The final loss came on Saturday morning while eating, I lost some dental work. It was an entire bridge that just came right off, and underneath it was a nasty looking tooth. The pain became so unbearable that I ended up seeing my dentist at 9:00 that night. He ended up doing a root canal. I also have to go back on Tuesday to have another bridge put in. I can't really chew right now, so I was thinking maybe a liquid diet will help me to shed the pounds I gained this week. However, I found out that ice cream really soothes the pain. So I think next week will be called 'The Week of Gaining!".

What a month!

So much going on.

I have no idea how single mom's do it. Kudos to you!

I would seriously just give up and hide in a hole.

This is going to be a long post, but I don't know when I'll have another free moment. I paid Emma to play with Olivia so I can blog :)

So...my smart, talented, and hard-working husband has been working 80+ hours a week (and traveling) for the last month trying to meet a deadline. We are hoping this is coming to an end next week and we can once again be a two-parent family.

Landon's school work is a lot more aggressive this year. There is very little room for error, and the teacher seems a lot more strict than past years. I don't know if it's the new school administration or just the way 3rd grade is structured, but I'm happy he's being challenged and he's doing really well. I guess I just wasn't mentally prepared for the amount of effort we would need to put in.

We are also working really hard in Scouts to earn his Wolf badge. He needs to earn it by his 9th birthday, which is in 2 weeks. So, needless to say, he and I have been working really aggressively on that. Meanwhile, they decided to throw in the Pinewood Derby. That deserves a post of it's own. Do you know how hard it is to be a girl (with no power tools) trying to compete with all the dads out there? Well, I went for it. Landon just finished painting it and we put the last wheel on a few minutes ago. The paint has bubbles and the wheels are out of alignment, but we did it together, and I'm proud of his hard work!

Also, Landon has decided to run for Student Council. He had to create a speech and a poster. He gives his speech tomorrow and then elections will be right after. I told him to write his speech and it was two pages long. He is so comfortable speaking in public. He never gets nervous. He will also sing a solo in front of anyone with no fear. I admire him so much for that. Anyway, after cutting his speech down to a paragraph, we made his poster. He has such a great sense of humor too...


Emma is also working hard at school, but since I've been through the 1st grade program with Landon, I'm fairly well prepared for her school work. Emma is very well liked at school and soccer and so she tends to get invited to at least one birthday party each week. With my time constraints this month, I've only allowed her to go to two of them, and I'm just the 'meanest mom ever'.

Aside from the basic drama of being a girl, my biggest challenge with Emma right now is that she is sleepwalking. It's been going on for years, but would only occur once a month. It's been every single night for the past month. I feel like I have a newborn again since I can't sleep through the night. She never has recollection of these events, even though we have a full conversation and sometimes I even take her picture. This is her (totally asleep) after she came into my room and just laid on my bed.


I don't know what to do for this. For now, all I can do is make sure she's safe and that the house alarm is always on. Until she magically out grows this, I will just continue to be sleep-deprived!

There's much more to update, but I think Emma has earned her dollar, so time to get back to being a single parent. Although it hasn't been easy, I do want to say that I'm definitely not complaining...I know we are so fortunate that my husband has a job he loves and that it's doing well enough that it requires so many hours. I'm definitely blessed, but also humbled as to how difficult it is to keep it all together without a lot of help.

Wish us luck at the Derby :)

Labor Day Adventure

I didn't have any plans for Labor Day, other than relaxing and enjoying time off of school. However, Friday afternoon, Jeremy informed me that he would be working all weekend. I was bummed that we wouldn't be able to hang out with him and definitely didn't want to just stay home all weekend. So, I decided I would check the kids out of school and head to sunny St. George. My Mom just had double knee replacement surgery, so I thought it would be a good time to visit her. Plus, what better way to spend a weekend then swimming, playing and no cleaning for me!

I've never checked the kids out early before, so they were absolutely shocked and a little worried that something was wrong. They were so surprised when I told them we were taking a quick vacation. We headed out right from school and made it just in time for dinner.



I didn't tell my parents we were coming, so we decided to just stop by and surprise them in the morning. The next morning we woke up and the kids picked out some flowers for Grandma. We knocked on their door and definitely surprised them. It was such a beautiful day. We spent most of the morning outside feeding the swans and visiting.




Grandma had two boo-boos on her knees and Livi wanted to show Grandma her boo-boos too.

Emma was just happy having 'cuddle time' with Grandma.


The rest of the time was spent playing at various parks and lots of swimming. We also had a few home cooked meals and a BYU game, both courtesy of my Dad.










It was so much fun and reminded me that I really need to be spontaneous more often. I just love spending time with these kids!