Boys Monthly Letters

The boys have posted their monthly letters to their blogs. Just click on their pictures to the right.

Trick-or-Treat

Since Halloween is on Sunday this year most of the kids in our neighborhood did their trick-or-treating tonight. And of course ... rain rain rain!

But the boys had fun. Kyle had a little identity crisis, deciding what side he wanted to be on.

Eric ran so fast to cover as much ground as he could to fill up his pillowcase with candy.

Brandon's friend AJ trick-or-treated with the boys. Brandon told me a couple days ago that they were going to "hit a few neighborhoods" and so they were ready to get going as soon as possible!

Because of the rain, I didn't let Kyle stay out too long but he really didn't care about the rain ... he loved trick-or-treating. I did finally talk him into going home by telling him that we could actually go home and EAT the candy in his bucket. He was so funny when we get home he dug right in to his candy and sat there with a tootsie roll in his mouth and a sucker in each hand.

Scouts

Being that I have three boys I always knew that I would get called into Scouts at some point ... it's just inevitable. So it wasn't a surpise when a little over a year ago I was called to be the Webelos leader in our ward. It has been good though and the boys love joining in with the scouts and going to pack meetings with me.

Now that Brandon is 8 years old he is old enough to join Cub Scouts himself and be part of the Wolf Den. Since he just turned 8 on Friday he hasn't been to a den meeting but was able to go to his first pack meeting today as a scout. He was so excited and couldn't wait to get his uniform on. He has also already read nearly his entire Wolf book cover to cover. :)

What a handsome scout!!

Family Halloween Party

We always really look forward to Halloween at our house. And we especially look forward to the family Halloween party. This year we had 35 people at our house for the party. It was a blast!

Since our house is all about Lego Star Wars these days we decided to all go as Star Wars characters.

I had a bunch of games for the kids to play which was super fun. We started out with eating doughnuts without hands.

This was by far Kyle's favorite game. He was so intense about it and looked like a fierce little puppy going after that doughnut with his teeth. It was hilarious. Thank goodness Dave had the camcorder rolling!

They also got to bob for apples. I know a huge germ fest ... but they love it!

Eric has always had a knack for this. He just dives right in and grabs an apple like it's no big deal. He is the reigning bobbing for apples champ! :)

Brandon's favorite part of the night is that we celebrated his birthday. I made him another cake (not a disaster this time) and we sang to him.

And he made out with a bunch more loot ... so spoiled!! :)

We had so many fun costumes on display at the party. I didn't get pictures of everyone but I was able to snap quite a few.

Brandon's 8th Birthday!

Brandon turned EIGHT today! Hard to believe. Yet also easy to believe since Brandon in many ways seems much older. Brandon has a very old soul and thinks and feels things very deeply. He is very intelligent and very thoughtful. We are very blessed to have him in our family.

We celebrated his birthday today and it was an all day affair. We started with a special family breakfast and gave Brandon his birthday present, the "Slave 1" LEGO set that he had been wanting. They had the day off of school today so we wanted him to have it so that he could spend the morning building. Of course he had it done in about 2 hours. It's pretty awesome! :)

We played all sorts of LEGO games, like relays ...


Balloon pops ...

And LEGO tower building.


Then things got really crazy when they got to use sticky hands to slap LEGOs.

Yes, I need to take a cake decorating class like my cousins have done. My LEGO cake was a bit of a disaster but thankfully 8 year old boys don't care!

Of course Brandon added quite a few new LEGO sets to his ever growing collection thanks to his friends.

Then this evening we met Grandma Chris and Aunt Amy at 5 Guys Burgers for dinner ...

and then on to the Jordan High School football game where Aunt Lizzy's dance company was performing at half time. Grandpa Clark, Uncle Randy, Uncle Brian & Aunt Carie and a bunch of other relatives met us there. It was a lot of fun!!

Happy Birthday Brando! We love you!Then this afternoon we had a friends party for him and his school friends which worked out nicely since they were off today.

Pickin' Pumpkins

Thanks Uncle Ryan for letting us come over to your Pumpkin Patch!!

Last Hurrah at the Cabin

We went up to the cabin this weekend for our last cabin trip of the year and to winterize the cabin.

The boys came up with their own little game. They strung a string between two trees and played like little monkeys!!

Dave had his own fun ... roasting twinkies! Don't knock it too much, they were pretty good actually!

We had a really fun cabin season this year. I have done much less driving of the 4-wheels this year because Brandon has become quite good at driving them. I sit back and ride most of the time and he does the driving. He's really growing up.

The Witches

We are so lucky to live so close to such a neat place like Gardner Village. They have such cool things to see all year long but this is our favorite time of year, in the fall, when the Witches are out!!

This year we had a Storm Trooper ...

Darth Vadar ...

... and Yoda who has never looked so CUTE!!