Halloween 2009

This year i let the kids choose their own costumes (this time without any influence from me) so cute!

CJ got an "Indiana Jones Lego" game for the wii and he loved it so much that we rented all of the Indiana Jones movies and had family movie nights and watched them- including the new one Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull (with a few moments of "cover your eyes till we say stop") He LOVED watching them! He would constantly say "remember when Indiana did..." for days and days. So when I asked him what he wanted to be it was an automatic "INDIANA JONES!" So with much searching and many, many stores later we assembled a very cute costume.

CJ was adorable with his "five o'clock shadow"

Ashley chose to be Princess Leia. (I swear i had nothing to do with her choice!) We borrowed a white dress from my moms "costume warehouse", a belt from Aunt Lisa's temple dress, and a lightsaber from Cousin Bryce. She had me redo her hair 3 times till her "buns" were just right. Her candy bucket is a Darth Vader mask.

I think her favorite part of the costume was posing in fighting stances with her lightsaber.

Ashley's Valley Days Experience

Ashley got to go to "Valley Days" for her 3rd grade field trip. Me, Mike, Grandma Stone, Aunt Tami, Uncle Jeff, and Cousin Addy went too. It was so much fun! I haven't been to Valley Days since i was a 3rd grader. It was so fun to see Ashley do all the things that were common in the 1800's.

Ash learned how to iron clothes by placing the iron on coal to make it hot then moving it to the clothes... maybe i can get her to do the ironing at home now...

Uncle Jeff and Mike worked in the "cooking station" where they taught the kids to make butter and bake biscuits.

Ashley loved making the "corn husk doll" and the little outfit on it was adorable!

Grandma Stone helped the children make rope and taught them how to lasso a cute wooden horse.

Ashley's lunch pail is the pail I used when i went to Valley Days *cough*cough* twenty-two years ago... talk about an antique!

Ash got to practice writing with a quill and ink. It was VERY messy! She decided she likes markers better... especially when she learned that some ink used to be made with catfish excrement. Yep that's right catfish poop! Gross.

I got to work the "Printing Press Station" and got to teach the kids how to use quills and how they used to use metal letters and a press to put the words on a newspaper. We made wanted posters for each kid and they got to add their names with the press.

It was a wonderful day!

Pumpkin carving

The kids really, really, really wanted to carve pumpkins this year so i finally gave in and we went hunting for the perfect pumpkins. The kids were gung-ho for carving and laughing and excited till after i cut the tops off the pumpkins and told them how to get the seeds out. Both kids stopped dead in their tracks and looked at me like i was CRAZY! Neither one wanted to do it anymore. Me being the mean and nasty mom i am made them do it anyway (I mean really- getting the slimy stuff between your fingers is supposed to be the best part...) Both kids got tool after tool out of the kitchen drawer to find one that would let them do it without having to actually touch the icky stuff. After that they decided that they wanted to make their own designs and not use the pattern book (that they begged me to buy). The both created vampire pumpkins (i swear i didn't influence them at all!) They are both really happy with their pumpkins and enjoyed lighting them up outside that night.

Happy Halloween!

Roasting Marshmallows in Northstar Village

After we went hot tubing we walked up the hill to roast marshmallows in Northstar village's beautiful fire pit. The kids said that this was the best day ever! (score one for mom!)

The fire pits are located around a skating rink and so the kids got to watch people skate and listen to good music while they ate their smores.

CJ kept asking me to hold his marshmallow stick because he wanted to watch the skaters and wanted me to tell him when it was done...

Ashley definitely takes pride in cooking her marshmallow's to the perfect golden brown. She almost liked cooking them more than she liked eating them.... almost...

mmm.... Smores!

Tahoe Trip

Me and the kiddos went to Tahoe over the weekend. The kids were worried that we would be bored because it was just going to be the three of us and there was no friends to play with. Boy were they wrong! We fell into bed each night exhausted! We did so much stuff: parks, the northstar village, melty beads, stamps, sun catchers, movies, wii, read, art with sparkle glue, beach visit, walks, scenic drives, and hot tubing at the community center...

The kids made several jack-o-lanterns out the the Perler "melty" beads. Ash made a melty bead cellphone that was really creative and CJ was happy just to sort out the beads into color piles.

We went to go to the "Big Truck Show" that the city of Truckee put on. They had Tractors,

Dump Trucks, Fire Trucks, Ambulances, etc. that you could climb on and in. Exciting right? Nope, the kids said "mom, we already seen all of these. Gpa Stone has the tractors and dump trucks, we climbed in an ambulance at the party at school, and we got to go in a firetruck at Aidans birthday party... can we just go to the park now?" I laughed and then we went to the park. CJ and Ash played at the park till they were tired (and stinky and dirty).

The kids got bored on the way home (traffic was terrible) and they entertained themselves with their McDonald's happy meal boxes and my camera. I love that my kids can always find something to do!

Silly Gooses!

Kings Beach in Tahoe

We went to Kings Beach to play and the kids had a blast! CJ kept calling the lake "the ocean" and Ash wanted to know where all the shells were...

There were a ton of rocks to play with (CJs favorite thing in the whole wide world). He would stack them 3-4 high then knock them over. He was a happy boy!

With a lack of sea shells Ash decided that finding crab legs was the next best thing...

What a beautiful place to spend an afternoon!

My favorite Beach Pics

just another one of those things i never thought i'd do...

A friend gave us a big ol' bag of peppers that we couldn't possibly eat before either we barfed or they went bad so i found out how to dry them (the 'net said that if i do it in my handy dandy dehydrator it would create "noxious fumes that will burn your eyes")... so i decided to hang dry them. It took forever to get the yarn through all gazillion of them but it was worth it... plus it acts like a kitchen decoration too...So in the last 2 years I've learned a few things that i had never known before:

- How to make and jar jam

- How to make and jar pickles

- Grow a garden and actually be able to eat what comes out of it

- How to blanch and freeze zucchini and squash

- How to make chocolate zucchini cake and zucchini bread (both are actually quite tasty!)

- How to dry peppers

- How to make beef jerky (with the above mentioned handy-dandy dehydrator)

- How to make fruit roll ups with applesauce and jello

- And thanks to Karen how to make these delicious chocolate cup with marshmallow creme with fruit tiny dessert thingies. Yum!

All in all not a bad batch of things to learn...

My animalistic children

Mike took the kids to a festival and they got thier faces painted. The kids had a blast.

Ashley makes a beautiful butterfly

CJ's lion face looks fantastic!

Now what could we do with these???

I got tired of picking the squash and zucchini in the garden so i left them for 3 weeks and this is the result... gi-freaking-normous veggies! now what am i suposed to do with these???