eyes of a child

At my house, all the trees are still small. Small trees=no leaves. I rake two or three times in the fall if I'm lucky. Papa has the opposite problem. He could rake two or three times a day. At Jace's request, he saved up the backyard for a few days so Jace could come rake and jump in the leaves. Jace was in little boy heaven!

prepping the pile...

getting the last few....

Jace didn't just jump in the leaves....

He dove into them at full speed!

there is a kid in there somewhere

heaven!

assisting in leaf disposal...Jace was the official garbage stomper

Just makes you wanna go jump in your own pile of leaves, doesn't it?

don't care where

This boy just makes me laugh. He has so many cute little pjs (thanks to Lindsey's hand me downs) and yet most nights he starts out wearing one of Tim's old t-shirts. He usually ends up taking it off and sleeping in his unmentionables...much to the dismay of my girls. Tonight, he opted to keep the shirt on, but he moved all his bedding to the doorway of his room. He was sound asleep on the floor by 8:00 (yay for early bedtimes!).

I had Tim come look, and he asked if I was going to move him back. NOPE! I don't care where he sleeps, as long as he sleeps!

ooey, gooey, pumpkin-mess!

Tonight was our official pumpkin night....I think everyone else in A.F. was doing the same thing. We were given free pumpkin coupons from a neighbor to get pumpkins at Maceys. I think the whole town was their buying pumpkins too...the place was a madhouse! Tim printed off all kinds of different faces and everyone picked out their favorite. We opened up the pumpkins and the kids went to work cleaning them out.

Jace thought the seeds and strings were "SO COOL!" He squished around the all the pumpkin goo for quite some time.

Kenzie was determined to do her pumpkin all on her own this year.

Carter almost died when he actually touched the insides...the look on his face says it all.

Lady just didn't have the muscles to get much out...Tim helped her out.

Maddy tried to recreate Tim D.'s pumpkin throw-up from last Halloween.

Yep...her hand is all the way in her pumpkin...yummmm.

Jace still squishy-squashin' the ooey gooey mess!

Kenzie finally let Tim help her out with the skeleton's teeth...

Proud punkin owners!

Seriously awesome lookin' jack-o-lanterns! In order: Kenzie's skeleton, Maddy's bat, Carter's mad face, Lady's smile, and Jace's storm trooper.

Hope the snow tomorrow doesn't ruin them...and really, couldn't the snow have waited just one more week? Gonna be some cold trick-or-treating this year!

tough days

Miss Lady came home from school today just bein' grumpy. I rushed her to the counter to start homework and have a snack. Left about 5 mintues later to pick up Kenzie....hurried home....started some spelling pretests...ran back out the door to take Kenzie to Courage Reins....back home to finish tests/reading/math....typical crazy afternoon. When I tried to give Lady her spelling test she got all upset, threw her pencil, and ran over to the couch...not the response I was expecting when I said "spell the word came". I went over and sat down to figure out the problem.

"So, tell me what's wrong?"

"Today (sniff, sniff) at recess (more sniffling) I asked my friends in my class if I could play with them. They said no. So I found other friends and they said no too (buckets of tears)."

"I'm so sorry...so what did you do?"

"I sat on the ground by myself (barrels of tears)."

After some hugs and love I said..."So, it was a tough day...tomorrow will be better."

Tonight during prayers, Miss Lady...."hope that tomorrow won't be a tough day again and my friends will let me play." I'll hope for the same thing.

Some days I'm so busy getting all the stuff done, I almost miss the most important parts. Good thing my kids bring me back to what really matters.

breakin' for fall

We took a quick trip to Boise to visit Tim's family for Spring Break. On the drive up, Laityn talked nonstop. You think I'm kidding...nope. She literally never stopped talking. After about 4 hours, Tim finally told Lady she had to stop (at least for a minute!). She was silent for nearly 15 minutes and then she burst out with "I can't wait til we get there so I can talk!" Soooo Lady. We didn't really have any set plans and it was great to just sit around and do nothing for a change. The kids got their fill of cartoons, played with the cousins, and stayed up til all hours of the night. I checked out the family store, "Import Outlet", and got some fun new stuff for the house. We also hit a few stores, and I got a jump on some Christmas shopping (it's gonna be here before we know it!). We hooked up with some old friends from Springville, Shane and Amanda, that now live in Nampa. We hadn't seen eachother in seven years! We had some major catching up to do, which lasted until after midnight.

Jace makin' pictures for grandma becky.

Control of her own tv!

Cousin capers!

Aaaahhhh....nothing like doing whatever I want and no homework.

Jada & Jia....sweet little twins!

Jared...kept telling Jace that 4 1/2 was little, 5 was big...of course!

We stopped at Shoshone Falls on the drive home...how have we missed this beautiful little place with all our drives to Boise?

checking out the view

We also stopped at the Twin Falls Temple and walked around the grounds.

Jace started throwing up about 5 minutes before we left to come home. Needless to say, we went through many, many gas station cups as Jace continued bringing back everything he tried to eat. He finally slowed down around 2:00, and kept his lunch down. Tim and I were laughing at him because whenever his tummy hurt, he would put his entire face into the cup. He had a big red line in between his eyes from the rim of the cup. I tried to catch him on camera.

As you see, that just made him mad. He refused to look at me for the next 10 minutes. At least they were a quiet 10 minutes!

Now we are home and back to reality...been doing laundry all day, mowing the lawn, raking leaves, homework with the kids, fhe, book orders....I think I need another fall break!

crumpled

This morning while drying Lady's hair, she made an interesting observation.
"Ya know what mom?"
"Nope, what?"
"You are not old and crumply yet."
"Crumply?"
"Yea...cause that's what happens when you get old, you get all crumpled everywhere."
Thank goodness I'm not crumpled...at least not yet!

who knew?

I took Jace to storytime today. We didn't try this last year because of kindergarten, and Jace has been loving it! We made a quick stop in the bathrooms before heading to Carls Jr for lunch... the conversation between our stalls went like this:

"Hey mom, look! We're right next to eachother...see?"

I look down to see Jace's head poking under my stall.

"Jace, we never look under the stall or touch bathroom floors (gross!)...hurry and go potty."

"I can still see you mom cause I have laser eyes."

"Huh, didn't know that..."

Somedays I think he really is a superhero in disguise!