October Family Fun

Monday, October 21

After a trip to the pumpkin patch with Grandma Swings (and a trip to Wal-Mart) we had eight pumpkins sitting on our front porch. We carved four of them.

The kids weren't too thrilled about the gooey stuff.

So Mom ended up cleaning out most of them.

Thursday, October 25

Nathan's eighth birthday was on Friday, October 26. Since Brian and I were going out of town, we held Nathan's birthday party on Thursday. Everyone came dressed in their Halloween costumes and we played Halloween games like "Zombie Tag" and served up pizza, a veggie skeleton cat, and "witch's brew" which was the biggest hit of all. (You can see part of the spider webs we wrapped around the house for party decor.) Even though only five out of eight kids showed up, it was still total chaos. I think we're going to have to re-think this birthday party thing for Nathan next year...

Halloween! Wednesday, October 31
The boys spent the day in their costumes at school. After a costume parade and Halloween parties in their classrooms, they still managed to get pretty excited for trick-or-treating. Maggie dressed as a sparkly princess, Matthew was a knight, and Nathan was Bobba Fett from Star Wars. Maggie got the hang of trick-or-treating right away. Even after she came home, every time the doorbell would ring she'd drop everything, yell "Trick-or-treat!" and run full speed to the door. Since Maggie lives for candy, I'm guessing Halloween is one of her top holidays.

Pretty Princess

Homecoming

We've been living in our new home a little over a month now and we love it! Now if only I could get these boxes unpacked and actually get moved in...wouldn't that be nice.

In the meantime, we're just enjoying living in our own house as our own little (but growing) family. In case you haven't heard already, I'm expecting baby number four in March.

Here are a few stories about the kids:

Nathan
Our new house is about a block from a temple currently under construction. On the way home from school the other day, Nathan was telling Matthew how awful it's going to be when the temple is finished, "...because people will be getting married and then they'll be kissing on the lips outside the temple all the time. It'll be sooo disgusting!" Matthew didn't think it would be that big of a deal, but Nathan assured him that there will be people kissing all the time and it was really going to be horrible.

Matthew
Yesterday, Brian brought home the old foosball table that had been at his sister's house for the past few years. As soon as he got it set up, Matthew started going around the house looking for someone to play "fuzzball" with. I'm afraid the name is going to stick.

Maggie
Out of the blue, Maggie put her hands over her eyes yesterday and started counting, "One, two, free, fife, six, seffen, eighck, nine, ten..." she went past ten but I'm not sure if she was still counting because all she said was "...yahyah, yahyah..." Who knew at 26 months old she could count to ten? Even if she did skip number four.

Maggie loves to sing. Her nursery teachers were amazed on Sunday at her ability to learn new songs so quickly. Even though you can't understand every word, she gets most of them. The other day she was coloring at her new "baby table" and I heard her break out into, "Twinkle, twinkle little star...lead me, guide me, walk beside me, help me find the way..." She went seamlessly from the beginning of one song to the middle of the next, correct tunes and all. And she sang at the top of her lungs. Oh, it does a musical mother's heart good...