Pre-Halloween Checklist

We have been working hard to make sure we check off all of the items on our pre-Halloween checklist. I think we have just about got everything checked off and we are ready for the big day tomorrow! Here are some of the things on our list. 
- Host the Zaugg Halloween Party and wrap up Grandma and Grandpa like mummies: Check.

- Go to the preschool Halloween parade and watch Dax sing Halloween songs with his preschool friends: Check. Dax has been singing the "Halloween, Halloween!" song he learned at preschool non-stop for a few weeks now, and did great. I might have to post the video later. Here is Dax (he is the dinosaur second from the left) and all his preschool friends and his awesome teacher:- Watch Ichabod Crane and Hocus Pocus and Nightmare Before Christmas and all those other essential Halloween shows: Check. Cora has been watching the Halloween episodes of Team Umizoomi and Bubble Guppies every chance she gets. (I am kind of looking forward to deleting those from my DVR later this week), and Dax loves Ichabod Crane. I was worried that that show would be too scary for the kids, but they love it. I don't have a photo of us watching TV, so here is one of Arden wearing one of the 23 masks she made at kindergarten this month. Sppooooooky!

- Go to the pumpkin walk and see the Jack o'Lanterns: Check. Here is Cora, standing by the E.T. pumpkin, which was her favorite.

More pumpkin walk pictures:

- Play in the leaves: Check. The trees in our yard are finally starting to grow up a little, which is nice. However, bigger trees drop more leaves, which isn't always so nice. Unless you are Cora, who had a great time sitting in my leaf pile and throwing leaves up in the air. How cute is she? She will probably get a lot more chances to play in the leaves over the next few weeks.

- Go to a corn maze and ride on a cow train: Check. Cow trains are essential. Arden wanted to ride by herself this year, but Dax refused to ride without his good buddy Cora. Later in the evening we rode the train again, and even though we were the only ones on the train, Dax and Cora still shoved themselves inside one little train car. Awwwww.

- Try to get through the corn maze before it gets too dark, and before the kids get too bored: Check. Cora and Preston are trying to decide which way to go:

And, finally...

- Carve our own pumpkins: Check. The kids were really excited to help with the pumpkins this year, so Preston said they could help scoop out the seeds. The kids all grabbed a big spoon and could hardly wait until Preston cut a lid out of the firsts pumpkin. They were so excited when he was finally finished and Preston put the pumpkin on the floor and let them at it. They fought over who got to scoop out the next spoonful of seeds and they were really making some pretty good progress...for about three minutes. After three minutes, they got bored and wandered away to the playroom. It was kind of a bummer for me, since scraping out pumpkin guts is my least favorite part of the whole pumpkin carving experience. I had been looking forward to having little helpers to delegate it to. Oh well, maybe next year. After Grandma and Grandpa showed up, Cora decided to help Grandpa scoop some seeds, and she actually scooped out a good portion of the guts from her little pumpkin:

(Notice my dad's shirt...he ran the Provo Halloween Half Marathon yesterday. Goooo dad!)

I will hopefully post pictures of our finished Jack O'Lanterns and the kids in their costumes soon! Happy Halloween Everyone!!

Beautiful Fall

Beautiful Leaves (sorry, I took this with my crappy camera phone):

Beautiful Pumpkins:Beautiful Boy:

Arden, the Soccer Beast

Fall soccer is now officially over. I am a little sad to see it go, but I gotta admit it is nice to have my schedule freed up a bit now that we have two less practices and two less games a week. Arden and Dax miss it already too. 

Arden has REALLY improved and scored quite a few goals this fall. The last game, she actually scored two goals!! Yay Arden. She is no longer that timid little four-year-old, running happily after the pack, ooooh no. Now she is Arden, the soccer BEAST, and she will steal the ball from YOU (even if you are on her team) and dribble down and score a goooooaaal! Wahoo! 

What was it that flipped the switch inside of our sweet girl and turned her from sweet little "I-sure-hope-that-ball-doesn't-get-too-close-to-me" Arden into "Get outta my way, I gotta score!" Arden?

Bribery. Pure and simple. Somewhere along the line, I told Arden that if she scored a goal, we could go out for ice cream after. 

Voila. Soccer beast. (We tried the same bribe for Dax but it didn't seem to kick in yet...he is still too busy tackling.)

Doesn't she look scary?

(I unfortunately don't have very good video of our girl in action...I only remembered to bring the camcorder to one game. I WAS actually filming while Arden scored a goal, but I got a little excited and so the camera wasn't exactly pointing in the direction of the goal when she kicks it in. Oops). 
She loves her team and her coach, and we are already looking forward to spring!

Night of the Running Dead

On Saturday my sisters, my brother in law, Preston and I all participated in the "Night of the Running Dead" out at the Utah State Fairpark. It is a 5k race, and you can choose whether you sign up as a "human" or as an "undead." The humans get a 2 minute head start, and then "run for their lives as the undead pursue them for a full five kilometers." HA! Brilliant! I thought the idea was so funny that I had to sign up. Even Preston was amused and agreed to do his first (and possibly last) race ever! Unfortunately, I was the only one who signed up as a zombie, so I had a lot of humans to catch and a lot of braaaaaains to eat.

Here is me practicing before the race (Preston and Val are not so good at pretending to run away in terror, even though I am looking very scary):

I was pretty lazy in my zombie outfit, but A LOT of the undead there were really into it and put a lot of effort into their costumes. It was fun to line up behing the "Zombie Hoarde" sign and get ready to chase down some humans. The humans took off, and our undead army approached the starting line. We roared a few times to let the humans know we were coming, and soon we were off!!! It was so awesome to see all of the zombies running down the street.

I caught up to Matt after a while and cheerfully said "Ate your brains!" as I passed him, but I kept running and running and running and I wasn't catching any of my other human friends. Cora had given me her cold a couple of days earlier, and my lungs really started to get angry with me after a while. I was really starting to be discouraged, when I saw Preston...running to join the crowd I was running in from a completely different direction than we were running. Wait....what? Turns out that the course wasn't very well marked and a lot of people made some wrong turns. I had been too busy running and looking for Manda's blue hat to notice. I left Preston behind and took off in search of Val's and Manda's brains, but met the finish line before I caught them. Dangit!

But as it turns out, they somehow ended up behind me by making a wrong turn (along with everyone around them) at the beginning of the race. The course was so messed up, Matt ended up running over 4 miles when a 5ks is only supposed to be 3.1 miles. Oh well. The race was fun (after I stopped coughing) and it raised money for cancer research, so I guess I can't be too angry that the course was totally messed up. They had it at a different location last year, so maybe by next year they will have figured everything out.

The T-shirts that came with the registration were pretty cool. You get a different one depending on whether you sign up as zombie or humans. The human t-shirts are white, and on the back they say: "Zombies don't eat FAST FOOD" (get it? FAST food?), and the zombie shirts say, "If you can't beat 'em, EAT 'EM." My dad was so amused he bought a shirt even though he was too busy watching Dax and Cora to run in the race.

Who wants to be a zombie with me next year? I promise to put a little more effort into my costume.

BWA-HA-HA-HA!!

Halloween is coming....

...are you afraid?

I love this time of year! (I can say that now that the weather is beautiful again). It is going to be a busy couple of weeks trying to squeeze in all of our favorite Halloween activities plus some new fun stuff. 

Five going on Six..teen

Arden is really enjoying kindergarten so far.  She likes bringing home lots of papers and showing me what she did at school that day.  She likes doing the art projects.   She likes her teacher.  She likes listening to stories.  But she LOVES playing with her friends every day.

Since she has started kindergarten, she has really latched on to a couple of friends, B and A.  They are both in her class and they all went to preschool together.  They are the three cute little musketeers at kindergarten.  That is fine with me.  That is GREAT.  (It is especially great because I am friends with both their moms).  I am so glad and thankful that Arden has good friends to play with and grow with, and I hope they can be friends for a long, long time. 

Couple things, though.

Arden can't seem to go through a single day without a play date.  The first thing Arden says when she gets through the door is "Can I go to B's house?"  Not, "Hi Mom!  I missed you so much!"  Not, "Boy, am I glad to be home with you!"  Nope.  She CANNOT WAIT to get back out the door to play.  If she HAS to, she will settle for having a friend over at our house, but she would much rather play at a friend's house because they "have different fun stuff" to play with.  I get it...other people's toys are always more fun than your own, but it is getting hard not to take it a little bit personally that she can't wait to escape from our boring, boring house.  :-(

She thinks her friends are just so great, and they really are.  They are really cute, sweet little girls.  Arden wants to do her hair like them.  (to Arden, a ponytail on the side with a big ol' flower clipped on it is known as "the B."  Mom, can we do my hair in a B today?")  Arden wants to dress like them (Mom, next time we go to the store, can I get some leggings like A has?).  She wants to do everything they do. 

The other night Arden was pleading with me to take her to get her ears pierced.  I was surprised, since not long ago she told me she NEVEREVEREVER wanted to get her ears pierced after watching me put my earrings in.  When I asked her to tell me why she had changed her mind, she told me that she NEEDED to get her ears pierced because B and A both had their ears pierced. 

Really?

She is FIVE years old and she is already willing to do something that she KNOWS will hurt so that she can be like her friends?  Is this scary for anyone except me???  It took every ounce of my strength not to pull out the line my mom used to use on me over and over when I was a kid.  You know the one.  "If (insert friends' names here) jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?"  I used to HaTe that line.  Instead I just told her she would have to wait until she got a little older.

Arden: like tomorrow? 
Me: No. 
Arden:  like after Halloween? 
Me: No, silly.  Halloween is only like two weeks away.
Arden:  like after three weeks?
Me:  EVEN longer.
Arden:  (rolling her eyes).  Okay-uh, Mom-uh. I will wait until I'm 6, but that's IT-uh.
Me:  ***sigh*** 

(When Arden is putting on an attitude, everything-uh she says-uh suddenly has an "uh" sound after it-uh.)

I knew things would get more complicated once Arden graduated from preschool, but I thought I had a few more years until I got to start arguing with her about piercings. :-) 

Cora singing

I think I mentioned in an earlier post how the kids sang "Families Can Be Together Forever" at my Grandpa's funeral.  I only had a few days to teach it to them, so we sang it a LOT.  They still sing it a lot.  I love it.  Cora often sings herself to sleep at nap time, and it is so fun to listen to her over the baby monitor.  One day a couple weeks ago I made her sing it for the camera after nap time was over.  She was a little intimidated by the camcorder so i had to help her in a couple of parts, but she really can sing it by herself (though sometimes she sings the very last line about 10 or 12 times too many):

So cute!  And soooo bad!  And so bad it is cute!  But it's the thought that counts, right?

Daxton's preschool teacher (who is also our primary chorister) told me how Dax was singing it at preschool playtime the other day and how she thought it was so sweet.  I love it.  I especially love the part when they sing, "I always want to be with my own fama-wee!" because I DO always want to me with my own fama-wee!! (except when I need a break sometimes on a Saturday night).  I am so glad that families really can be together forever.

Even if they really can't carry a tune.