Blog Update, Finally!

Here's what we were up to in November:

Making turkeys- (11/11)






Sewing up a felt storm- (11/12)






Building a house for our pet gerbil, Roller- (11/15)




Celebrating McKay's 3rd birthday (a day early)- (11/16)








Pit cooking one of our chickens in the backyard- (11/22)






Celebrating Thanksgiving at school and having fun with friends!




Hopefully I can get back to blogging more regularly after the holidays. Right after my last post in November I started in on making all sorts of crafts for Christmas presents and I'm still working on them! I'll post pictures of the fun things I've been working on after all the gifts have been opened so I don't ruin anyone's surprise. We hope all our friends and family had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you will all enjoy the Christmas season!

Parker's Catch

Parker caught two fish at Riverview yesterday. This big catfish and a small blue gill that they tossed back. Dallin thought that he had caught one too, until they discovered his line was snagged on McKay!

A Happy Halloween

Parker was so proud that he carved his own pumpkin this year. He did everything himself, with a little help to get the gooey stuff off the inside.



He made sure that I got a picture of the tarantula on the back of his costume. I love how he carved his name in the back of the pumpkin. Just so we wouldn't get it confused with all our other jack-o-lanterns!


Parker is showing off his blue teeth and lips in this picture.



Enough picture taking, let's go trick-or-treating!

Bobbing for Doughnuts

We got together for family home evening at my Aunt Susie's the Monday before Halloween. She had a fun game of bobbing for doughnuts set up for us. The kids did great, except for McKay. He was mad that his doughnut had chocolate frosting and refused to eat it.




Dallin gave up on following the rules and just pulled his doughnut off the string. Unlike McKay, this kid LOVES chocolate.


And here are the adults having a go at it. My brother Ryan (on the far left) was the winner. He's had a lot of eating (or should I say inhaling?) practice!

Singin' in the Sun

A couple weeks ago at family home evening, Parker discovered that he can now read the words (most of them) in the Hymn book and Children's Songbook. He spent the next few days carrying around one of the books, singing each song, page by page. Most of the tunes he made up since he didn't know them, but it was so sweet to see him carrying those books around, engrossed in the words that were opened up to him. In this picture he had gone outside to watch our little chicks as they walked around the yard and took the Children's Songbook along to practice his singing.

The novelty of the books has worn off now and Parker is no longer carrying them around singing, but he asked if he could participate in the Stake Children's Choir tonight and we cheerfully answered yes. I hope he'll always have a love for our inspired music.

Switcheroo

Aaron's dad gave us a standing freezer a little while ago and I wanted to switch it with our second refrigerator. It's been so nice to have the second refrigerator but I was looking forward to more freezer space. The refrigerator was in our laundry room where a sink had previously been (it just barely fit). So when you walked into the laundry room there was about two feet between the fridge on the right and washing machine on the left. Luckily the fridge was a double door and we could get things in and out of it fairly easily. I took the measurements for the freezer and realized that with the full door it would only open about half way before hitting the washing machine and didn't think that would work too well. I decided that if we removed a cabinet next to the fridge that the freezer would fit facing the other direction. So, out came the refrigerator, the tools, and the cabinet and in went the freezer. Sometimes I'm really glad to live in an older home where I don't feel too guilty about taking out thirty year old cabinets!


Aaron had to remove the doors from the refrigerator to get it out because the doorway wasn't wide enough.



Ta-da! The freezer fit just as I had planned. Now when we walk into the laundry room it feels so different, not having to squeeze by the fridge. Luckily, I was able to find new homes for all the things that were in the cabinet (half of them are going to DI!). And all I have left to do is paint the walls where the cabinet stood.


Daddy's little "helpers". Dallin and McKay took every piece out of the ratchet set so that Aaron could have practice putting them back.


After finishing the freezer project I asked Aaron (half jokingly) if he could fix the pocket door that closes off the laundry room. It hasn't worked since we moved here. He looked at it for a few minutes and decided to go for it. By removing the trim inside the laundry room he was able to get to the wheels and track and fix a few things and now it works! We just have to buy a new handle because that had broken. I am so thankful for a handy husband!

Dye and Dough Weekend

Earlier this year Parker asked if he could tie-dye a shirt (he has a knack for thinking of messy craft projects). I actually went ahead and bought the dye and a bag of rubber bands (we already had some white undershirts) at the beginning of the summer, but didn't tell him in hopes that he'd forget and think of a less messy project we could do. It didn't work. He brought it up several more times before I decided to be brave and try it about two weekends ago. Here he is holding the prepped shirts and we're getting ready to make the dye baths.


The boys all helped soak the first batch of shirts.


Here's what the shirts looked like after being soaked.


Then we cut the rubberbands and rinsed them until the water ran clear.


They were thrilled with how the shirts turned out and each boy had a different favorite. I'm also glad to report that there were no major spills or dye incidents!

Having survived the tie-dye craft on Saturday, I felt like the boys and I could take on another craft Sunday afternoon. We went looking for a Halloween project on the Family Fun website and found lots of fun ideas, but they each took a lot of supplies. It took awhile to find something that we already had all the materials for. We ended up making salt dough ghosts and pumpkins. All it took was one cup of flour, one cup of salt, and a little more than half a cup of water. We mixed the dough to the consistency of play-doh and started shaping. Once the dough was shaped how the boys liked it, we put each item in the microwave for about a minute and a half, checking them about every thirty seconds to see if they were hard. After letting them cool, the boys used markers to decorate their creations.





The boys were happy that they were able to help make some Halloween decorations. I was happy that this project was quick and easy!