Month: October 2013

In an effort to be prepared for Halloween, we got out the costumes to try them on and make sure that we had at least one that fit for each person.

The cat costume is too small for Tyra this year, and she’s not happy about it at all:

But it looks like Dinah will be able to wear it next year!

The kangaroo is starting to look too short on Ethan as well, but I think it will work for this year and we will need to find something else for Ethan for next year:

But it looks like the kangaroo may fit Tyra next year:

Adam just barely fits into the care bear costume, and he will be too big for it next year. 🙁 At least we can make it work for this year.

All of my kids are just growing like weeds! The little Dutch girl costume is getting tight on Chloe too:

So when all is said and done tonight, it looks like we need to buy Tyra a costume for this year, but we have something that will work for each of the others. 🙂

Part of the reason that mom, Tiffany and Wendy have been in town this week is because they were throwing a baby shower for Debby tonight. I was asked to make the treats, so I spent the morning making some cream puffs. Then mom, Tiffany, and I went shopping to get some other things that we would need for the shower. We spent a good deal of the day shopping, and when we got back, mom got to work wrapping some things that she picked up for Debby, and Tiffany and Wendy took mom’s car to go over and decorate the clubhouse where we were having the shower. They said that they would come back later to help get the presents and treats over. I got to work and made pudding to put in the cream puffs I made, and then realized that there weren’t very many, so I made a run to go buy some more. I thought about just buying some treats when we were at Costco. I saw them and thought about putting them in the cart and then didn’t. It took too long to go buy some more treats, and then mom called to ask me to pick up something else while I was out, and then Wendy called and asked me to pick up another tablecloth….so by the time I got back to the house, got the girls and the treats loaded into the van, and changed my clothes and we left, we were about an hour late. 🙁 And Wendy and Tiffany had never come back to help take things over. John had been helping Wendy and Tiffany decorate, and he came back to our house to hang out with Kyle and the boys during the shower.

Debby called me just as we drove up, and asked if I was arriving fashionably late because I thought I was the start of the show or something. I told her that we had arrived and she sent someone out to open the door for us. We got the girls inside and I got to work setting out the cream puffs and filling them with the pudding.

Then Wendy came over and asked me if I wanted to come over to the circle and play the games. Then I had a terrifying thought, I asked her if they played any games while they were waiting for us to get there. She said no, they were waiting for us! So all these guests had just been sitting here for the past HOUR doing NOTHING! No treats to eat, no games to play and obviously they weren’t going to open the presents at the beginning. I told Wendy to go play some games, while I got the cream puffs ready. So she went back into the room and got the party started.

Lydia had a great time trying on everyone else’s shoes that had been left by the door:

After all the games had been played we had Debby open her presents, and most of the guests waited just long enough for their present to be opened and then they took off.

Most of the presents on the table, mom brought up with her. Stuff from her, and presents from Patsy and Sandy and such. Towards the end of the evening there was a drawing for a prize. Everyone that had brought diapers got to put a raffle ticket in the box, but considering Wendy and I were the only ones that brought diapers….AND I brought a case of wipes as well, I won the raffle. My prize was one of  Jeff’s business cards with a note written on the back for one free appetizer, two free entrees and two free drinks.

After the rest of the party had left and it was just our family left to clean up, mom got out another couple of presents. I guess she had saved these ones because one was for Tiffany and she didn’t feel right giving Tiffany a present at Debby’s shower.

Neither of them knew what they were at first, I think they both thought they were lolly pops, actually they are baby mittens. 😉

Today was cold, and rainy. We talked about going miniature golfing, but again weren’t sure if we would be able to, because who wants to be playing mini golf out in the rain? Not me, that’s for sure. As we were suggesting that we do something else, Debby and Jeff mentioned that Tragalga has an indoor mini golf course, so we decided to go check it out. We got there before Debby, Jeff and Mom, and the parking lot seemed empty. So we sent Kyle to go see if he could find the entrance and see if they were open. Turns out that the main entrance was on the other side of the building, and there was another parking lot over there that wasn’t quite so empty. So once the others got there we went inside and paid for a game of golf.

The indoor golf course was dark, with black lights that made the neon paint glow. My camera didn’t pick that up very well though.

Our group was so large that we ended up being rather spread out over the course. So basically once someone played a hole they moved on to the next hole without waiting for the group, or we would have blocked up the whole course. Debby ended up not playing, and so she took my camera and walked around taking pictures of all of us. Tiffany stayed with Lydia and she didn’t play much either.

Look at how hard Lydia is concentrating on hitting that ball:

Then she realized that she was having her picture taken:

Hey look! There’s actually a picture of me! That almost never happens because I’m always the one taking the pictures. 😛

I think Oma was having fun:

Jeremy didn’t just play the game. After he finished a hole (especially the ones with a ramp) he would go back to the beginning and try to do a better job of getting the ball up the ramp.

Debby tried to take a picture of herself with Adam, and he looks like he wasn’t too sure what to think of that.

After our game of golf was over, we had some tokens to use up in the arcade. So we turned the kids loose with a token each to go play some games.

I think most of the kids were attracted to the games where you get candy back, but they did get excited about collecting tickets too.

Kyle and Jeff got to play some big boy games.

Once the tokens were gone, and we had gotten prizes for each of the kids we needed to leave to go see Turbo at the cheapy theater. We rushed over there because we were pushing it on time, and we quickly unloaded everyone and ran in to get in line and get some tickets so we could make it before the movie started. We got up the counter and said that we wanted to see the current showing of Turbo, and they said, “Uh our last showing of Turbo for the day was an hour and a half ago”. Our response was “What!?” So I pulled up Movies.com on my phone and said, “No it shows that you are supposed to be showing it now.” They had no idea why the website was showing that, and insisted that they weren’t showing Turbo any more today. So they tried to offer us other shows, and they just sounded lame. So we decided we needed to talk about it, and we went over to the door to converse about what we should do now. We had just decided to go to the store and get our own boxes of candy, and watch a movie at our house after dinner, when the manager came over and apologized for the confusion and he told us that they had switched things around, so they gave us FREE movie tickets for everyone that we had there, which was like 15! We thanked him and headed to the store.

Kyle stayed in the van with the kids while the other adults and I ran into the store to get treats for while we watched a movie at home. While we were in there, I saw that they had the Croods available to buy too, so I bought that as well as the treats. Shopping took longer than it needed to, because some of us got separated from the others, and then this was a store I had never been to, so I wasn’t sure where to find the candy aisle. But we finally finished up and left to go meet John at Chuck a rama.

We got to Chuck a rama a bit earlier than we expected, so while we continued to wait for John, Kyle and I ran across the parking lot to go to See’s to get some yummy bridge mix (for our movie night at home of course). Then we unloaded the kids and the other adults from the car to go inside to wait for John. We had just decided to go pay and get seated, and tell the employees to just send John back when he got there, when he showed up anyway. They seated us at a couple of tables that they had pushed together and then the rest of us had to sit in a booth across the aisle from the table we were sitting at. Everyone ate their fill, and we decided it was time to go home and watch our movie.

When we got home, we decided we would watch the Croods, since I just bought it and some of our visitors had never seen it before. We got out some of the treats, but decided that we were all too stuffed for popcorn, and we had our movie night at home.

Crazy, crazy busy day, but everyone had a good time. 🙂

We went on a pretty awesome adventure today. When we talked about the options for the many things that we COULD do while Mom, Tiffany and Wendy were here, and I mentioned the Norman Rockwell scouting exhibit at the Church History Museum, Mom blurted out that she would DEFINITELY want to go to that. So that became the plan for today, but I HATE driving around downtown Salt Lake and I HATE trying to find parking even more, so we decided to take the train to Salt Lake!

Lydia was so cute “reading” the train schedule.

We got off at the North Salt Lake stop and then we got to do some walking.

The Church History Museum and Temple Square aren’t really very far from the train station, so it didn’t take us long to make the walk. I am SO excited that I got to go see the exhibit celebrating 100 years of scouting in the church. I am very much into scouting and I like to push Ethan to achieve more within scouting. I am just sad that Kyle couldn’t come with us to the exhibit.

We went inside and started wandering around to find the scout art.

Before we found the scout paintings we found another exhibit of art depicting children.

The kids found a computer screen/graphic tablet type thing where they got to draw for a bit.

Then we went around the corner and that’s where we found the scouting exhibit.

I tried to take pictures of every painting, so Kyle could see them too, but that means I didn’t get many pictures of my kids looking at the art. I did NOT take pictures of every cover of the Boys Life Magazine though. 😛

In the room next to where all the paintings were, there was a room of a more hands on exhibit.

This quilt was like an “I Spy” under it there was a list of things to look at the quilt and find.

These pictures had levers at the bottom. If the lever was all the way to the right, you saw one picture but then moving the lever to the left flipped the panels around to reveal another picture.

There were stations for knot tying.

Then at the very end of the room, after watching a brief video about Lord Baden-Powell and why he started the boy scouts, the kids got to design a neckerchief on a triangle piece of construction paper.

After leaving the Church History Museum we decided to go eat lunch at the Crown Burger that we saw on our way from the train stop to the museum.

Once everyone was finished eating, we split up. Wendy walked up the street to go to the LDS Business college to meet up with John, and Tiffany, Mom and I took the kids back to the train station to come back home. I think everyone enjoyed the trip and I only wish that Kyle could have been there with us, but alas, he had to work.