UEA adventures.

Last weekend the kids had Thursday and Friday off of school so we jammed packed those days with adventures. We had all planned to go to Lagoon but after measuring we found out that Laine was the only one tall enough to ride. Instead Laine and Christian went to Lagoon on Thursday while Matthew, James, Eve, and I went up to This is the Place for their Little Spooks.

While there we...

Rode Horses...

...Pet sheep...
...panned for gold...
...made crafts and got candy.
Then on Friday the whole family went to a Halloween Party at the Expo Center. It was billed as a fun family party with trick-or-treating, bounce houses, Star Wars, Disney, and movie characters to take pictures , crafts, and just good old family fun. Instead it was a glorified ad for whomever was wiling to buy booth space.

It did have bounce houses though and the kids loved it.

There was also a rock climbing wall which Laine conquered very quickly.
The kids had fun dressing up though
Oh and the characters were cardboard cut outs.
So that one was a dud but the rest of the weekend was full of Halloween cookie making, one last visit to the Farmer's Market to get pumpkins and family pictures up at Camp Tracy.

On the Road to Domestic Goddess- part II

So last year I wrote about my goal to become a domestic goddess. Though my sewing still only consists of sewing a straight line I am making huge strides when it comes to canning. This year we put up 27 quarts of peaches, 18 pints and 12 quarts of salsa, 15 quarts of stewed tomatoes, and 24 quarts of applesauce.

Applesauce was the new addition this year. We hadn't made it before and I thought it would be good to have some on hand with four kids. Having never made it before I was unaware of how time consuming it could be . We were saved from a lot of work by a very nice lady in my water aerobics class. I happened to mention in passing that we were going to be making applesauce and Jan offered me her Foley Mill. She dropped it off, showed us how to use it, and saved us so much time.

I got up early and bought two boxes of apples from the Farmer's Market and then that afternoon we started on the project. It was a family project with some of the kids sorting the apples and pulling the steams, while the others were washing them and getting them ready to be cut. The kids worked really hard and were great helpers.

Christian operating the mill with some help from Laine.
Eve pulling the steams and putting the apples in the water.

There are times I am very grateful we have two kitchens, this was one of them. While the prep work went on upstairs the actually canning went on downstairs. That was really helpful when I accidentally broke two jars and Christian and to come and help sweep it up.

The apple sauce turned out perfect and it is rather healthy with little sugar and spiced perfectly. I think it is something that we will repeat next year.

A newborn no longer

Last week Matty achieved a rather big accomplishment- he graduated from a newborn to an infant (Christian points out that the stages are not that important because he is still a baby). We now have a child that basically sleeps through the night, he just needs some binky help from about 9 pm to 6 am. He is nothing but smiles and he likes to carry on conversations now with people. I am so happy to be out of the newborn stage and am very happy to have this happy little boy now.

At his last doctor's appointment he weighed 13.38 lbs (53rd percentile) and was 24 inches (48th percentile) the doctor pointed out he was the picture perfect baby and looked and acted just like a text book 3 month old should. He also got his shots which made him grumpy for the next week and a half.

This last Sunday we had a chance to bless him during sacrament with four other baby boys. It has been a baby fest in our ward these last few months and only one has been a girl. Christian gave him a beautiful blessing and I was very grateful that he didn't not start screaming during the blessing or have a blow out diaper while dressed completely in white.

After the blessing we came back to the house and had a day long party!

Matty with the Hazelgren's. I think they would have taken him home, if I let them.

Matthew with the awesome men who took part in his blessing. I heard that special thanks go out to Uncle Josh for putting the binky in his mouth before he started crying during the blessing.

We thought we would take a four generation picture so here is Matthew with my parents, my grandma Cardwell and my grandma Bellamy

And our family picture. It was hard trying to find one of everyone looking at the camera and not being goofy, but really we are just goofy anyway.

Tigers and Monkeys and Kids! Oh My!

We had about a hundred adventures the last few weeks. I think all of the kids are suffering from an acute case of fun overdose. Let me tell you about some of the outings we've been on lately.

The Circus

Yup, Barnum and Bailey were back in town, complete with acrobats, gymnasts, jugglers, tigers, elephants, clowns, tightrope walkers, and a dude that they lit on fire and launched across the stadium. Yes, they lit him on fire. The kids had a ball watching the show.

The Zoo

We went to the zoo to see if we could cut a deal to donate four monkeys, but the zookeepers said they were full up on primates so we had to take the kids back home at the end.

The Fair

We saw some ridiculously large produce.

And a chicken man in the freak show.
And rode some rides.

And had some treats.

And rode some more rides.
In other news, James started his fall soccer league, Laine is the new world champ of multiplication tables, Eve is working on becoming a professional artist, and Matthew is now (mostly) sleeping through the night. Hurray.