Double digits

The day before Halloween our Eve celebrates her birthday. She loves having her birthday the day before Halloween, as she told the doctor this week- "I get presents then I get candy." I see her logic- how fabulous. 

This year Eve got a tenth birthday party, a family party, and a second family party (Christian was gone on her actual birthday this year). For her party this year she chose an art party. 

We had a lot of fun planing this one. Eve and I scoured Pinterest for ideas and found some fun art projects. We even found a fun invitation. 

The  girls painted canvases, made bookmarks, painted letters of their name, and ate more marshmallows and M&Ms than I thought was possible for ten year old girls. 

Really, they had so much fun as evident by the picture below.  Extra points if you can find all nine girls.

Eve had a rather exciting birthday. It started with the Halloween Parade at school, then a short day from school, then a Witches Tea with the neighborhood girls. Finally she had a small family celebration with a peanut butter chocolate pie- so yummy. Eve has great taste. 

Christian had to travel for work over her birthday so Eve lucked out and had a second birthday celebration. Yup, that's right she got to pick a second round of favorite meals and then have yet another special treat. This time she chose chocolate cupcakes. 

We are so proud of our artistic girl. Eve really has great talent in art and we are proud that she takes the time to develop them and share them with her siblings. Eve is a fabulous big sister she loves to play pretend with Matty and read to him. She enjoys so many things and has a big heart, recently she knitted three hats and crocheted one scarf to send to an orphanage in Kenya. We are so lucky to have her in our lives. 

Happy Birthday Eve

Happy Halloween

 Happy Halloween!!! I remember Halloween growing up and really it was just Halloween anything happened. Now it is a month long celebration, not that my kids seem to mind and I am just happy we get more than one use out of the costumes.

We did have a few Halloween activities packed in this week and it started with a Halloween party. Even Matty had fun making spooky pumpkin patches. He was so proud he made the "dirt", added the cookies, and placed the pumpkins.

 The cousin party was fun. We had two Olafs, Two Annas, Two Elsas, and a Jedi. I would like to point out that they are all owned by Disney now so I feel that they all fit together. But yes Frozen mania had entered our house. The kids decided six months ago what they wanted to be. We tried to show them other costumes and they stuck firm. Laine did change her mind but by then the costumes had been ordered so it was too late to change. It all worked out though, and they looked cute.

The Halloween Parade was fun this year. Matty was so excited to see his brother that he tackle hugged him in line. He was very upset that he couldn't go with him through the line. 

We carved our pumpkins, this year using templates. I loved it. So easy and awesome. 

Halloween means trick or treating to grandparents, we visited five this year. The kids loved it and I think the grandparents enjoyed it too. 

So happy Halloween from our Frozen clan to yours. 

Oh and if anyone needs any candy, come visit. I'll trade you the peanut butter cups for Bottle Caps. 

All aboard the reading train

A couple of summers ago I was trying to find a way to motivate my kids for summer reading, my kids usually don't need much motivation to read every day but I wanted to give them a loftier goal so we set a meeting and they kids set how many books to read. We didn't reach the goal but I guess the kids loved it because they asked if we could do it again this year. 

 We sat down and had another meeting and the kids decided that they could read 100 books between June 1st and September 1st. I thought it was a bit much but they were convinced they could do it.
We had a slow start and come June 30th with 16 books read I was pretty sure that we were not going to make it.

 The kids had fun though and come August, even knowing that they wouldn't hit the goal, asked if they could continue until we ran out of trains.

Due to James finding that his favorite series of books (Beast Quest) had published another 30 novels, we hit 100 novels by September 28th.

It was a fun experiment and one I am sure we will try again. 

Harvest Time

So earlier this year I wrote about our garden expansion. When I wrote and posted pictures then little did I know the bountiful harvest that we would start pulling from this little bit of land.

We had a garden full of squashes, berries, carrots, beets, parsnips, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, pumpkins, cucumbers, and more items I just can't remember right now. We have been blessed with a great harvest, our one pumpkin vine alone produced about eight pumpkins.  It has been a fabulous garden and we've enjoyed much of the produce. 

This is a picture of part of the garden after we had pulled about half of what was growing.in those boxes, yup we are well blessed.

One item that we tried this year was cabbage. We are not big cabbage eaters and the only reason we tried it was Eve was given one at school as part of a project, so we planted it to see. We don't have the best track record with cabbages. Laine was given a cabbage a couple of years ago for a school project and we killed it in a week. I wasn't expecting much of Eve's but it surprised me.

 Having never grown cabbage successfully we weren't quite sure when to pull it so finally in August we decided to take that baby out...we might have waited too long.

Half of the cabbage looked great, the other half was molding. Eve was still proud of what she had grown and we decided that if nothing else, those leaves make some awesome hats.

With all the harvest it has meant that my weekdays are spent canning all the produce we can't eat. So far I have canned pickles, watermelon jelly, jalapeno jelly, raspberry zucchini jelly, peach zucchini jelly, tomato sauce, and tomato soup.   Still on the menu beets, more sauce oh and a few more batches of frozen parsnips and carrots.  I feel like a pioneer woman here. 

So the garden this year was a success, we love the produce and the added space. Already we have plans for next year, items to plant, new spots for growing, and more canning ahead. 

Raising them right

Last spring Christian and I went to our first Comic Con event here in Salt Lake and then decided that we should take the kids this fall. Knowing how many people that were going to be there over the three days I went back and forth on this decision but September came and we were headed to the Salt Palace for the second Salt Lake Comic Con. 

First thing, I know many people complained about the lines to get tickets that first day. We were not one of them. It took us twenty minutes to find parking but we were able to walk right in, thanks preregistration.  I really liked being there on Thursday, inside lines were short and we were able to see everything we wanted to with minimal wait!

Our first stop was the free picture we got inside the Tardis. The kids thought that was a hoot. 

Matty spent most of the convention on on of our shoulders. So much better than bringing his stroller, we moved quicker and easier. It was also really cute.

 The kids were most excited to meet some of their favorite authors, They got to meet and talk to Brandon Mull (Fablehaven books), Jessica Day George (Tuesdays at the Tower), Shannon Hale (Princess Academy), Richard Paul Evans (Michael Vey) and Brandon Sanderson (Alcatraz Verses the Evil Librarians and countless others). They had fun learning about what it takes to write a book and some spoilers for upcoming books.

 We spent time over at the Kid Con area where Matty was very upset to find out that he could not open this Tardis, it really was almost the end of the world for him.

 The kids also did some super hero training, Matty took this very seriously and when aske what we wanted to be when he grows up he said, "the Doctor" notice not a doctor but The Doctor.

I laughed Saturday after we took this picture, we walked right up with no line. Saturday at 10 am the line was at least ten groups deep. Yay for Thursday at the con! 

We did finally find the big Tardis with the doors that opened so Matty was happy! 

There were also some weeping angels near by, we weren't too afraid though because we had - ice cream!

 My kids didn't want a lot of pictures with the cosplay people but Eve race across the floor to get pictures with this Anna and Elsa. She was super excited, I wonder if we can skip them at Disneyland next year...

The next day we were totally awesome parents and pulled our kids out a whole half an hour early from school and headed down to the con. We got to meet and speak with John Barrowman (Doctor Who) and even got to skip most the line because we had a small child (thanks Matt!) and then we went and talked with Paul McGann (Doctor Who). 

We also got to meet Eve Myles who is incredibly sweet and kind. She talked to us for a bit and even commented about Matty's tooth gap. She was just pleasant and completely awesome. 

Only two of my kids wanted a picture with the big snakes. They were super brave and I was surprised that they could even stand hold two giant snakes. 

Eve may not have stood for a picture with snakes but she was happy to stand with Gollum, 

Our last day there we spent most the time in panels as the floor was just crazy but our kids had a great time. Matty had such a good time that he doesn't want me to cut off his admission bracelet.  

Thanks Salt Lake Comic Con, we will be back! 

And we're back

So summer seemed to come and go with little acknowledgement from our Bradley Family blog. We did participate in summer, there were swimming lessons, art lessons, cooking lessons, family reunions, travel, and movies. It was a pretty busy summer needless to say and there wasn't much time for chronicling the fun...I hardly got any pictures.

But with the start of school came the return of sanity and order and we are all loving it. 

We did snap back to school pictures though and the kids were all super cute, even if James had to wear his Sunday shoes, since he left the others out and the dog got to them...ah the things you find out at 7:30 Monday morning. 

Eve is our lovely 4th grader this year- go Utah History!!!!! I wonder if we have to memorize the counties and the county seats again? 

James is our second grader and right now everything is addition, subtraction, and eventually multiplication --gotta love those flash cards. 

Laine is the big sixth grader, big man on campus. She has finally decided that she no longer wants to grow up and stay in elementary school forever, I am okay with this. 

So there are my three back to schoolers off for 180 days of exciting learning. I just hope that we get our science fair projects done on time this year...but I'm not holding my breath. 

Happy birthday Matty!

I noticed this week that I am woefully behind in updating summer adventures. So here is my attempt to catch up with a belated happy birthday to our very own three year old toddler.

What to say about Matty, well I could probably sit him down to tell you about himself. Never have I met a more verbal child than he is. That kid is always jabbering and having conversations about his toys, shows he likes, games, or the goings on of his day. These conversations start when he wakes up to when he goes to bed making anywhere you have to be quiet difficult, church, movies, you know. I guess it wouldn't be bad if he knew how to whisper but that is not that case. Even with the jabbering he charms everyone he meets and believes that everyone is a friend. He is a good caretaker with a sweet soul that just wants to help. He follows me everywhere and will help with any chores, his favorite is dusting. He is also on his way to becoming a potty champion...thank heavens. 

Matty is a true Disney Boy and our current Disney favorite is Handy Manny. Matty loves to walk around with his tool box and fix things. He is also a fan of super heroes (Spiderman), puppies (except the one that actually lives in our house), Frozen and Wreck-it-Ralph (he can sing all the songs for you), and Dinosaurs (he can properly name several). This kid is all boy. 

Now as every three year old knows you cannot have a birthday party unless you have party hats. So he made sure we got the hats and people wore them. 

He also was happy to open all his presents and keeps asking when he will be receiving more--yes, a true toddler. 

So there he is our happy three year old. We love him and are so glad that this happy talkative boy is part of our family.