Alana and I practiced our Mickey faces one night.
Last year Sean went to the FMX conference in San Antonio and he learned so much and just really enjoyed the experience. The conference was being held in New Orleans this year and he decided it would be a great way to use some CME (continuing medical education) time and money. He was able to swing getting the resident price admission by signing up when he was still a resident. It saves like $1500 or something like that. He also signed up for a special 4 hour workshop to learn more about acne care and dermatology. I thought about joining him for a day or two like I did in San Antonio, but since we were planning the trip in July, which was (hopefully) the poorest we will ever be, I decided to skip this one. He stayed at a Bed and Breakfast that advertised making a southern breakfast to order. Unfortunately he kept getting up and leaving too early. He said the room was colorful and very eclectic. He came across a great shop and wanted to bring some fudge back for his dad, but they only sold it in half pound chunks and that seemed a bit excessive.
I'm assuming this is all the stuff from his acne workshop. He got micro-needled and said it felt weird.
The main speaker at the big session was a guy call Z Dog or Doc Vader, and he was amazing!
Here are some photos of the hotel:
This popcorn shop had so so many kinds of popcorn! Sean brought us home some beignet flavored and some king cake flavored. The beignet flavored was AMAZING! He also got a fresh batch of beignets one night and said they were even better that Disneylands.
He was also able to visit a World War II museum and he was brave and tried the local seafood at a Utah chapter dinner. He triumphantly told the kids about how he tried a food he didn't like because it was polite and important during that social event. We have been trying to help them expand their pallets a bit.
We went to Grandma and Grandpa's house for dinner one night and Grandma had Halloween candy bags for the kids.
This is the view from Sean's office window! Unfortunately they started digging up some stuff the other day and the rumor is that houses are going in there.
Sean finally got and hung all the art for his office rooms. Here are the panoramas.
A few weeks ago Foothill hosted an employee party at Boondocks. We all got unlimited 2 hour passes and unlimited access to this delicious pizza and pasta buffet. We all enjoyed the ice cream, but Lizzie was the cutest eating hers.
Alana and Sean rode the race cars first, then Brett and I took a turn. Lizzie isn't tall enough yet, but she handled it really well.
We played a fun game of mini golf, where Brett was super focused and pretty stressed that he missed the first few holes while finishing his car ride with me. Alana had a fun time and like Sean to show her how to hold her club. Lizzie thought it was all amazing and the best part was running after the ball and catching it after she putted it.
The girls eventually got really tired of the golf so they headed inside to the playground while Brett and I finished. After playing for a bit more, Sean and Brett went to play some laser tag while the girls and I did lots of arcade games.
Sean and Brett finished their laser tag and came and joined us in the arcade.
The kids (and adults) were all getting pretty tired at that point and so we got in line to get our prizes then headed home. It was a really fun night!
Sundays have been hard in our house for awhile. I'm not really sure why, but it seems like the day that everyone fights and Brett usually breaks down in grumpies after holding it together all week. One Sunday all three kids were bickering and Sean and I were just exhausted from fighting them. I pulled out some canvases and paint and we all made some Halloween art. It ended up being a really fun activity and helped everyone to calm down and enjoy themselves.
Our neighbors down the street put up this amazing spider web and all of us LOVE it!
I've been working on sewing costumes. It has been a lot of fun, but a lot of work and I hope everything turns out ok. I spent a big chunk of my day today looking for Harry Potter robes, then deciding they were too expensive so going to walmart to buy cheap sheets and piecing together and random pattern.
Lizzie loves to look through books and I always think its so cute!
Brett invented a fun game and Alana and Brett spent over an hour one afternoon playing. Alana loves to stay in her tumbling clothes on Tuesdays. Unfortunately with the weather getting colder she has had to start changing. She told me she tried a one handed cartwheel in class today.
Here is the Hermione skirt I made for Alana. I think it turned out really cute. It has a yoga style waist which is a big hit with Alana who doesn't like anything too tight.
Here is Lizzie's Elsa dress. The waist turned out differently than I planned because the pattern called for me to gather in the skirt with a basting stitch, but there was so much fabric, I couldn't get it to gather so I ended up putting an elastic casing in there and then sewing over it. This picture was before I hemmed it.
For General Conference weekend we went to Neil and Rebecca's. We drove down on Friday night and had cake to celebrate Dad P's birthday. Then the kids got all settled down in the basement with sleeping bags and we played some games with Papa and Mimi and Neil and Rebecca. It may have been the first time I have played a game with Dad P because he doesn't like any of them. He does like Aggravation though so we played that. After Mom and Dad P left we played a few rounds of Kingdomino before we all needed to get to sleep! I went down around 9:30 and Lizzie told me she wanted to go upstairs. Brett and Alana wanted to stay and sleep down there. It was hard for especially Alana to get to sleep, but once asleep they slept great! Lizzie slept in the bunkbed room on the pull out trundle.
Rebecca and I woke up early and made cinnamon rolls and german pancakes and got the conference game ready (mostly Rebecca, I think all I did was cut the strawberries). The kids watched a lot of conference and enjoyed listening for certain words and getting lots of treats. They also had a great time playing soccer, dress ups, and all kinds of other things.
We came home after the Saturday afternnoon session and Sean got the kids baths and such while I watched the Women's session. He loved not having another session to go to and I loved getting to have one! Among all the amazing talks, President Nelson challenged us to fast from social media for 10 days, read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year, spend more time in the temple, and read over the RS statements. On Sunday morning we headed down to Papa and Mimi's house to watch conference. We played the same fun game and enjoyed great talks and fun toys.
Poor Bear has been getting more and more ragged lately, I sewed his arm back on and am probably going to sew him a little jumpsuit or something to help protect his fragile little body.
Bear's arm falling off got me reminiscing about baby Lizzie and her relationship with Bear. Here is the first picture we have of Lizzie and Bear when she was about a week old!
Here is the cutest Hermione in the world! I made the sweater and the skirt. We bought the white shirt, tie, socks and wand.
Lizzie and Alana got some new dresses with the changing weather and it has been fun to see the girls in fun new clothes. Lizzie looks so grown up in this little tutu dress. Alana has a matching one.
While Sean was away in New Orleans, I made cookies for the sisters I minister to. It was fun to make the super fancy huge chocolate chip cookies and then the fun sugar cookies. I decorated the ones I gave away and then the kids and the neighbor kids each got a plate full to decorate with the piping bags.
The third and final night Sean was gone we had a dinner movie night where we watched Harry Potter and ate Hot dogs.
Sean returned home on Friday around noon. After Brett got out of school, we went to the Clark Planetarium. The kids have been earning a trip there with a jar of cotton balls for doing jobs around the house. We had a ton of fun with all the different exhibits.
I just really loved this quote!
We all enjoyed the show about comets and meteors. Alana did decide that she doesn't want to be an astronaut anymore because it looks really dangerous.
I finally got a picture of Brett's soccer games. The girls have been using my phone a lot during the games.
On October 13, we celebrated Ruth day. October 13 is my Grandma's birthday. We got our fun sitter Audrey to come play with the kids while we went to the Scarlet Pimpernel with my Mom and Dad. The play was spectacular! After the play, Mom and Dad came over for some Rigatoni in honor of Grandma. We ate yummy dinner and had a lovely time visiting. My mom had bought a bouquet of roses to take to Grandma's grave before she came over, so she let each of the kids pick a rose to keep.
We finally got brave enough and let the birds out of their cage. They seem to really enjoy it. We found after letting them out about 3 times that they only wanted to hang out on the curtain rod. It can be hard to lock ourselves in Brett's room too as the kids get a little loud and crazy. So we decided clipping their wings would be the best option, because then we can let them out to play in the family room without worrying that they will fly up to the fan and never come down. Sean and I clipped their wings last night and they didn't like being caught and held on to at all! Especially Pecksy. Sean was wise and had me wear a glove then I held the bird while he spread the wing and clipped. Both birds kept biting me, but the glove protected my hand. They are now getting used to having shorter wings. They haven't come out yet with the shorter wings.
Mom and Dad P gave us a fun Halloween cookbook and this was one of the ideas.
We went to Grandma and Grandpa's one night and Brett found my dad's old race track in the basement and put it together. Dad and I ended up down their helping him to get it to work. It was a lot of fun and we left it out so that we can play again next time we go.
Last Monday I went in to volunteer in Brett's classroom for the first time. Mom and Dad P came and watched the girls while I went and then they stayed and had BBQ chicken sandwiches with us and helped us make some haunted gingerbread houses.
I got out the fancy camera to take some photos and snapped these two of my beautiful kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment