Our November has been busy…

With soccer…
Go Go and Mr. Pres were on the same team. (here they both are going for the ball)

with early Christmas presents…..

that brothers thought were cooler than Ladybug did.

And with Thanksgiving….

we had this Superman Pilgrim join us for our feast. A feast which I made almost nothing for, I might add. We decided to try the pre-made store kind this year with no prep on our part other than to heat everything up! When dinner was over in less than 10 minutes, I felt fully justified in my laziness! 🙂 It’s just not worth slaving in the kitchen all day when you are only feeding a husband who doesn’t eat a lot, and three small children. Our little 10 lb turkey almost fit in a 9×13 pan it was so small! But it was more than enough turkey for our family of small eaters and we loved not having to cook it all. Happy Holidays everyone!

This may come as a surprise to many of you who know me well, but I have always laughed at the more extreme child safety products and their paranoia. Locks for your fridge, locks for your toilet, video monitors, and corner covers for every piece of furniture in your house. My personal favorite is the device that prevents doors from shutting all the way so that little ones can’t pinch their fingers in the door. Heaven forbid they actually learn something as basic as how not to hurt themselves. But I am now seriously considering the corner covers for all corners and furniture in my house or Blue Jeans might not make it to the age of 5 with his face intact.
Wednesday I had him scheduled to have his pictures taken at Target. Three hours before the appointment he ran through the kitchen with his bowl of snacks, tripped and landed teeth first into the dinning room chair. He didn’t knock out any teeth, but he hit so hard he gave himself a hematoma in his gums and lip above his upper front teeth and some nice teeth marks under his lip. That kind of injury can translate into crushed teeth up in his gums and dead nerves that cause the teeth to go gray. He was lucky enough not to have any crushed teeth, but the dentist said his teeth may very well go gray. “It’s only cosmetic for kids” he said to reassure me. Just cosmetic?! Easy for him to say, his kid isn’t going to be walking around with dead teeth for the next 5 years. When I finally can take him in for pictures once the vampire teeth marks do heal (look close you can see them), the exchange will go something like this:

Photographer to Blue Jeans: “Say “Cheese”!
Blue Jeans smiles.
Photographer: “Mmm. Maybe you better say “MOLDY Cheese instead.”

This is the kid whose mother gets stopped in the mall by modeling agencies and photographers in Walmart to tell me I need to have his portfolio done. Between the scars on his head and now his teeth I can kiss my life as a child star mother goodbye!

I was so looking forward to that too.

But he definitely is. Today begins my very long life in Cub Scouts!

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been complimented by an apostle.  (An apostle did thank me for cleaning the table he was sitting at once, but that’s a story for another day…) Today at our stake conference Elder D. Todd Christofferson spoke.  We have such a small stake here in New Jersey and there were so many children in attendance that he kindly offered to shake every child’s hand after the conference.  How exciting that my boys got to shake an apostle’s hand!  I didn’t get to do that till I was in college!  As Go Go got his turn, Elder Christofferson put his hand on his shoulder and said, “That’s quite a tie you have there.” 
(He probably wanted to say, “Wow, that shirt and tie combo is really… bright!” For some reason this Christmas shirt and tie are Go Go’s favorite. It’s like pulling teeth to get him to wear anything else!)  Go Go was not particularly bowled over by the compliment, but I felt it at least deserved a blog post.  After all, it’s not every day you get to shake an apostle’s hand. 

I love folding PINK laundry! 

This year, because Halloween is on the Sabbath, we did our Trick or Treating early at the ward trick or treat. Many of the members of our church handed out candy last night to all who wanted to keep the Sabbath today! So here they are… the 2010 Halloween costumes.

Ladybug as herself. (the statue of liberty costume will just have to wait until she’s bigger-they don’t make em in baby sizes!)
And just because the bottom view is so cute…

Blue Jeans as the Dog. He walked around for most of the month telling everyone that he was going to be a Knight dog. He just wanted to have a weapon like his brothers…..

Go Go as Darth

Indiana Jones-heartthrob in the making.
Yes, this was taken BEFORE Blue Jeans got a hold of the scissors.

All tuckered out.

Happy Halloween Everyone!

You would think there would be no contest in this kind of fight, but believe it or not, the boys wanted to carve pumpkins MORE than they wanted to go to the Empire State Building. So, Tuesday night we carved pumpkins with the help of Grandpa Don.



My, Grandpa, what big teeth you have!

Our little ham was very proud of his pumpkin…








Ok guys, now…hold… that… pose…

So much for that idea.

If you look close you can see the eyelashes on Ladybug’s pumpkin. The boys think that means it’s a girl.

Guess the Empire State Building will just have to wait!

We spent all weekend visiting with grandparents, Great grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins!  So much fun!

Namesakes…. 

Grandpa Don met Liberty Dawn

Great Grandpa John and Levi John

 
Great Grandma Dot and Grandpa John, Rock’s grandparents, are truly amazing.  They get to everything!  They were at Mr. President’s blessing 8 years ago,

and they are still truckin along to be with us at his baptism.   

 
Favorite picture taken all weekend!

Dogpile after dinner

And we got some post card pictures of Fall in New Jersey

  

Sunday, Oct. 24th, Mr. President was baptized and Ladybug was blessed! I’m so glad so many of our family members could be here with us on this very special day! We had people here from WA, UT, CO, PA, NY and NJ! WOW!

The Blessing Girl:

The Baptism Boy


Funniest moment of the day: When we got to the church for the baptism, I had a moment of panic when I realized I didn’t know if Mr. President had made it into one of the 3 cars that had left from our house.  I had visions of Home Alone-only worse because the missing boy was the star of the hour!  Luckily, he was indeed in one of the cars and we had a wonderful baptism. 

Mr. President turned 8 this week and we had a grand time celebrating.  Our weekend was so full that it will take several blog posts to cover it all!  First was the birthday party.

 
To go along with his Halloween costume he decided on an Indiana Jones LEGO party.  Here is his LEGO cake complete with Indiana, bad guys and Indy’s favorite pests.  (Pretend it’s dark green please-I’m too cheap to buy anything but the standard food coloring.)  No, Mr. President has not even seen the Indiana Jones movies and only knows what he’s seen on the Lego website, but he’s still fascinated by the whip wielding hero of the 80’s.  Oh and to save yourself a lot of headache and hassle when planning a birthday party: Always check to make sure that a toy line has not been discontinued before you plan an entire party around it.
Discontinuance nevertheless, we had 8 little boys running wildly through our house searching for lost treasure just as Indiana Jones would.  It was truly crazy-on the verge of out of control most of the time, in fact.  But they had a blast.  They dug through sand in an archeological dig to find their party favors, they wrapped themselves up like mummies with toilet paper and then proceeded to have a tp fight that left our house strewn with toilet paper.   They found their treasure in a treasure box pinata hanging up in the garage.  What little boy doesn’t like to beat something to a pulp.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of it because I was too busy making sure no one got killed by the swinging bat.   We did the real man’s kind of pinata instead of the new “safer” kind with pull strings.  But we do have this delightful video for your watching enjoyment so you can imagine what it was like. 
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=776250

I hope you are laughing hysterically.  No one was maimed at our party, but the boys had a great time!