Tyce is a brunette, Pumpkins

Kaly and her friend Ada playing make over. I was actually really impressed with them! Afterwards they painted their nails and Tarl put some fun designs on. Ada got skeletons and Kaly got Franketeins

Bugger! It's the year of medical expenses and house fixtures. My left eye has been having issues the last week or two so I finally gave in and made an appointment. He told me it's very common for women 26-30 to start noticing a change in their eyes (generally more dryness). He said that's usually when a lot of them consider LASIK but we're going to start with a new brand of contacts until that may be an option later.

Tyce wants to be Harry Potter for Halloween so we thought it'd be fun to dye his hair brown. Like actually, with the box stuff from the store. :) Everyone suited up in gloves and aprons to help. It was really 'cold and itchy' so thats why he's making a face.

We've been letting it grow long too, to further properly portray Harry, so after Halloween I think we'll buzz him.

FHE with Makayla in charge. She prepared and presented this entire lesson on her own about Baptism (her 8th bday is in January). She had some fun pictures to show us after we answered her trivia questions and even told us about baptisms for the dead and temple work. She asked Kalyana to play When I Am Baptized so she learned the song for us.

Our garden wasn't as plentiful as we'd planned but it was still fun to get some offerings. Our best grower this year was our zucchini. We made a few batches of chocolate zucchini bread but the rest of the HUGE zucchini we had I ended up blending for later (maybe for bread but I also love to add it to my home made chili). I should note also, this isn't nearly all of it, just the latest batch. I think we have over a dozen bags.

Another FHE. We went and picked out pumpkins, had Halloween cookies and carved. The kids thought they needed gloves but by the end they were wanting to touch the guts and seeds.  (Tarl used the only orange one we got from our garden--his is the littlest one on the far right.)

Tyce, Debbie, Makayla, Kalyana, Tarl

Stuff My Kids Say

Just wanted to document this here so I could have it. 

Funny things from my Tyce. Oct 2013
--Kaly was telling us she needed a dog for her science fair project. (We dont have one.) Tyce told her, "Well you can't borrow Isaacs dog, because his dog is really a cat."
--Tyce was telling me he is in love with a little girl in his kindergarten class. I asked him what that means and he said, " I want to marry her, but I can't cause we're too young." I told him maybe he has a crush on her. Or instead he could be her friend. He got this super funny look on his face and said, "Why would I want to be friends with a girl?!?"

Makayla from Feb 2013
My daughter just called to me from the other room to ask if she could have 'lettuce seeds'. I was stumped until I realized she was asking for a handful the sunflower seeds I sometimes put on my salads.

Jan 2013
Funny things from my kids today: talking about all the big buildings in Las Vegas and someone pointed to a tall building asking what it was, my 7y/o Makayla pipes up "I think that's where the magic happens!" 
Putting my 5y/o Tyce to bed tonight he says, "Mom I love you more than anything. Even ice cream."

Marriage, Kits, BOO

I'm still doing my weekly Marriage Monday on my Cranberryfries blog. I dont get a lot of actual comments (which is ok) but it's still pretty fun to see the amount of hits that come in. :) I made this little collage to post on instagram. And I really love continuing to find great information on enriching marriages!!!

For FHE we started updating our 72 hour kits. To do this, everyone in the family needed their own pack (last time we did it we just had stuff for Tarl and I to carry). We went to K-Mart where they had their packs 50% off. Well at the register they were ANOTHER 50% off so we got each for about $5-6!

Tyce got a coupon for a kids meal at Texas Roadhouse for doing all his reading for the month. It'd been a long time since we'd taken the kids out to eat so we thought it'd be fun to do. Turns out we went on a Monday which is kids night so the kids got to pick out a prize (they each got chalkboard movie clappers), and got free ice cream on the way out.
The waitress brought out all of our drinks, set the kids cups down and then spilled both mine and Tarls, very full, very cold, very sticky drinks on Tyce. One glass hit him in the eye and of course it was cold and crazy so he started crying. She felt horrible but right away two folks came over to clean it up and the manager came over to apologize and offer to cover our entire meal. He borrowed my coat to stay warm.

This was back from the first of October but we thought it'd be fun to start a BOO going around our neighborhood. We made a giant batch of sugar cookies and decorated them. The kids changed into all black (would you expect anything else from my ninja kids) and turned off all the lights and snuck two plates next door with the poem. They waited it out and then ran home to grab more plates for the next neighbor down the street.

One of the kids favorite activities is to play restaurant for regular meals at home. This one Saturday it was an ala cart kinda lunch so the kids asked if we could play. They even got their chore buck money out to use to pay their bills. :)

For Young Womens we went to the Family History Center to help the girls gather names they could use when we go to the temple to do baptisms. I even started learning how to index.

Tarl and Tyce found these fun foam swords at the store and picked up three of them. FHE :) He sewed crackers to their shoulders and we set them up outside and had them take a few steps and yelled go. They actually lasted a lot longer than we'd expected trying to break each others crackers.