Our Costumes

We had three fairies and an Iron Man this year. I made the fairies outfits (except the wings) and then bought the Iron Man costume since I was running out of time.

I even tried to do Ellen's hair too. It is long enough to put gel in it, which makes her hair curly and stand out a little. It looks a little fuzzy here. Calista ended up not wearing the white fuzz on her hair. It made her look too much like an angel.

Samuel with the Iron Mask on

Samuel without the mask. I painted his

face the same as the mask in case

the mask got stuffy.

Samuel and Aaron went to Baker this weekend to help people move and to work on the truck with Adam, so the girls and I stayed home. I took them to the trunk or treat at the College on Friday night. They got lots of candy, played pumpkin toss, and got their faces painted. They had a lot of fun.

Aaron and Samuel got back this afternoon, so Samuel was able to go with us to our ward's trunk or treat. There were a lot of people there this year. The last couple of years it has mainly been just our ward, but this year there were even some community people trick-or-treating, and the other ward helped hand out candy. We brought a big bowl of candy, that Aaron handed out to the kids. Whoever those kids were, they must've been excited. I was amazed at how fast he got done. He just smiled and said he just "gave it out as fast as he could." Probably meaning that instead of just a couple, he gave out handfuls!! I don't care as long as we didn't have to bring it home. Our ward also hands out donuts and hot chocolate. It was fun for the kids to be able to wear their costumes two times.

When we got home, we let the kids eat most of their candy, just trying to get it rid of it fast. I went through the candy and got all the hard candies and suckers and put them in a bowl to hand out to other people. I figure they are the ones that stay forever in their mouths, so they probably are worse on the teeth...what do you think "Dentist" Trace?

After all of our candy was handed out at the door, we turned off our porch light so no one would come. But that supposedly doesn't mean anything any more. We turned off our kitchen and dining room lights, and that still didn't work. We ended up turning off all of our lights except one light in the living room, that doens't shine directly at the door. So far it works, but I was amazed at how many people just come if a light in the house is on. We were also amazed at how old some of the kids were that came for candy. Growing up, we stopped trick-or-treating at the age of 12, which I think is a great rule. Once we get out of Primary, you are too old to go around asking for candy. Go ahead and dress up and have fun, but buy your own candy!!

Carving Pumpkins

We finally got to carve our pumpkins!! Ellen got left out on this activity, but she didn't seem to mind. We even bough candles to put in our pumpkins this year! The kids were really excited to see them glowing at night. It happened to be a windy night, so the candles didn't stay aglow for long, or maybe it was the cheap candles (I got them three for a dollar at the dollar store).

Samuel and his "vampire" pumpkin. If you look close you can see the two long teeth. Aaron has taught me something about cutting out the top of the pumpkins. If you are cutting a zigzag (or other design) top, make sure that you have one leg on the zigzag longer than all the others so you will know which way the lid fits back on! I remember having to turn the lids several times just trying to get it to sit down right. Also make sure your knife is at an angle when you are cutting so the lid doesn't fall straight down. Maybe you already knew these tips, but I didn't until a couple of years ago.

Jacque and her pumpkin. She is one who likes to pose for a picture. Each of the kids got to draw on their pumpkin exactly what they wanted cut out. Jacque must've gotten a little confused. Instead of drawing a face, she drew letters and numbers...thus the tattoo. Aaron took some alcohol to the writing and most of it came off.

Calista really enjoyed cleaning out the inside of her pumpkin. I think her pumpkin was my favorite. I don't know if it was just because it didn't have the triangle eyes, but it just looked really happy.

Calista's love of dogs

Calista is very afraid of dogs. I'm not sure how she got to be so afraid, but when I was visiting one of my elderly friends, Calista wouldn't even put her feet off the edge of the couch because there was a dog in the room. Yes it was IN the room, across the room in fact. And whenever the dog came near, all of a sudden, Calista would be climbing onto my shoulders. We've tried to work with her on her fear of dogs, and I'm not sure if its helping. We've walked peoples dogs, held her while she pet the dogs, and when she was at Mom and Dad's house a couple of weekends ago, they would give her candy everytime she was able to pet Aimee.

On our walk this morning, we passed a dog behind a fence. We say "Hi" to the dog and kept walking. (Calista and Ellen were in the bike stroller that I was pushing). After we passed the dog Calista says, "I like dogs. I like Aimee...when Aimee gets shot, Grandma won't have none more dogs." (For those of you who don't know, my mom and dad's german shepherd dog was shot by some unknown person about a month ago.) She said this kind of happily. I'm not sure if she was looking forward to that time when grandma would have "none more dogs" or if it was just the way she thinks life goes. I had to laugh to myself about it.

Daylight Savings Time Ends

Don't forget that we get to set our clocks back this weekend! Time officially changes Sunday November 1st at 2:00am.

A Bunch of Videos

While I was at mom's this weekend I decided to take advantage of her

fast Internet and load a bunch of videos that I've been waiting to share!

This is a funny video of Calista learning to ride her bike with training wheels.

She moves her legs as long as there isn't any resistance on the pedals.

Jacque can ride without training wheels!!

Samuel is being a tricky bike rider. He can ride with only one hand!!

Super Ellen!! I love her squeals here.

Here's a video from the air show we went to.

Hello from Ellen!

Most of you have already seen this video off of my

mom's blog, but for those of you who are not in my family,

this is a great video. It will brighten your day!

Apple snakes

I love making things with apples with this apple corer peeler. I borrowed Leslie's last year and then found on on sale this year at Bi-Mart. It makes this process so much easier. Calista was a great helper peeling and coring the apples. Once while they were working,

she commented that they were making apple snakes!!

Apple Pie Filling

Mom came over yesterday and we made 49 quarts of apple pie filling and then split them so she took 24 home and I got to keep 25! Aaron's excited because apple pie is probably his favorite pie. We had a little bit of cut apples left over so I made a couple of pies last night. We'd gotten a really good deal on apples from an orchard outside of Milton Freewater, Oregon (40-50lb box for $10).

The other best part of yesterday was that Mom took Samuel, Jacque and Calista home with her!! She was going to surprise Grandpa. Hopefully it was a good surprise! We are going later today, but they were so excited to go with Grandma yesterday. Since we only had one kid last night, we went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant. Aaron usually says he doesn't care for Chinese, but after last night, he said it was pretty good. So maybe we will get to go again :) Ellen liked the sweet and sour pork the best, but she did eat some pork fried rice. I also ordered pork chow mein, which I think is my favorite. It doesn't look very appetizing because it looks like a bunch of steamed cabbage and other stringy veggies, but the sauce or something else makes it really yummy.

Samuel

We have some exciting news! Samuel hasn't had to patch his eye since the end of August, and at his eye appointment last week the doctor said that his lazy eye is doing really well. In fact he can see better in that eye than his "good" eye! His good eye couldn't see one or two letters in the 20/20 range, but that is still really good. We are done patching and he won't have another appointment until March!! He will always have glasses, but now his lazy eye will focus with the help of glasses.

More news. Samuel has become a really good reader, and after listening to General Conference on Saturday, I had the inspired idea that Samuel should try to read the whole Book of Mormon before he gets baptized! As a family we have read it at least 4 times in his lifetime, but it would be fun to have him read it. It took a little bit of coaxing, but then he got excited. We figured out that if he was going to get it done in a year, then he'd need to read 1.5 pages a day or three columns. The first day he actually read all of chapter 1, the second day he read chapter 2 and some of chapter 3, and then it slowed down a little. He is halfway done with chapter 4 now. Either Aaron or I will sit down with him and read along to help with big words, but I've been impressed with the words he can read all by himself. I don't think I could read that well as a 1st grader. I would like to challenge anyone else to make this a goal this next year too! Looking on the Internet I found some Book of Mormon reading charts off of http://www.sugardoodle.net/Book%20of%20Mormon/index.shtml which were cute, and another mom did the same thing with her daughter, except they'd take turns reading verses. I think it's a great goal to have, and it would be fun to look back upon that he accomplished a big goal when he was young. Another thing the Kerns' do when they finish reading a particular book of scriptures (Book of Mormon, Old Testament...) they write the date in the front of the book so they can remember how many times they've read it. It has been fun to see how many times we've read them, although I haven't been as good at writing them down right after finishing the book.

Cute Ellen

I was washing the dishes one day, and happened to look over at Ellen. She was licking the top of the honey container (the honey had solidified, so we cut the top off to get to the honey on the bottom). As I looked at her, she smiles and says, "Yummy!"

I just thought this was a cute picture. Aaron is so nice! How many people do you know that can lay on their back with a child sitting on their chest and still be able to play the guitar?!

FHE - Pumpkin Fun

I went to Honk's dollar store and bought some paintbrushes yesterday, so for FHE we painted pumpkins with real paint! The kids had a fun time. We only got three paintbrushes, so we had to improvise. I was hoping that Ellen wouldn't be interested in painting, but she was feeling left out. I tried to think of a substitute, and Jacque came up with an old toothbrush! It made me a little worried that she try to brush her teeth, but luckily it didn't happen!

Cute face. I think she was excited!

Calista, admiring her masterpiece and looking very pleased.

Jacque, putting on the final touches.

Samuel working very carefully on the fine details.

The final masterpieces. If you look closely, you can see Samuel's Vampire face. I think he has a thing for vampires right now, and no, it has nothing to do with the whole "Twilight" thing either!

More Air Show pics

Our cute pumpkins

We wanted a fun activity for General Conference weekend so we decided we would paint our pumpkins since its too early to actually carve them. We found some glitter glue and decided it would work. After waiting for the pumpkins to dry from being brought into the house, we started decorating. The glue worked pretty good for being about two years old. Every now and then it needed a little encouragement, but thanks to Aaron's help getting the lids off, we managed just fine. (They were adult proof because they were threaded backwards. I was ready to tear it off with pliers before Aaron came and saved it).

Samuel's vampire pumpkin

Calista's fairy pumpkin

Jacque's balloon pumpkin

Ontario Air Show

We attended the annual Ontario Air Show a couple of weekends ago. The kids a fun time looking at all of the different airplanes. They got to sit in one, but my camera decided to have a low batter right after Samuel sat in it. It did decide to resurrect by the time some air stunts were happening, but my internet connection is too slow to upload those. Here are some random pics from the air show.

Ellen, Jacque, Samuel, Calista
Calista

Ellen and Aaron

Jacque and Samuel

random pic

I'll post more pictures later when I have more time!

Our Garden is Finished!

With the turning of the seasons, our garden is all done producing. We picked our peppers earlier this week, and I was surprised at how many we got. I cut them all up and froze them for future use without taking a picture, but we filled two large mixing bowls with peppers. Our watermelons didn't amount to much, but our pumpkins were awesome. We got 12 pumpkins including one small green one that had escaped into our neighbor's yard. The kids were really excited about getting to bring all of the pumpkins inside, and asked to have their pictures taken. I am so grateful for digital cameras that let me take so many pictures and share them for free! Some of the pictures were silly, of course, but these were my favorites.