Walking Miss Molly

Last night Eric and I babysat Molly, Ashlee's little Yorkshire Terrier/Shitzu. We took the doggies for a walk on the Jordan River Parkway, it was so fun.

Yeah.... there's a size difference.....

Here I am holding Molly and Peanut, we gave some serious though to putting Nanuk on my lap too but in the end, we decided it maybe wasn't such a great idea.

A picture of the sunset on our way back...

I just found out that ITS had to let Ashlee go (about 5 min ago) so I'm really sad right now. I love you Ash!

Best Pumpkin Carving Ever

Eat your heart out Charlie Brown.... (the Great Pumpkin people). Check out my master pumpkin carving skills, even Napolean Dynomite would be jealous.

Pumpkin Carving Extravaganza!

Last night we all had a blast with pumpkin carving. We had Ashlee over for dinner (just sandwiches and I even made her bring her own can of soup) and got to work. I had some patterns I found from the Internet since I can't do anything even slightly artistic on my own. First we had to gut them...

Here's Rena and Ashlee getting started...

Daddy and his little princess....

I love Rena's face in this, she looks totally grossed out by the whole thing. Tommy's "help" was to pick out his pattern and pumpkin, the rest was left up to me. He didn't want to touch the insides of the pumpkin.



Here we are working diligently.

Here is Syrena's finished product... It's kind of hard to tell what it is. It's a cat but the weird beard thing at the bottom skews it because it sort looks like a mouth. I think I should have not done that part.

Here are Syrena's and Ashlee's pumpkins.

This one is Tommy's. I messed up the left eye a little but it still looks okay. It's supposed to be the face on the Headless Horseman's pumpkin head from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Tommy's again, just in the light.

This one is Eric's- it's so cool. It's my favorite by far. You can totally see the momma bear and the baby. In the dark with the candle lit you can't really see it, it's much better in the light. I didn't get to do mine yet since I had to do the kids' but I'm hoping to do that tonight.

Been awhile...

I haven't blogged for a little while, up until this last weekend things were mellow and I didn't have much going on.... it was nice but also a bit boring. I stayed home with the kids on Friday, Tommy had been sick -throwing up and running a fever on Thursday night, but he was well enough on Friday afternoon to give his costume a try....
They insisted we do the pictures outside where the tombstones were....

We took the doggies and childrens to Wheeler Farm, it was cute. Just to give some perspective on Nanuk's bigness, here he is next to a donkey.
I just thought this looked like a cute picture of Eric and the kids going down the path.

This was the only animal there that could give our "big" a run for his money, a massive draft horse.

Then we were off the Gardner Village. Eric thought it would be fun 'cause they always deck it out in Halloween decor and since the kids are way into Halloween..... Well it was packed! We could scarcely take more than 2 steps before we were stopped with a million questions about Nanuk and people were wanting to pose with him for photos. We should start charging for those!

That night we were going to take Tommy to a haunted house. He has been begging me to take him to one since last Halloween. I wanted to do it, but was unsure of which one to go to that wouldn't be too scary but also not too lame. I was undecided until I heard on the X96 morning show that they had "chainsaw guys" on the show that you could call and ask questions. So I called and they put me on and I explained the situation and asked their opinion. They suggested we go to Carnival of Fear because they offer glowsticks for special situations like mine that signal to the actors to take it easy on the bearer. I thought this would be perfect, so off we set. The SECOND we stepped in the doorway, he just lost it. Completely freaked out.... so we left, went to FYE while I tried to talk him into it. We came back for another try and though he was nervous, he was willing to give it a shot.... until we walked past the end of the line and a car horn honked suddenly (part of the haunted house). Again he melted down... just a total sensory overload. We tried, with the help of the owner, to talk him into giving it a try, but there was just no way. They had a special area for him to play video games that he was happy with, so we let him play while we took Syrena through. She did awesome! Wasn't the least bit scared, so next year we'll try Nightmare on 13th..... I felt so sad for Tommy, I hope he gets over this and tries one next year, he loves Halloween and spooky things so much, but the anticipation was too much for him.


On Saturday we went to the U of U game... they spanked Colorado State so it was a nice safe game, I love those. On Sunday we watched some football, cleaned and mostly relaxed. Before we took the kids back to Ben's house we took them to feed the ducks and they loved that. My Broncos play tonight so I'm headed over to my Dad's to watch the game.... GO BRONCOS!!!!

Party for Syrena!

We threw Syrena her birthday party this weekend, it was a great success I think. Before the party I had a long anticipated appointment with my hair stylist to get my hair done. She moved to Vegas and comes out once per month to do hair out here, so I have waited nearly 3 months for this appointment. I had Eric take a "before" and "after" picture... I tried to do the thing on TV where they look mad or sad in the "before" with no make-up, then they are all happy in the "after" one.....

"Before"
"After"

Anyway, so I love the new hair. :)

While we were preparing for the party, the kids were going crazy over the Halloween stuff - they are way jazzed. They decorated the whole house and decided on activities for the party (the only one I can remember was Tommy's 3rd activity: Punch That Skeleton - it made me laugh all day long). Here's a pic of them in Halloween costumes.... Yes, Syrena is being a cat again this year... Tommy is actually being a skeleton, but he didn't have his costume yet. When we went to pick them out, I let him know that they don't let you have masks at school, so he threw a big fit and promised to blow the school up. He did finally relent and pick one out yesterday.

Lots of people showed up for the party which was awesome, we even had surprise guest, my Aunt Kari from Vegas came! It was so much fun, Eric's family was all there too.

Syrena has so many way neat presents, mostly dinosaur themed - which she loves. Eric and I got her Roller Coaster Tycoon for the Xbox. She loves that game - had on the PC but lost it and we can't the PC to work properly right now anyway. We also got her an iPod, which she totally freaked out about. It was really fun to give her that and see how happy she was, such a grown-up present! I also took her horse-back riding on Sunday.



Here she is on her horse, Sarah. This is the same horse that Eric rode when he took me for Mother's day last year. They used this horse as a model for Rain in the movie Spirit. A little known fact that is so cool to me. It had been raining all day Saturday and all night so they said the trail was too muddy. They asked if we'd like to ride around in the arena instead... well I didn't want to disappoint Syrena - drove all the way out there and everything, so I said yes. It really wasn't a whole lot of fun riding around in a dusty dark arena for an hour. I guess maybe it was a good way for Rena to get acquainted with riding, but it was boring. Right at the end they let us walk down the trail a little ways and come back and she loved that part. It was a lot of money to spend on an hour's entertainment ($70), and I felt it was way too much for what we got. I hope that soon we will have our own horses, or at least access to someone else's, so she can get a better experience.

Final note, Broncos won again. This time our defense looked awesome and offense was more patient and it paid off. Won against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, brings our record to 4 (wins) and 1 (loss).

Go Utes!!

Last night Eric and I went to the University of Utah game and they played Oregon State... it was such an exciting game! Syrena's special day brought the Utes some much needed luck and they were able to pull off the win, much to many people's surprise (not surprising to true Ute fans of course). It was maddening though because the Beavers (OSU) scored a touchdown late in the fourth quarter, giving us only 3 minutes to tie the game (their score put them up by 8 points). So the Utes charge down the field and make the touchdown... our first attempt at a two point conversion was foiled but the refs called "Pass Interference" (finally refs!! I swear they were calling stuff for the other team right and left in their favor and screwing us on every call... a different rant for a different blog) so we got a second chance. On our second try, the quarter back ran it in and we were tied. We kicked the ball to the other team and our AMAZING defense (they were incredible all night long, despite seeing so much play time - they had to be exhausted) held them and forced them to kick to us. We made a couple of good plays, just enough to get us within field goal range and with only 1 second remaining, the attempt was good! The fans stormed the field, it was so cool.. my throat is so hoarse from screaming though!

Happy Tenth Birthday, Syrena!!!

I can't beleive it... my little tiny baby girl is 10 today. I remember when I had her at the hospital and she looked so huge to have fit into my tummy (which is now more than accomodating)... a whopping 5 pounds 2 ounces. I have had so much fun with her! It's crazy to think that 10 years have passed. Last night I took her last picture as a 9 year old....




and this morning I took her first picture as a 10 year old.



To look at them you may not see much of a difference, but what a big one there is. She is such an amazingly talented and smart young lady, I am excited (and of course a bit nervous) to see what lays ahead. I love you so much dear Syrena! I will always love you and be here for you, whenever you need me!!