Halloween 2009

Brooke as Sacajawea. I love that she likes having costumes you can't really find in the stores. It gives us the chance to make them how ever we want. Brooke actually made the necklace and earrings :)

Kelsie wanted to be anything that would require this red cape. So Little Red Riding Hood fit best for her. And because she is extremely picky about what she wears, she decided to wear regular clothes and have the basket as her Trick or Treat bag.Shayna the "Beautiful Green Sparkly Witch". Amazingly we found this costume that matched the picture she drew almost exactly! Good thing since I'm not sure I'm talented enough to sew something like this w/o a pattern.

Becca as "Shayna's Bat". Everyone we came up to she announced "I'M A BAT! heeheehee" We're talking 3 days of this because, of course, once her costume was ready, she has refused to take it off.

Doing the Cake Walk but for stuffed animals instead of cake. I guess the animals are better than having a bunch of cakes around the house, but I just managed to get rid of about 20 stuffed animals...ah well

Shayna, Becca and Brooke. Austin is in the stroller. He rebelled against the clown costume we have so he dressed up as a little boy ;)
Brooke and her friend Kaitlyn

Austin wasn't too sure about the whole dress up thing. Every adult that came up to him that was dressed up he gave a nasty, dirty look to. He didn't cry or look afraid, just totally ticked off. Like "How dare you look at me while you look like that!" It was pretty funny.
Becca goin' fishing
Shayna and her friend Elise.

Becca chanting "Candy, Candy, Candy"

Kelsie and Constanza handing out our candy.

A family in one of the wards owns the local mortuary so every year they bring out the hearse. Because kids get scared, they also hand out popcorn and glow sticks to entice them over :)

Unfortunately Mark has been having eye issues for the past few days. So he stayed home tonight so he would be better for Halloween night. I was sad he wasn't there, but we had fun and they kids had a great time :)

Heaven help me...

Me to Kelsie: "Come and sit down, its homework time. (Kel just stands there then starts to sit on the couch) No, come here. (She comes but sits at the computer desk) Your homework is at this table, not that one. (Finally she is at her chair and sitting).

Kelsie: "Will you help me?"

Me: "Sure, lets see what you have."

I'm reading the directions and Kelsie makes her way back to the living room.

Me: "Kels, come here. I know what you need to do. (No response) KELSIE, come here now please!. Thank You. On this spot you need to write the problem and under it you need to write the answer. Then circle the double facts."

Kel: "What?"

Me: "(repeat directions)"

Kel: "uuuhhh"

Me: "(repeat directions again) So for this one you would write 3+1 then write the answer under it. Kelsie, write 3+1 right here. (she starts to write in a random box) No, in this box. (has the pencil pointed at the right box, but nothings happening) 3 then + then 1. Right HERE Kelsie. (whew, success!) Great now write the answer."

Kel: "To what?"

Me: "3+1 Kelsie, whats the answer to 3+1?"

Kel: "5?"

Me: "What? No, 3+1! Whats the answer?"

Kel: "Ooohhhh, I thought you said 3+2 haha"

This is when I take a deep breath and try my hardest not to do the work myself ;)

Cache N Chaos

A while back I read about geocaching on a friends blog. I told Mark about it and it didn't take much to convince him this would be great fun for our family (I mean how can you turn down hiking, electronics and hunting for something?) :) We got our GPS unit just in time for our trip to Tahoe so Mark and I got to try it out then. When we got home, we told the kids about it and have gone out everyday after school since. The cool thing is that its really popular and you can find caches everywhere! Here in Davis there are hundreds, turns out we've walked right past 3 on our normal walking path without even knowing it and there are 2 at the park near us. Its a great activity to do when you want to get out of the house for an hour but don't have anywhere to go and walking aimlessly doesn't sound appealing. There are some in almost every State and National Park too, in trees, under water, behind rocks and logs. There are single stage ones, some have clues to lead you to another location. Some are big enough to trade little toys with and some are the size of pill boxes. The cool thing is everyone signs their name and date in the log book that's inside so you can see how many ppl found it. You can also hide your own cache for others to find. Here are some pics of our last outing...

The girls foud this small one in a tree along our walking path.


Inside was a log book we put our sticker on. This is our sticker. Instead of just signing the log, we made this. Cache N Chaos is our screen name for the geocache site we use.

10 yrs!

I can't believe it's been TEN years since Mark and I got married! I was going to post pictures of our wedding day but they are all packed, waiting for the day we actually move (long story for another day). But Mark and I had an AWESOME anniversary in the Tahoe/Truckee area. Of course that wouldn't have happened if my parents didn't take all the kids for the weekend. THANKS SO MUCH!!!!

We dropped the kids off Friday morning then headed to our condo in Northstar (just south of Truckee). It was a nice one bedroom apt style condo right next to the Northstar Village and ski resort. The village was amazing. At night you can walk around and all the stores/restaurants have huge fire places with couches and lounge chairs you can hang out in. It was warm at night so we didn't take advantage of it, but it was still nice to walk around. Saturday morning we went horse back riding. It was a nice hour trail ride. Another couple from the Bay area rode with us. I actually really enjoyed the ride. Poor Mark was right behind our guide so he had to endure her non-stop talking and behind me the guy was trying his hardest to comfort his teriffied girlfriend (seriously, she was freaking out that her horse was going to buck her, but he had to be like 15 yrs old and barely able to walk). So I had a nice, undisturbed, peaceful hour of riding.

This is me on Cali. Mark rode Thor, who was huge!


After the ride and lunch we went hiking. We wanted to hike the Ellis Ridge trail which is said to have an amazing view of Tahoe, but got lost driving there so we did the Miller Creek trail instead lol. It too was pretty beautiful. :)
Here is our new puppy Chip (oh yeah, we got a puppy from the El Dorado Animal Shelter. He's half Lab, half Red Merel Austrilian Shepard) We should have named him Camo cuz he blended in so nicely with the dirt and rocks :) He did great on the trail even off leash.
Ok nature buffs, by looking at the picture below, and using the info I've already given you, which direction is the picture being taken? ;)
Sunday morning we went to the river to do a little (very little) fishing and relaxing before we went to get the kids.
All in all, it was a truly amazing vacation!