A Day With Isabelle

We had an interesting experience a few days ago. A man really wanted us to buy his dog, who he adores, but he's having some financial trouble, so we agreed to give her a "test run." Her name is Isabelle, she's a beautiful cocker spaniel. She was such a good dog, and wonderful with the boys. She was very sad though, and missed her "Daddy" as Grandma called her. Grandma hired him to do some yard work and while he was here, poor Isabelle was so confused. In the end we had to give her back, it just wasn't the right time for a dog in our life, but it was a fun day.

More School Stuff

The boys are addicted to putting money in penny banks so we decided to make our own. We painted jars, and while they were drying we did Thanksgiving turkeys with our hands. See if you can guess whose is whose. (*hint, Ezra's has his name on it.)

Blog Tag

Well, I got blog tagged, by Crystal and Krystal, which means I need to post 6 random things about myself and then tag 6 people. Well, here are the six people, and then I'll tell you my random things! Cherisa Tagg, you're it! Vicki Forsyth, tag! Vanessa Garnica and Vanessa Skinner, tag, gottcha! Kelsey Pankhurst and Julie Allred, you can't escape, you're it!

1. I am a huge popcorn junkie. I love it, love it, love it. I love going to the theater just for the smell. The yummy greasiness. Mmmmmmh! Even better than popcorn though, is day old popcorn! Yes, I'm talking about the stuff that didn't get eaten the first day, that is still in the bowl the NEXT day. Some would call it stale, I would call it YUMMY! I also like Parmesan cheese on my popcorn, or seasoning salt.

2. I don't like jumping on trampolines. I hate the way my body feels as it's flying through the air, like my fat rolls are going to fall off or something. Okay, that's a bit gross, but seriously. Not a fan.

3. I absolutely HATE to cook. There's this buffet here, that does 2 for 1, and it's only $6 per person, and kids under 6 eat for free, so we used to go there a lot. Our whole family of 5, eats for under $6! Why cook when you can have all you can eat food, dessert, and soda for $6. Plus, someone else cleans up your mess for you! I don't even like to bake, although, when I do I usually love the end product. I guess it all boils down to laziness!

4. When I repair musical instruments (that's what I do), I always have to start out with an absolutely clean work bench, with all the tools laid out perfectly, in the order I need them. When I am done fixing the instrument the work bench is ALWAYS destroyed, and I will usually leave it that way until I'm ready to start my next job. So each repair job always starts out with a serious cleaning and laying out of my work bench. I also do my make up this way. I start by laying out everything I need, but I do put that away as I go. Order of makeup: face lotion, foundation (cover up), Eye liner, Lip gloss (on days I don't wear lipstick), eye shadow, blush (if I wear it that day), use eye lash curler, mascara, lip stick (If I'm wearing it).

5.I adore camping. I would camp every weekend if I could. Most people that I know like to just camp for a couple of days, but I would go for weeks on end if I could. I wanted to go camping on my honeymoon, but it was to cold! Plus, Bill isn't so big on it. The best part of camping is camp fires, and tents, I love sleeping in tents. The boys though, think that camping is all about the marshmallows. If we have a fire in the back yard and roast marshmallows the boys think we are camping!

6. I find brushing animals very therapeutic. Weird eh?

Bubbles!!!

I meant to post these yesturday, but got to busy playing with the boys, so here they are today. It was such a beautiful day that we put bubble solution in our bubble machine and had a bubble party. Liam's favorite thing to do with bubbles is "kill" them. He's all about attacking, and destroying. Ezra is more of a watcher. Everyone in a while he'll jump in and knock off a couple, but mostly he stands back and watches the other boys. This was Mo's first experience with bubbles and he LOVED it. (As you can see in the pictures.) His favorite part was when the ground got wet from the fallen bubbles and they started to stack up. In all his pictures except for one his hands are blurry, because he shows his excitement by shaking his hands. It's so funny.

I aplogize for the undear wear shots, we kind of decided to do bubbles on the fly, and I didn't think to re-dress the boys!

By the way, Bill and I checked Liam's cut today, and it's healing up quite nice (Yeah for super glue!!!)

10 Months Old Today

Today Mosiah turned 10 months old. Time flies when you're growing up! Ten months ago, on a stormy January night Mosiah decided he was coming out and nothing was going to stop him! He was a beautiful 9 pound baby, perfect in every way. I was only in labour with him for An hour and 45 minutes before he came out to see the world!



Now Mo is laughing, and crawling, and making everyone else laugh.... and believe it or not.... crawl! It won't be long before he's walking, he's up on his feet as much as he can be. Mo has 5 teeth now, 3 on top, 2 on the bottom, and we're pretty sure the others are on their way. He hates baby food, and will eat ANYTHING that we eat... so if we eat the baby food he will have a bite. He's so paranoid about baby food though, that he hesitates to eat even pudding, because he thinks you are trying to trick him into eating baby food. He likes to chew I guess!



These pictures were all taken today, after he was done eating his pizza pops, so he's very messy. He loves bath time though, and is always cute and smiley in there. Later his brothers joined him in the tub, and he was so sad when he had to get out!



Happy 10 months Mo-Mo!

Ninja Boys

Today we decided that because Liam was so brave last night, that he could have one of his "on sale Halloween costumes" right now, instead of saving it for Christmas... alright you got me, in the commotion I forgot to hide it and Liam found it, so we let him open it. Ezra got the matching one, so they both got theirs today. They are ninja swords, sais throwing stars, ninja masks and sword sheaths. Today, the boys played ninjas and they adore their new toys/costumes.

Liam in his Ninja get up.





















Ezra in his Ninja get up.

Trouble at Walmart and Home Made Cookies

Well, we had an interesting night last night. I promised the boys we would make cookies but when we got all the ingredients out, we realized that we were out of eggs, so we decided to make a quick Walmart run to pick some up, as well as some almond extract. Anyways, we got there, picked up we needed, and then decided to check out the discount Halloween section, and everything was knocked down to 75% off, so we decided to get a couple of things, mainly the swords that go with costumes, but we also got a cool knight costume for $2, and two vampire capes for $2.50. We also got a Zorro hat for $1 and a pirate hat with an eye patch and an earring for $1. We're planning on giving the boys this stuff for Christmas, along with Nana and Papa's top secret Christmas gift, which I'm sure you'll hear all about after Christmas. Anyways, we were having a great time in the Halloween aisle, and the boys were a bit crazy, so we put Liam up in the cart with Ezra. They were doing good until they both decided to lean the same way at the same time. The cart toppled over and the boys went with it. Both Bill and I ran to them and picked them up. Ezra was sitting in the chair with a seat belt on (which by the way, totally didn't help) and Liam had been standing on the back. He banged his chin pretty good, and there was a pretty decent sized gash on his chin. Of course, as it is with most Mommy's, I panicked and it looked way worse than it was. Bill, always the calm in charge Daddy, picked him up and took him to the bathroom to clean him up. I inspected Ezra and found that he had just bumped his knees, they are totally fine now, and just have bruises like all kids get every day.

After I cleaned up the spilled groceries and got everybody situated I headed over to the bathroom where Bill and Liam were. I could hear Liam crying, so I knew I had the right bathroom. I got an employee to go and grab a couple of bandaids and then Bill came out. We threw a bandaid on it, ran to the first aid section and grabbed some "new skin" (liquid bandaid), payed for our purchases, and headed to the hospital to have it looked at.


Bill and Liam went in and Mommy stayed with Ezra and Mo. Bill talked to Vicky, the receptionist, who wasn't very helpful, surprise, and came back to the car with Liam. Bill did manage to get out of her that the doctor would probably just super glue it shut, and that even if it was nothing, and the doctor sent us home it would cost us a minimum of $300.


Well, it just so happens that I have some (medical) superglue at home from our last little incident, so we decided to do a home repair.


Dr. Mom, Dr. Dad, and Dr. Grandma laid Liam out on the counter and pinched the cut together, applied some "new skin" which is also an antiseptic, and then covered the outside with the glue. It sealed together quite nicely, and Liam was so brave! Apparently though, new skin hurts like nothing you've ever felt (must be the antiseptic). The super glue didn't hurt at all. We waited for everything to dry, gave Liam a sucker, a couple of bandaids and a whole lot of medical tape to cover everything, and then we made cookies.


Anyways, it was a devastating experience, and we'll never put to kids in one cart again, but it could have been worse, we could have broken skulls, or bones, or necks (which, I suppose all fall into the "bone" category) but we just had a little cut, which didn't even need stitches. So Liam is walking around with a big bandage on his face, and he's taking it easy (by force).


The cookies turned out good, and we all went to bed happy. The only thing bothering Liam is the tape because "it's itchy!!!"

Andy's Birthday

On Saturday we got invited over to the Skinners house for Andy's 3rd birthday! Can you believe little, darling, Andy is already 3? It seems like just yesturday that he was Baby Jesus in our Nativity. Wow! Ezra isn't to far behind, he'll be 3 in February. Kids grow up way to fast!

Vanessa made a delicious squash soup, with amazing flavour, which reminded me of Ratitouille, because Remy (the rat) is always mixing different flavours together, and this was like that. She also made these amazing cranberry muffins, that were nothing short of Heavenly. Mom/Marion made an amaizing chicken salad, and the juice was wonderful... if I do say so myself (Bill and I made it!) It was so much fun, and the food was great! Thanks Vanessa and Jake for a good day!

Happy Birthday Andy!!!

For more cool pictures you can check out the Skinners blog at: http://www.skinnerfamilylife.blogspot.com/

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween everybody! We hope yours was as good (and as fun) as ours. We started off our trick-or-treating adventure with a trip to the band (we had to go there anyways) and we showed off our jedi costumes, they gave us tonnes of candy! Next, off to the movie rental store to return Spiderman 3 (Awesome by the way!!!) and they gave us even more candy!!! The local library advertised in the paper that they were giving out candy to trick-or-treaters so we stopped by there and Liam and Ezra got hooked up!!! Next we went to our friends house to pick them up so they could join our adventure. We stopped at a Retired Living appartment complex and showed off our costumes. We took these pictures there. A lot of homes didn't answer, and some did but didn't have candy, but they loved to just look at all the cute kids in their costumes. The people that did have candy gave a lot of it, and one cute lady even took a video of the kids running to her door and showed it off proudly. (She took it with her phone!)
Next we all piled back in the cars and headed back to the library for Mosiah and our friends who hadn't been there yet and we got even more candy. Liam and Ezra waited in the car.
Then, off to the comunity church here that does a big Halloween Bash every year. Free entry and free hot dogs and soda for all the kids. 50 cents a dog for adults, and 50 cents for a pop. They have all the fun games you could imagine (well maybe not all, but lots...) and toys and candy for prizes. They also give the kids free raffle tickets with entry (you can buy adult raffle tickets if you want) and raffle off really cool prizes every half hour. I was standing right beside a lady who one a bike for her 8 year old, she just started bawling and it was so cool!
The hot dogs were delicious, and who doesn't love soda (other than my sister Cheyanne), so we had a blast. They also have a preschool room for kids under 6. The boys threw bean bags and made playdough halloween cookies (that they go to keep), and shot hoops with a beachball disguised as a basketball. They waded in ball pits and did a ring toss. They won really cool prizes and had so much fun!!!
When we were done at the church we headed over to the Subway (eat fresh!!!) parking lot where they were having a trunk or treat and got quite a bit of candy from there even though there was only 4 cars giving out candy (and one business.) Then we headed over to an assisted living home where all the residents were sitting around a big dining room table with big bowls of candy for the kids. They were so sweet, and loved the kids, spoiling them with to much candy. They had this little alligator bowl that you could reach in and get your own candy from (who doesn't love that) and Liam put his arm down and it chomped his hand scaring the poop right out of him!!! Later I tried it and it didn't even work, so I didn't think anything of it when Ezra ran over to grab himself some chocolate. Poor Ezra!!! He jumped about a mile when it chomped his hand! He didn't know if he should laugh or cry, so he just walked away and pretended nothing had ever happened. After that our friends headed home.
We got back in the car and headed over to our church to check out the other wards trunk or treat, but got there just as everyone was driving away. A couple of boys from Bills seminary class were there and they gave the boys candy out of their pockets which I thought was sweet.
When we finished walking around the empty parking lot we headed over to a community with lots of homes and went "trick-or-treating" (official trick or treating - door to door). Well, at least we tried. There were only about 4 actual homes that had candy, so we just packed up and headed back to the community church to end our evening. We played more games, got more free food and pop, and even more candy.
We now have so much candy we don't know what to do, Bill will probably take it to seminary and share.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Jack-O-Laterns

I helped Liam and Ezra both do their own pumpkins tonight. We also did two other ones, I will post better pictures tomorrow, but we had so much fun I had to get a start on it today. Ezra's pumpkin is a self portrait of himself. Liam's has "A's" for eyes: "because it's my favorite letter" he says. And a half circle nose, and a scary mouth. He picked everything himself. The other two pumpkins are a surprise, you will see them tomorrow, along with more cute pictures of the boys. I took these pictures in the dark with no flash, so they are definitely not good, but you can see the idea of it anyways!