Dancing Skeletons

It feels strange that it's already November! I'm not really mentally ready for the holiday season, but to start in preparing myself, I'll first tie up loose ends by posting about our Halloween night. We were quite the sight all dressed up in our skeletons get-ups. The 10 of us went around with the kids for trick-or treating to 15 or so houses... at one of the homes the nice people who answered the door wanted to take our picture. :) We ended the evening by putting the kids to bed and watching The Watcher in the Woods... it gave me the heebie jeebies!













We played around with a black light and had fun dancing with our skeleton bodies... we're pretty goofy... and most definitely hopped up on a bit of sugar ;) OH- and people asked where we got the costumes... well, we actually made them - Ben's mom, sister, and I all spent Conference weekend cutting out and ironing on bones over black clothes. The kids shirts however, were bought at Children's Place... that's why they glow yellow - because their shirts already had glow-in-the dark stuff on them.

No-kid Halloween Fun!

I definitely view Halloween as a kids holiday, and as a mom it's SO fun for me to watch them enjoy trick or treating, help them do jack-o-lanterns, and just create fun holiday memories. BUT, it's also a great time for an awesome 'no kids allowed' Halloween party! :) It was thrown by a fun couple in our ward (and veteran Halloween party throwers!) and was a great opportunity to try to better familiarize ourselves with all the amusing people in our new area. Thanks to Mike and Melody for a really crazy fun evening!

One of the many games we played - picking up the cereal box with your teeth and ripping off a piece until there was nothing left... the result was some pretty funny pictures!

FeAR FaCtOr! - This crazy guy ate two LIVE crickets... his prize was 40 bucks. A generous reward, but I definitely would not eat live crickets for $40! Would you?

Catherine and I going at our swinging donuts :)

Donut Eating! from Susan Dangerfield on Vimeo.

Trunk or Treat

There's always lots of Halloween related posts at the end of October - the holidays definitely bring about lots of parties and plenty of fun! So, onto some more fun - we had our ward trunk or treat last night and the kids loaded up on candy. Beforehand though, we ate dinner and played games in the church. Emma and Becca's favorite was the cakewalk. They very much enjoyed their cupcake winnings! They also had a pumpkin carving contest and Ben's pumpkin won for 'funniest pumpkin'. Our prize was a huge Costco pumpkin pie! And it was a lot of fun getting all dressed up in our skeleton costumes for the evening - you could definitely tell we belonged together!

Let the fun begin!

The annual Halloween festivities finally got going this week and I've already had my fill of sweets... too bad we haven't even been trick-or-treating yet! First off, for FHE on Monday we decorated and ate sugar cookies (as you can see, the frosting was a bit runny and added to the yummy mess ;)





Last night Ben organized some fun family time - we carved pumpkins and roasted the seeds (and while doing so Ben recalled THIS little clip). We also made caramel apples and got very sticky! Mmmmm. Oh, and with the kids pumpkins - they drew on the pumpkin what they wanted the face to look like and then Ben carved where they had drawn.























This morning (while Emma was at preschool) Becca, Jake, and I went to "the other ward"'s playgroup Halloween party. (For the record - I am attending my own ward's playgroup/park days as well, but since each ward's playgroups are on different days each week, I try to go to both, because I'd miss my old friends too much if I didn't). For Halloween this year, we all are skeletons! I was wearing my costume as well, but I like to avoid pics of myself. ;) Don't worry though - you'll be getting plenty of pictures of us all in our skeleton costumes soon enough...





I was realizing that I have quite a lot of photos of the kids decorating cookies at this same table at the Midwestern clubhouse... at many different holidays. :)



Finding ghosts during the 'ghost hunt'



Now we're gearing up for three more Halloween parties. I'm happy to have started regularly running again.. it just might help me break even with all these sweets being eaten.

Fireworks, shooting stars, and petroglyphs

Yes, that's quite the list of random stuff! But they are all things we encountered this weekend on our overnight camping trip we took. It was most definitely some great family time! We decided we wanted to camp close to home so we wouldn't have a long drive to take and we ended up in the White Tank Mountains about 30 minutes southwest of us. We enjoyed an evening of storytelling, games of "I Spy", singing, s'more making (using our propane stove, because of a fire ban - bummer!), and nature exploring. Like I said, this Regional Park is very close to home, and actually overlooks the city... this turned out to be pretty cool when we ended up being entertained by a rather impressive and lengthy firework show, which I suspect was taking place over the nearby Sports Complex. Definitely not something you usually get to see while camping! :) Since there was a fire ban in effect, it got pretty dark in our campsite as the night got later. I guess the good aspects of this were that we didn't smell like smoke, and we got to see the stars quite well! Ben and I even saw a few shooting stars as we watched the sky and chatted after putting the kids to sleep in the tent.







I put together a nature scavenger hunt for the kids beforehand - I gave them this list and little paper sacks to collect their findings. Anything with a camera next to it, they were to snap a picture of the item (instead of collect it) using their kid camera.











Because of the heat, our chocolate was all mushy when we unwrapped it which was perfect for s'mores and resulted in very messy faces!



The next morning we ate a yummy breakfast made by Chef Ben, let the kids play, and then packed up camp. Instead of heading home right away, we decided to try out one of the many hiking trails in the area. The Waterfall Trail ended up being quite an adventure. The trail was lined with many ancient petroglyphs, which according to the county website were put there by the Hohokum Indians between 500-1100 A.D. Cool! The trail dead ends in a shady canyon where a waterfall will be if there's been rainfall recently... it's been a while since a good rainstorm around here, so it was dry, but we enjoyed climbing around on the rocks and exploring. The kids did well hiking - at least on the way up. Ben had Becca ride on his shoulders on the way back and Jake fell fast asleep as we headed to the car. (Keep in mind with the following pictures that we had just been camping.. and weren't looking to win any beauty contests... speaking for myself anyway ;))















As is often the case when we try to take a family pic, one of us ends up not smiling... Emma?!

This is about how we all felt after our little trek was over

Oooo.. Fire trucks!

We went to the fire station this morning for playgroup! Becca was pretty impressed by the big fire trucks. Too bad Emma was at school - she would have LOVED this! Luckily, I think she'll be going for a school field trip sometime this year.





I forgot to put in the previous post about the kids little backyard camping adventure. Ben set up the tent on the lawn and the kids packed in pillows, blankets, books, and flashlights. I was surprised that they actually did fall asleep out there! It was pretty cute. We brought them inside though, before Ben and I headed to bed. But it was a fun evening for them! Maybe next time we'll have to include some backyard s'mores. mmmm. :)

Growth and Progress

Becca is successfully doing this-



Emma just finished reading these-



And at 6 months, Jake started sitting up and doing this little trick...



I think the baby gates will be needed much sooner than I thought.