Halloween Decor-outside

When Ryan was gone hunting in Wyoming, I asked Julia what she wanted to do.  Her reply, decorate the outside of our house for Halloween.  So we went shopping for decorations, she picked most everything out.  It was fun putting it up and it turned out pretty cute.  We also purchased some Thanksgiving decor, so check for that post later.

I really need to learn how to use my camera, so I can get good pictures.  I have troubles with lights at night and motion pictures.  Any suggestions?

Which one do you think is a better picture?

Pumpkin Carving

This year for our pumpkin carving, I bought fake pumpkins.  It was so great, no seeds to pull out and it was so easy to cut.  It took a lot less time and the kids could do it by themselves, well except Sawyer.  As a added bonus we can keep the pumpkins for next year decorations, not to mention that not one pumpkin got moldy!!!

Julia went traditional and picked a cute jack-o-lantern face for her pumpkin.

Ryan chose a skeleton face, and he did it all by himslef, it was awesome.  Also don't you love the pose he chose for the picture?!?

As for Sawyer, he just chose the first one the he saw, this is his normal routine for choosing!!

Dennis helped him with the pumpkin and I thought it was very cute!!

Committment

I have made a committment to get all caught up this week!  I know I have promised this before and not followed through, but I am committed this time.  So take a look each day this week and see if I keep my committment.
To leave you with my a "mommy moment" from my thought a day calendar
"Holly patiently said to her five-year-old daughter Maureen, "Please pick up your toys and dolls,"  After a few minutes, Holly again reminded her.  When the little girl still hadn't complied, Holly asked in frustration, ""Why aren't you picking your things up?"  Maurenn answered, "I'm playing house and I'm the Dad, so I don't know where anything goes."
Isn't it true!  I love it!!(the story not the factualness of it!!  hahaha!!!)

Playschool, playing cars

Saywer loves his little school and his new friends that he has made.  As everyone knows, little kids have a hard time playing together, learning to share and be nice at all times.  The first couple of times that I had these little boys at my home, Sawyer had a hard time sharing his toys, the other boys did too, but not as hard of a time as Sawyer did.  I was not sure if this was going to work out for me.  I do not try to do anything that is more work to do then not, so I was wondering if I should keeo it up.  I decided to give it one more chance.  I pulled out the beloved hotwheels track and the boys loved it.  They were all so good about taking turns and sharing the "best" cars!  I guess that I just had to find the right activity!!! 

PALS, playing so well together.

Julia and Sawyer play so well together.  Julia is the little mother hen and Sawyer, laps up all the attention like crazy!  When it is just these two together they will play together forever doing anything.  This fine day, the spend a very long time building a castle and they were so proud of their final product!

This is the awesome castle that they spent many hours working on together!

I love this picture! 

DRIVE IN

One of the greatest things about living in a warm weather area, is drive in theaters.  We have had the opportunity to go a few times, and we love it,  First of all it is cheaper then going to the regular theater and you get to see two movies instead of only one.  The trick is finding a night that shows two movies that the kids can see and the adults don't mind watching.  This night we saw wild things and meatball movie.  I did not like wild things, but I think that meatballs was cute!!

We met out good friends the Svedins there this night.  We really love this family and they have a 8 year old boy Ryan gets along with so well, a 6 year old girl Julia gets along with and a 5 years girl that plays well with Sawyer and Julia.  What a fun family!

Pumpkin Patch

In October, Dennis and Ryan made a trip to Wyoming to go elk hunting.  The little kids and myself stayed home.  We had a lot of fun, one day I let Julia play hooky from school and we took a trip to a local pumpkin patch here in Houston.  There were a ton of fun things for the kids to do, it was a long day.  We went with some good friends and had a great time.

One of the activities we took a wagon ride out to the cows and had little cow biscuits to feed to the cows.  We were suppose to hold the biscuit in our hands and let the cow take it out of our hand.  Well after seeing the cow's long long tongue, Sawyer just dropped his on the ground.  He did not want to be attacked by the cows.  Julia was so nervous to do it, but if I could do it, then so could she, so after some major pumping her up, she did it. FUN DAY!!

Rain Rain Rain!!

Well we went to the zoo and it was on and off drizzle rain the first few hours that we were there, but then it started to pour, it shorted our stay, but two of the three kids, the boys, had a lot of fun playing in the rain.  It was so warm.  Julia did not want to get wet and would not share the ONE umbrella that we brought!  Needless to say, we now have an umbrella for each person in the family and also a pair of rain boots.  I guess this takes the place of gloves, hats and snow boots!!

Here is Julia being Julia, not sharign the umbrella! 

Sawyer thought it was a lot of fun to play in the rain.  Not much different than a splash park, because it was soooo warm!!

Houston Zoo

For Columbus Day, it was free day at the zoo, so the kids and I headed downtown to see the zoo.  We stopped and had lunch with Dennis at his work and a lady at his work, loaded the kids up with freebies.  The greatest freebie was a backpack, so that they could carry all thier own stuff at the zoo.  Here they are standing in front of a eagle with vines growing all over it.  It was way cool, things grow like crazy here in Houston. 

This was so beautiful!  I wanted the kids to sit on this branch for a picture, but there is a big sign on the brach that says to keep off!  These huge trees, where the branches grow down to the ground and then back up again are my favorite!!  Aren't the kids so cute in thier halloween shirts!!  Thank you Grandma Updike!

This was way toooo cool.  In the aquarium area, there was a tube right through the middle of the water that the kids could crawl through, of course, I had to take a picture!! Ryan thought it was the coolest thing ever!

This picture was taken toward the end of the day.  It ws not very hot, but it was raining a little and it was SUPER humid, so we were really moist.  The zoo was a lot of fun, we did not get to see everything, but we are for sure going to go bcak again and again!

New Baby Alex and big sister Gabby

Alex Lee Hansen  August 28, 2009

I was able to fly out to Utah the beginning of October to see my new nephew, Alex.  This is my sister, Mandy's baby boy.  I had a lot of fun hanging out with the Hansens and my mom.  It was a great weekend.  We ate some great food, (always a favorite of mine) enjoyed each other's company, took a ride in the mountains to see the coming of autumn and giggled.  Gabby is sure turning into a cute little girl and the thiings she says are so cute!! Alex is a darling little boy and looks just like his daddy!(anyhow, that is what I think)  It was a good weekend and I hope to do it again soon!

2 postings with no pictures

#1) Last night we had brownies for our family home evening treat. It must not have settled well with Sawyer, because in the middle of the night we were awoken to him omitting it form his body through his mouth. Of course, the middle of the night clean up is never that fun, especially on our white carpet with the color of dark brownie throw-up. I was not happy and Sawyer was being his normal AWESOME self and asked me sooo nicely, "Mom, are you done cleaning up the mud?" I said, "WEll Sawyer it is throw-up." Then in is matter-of-factly voice says, "WELLLLLLL, I threw up mud!!!" (I am sure you can imagine the color, after eating dark chocolate brownies)
I just had to laugh, even though the last place I wanted to be in the middle of the night iscleaning up throw-up! What a character!!

#2)The girls in this family, Julia and myself, are not morning people. Getting up in the morning is the last thing that we want to do. Well needlessly to say, getting Julia up to go to school every morning is not a fun activity. Well you can not believe how happy this week has been when I have gone upstairs to get her up and she is already in the tub!! What motivated this behavior??? The chance to read!! After Ryan goes to bed each night he gets to stay up for a little while and read. We have not let Julia do this because she is so hard to get up in the morning. SO when she asked why she does not get to read in bed, I told her because she is too hard to get up in the morning. So I said that if she got up all by herself without me having to fight her for a week, then she could read in bed. Welll it is working marvelously! And all because she wants to read!! I hope my kids always like to read as much as they do now!

always playing catch up

well I am finally caught up through September and if you are really lucky, I might start October before MONDAY, but no promises. Enjoy the last 6 entries!!

Building!!!

Dennis and the kids enjoy spending a lot of time in the yard doing yard work and tinkering! I love our yard, but mostly looking at it and playing in it!! I will be the first to admit that I do not like yard work! Good thing that it is Dennis's favorite thing to do!! So one night Dennis picked for the activity for Family home Evening to bulid a shelter on the playhouse. EVery one was sooo excited, except me, but I did participate. i could not believe how fast they were at going and finding their own hammers!! Well I must admit, it was not the most boring thing that I ever did, and it was very awesome to see Dennis and the kids so happy. The shelter project might not make it through the next storm, but if it is true that a family that works together stays together, then at least we will make it through the storm.

ITZ

ITZ is a chucke cheese gone way good!! It is a pizza buffet/arcade. Way more fun than chucke cheese. It was a lot of fun and the food was so much better! Ryan has been begging to go here ever since we moved here and we finally did it. It was fairly expensive, so we will not be frequent guests, but super fun! Dennis introduced them to a shooting game that they loved, I thought it was a little much, but they loved playing it and since they were only shooting overgrown bugs I guess it was not that bad, just very gross!! of course they got a ton of tickets and spent way to long deciding what to get!! Fun night all in all!!

Sawyer goes to school

Well Sawyer gets to go to school one day a week this year. To him it is school, really it is just an organized play date, where moms get a break. There is only myself and two other moms doing it. There are three cute little boys altogether! it is fun. Sawyer was SUPER excited to go and could not wait, he got to pack his own lunch and ring the doorbell all my himself. He was soooo excited that he rung the doorbell 5 times. It was super hillarious. He is having a lot of fun and learning to share, super important!!

Ryan gets the rank of bobcat(finally)

Well Ryan has been in scouts for almost a year now, and he finished the requirements for his bobcat about 9 months ago and finally got his rank! He really enjoyed it. I am his scout leader(suprise, suprise!!) and am getting to spend a lot of scout time with him. When Ryan is taking scouts seriously, he is a grand young man.

Jam Session-WII style

We are really lucky and have a house it a GRAND neighborhood. The people are so nice and the kids have some great friends. Ryan's really good friend Elijah comes over a lot and his older brother comes with him a lot also. Ryan plays with him everyday that I let him. They mostly play at our house, which I love, or in the front in the cul-de-sac. This particular day they came over to play the wii. All five kids, our three, plus the two nieghbors, got to participate, so it was a lot of fun. Sawyer was really getting into it dancing and singing his brains out! It was so cute. it was driving everybody else crazy though!

FROG FACE

Sawyer and I have been having a lot of fun going to play group. A grand thing about living in a big city is that you get to go to a lot of fun places. This particular week we went to one of the children's museums.
Unfortunatley I forgot my camera, so I did not get to take any pictures, but I did take this one when we got home. There was a lot of really fun things to do. My favorites included an old car that was painted with chalk board paint-so you could write with chalk all over it, a parachute to play with and the face painting. Sawyer's favorite, a toy made for infants to sit under and look at that had a mailbox on it. He made one piece of mail and then for hours would put it in the mail and walk around and take it out. TOOOO funny. He did like getting his face painted, he know exactly what he wanted, a green frog. I think that it is the cutest thing in the whole world. The best part, the children's museum was in a mall, the best mall, so we went shopping when we were done. What a great day!!!

Galveston Beach

Well we went to the beach for the first time on Labor Day. WE LOVED IT. It was so much fun. We loved jumping in the waves, playing in the sand, looking for and trying to catch crabs and cool little fish, seashells hunting, relaxing in the WARM WARM WARM water, and just being together in the ocean!!! We will definately go back time and again!

LIZARDS

If anyone knows Ryan very well, you know that he loves, animals, especially reptiles and amphibians. Well our yard in TX, is a gooey creature paradise. There are lizards everywhere, frogs, toads and even snakes. Luckily we have only seen one(not me, even luckier) snake, and it was not a bad one. Dennis sees the frogs and toads when he is mowing the yard. And we all see the lizards all over all the time. Ryan is very fast at catching these little creatures. Here is a lovely picture of him with one of the bright green ones.