My other blog

Wondering the details behind our Points system that gets mentioned whenever Kaylyn wants to play with a friend? I just posted about it at my other blog. I'd love to hear how you decide what your kids can and can not do.

I've also started sharing some spiritual thoughts on Mondays. I'd love to get others thoughts too.

It's Girl Scout Cookie Time

Today starts Girl Scout Cookie Time for Kaylyn's troop. If you'd like to place an order with the cutest Daisy Girl Scout ever (until Morgan becomes one) ....

Please let us know. We turn in initial orders on Jan 23rd. We'll be emailing and calling around too but you don't have to wait for us.

Trick or Treating

After all our other activities for the day, it was time for trick or treating. Kaylyn decided to change costumes. Both girls refused to put on coats, although we did convince them to wear shirts under their costumes.
We headed off to start our neighborhood.

The girls enjoyed getting candy and saying Hi to all our neighbors.

It took most of the night before we found Kaylyn's friends Rylie and Madelyn who were also in the neighborhood. We never did catch up with our neighbor Sydney :(

Halloween at the Symphony

As the birthday party started winding down, we had the girls change into their costumes and we were off to the Symphony's Halloween concert (a free community event).
Our friend Tiffanie plays bass in the symphony. She also works for the symphony as their operations manager. Here's the view from our seats. We were running late, barely getting seated before the concert started, so we were in the balcony.

We enjoyed the concert and the girls enjoyed meeting our maestro afterwards.

Halloween birthday party at the fire station

Our friends Mike and Arlene decided to have their son Andrew's 3rd birthday party on Halloween at the fire station. We got a tour of the station, including the fire trucks. Morgan couldn't wait to climb in the engine! Kaylyn was content to just look at it.

After the tour, it was time for the pinata - but there wasn't any place to hang it from. So another friend of our's, Chad, volunteered to hold it for the kids to hit. Brave or not so smart? We're still deciding. But there weren't any hits on Chad.

But pinata's from Wal Mart are not designed to be hit to open - you have to pull the ribbons. On this one, the ribbons were attached to an interesting body part of the Transformer.

Lots of candy poured out.

Pumpkin Patch / Farm Field Trip

After Morgan's story time at the farm park, the 1st Grade classes at Kaylyn's school went on a field trip there. They got to learn a LOT about pumpkins! And then there were several activities for them to do.

Here's the introduction to pumpkins.
At the last minute, we ended up with Morgan's friend Seth for the morning so we just took him along.

Kaylyn and Morgan at the table to make a pumpkin face using stamps.

Another activity was to see which size pumpkin had the most seeds - the small pumpkin, the medium pumpkin or the large pumpkin. Here they are putting the seeds into piles to be able to count by 10s. (A little math learning on the field trip)

TOFW - Saturday

Saturday was just as awesome as Friday night's event.

It started off with Emily Watts who is real and funny. One of my favorite thoughts from her talk is that outward appearance can represent inner commitment but sometimes we spend more effort on the outward appearance than on that inner commitment.

Next was Sheri Dew's replacement - Remember those ah's of disappointment? Well when Sheri's replacement was announced, there was a gasp of pure excited. John Bytheway! I'd never gotten to hear him speak before and he was incredible!
Some thoughts from John Bytheway:

• feelings of comparing and competing fade away when the Spirit is present.
• As the sacrament bread is prepared and we are singing of the atonement, watch the Priests breaking the bread - bruised, broken, torn for us. There's a reason this is done in front of us not ahead of time.
• Appreciate our spouse. Not have him come home to a wife fed up with the kids, but to a hero's welcome.
• Ask "what's it like to be married to me?"

Any my absolute favorite was a quote he shared from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland...

The future of this world has long been declared; the final outcome between good and evil is already known. There is absolutely no question as to who wins because the victory has already been posted on the scoreboard. The only strange thing in all of this is we are down here still on the field trying to decide which team's jersey we want to wear!

After John Bytheway, was Wendy Ulrich. I hadn't really heard of her before but had probably seen her books in the DeseretBook catalog over the years. Well, my review after her talk - fabulous.


Favorites from Wendy, who talked about weakness verses sin.

• If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly rather than not at all, while you learn to do it better.
• 5 P's for a weakness... Ponder, Prioritize, Practice, Prop (Prop yourself up with good books, good people), Patience.
• The difference between sin and weakness is it's author!

Our last presenter was Kris Belcher, another newbie to me. But she was inspiring and uplifting. Her story is amazing and she's turned it into a wonderful way to help others. She had us crying sad tears to laughing so hard we were crying.... all 2000 of us!
Favorite thoughts from Kris....His will and my will must be the same and His isn't going to change. Adversity comes from sin or evidence that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ feel we're ready to grow more.

Now you'll notice that I didn't get pictures of everyone. Not sure why. But I know the reason I took like 10 pictures of Wendy Ulrich - I LOVED her suit. I want one for me. I told my friends with me that and they agreed it matched me. So now I have a quest to find that suit for myself :)

Here we are after the event - Heather, me and Claudine.