Party Pics

Me and Matt - I went as a pink lady and Matt went as my Grease Lightning, but people kept asking him why he didn't dress up! We will work a little harder on our costumes next year when we don't have three missionaries coming home the same weekend as the party!

Lucy went as a Halloween witch. Her costume changed continually until I found an adorable witches hat at Shopko!

Meggan won the award for Most Relevant costume. I loved it!

Marilyn and Joel were very authentic!

The Howard clan won the Best Group costume award - of course - coming as Ramalamba zombies! They also kicked off the best dance party ever with the official Ramalamba zombie song and dance!

Jack won Best Child - Boy costume, Emma won Best Child - Girl costume, and Londyn won Best Overall Costume.

Here are my other Pink Ladies - Jami and Jenny! Thanks to Jenny for the costume idea!

Lastly, Sean, who made a very convincing Wolverine!

I am sorry I did not see more of you there, but I was really bad about sending out invitations, I only emailed and facebooked! I had a lot going on. So, just remember that you are invited every year, the Saturday before Halloween from now until forever!

Hale Missionary Trio Return!

We are so excited to have the Hale family complete again - at least for the next nine weeks! Above is the first sighting of Marilyn and Joel at the airport. And below are the reunion of Emma with her Grandma Marilyn and Joel's first introduction to his new grandbaby Lucy.

We also were so privileged to be at the airport upon Cameron's return. I took a million pics for Marilyn and Joel's arrival, but forgot the camera for Cameron! I felt awful, but it doesn't diminish the excitement we felt! He looks great, glowing, skinny, taller....yea for our returned missionaries!

Drift by the Window

Today Lucy and I joined Emma and her preschool class at the pumpking patch. I was so excited to do something fall-y...fall-ish? I have decided that fall is my favorite season - I love going to the pumpkin patch, I love dressing up for Halloween, I love stuffing my gut full of turkey...I LOVE FALL and I don't care who knows it! Anyway, we had a good time and picked out some great pumpkins. Then I came home and decided to make some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies to further celebrate the awesomeness of Fall. This is a great recipe if you are looking for one: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/george-duran/pumpkin-chocolate-chip-cookies-recipe/index.html I topped mine with Cream Cheese....so good. Oh, and I didn't have nutmeg so I played around with the spices a bit - I used pumpkin pie spice plus some other stuff.




Oh, one other thought - when we were at the pumpkin patch there were only about a hundred other preschool kids running around and I heard a fellow mother tell her child "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit." I found it funny since my mom totally used to say that to me when I was growing up. Weird how those old sayings stick around.


If you haven't heard, we are having the annual Hale-o-ween party on Saturday. I would love for you to come! Comment with your email if I forgot to send you an evite and I will get it to you with all the details...should be a good time!


Yea for Fall!


Sarah

Lucy's One!!!

Today is Lucy's 1st Birthday! I would say "I can't believe my baby is one year old" but...I kinda can believe it! It has been such fun to have little Lucy in our family. She is a riot - every minute. I love her glistening, penetrating eyes; her excited shake; and even her whiny yells of "Mommm-eeee." Her newest tricks relate to her trying to walk and sing. This little girl loves to sing! As you can see from the video above, she is making progress towards the whole walking thing, but I think Grandma Marilyn has been faithful in her prayers that Lucy won't walk until she gets home - Lucy hasn't taken a step yet, but she cruises around the furniture and stands very well. I anticipate that she will walk on Saturday when Grandma Marilyn finally returns!

Anyway, we love her - she is a great addition to our family - the opposite of Emma in so many ways! She has a little tomboy streak - she loves balls, blocks, and driving cars around the room while she says "vroom, vroom!" But she also loves jewelry and loves me to fix her hair! She is a Daddy's girl - I love to watch her stare at him adoringly. She loves to pester her sister - but they also share a great bond. And lately she has randomly been giving me kisses - so I think she likes me too!

Happy Birthday Lucy!

Mom

The Beautiful House

Last weekend our good friends Sean and Sarah generously invited us - okay, there may have been a little encouragement on my part - to their condo in St. George. Our other good friends Kevin and Melissa came also. It was quite a party with the 5 kids and 6 adults! We spent the first day at the Wildlife Museum. To save money on tour guides, they give you a radio that you can listen to, but you can't hear anything unless you put it directly to your ear - as pictured to the left! We all looked pretty silly, as you can imagine. The kids liked looking at the animals and just spending time together! They were really good, actually!













After the museum we headed to Main Street to stop at my favorite place in St. George, Twenty-Five on Main. We ate lunch (their food is delicious!) and ate an infamous cupcake (I shared a coconut and pumpkin chocolate chip with Matt - DE-lish!). !













Then we took the kids to the water fountain by the tabernacle. Emma hates being splashed in the face, so we found this other water feature that was more her speed. It was a cool little stream. The kids loved playing in the water and getting wet - especially Lucy, who has no fear when it comes to getting splashed, unlike her sister! After we took the kids home to get cleaned up and rest, we had a make-shift BBQ at the park and played games the rest of the evening. It was a really great trip!

Emma's absolute favorite part of this trip was just playing with her friends! She didn't want to leave "the beautiful house" which is what she called the condo - she just wanted to stay inside and play! Even now she talks about how much fun she had!

We are so grateful for good friends and for the times like this where we get to draw closer and create memories! Thanks so much Sean and Sarah and Kevin and Melissa for a great weekend!

Belated Labor Day Getaway

Tuesday night Matt decided that Wednesday morning we were going to "get-away" for a couple of days. I was at the ready, since our chances to get away will be getting fewer and farther between in the next couple of months. Our first thought was to go north, to Jackson Hole - but with a last minute check of the weather - we changed our course and headed southeast, to the mountains, and Emma's favorite spot: Park City. We spent our first evening at the movie theater watching "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." I enjoyed it, Matt thought it was silly, and Emma was excited to get outside afterwards and eat the meatballs that had fallen from the sky. We are still trying to get across the fact that movies aren't real! Favorite line: "Steve, we've got some diem to carpe!"

We headed past the Park to Midway for our first night's stay. We decided to try one of Matt's family's old haunts: the Homestead. It turned out to be a nice quiet refuge and we woke to a beautiful morning and a whole day to do with whatever caught our fancy. We grabbed some breakfast, explored the famous Crater, and then went to try our luck at horseback riding. To no avail. The offices were open, the horses were feeding, but there was not a guide or a rider in sight. So, moving on to our next plan - we headed toward Park City and checked into the Mountainside for our next night's stay. Matt and Emma had a pleasant afternoon swimming in their pools, while I spent the afternoon doing one of my favorite things - reading. I read while Lucy napped. Matt then took Emma down the alpine slide. She loved it and still talks about the "long, long slippery slide." Lucy's favorite thing was swimming, swimming, swimming! She is not like her sister that way and would dive right in if we would let her! Today we decided to make a stop at Ruth's Diner and Hogle Zoo on our way home. We got to see all of the baby animals that were recently born and we ate Ruth's famous Mile High Biscuits that I could eat daily (and thus grow happily fat). Lucy went NUTS over the animals, while Emma was distracted by her thirst, the people, and the gift shops. But, she did love the baby Elephant which I would definitely suggest seeing!

All in all, we had a great couple of days, a much needed escape - and are now attempting to rest up for the crazy weeks ahead!

As a bee...

Life has been very busy lately! Emma has started preschool and dance, Matt is building his homes in Farmington, and I have been helping Matt in the office and working as Farmington's Art Coordinator and been...being a mom! I feel like every spare minute has been taken up with something!!! I just spent the last two weeks auditioning and casting kids for our upcoming youth theater and now I have only three weeks to complete the preparations for Dinner Theater. Oh man. Its nuts! As crazy as it has been, I love that I can help Matt and I love what I get to do for the City and I love being a mom - so I am not complaining...more....explaining why I haven't blogged in so long!

So, yeah, Emma started preschool and she is really enjoying it. Here is a picture of her first day!

Every time I ask her about her day at preschool she says her favorite thing is to play with the toys. I love that she comes home and tells me "The letter A makes three sounds" and then makes them! I am happy she is learning and growing.

As a family, we recently discovered something we all enjoy doing: going hiking. Here are some pictures on a hike we took over Labor Day weekend.

It is fun to spend some time as a family, but there is a drawback: Emma is the slowest hiker in the history of hiking. I was about to go crazy trying to follow her up that mountain! As slow as she walked, she wanted to keep going when we finally decided to head down the mountain. She would have hiked to the top if we would have let her!

Lucy was also enjoying nature in her own little way! Anyway, we hope to go hiking more often as the weather cools - let us know if you want to go or if you know of any good hikes.

Also, let me know if you want to help out with dinner theater! We need help preparing and serving dinner and also my director is looking for a prop master and backstage help.

Well, don't think I am too busy to call or hang out! We still love playdates and barbeques! They are what make all the craziness of life worth living!