To Infinity and Beyond!

After a night of trick-or-treating, our little Buzz is dreaming of infinity. 

 

Our evening included some festive tableware for Grandma's Bacon sandwiches:

 

Fury (The Avengers), Buzz, The Purple Ninja Turtle (Uncle Kioa),

she calls herself a "Bobcat", and Zorro.

Hyrum's jack-o-lantern:

 

Sariah's mimicks her own smile.  She lost another tooth after this picture!

Bryant, who gutted all by himself this year.

 

And James's and Talmage's campaign work.

 

Happy Halloween!

Rex meets kittens for the first time.

Rex has been able to say, "meow" for awhile now. 

Today he saw a real live one for the first time.

The kittens belong to the neighbors but have shown up at the house a couple times recently.  At the first sighting this place goes into full rescue mission.  Once all the kittens have been rescued from the lambing shed and surrounding area they are transported home where the kids linger for quite awhile.  These are pictures the neighbor sent me.

Friday, was Talmage's Class Halloween Party.  This costume was all of his accord.  He'll be a great one someday.

Parent Teacher Conferences

I told Talmage and Sariah  on the way over to conferences (Bryant wanted to stay home and read) that I love going to conferences and having their teachers tell me how wonderful my children are.  Tonight was no disappointment.

James spent the day in Provo with his family at Spencer Hales's funeral.  We think it is the first time all of his siblings have been together since we were married.  Although under unfortunate circumstances, he said it was neat to all be together again.

No more mud puddles.

I guess there won't be any mud puddles for Rex for awhile...or full on baths.

He decided to take a dive off the back of the arm chair.

Broke both his radius and ulna clean through. 

Doctor said at his age he'll be good as new in 4 weeks.

The only question...what's between now and then?!

 Fell asleep right before they casted it.

He doesn't like it much, but he did give me this grin. 

In a few days I'm sure he'll be throwing it around like nothing.

We try every night at the dinner table to share with each other our "positive thing" of the day.  This has to be mine. You can't see it very well, but in Sariah's cute little handwriting, with an arrow pointing at my face in the picture, it says, "I love you mom I hop that dusit chanj. love Sariah"  (I love you mom.  I hope that doesn't change. Love, Sariah)  How precious is that?!

"Good Mom"

This is when I deemed myself a "good mom" today.  I really didn't want to do the whole mud puddle routine, but we did anyway.

And of course, they had a blast.

Future duet?

 People ask me often what differences I notice between Rex and Lyle.  This is one obvious one:

Lyle ate his sandwich like a human, Rex ate his like an animal.

Lyle, clean.

 Rex, disaster.

Both happy.

And dare I pause to take a picture in the kitchen...Hyrum has an "assident."  Grape juice, up the wall, stains in seconds.  Thank goodness for bleach.

 Talmage finally got into a violin teacher today.  He just picked up that instrument and away he went.  I try to tell him he has a gift, I hope he sticks it out.

Dear Santa

 As I watched Sariah, barely out of bed, eat her breakfast this morning, I was struck again by how beautiful she is.  I suppose every mother sees her daughter that way, but she really is a beautiful girl with her long, sleek, golden hair.  She wore her hot pink trench coat for the first time to school today.  She has more taste in her pinky finger than her mother has acquired in thirty some years.

 These went out in the mail today.  Fun, fun!

(Kids are funny.  I could ask them 10 times to do something and it still never gets done.  James mentions that it might be about time to write Santa and within an hour on Sunday morning they've got typed, numbered, highlighted lists in stamped, addressed envelopes.  It's not that they aren't capable.  A matter of motivation I guess.)

And I turned around and I saw what the kids see every day before they get on the bus---a couple of really cute faces in the window.

Hanging on by a thread...

...literally.

Lyle split his lip open Monday morning and ended up with 2 dissolvable stitches and one to be removed.  By the time he went to sleep that night, the two dissolvable ones had come out. 

Since then, I have been "hovering" in hopes of keeping his lip together with just the one stitch.

The doctor said, "well if they were identical, they aren't now."

Still so cute.

This afternoon I caught this photo thinking, "this is a day in the life of."

Talmage practicing on the unicycle.

Hyrum and Sariah playing Oscar the Grouch in the garbage can.

Rex and Lyle putting rocks in a bucket.

It was a very pleasant afternoon.

Sariah's Seven

I'm really perplexed why all of a sudden I can't upload photos from my ipod.  I've got some fun pictures of Sariah and her birthday celebrations.

We were headed to hike Badger Mountain on Friday---a tradition we started on her 4th birthday.  The boys were farmed out and I was looking forward to our long talk up and down the mountain.  It was cold and windy when we got there.  My usual way of doing things---tough it out, build character---was what I thought I would instill in my growing daughter on this day.  A few hundred feet up the hill Sariah had her hands clutched at her hood holding it tight to her face and was saying she wished she had some gloves.  All of a sudden, I had the thought, "This is her birthday, she needs to enjoy it. Besides, I surely don't want to make it so she never wants to do it again."  I knelt down beside her and told her if this wasn't fun, we could do something else for her birthday.  She said she wanted to do something else.  So, we ate at Sonic with the sun roof open. She had a corndog, her favorite.  We walked around the Far West Boutique and looked at fancy, modest dresses.  And her favorite part, we got some window paint from JoAnn's and went to the seminary building to write on James's windows.  She was giddy the whole time.  She wrote, "Frum yor favrt gurlfrnds" and drew a lot of hearts.  She was so giggly and excited.  It was real fun.

Bryant bore a special testimony in sacrament meeting today.  Basically, he said that when he had watched conference last week he felt like he needed to bear his testimony.  He then said, "I need to get three things clear."  Then he bore his testimony of the prophet, the church, and prayer.  I was so proud of him because he really didn't want to, but he knew he had felt the Spirit and His promptings. 

He and Talmage did a great job fasting today.  It is not easy for them, but they do it.  It makes me happy.

We had our best sacrament meeting since Rex and Lyle were born.  For a short while, they just sat on our laps and snacked.  Dad said not to get our hopes up, it was just one Sunday.  Perhaps true, but it was so nice.

Dirty Apples

My photos aren't uploading for some reason...

It's nicer outside this week than last, and Rex and Lyle are happiest outside, so...

We spend a lot of time outside---exploring.

The golden delicious apples have been harvested and the boys love to explore with an apple in hand.  Usually, by the time they are done (or more accurately, by the time I finally take their apples away), both apples and boys are very dirty.

Tomorrow is Sariah's birthday.  She has been counting down. 

She went to bed early so it would come faster.

Talmage independently raised $65 for the school fund raiser.  Funny how anything like that makes me SOOO uncomfortable and it doesn't phase him.

Bryant is studying spiders at school and Grandpa captured him one of the giant orb spiders from the porch to take to his classroom.  I'm sure his teacher will be thrilled.

General Conference

The bits and pieces I could pick up from the broadcasts while Rex and Lyle went about their activities make me excited to be able to sit down with our Ensign.  Actually, there will be a few talks I'm going to comb through as soon as they are available online. 

My sister-in-law, Marylan, always made cinnamon rolls for her family for General Conference.  I always thought that sounded so fun.  Now that it's happened for the last two conferences I'm going to officially call it a tradition for our family.  I still haven't figured out how she had them ready for the morning session without starting them at like 2am, but knowing Marylan, she probably does.

Out of the Mouth of Babes

Cleaning up after dinner tonight, Hyrum exclaimed:

"We gotta get this mess cleaned up before the next parade starts!"

I couldn't have said it better myself. 

Walk-a-thon

This evening was the Basin City Bobcat Walk-a-thon Fundraiser.  I'm not a fan of fund raisers, but this one was different.  I got to watch the grin on my kids' faces as they ran and walked the laps around the soccer field, looking my way as they'd pass for my thumbs up.  Hyrum and Rex and Lyle cheered them on as I tried to keep them pacified with hotdogs and nachos.  My favorite part of all was when the field cleared and Hyrum asked me if he could run around it.  Talmage said he would go with him.  So, big brother and little brother ran around the field all by themselves, mile-wide smiles.  Mine too.  Oh, how I wish I had had my camera.  When we got home, that same big brother made hot cocoa for that same little brother as little brother hugged him around the leg. 

Bryant may have had the school's highest number of laps.  He's a competitor. 

Sariah bought a licorice rope with her hotdog.  Happiness.

Fish Lips

Lyle has been trying to give kisses lately, but just hadn't quite figured it out until bedtime tonight.  Sometimes he just put his little face close to his target, sometimes he blew a little puff of air.  Tonight, he had the biggest fish lip pucker and he did it.  So sweet.