Halloween

Oh Halloween- we do love this holiday, but I can say I'm glad it's over. It was well celebrated (like five separate parties!) Here's the run-down of what we did:

First was the Kaysville Elementary Carnival- this is the school where my mom works and they put on a darling free carnival every year. Chase is the best kid to take to stuff like this. He was so enthusiastic about all the games, talked to every kid he saw there (even though he knew almost none of them) and absolutely LOVED the cake walk (and had us laughing at his darling jumping-up-and-down excitement when his number was called). 

Hudson did not attend this event, since it was the day Ben got home from his 10 day work trip and we all felt like it would be best for Hudson to have quality time with daddy. When I sent the pictures from the carnival in our family group text, Heidi noticed the lack of Hudson pictured. This exchange just made me laugh:

(This is referencing a serious tantrum Hudson was having in which I calmly asked him what was bothering him. His response: YOU are bothering me!)

The next night was the trunk or treat in my parents ward, aka our old ward. I knew Chase would want to go to be with his little friends, so we tagged along with them! Chase ran around with Will and Matt (both Batman) and Paisley (the dalmation) and had a wonderful time. 

On the Monday before Halloween we traditionally carve our pumpkins for Family Home Evening. It was just too gorgeous a night to stay home all night, so we started off with a little family hike up in the beauty of the mountains. Fall is our very favorite time of year! And at sunset, with leaves that are already red, orange and yellow, everything looks gold and beautiful. It was a wonderful night (despite Hudson asking to be carried every 90 seconds).

 Then we carved pumpkins. Ben, always one to find an "easier" way to do things (even if that "easier" way takes "longer") used a drill on the pumpkin he was helping Hudson with. Chase immediately told me, "I wish dad was helping with my pumpkin so that I could use power tools!" Of course, it immediately became a three-man job.

Two nights before Halloween was our ward's Halloween Carnival. Because Hudson's firetruck costume (which I made) was a little cumbersome, he wore his monster costume to the party. I feel like the monster costume really is Hudson is his true form.

 The day before Halloween our neighbor hosted a little Halloween party for the kiddos! It was so fun and cute. They played several little games, decorated cookies and had some snacks. It was the perfect little get-together and a fun way to spend a morning.

 And then it was finally Halloween! The boys were so excited to trick or treat! We slowly made our way around our neighborhood (partly because Hudson walks slowly and partly because Chase liked to have a short conversation with most of the people handing out candy). I love our little fireman and firetruck!

And now I think we will all detox from the sugar high we are currently experiencing and start thinking about gratitude....

While Ben was Gone...

Ben went on a business trip to Washington DC this past month. We decided that since the company was paying for his flights and car rental, he might as well just fly into Richmond and spend time with his parents and grandma. It seemed like a lot better idea when we booked the trip in early October. The day before he left, our already difficult two year old turned into an even more difficult two year old and completely shook my confidence that I could do the single mom thing for 10 days. I can't say that it was the smoothest, easiest ten days of parenting I've ever had (actually, it might sound dramatic, but it was some of the very hardest!) but we made it through!

I am always looking for fun things to do with the kids, but especially during this time of year. And my kids are always easier when we are out and about and doing fun things than when we stay home all the time. The boys have so much energy! One afternoon we took my mom with us and went up to our favorite little hiking trail to do some hiking and a scavenger hunt. Chase loved looking for each thing on the list (something red, something hard, something pokey, something blue, etc.) Hudson spent the whole time insisting on looking for tadpoles. So after hiking for an hour, we headed to the Kaysville ponds to look for tadpoles. We didn't see any, but Hudson felt okay about it by that point. The mountains were gorgeous with beautiful leaves, the boys had a great time, and both boys crashed relatively early that night!

 On Saturday I enlisted my mom to babysit while I went to my friend's baby shower. She made sugar cookies with the boys, which they always love. Doing holiday sugar cookies is one of our traditions and even though it's so messy, it always seems worth it. Later in the day we went back to decorate them. The boys were so cute about it- piling on the candy and sprinkles. And of course, Hudson wore the binoculars the whole time. They are apparently critical to his creative process.

This is a picture from the baby shower I went to on Saturday- Jessica is having a long awaited baby girl in a few weeks! Jessica and Holly are my friends from the island- we got there at the same time and went through the whole experience together, and Jessica lived by us in Florida as well. It was so fun to get together with them. We shared such hard, trying, and amazing experiences together. I feel kind of weirdly emotional just looking at this picture, thinking of very specific times on the island when I needed a boost and either Holly or Jessica was there for me. Even though life didn't follow the path we thought it would, I will forever be thankful that I met such amazing people on the island and all I learned from them. 

My friend Ashley from our Provo days brought her little ones up to play one morning! We always love seeing them. Her girls are darling and my boys love them. They discovered this unused cupboard in our kitchen that rotates and it became a little ride for them all morning.

And oh dear Hudson- heaven help me! He is, of course, adorable, but he also has tested my patience like I never would have imagined! He did not handle his dad being gone that well, he's very attached to Ben and usually wants daddy to put him to bed, whenever he's sad, etc. So of course, bedtime without daddy was a pretty big battle most nights. And then he got into lots of trouble while Ben was gone too. One morning I ran upstairs to take a quick shower and he got the lipstick out of my purse and colored all over our couch! While I was cleaning that mess up, he ran upstairs and emptied his whole bottle of shampoo into the toilet. Right after that he unrolled a whole roll of toilet paper. He also has been throwing crazy, intense tantrums several times a day, which I don't really know what to do with. Then one night he bit Chase (he was pretending to be a dinosaur, obviously). Of course I love him, and he is delightful a lot of the time, but he sure gave me a run for my money while Ben was away. 

Needless to say, after ten days apart, we were pretty excited to get Ben back! Chase gave Ben a big hug and sweetly said, "Dad! I thought you were never coming back!" Hudson was napping when Ben got home, so when he woke up he glared at Ben and said, "I didn't want to see you!" After Ben started playing cars with him, he quickly warmed up to him and then pretty much didn't leave his side for a good long while. 

Basically, we survived, and it's nice to all be back under one roof again!

Books, Bow Ties, The Zoo and the The Marsh

One of my favorite parts of this time of year is getting out the Halloween books! Thanks to their Nana, our boys have quite the collection of Halloween literature and it's so fun to pull them out. I snapped a few photos of Ben reading to the boys on a few different occasions (In the first picture I believe they are reading Froggy's Halloween and in the second one they are reading Dinosaur's Trick or Treat). Our boys are such readers, they love story time so much and it's a big part of our lives. It's so fun to bring a little festive Holiday cheer into it!

 We went to the zoo again this week! We have such great friends with zoo passes that keep getting us in for free. We went again with our friends the Bennett's and Alyse's friend Chelsea and her kids. Chase was mostly just happy to be there with Ryder and the two of them occasionally glanced up from their running around to see an animal. Hudson, on the other hand, loves the zoo more and more each time we go. I don't have a favorite child, but I do have a favorite child to take to the zoo and it's definitely Hudson. He loves animals and gets so so excited. He was claiming that each one was his friend and each animal we saw was his favorite. He excitedly would yell "OH MY GOSH! There's my friend giraffe! Hi giraffe-y!" It was hilarious.

And then we got to the bears, which have always been a highlight for Hudson.  They were napping up against this glass pane, so Hudson laid down right by them and sang to them for a solid ten minutes. When I finally pulled him away he insisted "But mom, I need to sing my friend the bear some lullabies!" Oh my goodness, days like this remind me why we keep Hudson.

Not photographed, but worth mentioning, is that Ben and I got to have another beautiful get away to Park City that weekend, thanks to MarketStar! They treated us to a super delicious dinner and then a night at the NewPark resort, where we've now stayed twice and we love it! We did a ton of shopping and thanks to good luck and great sales found everything we were looking for. And then we came home to our two sweet boys, who didn't miss us even a little and were spoiled by their grandparents. I overheard Chase saying to my mom, "I like it when we stay here, we get to do whatever we want!"

The boys are now wearing their fall church clothes. They generally have just one church outfit to wear a season/they grow out of it. I bought them a few bow ties and I loved how cute and dapper they looked!

 And this is our beautiful marsh! Having bought our home in the winter, I didn't realize what a gem this is! Our property is bordering this gorgeous marsh and all spring/summer/fall I've absolutely loved the view! This is the view from my huge bedroom window and also from our kitchen sink, so I see it all the time. It was beautifully green all summer and now it's turning gold. Seeing the sun rise over the mountains, the pink sky, and this below is a beautiful, welcome sight every single morning. The picture doesn't do it justice, but trust me, it's one of my favorite things about where we live.

Some Fall Stuff

The Park: We have been to the park so many times in the last few weeks! The weather has been divine and we have a perfect little park very close to our house. One week we went to a park 6 times in 5 days! We've met a bunch of little friends there, or gone on our own, and once we took Nora with us!

Discovery Museum: Since the crowds die back down when everyone else goes back to school, we have been usuals back at the museum. I love playing here with the boys so much. It's amazing to watch their imaginations take over and see them "work" there.

Hudson's Education: While Chase goes to preschool, Hudson and I have our own little school. Hudson mostly knows his shapes and colors, but I have not made much progress in the past on his alphabet. So I just plan a few simple little activities around each letter and we are slowly making our way through the alphabet. These pictures are "E is for Elephant" and "D is for Donut". (He also really loved the day we learned about C- we made cookies). He's making progress!

BFSC Reunion: While Heidi was here visiting our BFSC Jana came down from Nampa to spend time with her. So we made it a little BFSC reunion and had a blast laughing, talking, listening to music and just being together. It doesn't happen enough now.

Pumpkin: Worth noting, we've made a serious amount of pumpkin recipes around here this fall. What can I say, we love this season and we are embracing it! So far we've made pumpkin cupcakes, pumpkin pie cinnamon rolls, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin baked oatmeal, pumpkin cookies and then we bought pumpkin bagels and cream cheese from Einsteins. Luckily for Ben and me, the boys seem to love pumpkin season just as much as we do.

Napping- Huds is still the king of naps. But now he tries to stay up late at night too, so we've been limiting him to a 2-3 hour nap. The problem is that waking him up can be a big mistake- like screaming, crying, hitting, hair-pulling battle for over an hour. It's like waking a sleeping dragon. Ben figured out a much better approach. When we feel like he should wake up we open his door, turn off his noise machine, and just tell him it's time to wake up. Then we leave and let him wake up slowly on his own. It produces a much happier Hudson (although it takes longer). I walked in a few days ago after doing this routine to find this- which is just obviously so comfortable.

Out of the Mouth of Hudson

As I start singing him a lullaby: That's not a song mommy! That's a joke.
(he does this to me pretty much every night. It's nice to know my singing voice is "a joke"- it's a big confidence boost for me.)

After several rough weeks in nursery, he greeted me one Sunday with a huge smile. I asked him how nursery was and he said, "Good! No tears!"

 His new phrase he says all the time is "Why Because?"

We were watching the Minions movie and they show this underground evil fortress. In all seriousness Hudson turns to me and says, "My dad and me went there. Uh-huh. We did." (While nodding his head to really drive home the point)

While I was rocking him before bed one Friday night "Mom, I don't like you to help me on Wednesdays."
and in the same rock session "Nora is my cousin mom. You know Nora mom? And she lives with Katie. Katie is my aunt, right mom? And Unky Will lives at Nora's house."

He's so funny about how he uses pronouns- it's all "he" and "she", never "him/her". He always gets the right gender assigned though. So all day long I hear statements from him that sound like this:
"She forgot she's ball."
"Chase likes he's milk."
(About Nora) "I will not poke she with the crocodile. I say sorry to she. I give, and Chase gives she hugs and kisses." -if you can guess, this statement was based on an actual incident where he hurt Nora's feelings by repeatedly poking her with his little crocodile. And then we talked about it for a few days afterwards.

 He's way into BYU this fall. He's been calling them the "congas" and now finally the Cougars. He keeps sneaking downstairs while we are watching the football games (they've been late the last few weeks) and snuggling right up on Ben and intently watching for long periods of time. He's been calling BYU "By-You". As I'm writing this he's on Ben's lap (wearing his BYU jammies) repeatedly yelling "go cougars!" over and over again.

While scrolling through our family pictures he was identifying each picture (That's me! That's my brother Chase-eh!) and when the picture turned to black and white he seriously said "And now we are all dead." Sure enough, we were "dead" in each black and white picture.

While we were waiting for our bagels at Einsteins the other day he turned to me and said "You know Mom, waiting is really hard to do." Yes it is buddy.

The boys spilled some water. So they went to get towels to clean it up, and decided to play store in the process. Chase held two towels out to Hudson and said:
Chase: Which one do you want to buy?
Hudson: That one!
Chase: Okay, that'll be $42.
Hudson: $42!?!?! Here, $42 cash!
Chase: No, that's $41. You can't buy this.

Camping

We survived our first camping trip as a family! Ben and I have never been camping together, and obviously this was the first time the boys had been camping. It was so fun! And exhausting. And cold. And super wet.

 We kind of decided to go last minute and planned the whole thing the week of. We don't own any camping gear, but we able to borrow most everything we needed from generous family and friends. I found a camp site online that is up Big Cottonwood Canyon that was still open, so we decided to try it out! As soon as Ben got home from work on Thursday we took off and headed to the mountains with two very excited boys!

 We got our camp set up pretty smoothly with only minor hiccups and explored the area a little. We were so pleasantly surprised that it was absolutely gorgeous! The canyon itself is just beautiful, especially during the fall. The campground had amazing views and our site bordered on this pretty little babbling brook. It was the best place to camp and we easily agreed we will for sure be going back!

 After a late dinner and s'mores around our campfire we decided to head to bed. The boys were so excited to sleep in a tent! We bundled them up nice and warm and got all settled in just as a serious rain storm hit! There wasn't any lightening close to us, but definitely elsewhere in the canyon and the thunder was so incredibly loud and echoed all over. The boys easily slipped off to dreamland and Ben and I laid awake most of the night listening to the storm.

 In the morning we had two happy and excited little boys hop in bed with us (on the comfort of an air mattress- the best way to do it in my mind- we may have been awake all night, but at least we were comfortable). The boys sleeping bags got soaked, and despite our best efforts our tent let in quite a bit of water. I told them stories while they snuggled with us until it got light.

 We surveyed just how wet our stuff was and determined we really shouldn't spend another night there with sopping wet equipment. Our original plan was to camp for two nights, and we would have loved to if the weather had cooperated. We spent a little time playing around the campsite in the morning, taking in the beauty all around us. Then our beautiful clear skies clouded up and storm #2 hit! By this point the forecast unfortunately showed thunderstorms for the rest of the day so we decided it was time to leave. We hurried and took down camp in the pouring rain and headed for home, with everything (including us) pretty wet and muddy.

 So it wasn't exactly as we had planned or hoped, but it was still a great time. The beauty of the canyon alone was worth it. As was the happiness from our boys. We deemed the camping trip a success and we are already excited to do more camping next summer.