Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!  Max joined us again.

Aren't they cute?  Buzz, Bee, and Raphael.

A cute little candy corn.  The funny thing was, she loved wearing the hat and kept it on for hours.

I won this delicious cake at our ward party.  Sorry ladies, I guess I am awesome at musical chairs.  Thanks Audrey, it is DELICIOUS!

This was the first year Ryan designed his own  pumpkin face (and then Spencer carved it out).  Can you tell there is a booger coming out of it's nose?  Ryan was pretty proud when he won a prize at the ward pumpkin contest.  

A city so nice, i'll post about it twice

Mabel was really excited about the whole trip.  Except sleeping time (sorry again Dan and Anne!)

This is the great hall on Ellis Island where Immigrants would be brought before entrance to America.  Also a good place for punching your brother.

Times Square

Central park is so fun.  We could have probably walked around the park all day.

And one of the coolest things about going to Manhattan is seeing the beautiful temple right smack in the middle of downtown.  

Thanks again Dan and Anne for a great time.  And a big thanks to Grammy and Gramps who let us sneak away for a trip and leave the boys with them.  Our boys had so much fun, they hardly missed us.  You can check out all the fun they had here.

We heart NYC...and Connecticut, and even New Jersey too.

I have loved Connecticut long before I ever visited the state.  It is the setting to my favorite childhood books, The Babysitters Club, and my favorite show, Gilmore Girls.  And then the fabulous Dan Grange's moved there and of course it got even better.  We just got back from a great visit to see Dan, Anne, and cute little Beckett.  

You can kind of see Lady Liberty off in the distance.  We were on the boat on our way to Liberty Island.  It was kind of drizzly that day, but the rain held off until our search for dinner later on.

We got to roam the streets of Newark where Dan served as a missionary for our church.  We ate delicious Brazilian hamburgers in the Portuguese area of town and got to see a lot of areas where Dan served.  Some of the areas outside of the city where some of the most beautiful little neighborhoods I've ever seen.

New England didn't disappoint with drives like this everywhere we went.  

And here is Yale University where Rory Gilmore went to college.  

Doesn't Mabel look smarter at Yale?

look what I can do!

Mabel says "Happy Birthday Daddy, I love you!"

Crawling and pulling up has opened up a whole new world for Mabel.  

oh Ryan

Ryan engaged us in a deep conversation today.  He loves these.  Over the last couple months we've had lots of talks about death, babies, and heaven.  The topic of discussion this time was on having children.  Ryan is always talking about how many kids we will have in our family and asks me "when are you going to get pregnant?"  I think he thinks he's part of the decision making process.  Anyways, Spencer asked him how many kids he wanted to have.  He replied, "4 boys, and 5 girls".  And he knows their names:  

Boys- Junior, Scar, Brigham Young, and Simba

Girls- Elizabeth, Erin, Sarabi and 2 more I can't remember

I was listening to this conversation and I told him he better get a good job if he is going to have 9 kids.   He thought for a moment and then told me "Heavenly Father doesn't make us pay for babies".  duh mom.  

I then explained that what I meant was that he had to pay for their food, clothes, that kind of thing.  So he decided he would fix trucks.  

Oh how I wish I could attach a tape recorder to him when he goes to school to hear what kind of things he talks about with his teacher.  

Galloping Grace Pumpkin Patch

Spencer agreed to the boys request for picking out really BIG pumpkins this year.  Have fun carving those big guys spence!

Racing rubber ducks down gutters with hand pumps.  What a great idea.

The giant corn pit...like a sand box but with hard corn kernals.  The boys probably could have stayed in here all day.

Giving eachother high fives on horses.  We were pretty surprised how brave they were about just jumping up on the horses.  

The Galloping Grace Pumpkin Patch is probably the best pumpkin patch around for little kids. They get to ride horses, pick a pumpkin, race ducks, play in the corn pit, go through a corn maze that is made just for little guys, play pumpkin bowling and do a beanbag toss, and lots more.  Best of all, you get to do all this for free and just pay for your pumpkins, which benefit a great cause.  The kids LOVED it.

glowdeo

Our first ever Glowdeo was a big hit.  Ryan said it was the "best ever".  What 4 year old wouldn't love a bus ride to a big park full of hot air balloons, fireworks, and glo sticks?  The 28-year olds liked it too.  

7 months

At 7 months Mabel is:

*CRAWLING!  yikes.

*refusing to eat solid food...anybody got any tips for a baby that doesn't want to eat?

*pulling herself up onto her knees

*can get into sitting position herself

*toothless

*still as cute as ever