Costumes, cute kids and fun outings for Fall Break

For a while there (most of the summer) I wanted to "kill" my kids on a regular basis. Lately, though, they have been rather delightful. I'm not sure if this is because they all outgrew their annoying tendencies at the same time, or if separating them for 6 hours a day made them like each other better, or if giving *me* a break from them gave me enough time off to enjoy them when they're around. Maybe it's a combo. I don't know. But I've sure been enjoying them.

Cecily was a mermaid princess last Sunday and made this crown for herself. She asked for a picture and then made this face. I asked if the crown made her sad and she was like, "Oh! I didn't know I was making a sad face!"

On Monday, she was playing with a Grinchy Santa that Mira had gotten as a classmate gift last Christmas and Cecily had found recently and altered. She jumped up and said, "I need to make a Halloween one now!" She ran downstairs and after about 20 minutes, came up with a striped black and purple Santa. I complimented her on her cleverness and soon she was downstairs making a spring Santa, a winter Santa, an autumn Santa, and, of course, a rainbow Santa.

After she laid them all out on the ottoman and started playing with them, I went back to the writing I was working on. But after a while I tuned back in again. She'd gotten a small, see-through drawstring bag that she dubbed the ghost. He was haunting the Santas, taking them each away one by one (by eating them). She would shove them in the back, break them to pieces, and have the ghost spit them out on the ground before going back for the next one. I asked after the fourth one if the ghost was eating the Santas, (you know, just to make sure,) and she laughed. "Yeah. But they'll be fine. I can put them back together again."

The poor broken Santas that she took pictures of herself:

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty mundane. I worked on finishing the girls' costumes, attempted to keep the house clean, took the girls to the library and gymnastics, and did laundry.

Thursday and Friday were fall break for us. Wednesday night, Cecily and Mira got to have a sleepover with cousin Dylan. Steve went with to play LOTR with Ben, so Emilia and I had a nice evening together watching The Great British Baking Show and baking cookies.

Thursday morning, all the cousins went to Nana's house to make haunted "gingerbread" houses. Decorating gingerbread houses always bring out my kids' creativity and I love doing it with them. They'd gotten coupons for free smoothies from school that week, so after the activity, we got smoothies and then the girls played outside with friends for the afternoon. I got to have writing group that night which I always love.

Friday, we had a quiet morning, then went bowling at BYU, used a gift card to get a JoJo Siwa bow they'd been begging for, got ice cream and french fries for a snack, then each of us picked out an outfit at Kohl's for the baby. It was a really fun day.

Saturday, we decided to use one of our last Visit Salt Lake passes to This Is the Place Heritage Park. It was supposed to be 65 degrees, which is perfect because it is almost completely outdoors. They were having a Halloween event Saturday and kids were encouraged to wear costumes, so they all got to try out the costumes I'd finished during the week. Cecily is Snoopy, Mira is Glitter Unicorn (an anime power girl with a unicorn horn that she made up), and Emilia is (a real-girl version of) Princess Unikitty (from the Lego movie). I love how their costumes turned out. They are all so cute and they were SO excited.

We got to go to the park with Grandma and Grandpa Watts. The girls colored ceramic pumpkins, panned for gold, did leather stamping, rode the train, petting snakes and lizards (Grandma had one try to take over the wheelchair she'd rented because she'd sprained her ankle that morning), and participated in a costume parade. Mira and Cecily got to ride the ponies, but sadly Emilia was too tall. then Grandma and Grandpa gave in to treating the girls to the Lionhouse Pantry again. We'd gone on another outing because it was one of the Visit Salt Lake Pass activities. And they LOVED it. They've been begging to go back (even though none of us adults were super impressed) It's like a cafeteria-style restaurant--not a buffet, but you get trays and you get to pick the pieces of your meal you want as you go. They all stuffed themselves so full with the dinner food they had to take their desserts home. That's nearly a miracle for them, so I was happy. And our food was pretty tasty for cafeteria food.

Next week should be a crazy week. Lots going on pre-Halloween and all. I'm looking forward to Cecily's school program. It should be super cute. If anyone wants to come, it's on Friday at 2pm in her classroom.

Three weeks condensed into highlights -- yea!

I haven't posted for three weeks. I've been feeling super lazy. Am I allowed? :)

So, since there's no way I'm going to remember everything that's gone on, you'll get the highlights version based on pictures and my calendar entries and to-do list.

I've been nesting and satisfying a lot of sweets cravings lately. I'm not sure if they're pregnancy cravings or just an indication that I need to do a sugar fast, but it sure has been tasty.

I made regular and GF waffles for dinner one night and used the raspberry syrup I canned three weeks ago. It was more like jam than syrup, but it was still tasty on waffles.

Since Wilda had given us peaches and apples and pears, I made peach pie the last time I posted, I ate the pears since no one else would, and then I made GF apple bars and GF caramel apple bars (which basically tasted like apple cobbler with a caramel sauce drizzled over the top. Cecily helped me use the slicer/corer/peeler to get the apples ready for sweet sweet goodness.

Don't they look delicious? Don't worry. They were. :)

I worked a lot on Halloween costumes--shopping with each of the girls for pieces to their costumes, buying hats and making headbands with unicorn horns, and researching how to make them boots that won't cost me a fortune.

I worked on a throw pillow for the Childress's house, did a lot of writing, even more lego building, and decorated for Halloween.

This is the beginnings of the pillow:

Here are the Halloween decorations:

I also went to a paint night put on by our Relief Society one night. This is my friend, Julia (the one I used to help each week), and her daughter holding their paintings.

And this is mine:

Cecily wanted rainbow pigtails one day, so this is what we came up with:

I'm now officially in my 3rd trimester. Only 2 1/2 more months to go. Augh! Here's my 28 week belly picture.

Last weekend was General Conference for our church. It was a great conference and I can't wait to go back and read through all of the messages. My friend Emily, who used to be one of my college roommmates and currently lives in Ohio teaching Spanish to college students and junior high kids, flew into St. George for the weekend because she was running in the St. George marathon. Since she was going to be so close, I decided to drive down for the day on Saturday and spend a few hours with her. It was great to see her and catch up. I hadn't seen her in four years.

We also had a garage sale, I attended to a writing retreat, Steve had a couple game nights, Cecily went on her first field trip in which she got to ride on a school bus--so exciting!--I held Activity Days and taught the girls about manners, and Mira had a play date.

That about sums things up. Here are a few more random pictures to end the post: