Only Highlight of Election Day

November 4th was Grandpa's birthday, so at least something good came out of that day.

Grandma wanted to get a picture of Grandpa with the greats. Marah wasn't too excited about it.

My mom gave Grandpa a bottomless bag of goodies. Lily just kept pulling one candy out at a time and filling up Grandpa's hands and lap.

Marah sniffed out the bag as soon as it was set a side. One sucker is never enough.

One of the gifts in that bag was a toy airplane. Grandpa had a lot of fun trying to hit people with it and he was a pretty good shot. One of the other toys was a gun that shot suction cup darts. Grandpa kept aiming for Grandma's rearend. I actually took a few of his stray bullets. It was fun watching him having so much fun with cheap little toys. It is hard to think of what to get Grandpa when he just doesn't need anything, but I was impressed with what my mom came up with. They were just silly things that would be thrown away then next day but they created some fun memories. I love how Grandpa is always up for playing. You can't help but be happy when you are around him. He may not remember our names but you know he loves us.

Lily made him a cute elephant card that she was so excited to give him. I'm so glad she has had some time with her great grandpa.

Here is him throwing the plane. I wish I would have gotten some of him shootin' people with the gun, especially him being after grandma.

Happy Halloween!

We had an awesome Halloween and I had a blast dressing up my beautiful girls. Lily obviously had to be a fairy. I made Marah be a pirate which I've wanted someone to be for the last couple years. I figured Marah doesn't have a say yet so that was what she was going to be. I just loved both of their costumes and had a lot of fun doing Lily's hair and make up. I did a little photo shoot in my back yard and got some fun pictures that I've been so excited to share.

We stopped at Grandma and Grandpa's on our trick or treat trek.

We hit the very end of the carnival at the school. We basically just wondered around. Marah was quite scared of all the people in costumes. This huge 10 ft. creature really scared her as you can see her clinging to her laughing dad. Have to admit I was a little scared of this one too.

No forces that I know of could have stopped these girls from stuffing their mouths with candy as we went from house to house trick-or-treating.

Lily loved the pumpkin she carved. She drew the face and I helped her cut it out. She loved it!



Saying good night...



....or so we thought. We didn't take into account how much sugar they had both consumed.

So the following are the pictures of the little photo shoot. I was so surprised so many worked out and have been so excited to share them. I may have gotten a little carried away with some of the photo shop stuff especially with some of the fairy ones, but oh well. I don't know if it was because Lily was the cutest little fairy I've ever seen or what but I got way into the fairy stuff that night. The girls were so crazy on sugar that we actually ended up watching the whole Tinker Bell movie after their bed time and it is all about all different kinds of fairies. It was just such a magical night and I didn't want it to end. It's fun to have peaks through my girls eyes into the make believe world every now and again. I find it really hard to pretend as I've gotten older but every once in awhile I have nights like these where I feel like a 4 year old again.

Playing catch-up

Here are just a few extra pics. I'm trying to catch up on this blogging stuff quickly because I am just so excited to get to my halloween post and I have been behind for awhile. There just seems like there has been a lot going on. Anyway here are just some random shots for anyone interested.

El Good-o Food-o Restaurant-o

My mom always makes us whatever we want on our birthdays, so I've been trying to do that on her birthday since I've been back to Monticello. She wouldn't tell me what she wanted so I decided to try to make restaurant style enchiladas since that is one of her favorite go out to eat dishes. Sydney came over to help me get ready for the party. We decided that since mom loves going out to Mexican food restaurants, we decided to make our own little restaurant. We named our restaurant "El Good-o Food-o Restaurant-o". Those of you in my family will understand the meaning of that. My dad always adds an 'o' to the end of any word and in his mind he is magically speaking spanish. We named the restaurant for his benefit. Sydney was the waitress. We set up two round tables and had little menus. Mexican food is basically all the same stuff just prepared differently, so I was able to put about 5 different things on the menu. We had chips and salsa on the tables and Sydney got all of their orders. My kitchen is pretty small so it was kinda tricky but I actually had a lot of fun preparing all of the plates. Everyone had a lot of fun and I'm just glad it worked out.

"The Cheff"

"The kid table"

"the birthday table"

Lily kept tearing up all the wrapping paper and throwing it all over. She hadn't even had any sugar yet.

Sorry about this picture. Couldn't resist. She is definitely a plumbers daughter.

My gift to mom was lamps and Sam started the trend of wearing the shades as hats.

The first thing Grandpa said when I put the shade on his head was "konichiwa".

My all time favorite picture of the night! What a cute couple!!

Twin Cracks!!

On the way to canyonlands, you go through Indian Creek where there are huge cliffs which always have many climbers that look like little specks hundreds of feet up. I always considered these people extremists and quite crazy, so never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be at the base of one of these cliffs threatening to climb it. My crazy sister, whits, started all this. She has been way into climbing lately and is awesome at it for the short amount of time she's been doing it. She was down a couple weekends ago and told me I had to come try it.

Here we are all geared up, trying to look the part. whits pulls it off with style, I however, am quite awkward. She taped my hands all up and told me it was so my hands wouldn't take the brunt of the damage about to be inflicted. Supposedely crack climbing is one of the most painful types. Oh yea!

Lily and Marah had quite the climb to reach the base of the cliffs, but they were good little troopers.

Yep, that's whits way up there not even half way to the top. I was speechless. This was the first time I had ever seen her climb and I was beyond impressed. She only had that one little crack to hold on to all the way up. I have no idea how she did it, and watching her I began to wonder if I should even attempt the easier climb they had set up for me. I was pretty sure I couldn't do it.

No backing out now. This is her friend giving me some last minute pointers. He is showing me how to jam my hand into the crack and wedge it down so I can pull myself up to the next hold. Yeah right!

It wasn't so bad and I was actually getting somewhere!

I made it!!! I'm petrified of heights in my older age and I made it. It was truly awesome. Usually I'm so scared to climb because I'm constantly visualizing my death but this was so different. I wasn't scared at all because I was tied in. I couldn't fall and it was so amazing to just see what I could do without worrying about falling. I definitely see how this is so addicting and would love to do it again with her sometime. I felt like the little sis trying to be like my cool big sis. Thank you so much Whitney for making me try that and actually believing that I could do something like that. It was awesome hearing you cheer me on. Thanks and love ya! Whitney told me it was 5-7 before I left but then called me later and said that they all climbed it and realized it wasn't as easy as they had thought. They looked it up and the climb was called 'twin cracks' and was actually a 5-9. That means nothing to me but she said a 5-9 was fairly advanced. It was just an overall awesome experience. I love being a mom but sometimes one day just blends into another so doing something like this really was a huge thrill in my simple mommy life.

GRRRRRRR!!!

I had to work that night and I was late so we were all running down the trail back to the cars. Marah was doing her best running down the trail but I had plenty of time to catch a few pictures.