This is Halloween

This whole week hinged around Halloween and Halloween type events. It started off slowly though. Annika stayed home from school on Monday with a nasty cough. Fortunately it was mostly gone by noon. I probably should have sent her, but I didn't want the other parents to lynch me because I had sent a semi sick/coughing child. :) Sadly we also missed gymnastics and a group piano lesson. Happily Annika got to do a make up for her piano lesson on Wednesday and had lots of fun. :)

Tuesday night's sewing - much better! I actually sewed a super fandangeled pocket. Amazing - I know! And I learned how to put in a zipper. Not so fandangled - more mangled. But at least I know how to do if I ever need to. Which I probably wont. :)

Wednesday was a blur of running errands to pick up items for our Thursday and Friday activities. Needless to say Target and Walmart got A LOT of our money this week! We also got our first snow of the year. Mieka went out and ate some snow and then came back in and conked out on the couch.

Yum .. savoring the taste of melting snow. Mieka is quite the connoisseur of snow.

Sleeping with her natural hot water bottle.

Thursday was Annika's Harvest Party and Mieka's Halloween party at school. I bundled Mieka up her in super cute girly shark costume (notice the pink bow!). She was super excited to be able to take candy to class and have a party!

After dropping Mieka off I headed over to Annika's school to help with their harvest party. They don't celebrate Halloween at American Heritage, so we did more of a harvest theme. My portion of the pony show was the craft. We made little gourd/pumpkin people. I was so busy with my part that I didn't notice the other areas. But Annika told me that decorating caramel apples was her favorite part. And I heard lots of kids cheering and laughing while doing the pumpkin bowling game.

Here's our family gourds made from the left-over materials.

Later that evening we decorated our pumpkins. I thought we would try painting them this year. Unfortunately I didn't think about the paint being washable - Dave's pumpkin was washed clean by the rain. Bummer. :( The girls had a good time and because it was paint they were able to "decorate" the pumpkin and themselves many times over. :)

Friday we spent the morning racing to get things ready for our neighborhood kid party. We have A LOT of kids on our street around the same age of Annika and Mieka. We had 26 or 27 little ones show up for the party. It was chaos. Next year I think I will rethink having so many and doing so many different little crafts. Or maybe next year we'll just have more adults there to help and supervise.

We made spiders out of suckers, decorated pumpkins, decorated cookies, made little mummies out of toilet paper tubes and ate donuts off a string. It was a sugar fueled fest - but I think everyone had fun.



The next day was Halloween eve. It was a rainy afternoon and Annika fretted that we wouldn't be able to go to the ward Trunk or Treat or regular trick or treating. She asked me at least 10 times if we were going to go. Ack!

While we waited out the storm Dave put on his "Dave the Builder" hat and hung some shelves and put up some swings down in the play room. Slowly but surely we are getting things pulled together. Maybe some day we'll get everything up on the walls and organized. Probably just before we move. :)

Our new nifty little library in the playroom. Yay!

It really started to pour around 5:30 but we decided we would just wade through anyway. Annika dressed up as a beautiful butterfly, Mieka - a cute little shark, and me - a bee. Dave decided to forgo dressing up this year - and for once I didn't make him. :) On the way to the trunk of treat Mieka declared that she was the kind of shark that ate bugs - not fish. Apparently she had plans for me and Annika later that evening. :)

I think the prayers of many parents and the activity committee were heard that night. We got to the Trunk or Treat shortly after 6:10 and the rain stopped at around 6:20. Amazing! In less than 20 minutes the girls bags were 1/3 full and they were ready to go knock some doors.

We first headed over to Nancy's part of the neighborhood so that the girls could visit her. We got some great hot bread sticks to warm us all up while we were there. Thanks!

And then we went over to Dan and Emilee's part of town to go Trick or Treating.

Mieka was so tired by the end of the night she could only drag her bag of candy behind her. Poor tired shark!

By the time we got home the girls each had literally 2 lbs 14 ounces of candy. I weighed it! :)

We celebrated the actual Halloween on Sunday by having candy pumpkin pancakes - nothing like candy to start your morning off. The breakfast of champions!

After church Grandma and Grandpa Sucher stopped by for a visit. The girls chased Grandpa around the house and blocked the door so that he couldn't leave. I think they like him. :) Later we headed over to Nancy's for dinner. We were treated to some great Korean curry and very interesting chats about computer programming and iphone apps. :)

Over all a super great week! Tomorrow is Election day. Yay! I'm very interested to see how the elections work out.

Busy Bee's

Busy, busy week. Annika had Monday off from school, so both her and Mieka spent the morning playing with Nancy. She took them to school where they fed the animals in Nancy's science room. Afterward they had a picnic with one of Nancy's friends. And they made a stop by Animal Ark where they picked out a great costume for Asher. Thanks Nancy! I'm sure Asher will gladly bite you next time he sees you. :)

Later in the day, after gymnastics, we headed over to the Barn Yard Boo for family home evening. The girls got their faces painted. Seems that the little black cat was very popular that night. :)

Next we steered the girls over to the classroom where they decorated and ate a sugar cookie and made slime. The slime wasn't quite so slimy - it turned kind of hard after a few minutes. It actually would have made a great bouncy ball if I had thought to have squished into that shape.

We ended the night with a pony ride and a few more crafts.



Thanks to Jen for coming with us and helping with the different projects!

On Tuesday the girls got to go with Dave to pack meeting while I went to my sewing class. The girls thought playing games and eating pumpkin shaped doughnuts was the highlight of the day. I mean while was chasing bobbins under tables and sticking pins in my fingers. Good times.

Wednesday we were suppose to go a Chemistry Magic show down at BYU to celebrate National Chemistry Week. But the fates were against us - well actually it was UDOT but we'll call them the fates for this week. We left at 6:20 thinking 40 minutes was enough to get down to BYU. At 6:50 we were at 1600 South in Orem. We had barely gone 8 miles in 30 minutes. Bummer. Needless to say we missed the show. Double Bummer.

Thursday we went to a craft class at the Thanksgiving Point Dino Museum. I was hoping to get some more ideas for our neighborhood party we are having on Friday. They did do a few fun things, like making dirt out of oreos and putting cool whip and worms in them. But, I think I'll have to search through Family Fun to get a few more ideas.

Later we went to the dentist ... dum dum dum! Happily there were no screams or tears this trip. Yay! Both girls were cavity free and left happily with their new princess tooth brushes, tooth paste, and dental floss. Mieka had her whole box of floss out and wadded up in her lap by the time we got home. Nice!

Friday was the Fall Festival at American Heritage. Mieka and I spent the morning making cupcakes to take for the bake sale. We made these apple cupcakes from the Hello Cupcake book (thanks Marianne!)


I went to the school around 5:00 to help set up and serve food. I was amazed by how many families came through to get food. Kids that would actually eat a hot dog or sloppy joe! Amazing! A feat never seen before in our house. :)


Dave came around 6:30 and we went to the kids store and made a candy necklace. While Annika was eating one of the apple cupcakes we had made her front tooth fell out. Those mini doughnuts on top of the cupcake must have been pretty stale. :) All she could talk about for the rest of the night was the tooth fairy.

(Sorry - blurry iphone photo of a cupcake crusted mouth!
But we have to document the missing tooth yah know!)

When we arrived home she promptly put her tooth under her pillow and wrote a note to the tooth fairy so that she (the fairy) would know where the tooth was. You never know - you just might get a novice tooth fairy that doesn't know that the proper place for a tooth is under a pillow! Saturday morning - hooray! The tooth fairy came. Money! Happy Day! Annika immediately started to plan how she was going to spend her $1.

Saturday was also Annika's last soccer game of the season. It was a cold, rainy game and they called it shortly after the first half. Thank heavens! Mieka hid under our chairs for the majority of the time. I wish I could have fit down there with her. :(



Well - that's our week in compact form. I think this week will be just as busy with all of our Halloween activities. I foresee another Sunday nap that extends well into the evening next week. :)

Pictures for real

Ok, so here are some pictures for real. :) We were lucky enough to be able to have our pictures taken by the fabulous Heather Waegner last week. We went to a farm up Hobble Creek Canyon. It must be the photographer hot spot - there were 4 other families getting their photos done at the same time. We decided we wanted ours out in a field instead of by the barn. I think they turned out pretty cute. :)

My mom told me to ...

So, I've been getting some flack about not having any pictures of me in my posts. My mom told me to just "put your head in the picture." So - I did. Can you find me?


This picture by the way is a nifty contraption that Dave built for our garbage cans. He put a hook on the garbage can and then ran a rope through it to another hook on the ceiling and then down to the railing. Now I can walk out to the garage stair landing, pull the rope and it will lift the lid so I can throw the garbage in. No more tumbles down the stairs and no more stinky fly invested open lidded garbage cans. Yay! Dave the Builder - yours is superior!

HEE HAW!

It's almost Halloween. That means corn mazes, corn boxes, and corn hills to slide down - Hee Haws! Normally we head over to Corn Belly's at Thanksgiving Point, but we decided to try something new and were not disappointed. Hee Haws was great.

The girls loved riding the little animal train around the dirt course. It came with sound effects as well - the boy behind Mieka cried the whole time.


Next was a huge hill that they transformed into a giant slide. I think that was Annika's favorite part. She ran up and slid down the hill A LOT!


We tried the corn cannon - a high powered air cannon that you shoot out corn cobs, but Mieka was not impressed and ran as quick as she could away from it.

We next wandered over to the corn box - a large sandbox style thing that was full of corn. That lost interest after 2-3 minutes and they then wanted to try out the swings.


Who ever made these tire truck swings in the shape of a tractor is very creative! I've seen lots of horses, but never a tractor. :) With a steering wheel included!


And finally, once it was almost dark, we made our way into the maze. I was worried that both of the girls would get scared and cry and cry till we left. But they didn't! They thought it was quite the adventure. :)


Dave marked our starting point on his iphone and we were able to track our way through the maze. Very interesting to see the squiggly path that we created by going through the maze.


And finally we ended over at the petting zoo where Annika fed a goat and held a rabbit. Mieka held only Daddy. For some reason she didn't want anything to do with ANY of the animals. :)

Witches brew with bat eyballs

Annika and Mieka were able to go to a really fun Halloween cooking class at Thanksgiving Point yesterday. They started off by making their own apron. Fun!

Next they got to frost and decorate pumpkin cookies. I think they ate more frosting than cookie. Bleck. :(

Next came a cute little spider pop. I saw these in Family Fun. I think I might use them as a craft for our Halloween party.


Next a witches hat - round cookie, frosting, hershey kiss. Awesome!


And finally an odd little popcorn hand. Basically a glove filled with popcorn. :)


Over all they had a fantastic time (you can tell by the frosting, chocolate, and markers all over their face) and luckily their little friend Hailey was able to join them. :) I think that I will make sure that I keep my eyes open for other classes they do over there. They do a fantastic job!

Happy Thanksgiving Day Eh!

Well - actually Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day in Canada. Today we learned a few facts about Columbus (1. he thought he had landed in India and so therefore called the inhabitants Indians) and made the Pinta, Nina, and Santa Maria out of egg cartons. I'm amazed at the creative sites there are on the web with ideas for every single holiday around - including national doughnut day! Amazing!

Close up of the crazy egg carton boat. Maybe a bit too close - it's kind of blurry.

Annika with her Pinta.

Mieka dismantling her boat. Apparently Columbus didn't need or want the Nina.