Trunk or Treating

While we were at Grandma Shupes, mom had mentioned that their neighborhood was sponsoring a trunk or treating. Anyone was allowed to come. So we called Jeff to see if he, Tiff and the kids were going. Luckily that had decided to go, so we went to the trunk or treat with them. I love the trunk or treating best. I love that you only have to go to one place and get all your trick or treating done in one clean swoop. I'm not a fan of door to door. When we got there, there wasn't a ton of people there, but as time went on the numbers progressed quite a bit. The kids kept going around and around until it was time to leave. The first time around Ben and Jeff took the kids, but when they were done, the kids wanted to go around again. We didn't see any harm in it since everyone else continued to go around and around. Gabbi went with Kayla and her friends. It was funny because at one point she saw something that scared her and she ran for it. It was funny. The only bad part about trunk or treating beside have kids go around more then they should was trying to get the kids to stop so we could leave. Gabbi was not happy that we had to go before it was over. She still wanted to trunk or treat with Kayla. It was sad to see the crocodile tears, but it was time to go. We had other plans and she just didn't understand that. Oh well, she will when she's older. Don't be sad for her, she got plenty of candy. More then she needed. On the side note, after we left the trunk or treating we headed up to Garland. The entire car ride Gabbi was trick or treating. She would go in all directions of her, holding out her blanket, saying trick or treat. It was pretty cute. She finally got the hang of it.

Halloween visits

The best part about the holiday's is getting to go and visit family that we don't get to see very often. The kids had a blast being dressed in their costumes and visiting their grandparents and great grandparents. It was a great Halloween this year.

Nana and Papa

Grandpa Nelson and Grandma Deann

Grandma Annie

Great Grandpa and Grandma Williams

Great Grandma Shupe

Great Grandpa Sagez

Great Grandma Sagez

Halloween Dinner

This year's Halloween family dinner was done at Jenny's house. Truly the best place to have it because Halloween is Jenny's favorite holiday. She put on a great Halloween party. She had fun party foods like ghost cookies, bar-b-qued fingers and toes, and a yummy spider 7 layered dip. The kids loved the ghost cookies the best. It was fun to watch them run around scaring each other with their cookies. She made some really good soups with yummy toppings for dinner. Everyone, even Owen enjoyed the soups. Once we were all done and cleaned up we did the traditional pumpkin carving. The best part about the pumpkin carving is to watch Jeff. He loves to carve pumpkins and he goes above and beyond when he carves his pumpkins. This year Jeff followed the theme of Star Wars. He did one pumpkin at his in-laws that was R2-D2 and the one he carved with our family was the Death Star. they turned out absolutely great. Each kid got to carve or color their own pumpkin and they just had a blast. They turned out pretty good too. The dogs cleaned up the floor, its a great tradition. Ben and Gabbi worked on our family pumpkin. I'm not a huge fan of playing with the inside of the pumpkin so I am very grateful for my hubby and wanted to carve the pumpkin with Gabbi. Ben and Gabbi both gutted the pumpkin, Ben carved the pieces and Gabbi pulled the pieces out. She loves having such a big part in helping Ben carve the pumpkin. It was just a face, but they did a great job together.

Fire Tree

Ben calls this the fire tree. We are not sure what type of tree it is, it's not a tree that we have really ever seen. But its in our back yard and when the leaves started changing Ben said that it reminded him of a burning fire.

Pumpkin Maze

On the way home from visiting Grandma Annie, we decided to stop by the corn maze to see what it was all about and to see if Gabbi might be able to enjoy herself. We went to the only one we saw when we were headed out to Roy. When we got out of the car to see exactly what they had we were surprised how much of it was triggered to kids. So we decided to stay and play for a while. The had a giant hay slide, which of course was Gabbi's favorite part. So she went down a few times, and then we decided to go through the maze before it got dark. We didn't have a flash light with us, so we didn't want to get stuck in the maze without a way out and I did not want to go through when it was haunted. Haunted was later. While in the maze Ben put Gabbi on his shoulders so she could get a birds eye view of the maze. He decided that it would be really fun to let her tell us where to go, and it was. Every time we came to a fork in the maze she told us where to go. It was a lot of fun. We got out of the maze in an amazing short amount of time. I think we were only in there for 10 minutes tops. Gabbi had a lot of fun telling us where to go. When we got out of the maze she of course ran up to the slide. She went down so many times and the majority of them were by herself. Such a brave girl. Ben and I did get into some of the action on the slide as well. We even took Owen down. The pictures so give it justice of the real look that was on Owen's face. He looked terrified. Needless to say, we only took him down two or three times. The night was blast. I was only peeved by one thing. The high school kids. They of course were screwing around and did care less about the little kids. Ben had gone up with Gabbi one time and one of the kids was messing around and grabbed Ben and playfully threw him on the slide. Gabbi freaked out. She thought that this kids really hurt Ben and she was hysterical. She was screaming bloody murder not knowing where to go or where her daddy was. She just stood there. We were waiting there just a minute or so to see if she would come down, but she was to freaked. Ben ran up there and swooped her in his arms and went down the slide with her. The nerve of some kids. It really ticked me off. It makes you think that if they have as many people as they did on those slide they would try to keep the crowd to a small wave. They did eventually have someone up at the top to regulate how many people could go down at a time. IT WAS ABOUT TIME. Once I had had my fill of the slide we took the kids around to the other activities. They had wooden horse rides, a candy pit, and picture boards. The ones you can stick your face through. Even though I was some what peeved by the idiots, it was still a great family activity.

Square Dance Halloween Party

Grandma and Grandpa Hall belong to a Square Dancing group and each year they put on a Halloween party for themselves and their grand kids. The kids look forward to this each year, at least I do. Grandma and Grandpa are so proud of their family and truly enjoy being surrounded by their grand kids and great grand kids. When you walked in, you were greeted with an award winning metal and a musical kazoo. Then they got everyone out on the dance floor. The cutest thing was to watch Grandma and Grandpa dance with our kids. You could tell that Grandma and Grandpa were on cloud 9. The had an announcer that would explain each dance and even demonstrated so all the kids could see how the danced was done and then they would dance. As you know from previous posts, Gabbi loves to dance and she had a ball. Her and Kamree took center floor half the time, it was just so cute. To top it all off they looked even cuter with their costumes on. All the kids were dressed up, a lot of the adults were dressed up, there was dancing, refreshments, and just a lot of fun. The kids even got to put on a costume parade and they trick or treated to each member of the group. We had another great hit this year with the Square Dancing Halloween party.

Primary carnival

The primary carnival is planned and put on by the Young Men's and Young Women's groups in our ward. Each class was in charge of putting together a game for the kids to play. With Ben being in the Young Men's presidency, his boys were in charge of a game. The boys wanted to do a bean bag toss. So they came to our house several times to get it ready for the carnival. They had planned for the carnival to be on a Thursday night so we would have the building to ourselves and not interfere with another ward. Well a mix up happened and out carnival was not put on the church building calendar. So another ward had the same thinking that our ward had. Oops. So after deliberation, both ward decided to work together and have a giant carnival. It wasn't bad, but it sure made for a lot of people. It was very crowded trying to get through the halls and when you have a 3 year old wanting to go in and do everything, its kind of hard to keep track of her when you can't really see her through the crowds. It was fun though. They divided kids up into groups and they went around the building to the different classroom for each game. They had an obstacle course, face painting, fish pond, bowling, cake walk, glow in the dark bowling, wood cut out pictures, and many different versions of bean bag toss. It was definitely the game of the night. Gabbi's favorite was the obstacle course. You got to swing on a rope and hit a wall of boxes to see how many boxes you could knock over, then you got to go through a tunnel and then ended with a basketball toss. It was fun to watch her figure out how to complete each section of the obstacle. Even though it was almost complete chaos, it was still a lot of fun for the kids. Even Owen played some of the games. He loved it, just as much as Gabbi did.

Amanda and Dan Wedding

After 5 years of dating Amanda and Dan were finally married. The wedding was beautiful. Amanda had to plan a lot of it by herself because Dan was out of town with work. She did a great job. She looked absolutely gorgeous in her dress and Dan looked very nice in his tux. They made a perfect couple. I am so happy for them and happy to say that Dan is now a part of the family. He always has been, but now it is official. They held their wedding and reception at a reception hall in Layton. The place had a very nice hall for the wedding and reception and had beautiful scenery area for pictures. They had the wedding ceremony first. The ceremony was very touching. The marriage was performed by a judge and he did a wonderful job. At one point Amanda was in tears. It was very exciting to see how happy they were and how finally all their hard work and time had paid off. Once the wedding ceremony was completed, we had pictures taken. Some of them and some with family. When the pictures were done we had dinner and the reception started shortly after. Gabbi had a blast running around the yard and on the balconies with her cousins, but her favorite part of the night was the dancing. After the wedding traditions were over (i.e. cake, the bouquet toss, and the garter toss; they did a dance). It started with Dan and Amanda taking their first dance as husband and wife. Then they had a few more dances with family and then they opened up the dance floor to everyone else. Gabbi couldn't wait. She wanted to go out as soon as Amanda and Dan did. She's not a very patient child, so that was hard for her, but once she was given the green light, she had a ball. I think she was on the dance floor from the get go and wouldn't stop. Of course she did stop when it was time to eat cake. It was over all a great wedding. Amanda and Dan, you guys did great job putting it all together. The lucky ducks are now enjoying their honeymoon in Hawaii.

She danced

and danced

and danced

and danced

and danced

and danced, the night away.

Saying their last good-byes as the walked through a throng of sparklers.

Taking their first drive as Husband and Wife as they leave the reception hall on a very nice modeled car. I think 1970's.