Not too much to report for this past week but thought I'd go ahead and post, anyway.  We ended up babysitting the neighbor boys (the girls' friend, Jason, and his little brother) on Monday.  The girls were taking a nap when they got here and they slept longer than anticipated, especially Avery (I guess they were still catching up from the busy weekend), so they didn't get to play with Jason all that long.  He wants them to go play over there on Wed., so they'll be excited for that.

Tuesday was dance class; while they both went in, Avery was on the floor at one point, covered with her blankey, which she was supposed to leave on the side of the floor and not dance with it!  What am I gonna do with that girl?  :P

Wednesday, we all went to the dinosaur museum.  It was actually Jared's first time going there with us.  We all had fun.

Avery had all of her dinosaurs sticking up out of the sand :)

 

 

That afternoon, I went to PetSmart and came out to my car to see this (mine is on the right and was parked there first):

 

I stood there flabbergasted for a couple minutes and thought that I would have climb through the passenger side but then I saw a sweet old lady come out of the store, headed our way. I was very kind and polite and asked if that was her car as she came closer. I told her I couldn't get my door open and that it looks like she came very close to hitting me. She said the sun was in her eyes, blah blah blah (it was to our backs), but I told her not to worry about it. I was really nice and didn't want to make her feel too badly about it but I hope she's more careful from now on! You wonder about some people driving out there!!!  She was able to pull forward, instead of backing up, thank goodness! I was quite nervous as she pulled forward, though!

That night, I asked my family if they wanted sloppy joes for dinner and Makenna started rocking back and forth on the couch and said, "It's a holiday! It's a holiday!" Ha ha! That's probably because we had sloppy joes at the town Halloween party and she loved it. :D

Oh, and that day (the 5th) was the 3rd anniversary of our temple sealing! :D  Here are some photos to reminisce:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, 11/6: I bought Elf on the Shelf! I am so excited!!! This is gonna be so fuuuuuun! I'm seriously so giddy with anticipation, ha ha! I've anxiously waited for the twins to be old enough to do this. Starting the day after Thanksgiving, y'all are gonna get sick of seeing pics of all the fun stuff our elf is gonna do, ha ha ha!

Friday: I went to the church that morning around 10:30 to do our R.S. craft weekend.  I was there until 3:00!  When I got home, Jared and I did some stuff around the house (even though my back was KILLING ME from sitting in hard chairs working on the crafts for 4 1/2 hours!), then I got the girls packed and ready to go with Jared.  They went up to Hoytsville and stayed at Grandma's house so Jared could help his dad get all the honey from his beehives.  They got 10 gallons!  The girls had a blast "helping" grandma in her yard and feeding cows, etc. on Sat.  And Jared took them to visit a high school buddy that evening.  Meanwhile, I went back to the church for a couple of hours to finish up my crafts that morning, then I went and bought new tennis shoes.  After watching some football by myself in peace (RARE for me, ha ha!), I went to my friends/neighbors' house to watch the LSU game.  Jared and the girls got there at halftime, with the girls smelling like cow poop, ha ha!  They were exhausted by the end of the game so Jared took them home as overtime started.  LSU ended up losing.  Waaaaaaaaaaaah!  It was a super close game the whole time. I HATE losing to Bama!  Blech!!!!


Today was just another exhausting Sunday, with choir practice this morning and a taking care of nursery kids.  The girls went right to sleep tonight--go figure, since they only had a short nap yesterday after playing all day at Grandma's, staying up 3 1/2 hours past their bedtime last night, and not getting a nap today!

Halloween! And other fun stuff. :)

10/20: Lots of errands run and money spent today!
Dance/recital fees = $100
New car battery = $140
Food/household items at Costco = $185

Keeping my kids well-fed and happy and having the piece of mind that my car will now start every time (had to charge it again today and had it tested, yep, bad battery) = Priceless

I usually don't mind them but a trip to Costco sure makes me hate the 9 steps from our garage to the house! The good thing about Costco, however, is we went right at lunchtime and the girls ate so many samples they didn't want lunch afterward. 

10/20: Picked up my new progressive lenses with purple frame today. If I have to get old and wear glasses to read and look at my phone, at least I can get them in a fun (LSU) color. :D

10/22:  The girls got to play at their friend, Jason's, house next door while I went to an appt., then I stayed and hung out with Rebecca when I picked the girls up.


10/23:  I watched Jason and his little bro. while Rebecca went shopping, so the girls had fun playing with Jason again.  That night, I had Bunco and the girls came with me and got to play with lots of kids there (one of those night where all of had our kids there, except one of the girls); there were 12 kids there at one point!  That was a little bit of a trying day for me.  Avery had gone over a week without pooping, so I had given her a little extra Miralax the day before.  Well, let's just say it worked a little too well!  She pooped in her pants 4 times and peed in them once that day!  Ack!!  She also pooed in her pants a few time over the next few days but at least I'm sure she's pretty cleared out! :P

10/24: Another fun visit to Farm Country with friends. (Ashley & Rachel Hoyal):

 

 

 

 

That night, I took the girls to the Lehi City Halloween Party at the rec. center. They got to trick-or-treat, listen to a spooky story, get animal balloons (a bunny for Avery and ladybug for Makenna), get their faces painted (bunny and ladybug, ha ha), and play lots of games and we had the sloppy joes there for dinner:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 My little Elsa and Anna (from "Frozen"):

 

 10/24: Their cousin, Wyatt's, birthday party was on Sat. We went and played at the Museum of Natural Curiosity for a couple of hours, then went to Kiki's house for pizza, cupcakes, and ice cream. The girls had a blast playing with their cousins!

 

Avery was more interested in collecting leaves than watching the Curious Critters exhibit

Watching the Curious Critters exhibit

Wyatt petting the skunk at the Curious Critters exhibit, Avery sitting by him (cute cousins) :D

  

 

 10/25: WOOOOOOOOOO! It's always good to beat Ole Miss, especially when they are #3! Geaux Tigers!! My throat hurts from yelling the entire game, though!

So while I was downstairs watching the game earlier, the girls were upstairs watching a movie. Guess what was also upstairs? Their pumpkin candy buckets with all the candy from a Halloween party last night! When I went upstairs to put them to bed, I found tons of candy wrappers on the couch! I'll just take that Mother of the Year Award now, ha ha!
So now I'm here in bed with Avery at 12:20; she's been up with me for a while and hadn't gone to sleep at all before she got out of bed. She doesn't seem to be tired at all. Hoping she goes to sleep soon!

10/26: The twins' first Primary program was today and they got up and did their parts so well! They didn't do much singing, though, and Makenna spent most of the time waving and doing thumbs up at me, ha ha! It was pretty funny. I was proud that they even went up there and stayed the whole time! Makenna came close to missing her part because she had to go potty just as the program was starting. She always has such great timing with that ha ha. Our Primary is ginormous, btw!!

Jared got home really late that night (he came home early again without telling me but at least he didn't scare the crap out of me this time); he had told me he wasn't coming home until Thurs.  So he was able to stay home with them while I went to the dr. on Monday. Good thing he came home early because I started getting sick with either a sinus infection or bad head cold Mon. night!  I spent ALL DAY Tues. in bed while Jared took the girls to dance class, took care of the girls and cleaned the house a bit.  I also rested quite a bit on Wed.  I used my Neti Pot quite a bit over the past few days and I think that, along with the rest, helped me to feel better by yesterday.  So I was able to go shopping for our traditional chili and trick-or-treating with cousins Daisy and Cody tonight.

10/31: We took the girls to the Aquarium Spooktacular.  There were some special activities (trick-or-treating, scuba-diving skeletons, story-time, a witch making a brew, all of the employees dressed up, and lots of fun decorations everywhere and spooky things in the fish tanks).

Petting a tarantula!

Petting a snake!

 

Scuba diving skeleton

Story time with Anna, Kristoff, and Sven (from "Frozen")

  

My Elsa & Anna checking out the penguins

Trick or treat!

A cool scene in the starfish tank

Petting a starfish

That evening, my SIL, Laura and her family and my MIL came over and we had our traditional chili and cornbread before trick-or-treating. The twins had so much fun trick-or-treating with cousins again this year!  We had such a great night!

 

 

We took a fun little road trip up to ID (left yesterday {Sat.} mid-morning and got home this evening) to attend a nephew's baby blessing. We got to visit some friends (the Stoebers) in Rexburg, we stayed in a hotel in Idaho Falls and took the twins swimming in the pool there, hung out in our room for a bit and had hot cocoa with my SIL (Laura), MIL, and niece and nephew who stayed in the room right next to ours, attended the baby blessing this morning, then hung out with all the family there at my other SIL's (Michelle) house after the blessing and had lunch there. The girls had so much fun doing all of it--except poor Avery had a rough night last night, crying half the night because of leg cramps (too much walking on her toes while trick-or-treating, I guess). Overall, it was a great trip, though!

The Stoebers were so nice to have us over for dinner and we had such a nice evening with them [Stoeber was one of Jared's mission companions and still one of his best friends]:

 

Hot cocoa in the hotel room after swimming and a bath:

 

Needless to say, I'm pretty exhausted from the fun, busy weekend, so I'm looking forward to some down time tomorrow. :)