Ethan's Party

Ethan wanted to have a Halloween Party so we invited a few of his friends over last Saturday night for some spooky fun. (Courtney was invited to a party at a friend's house at the same time, we kind of swapped kids, and had a great time too.)

The boys drew scary monsters, made candy apples, dipped pretzels in chocolate, played pictionary, told scary stories and tried to play a scary version of telephone (although they giggled through that one too much). I think they had a great time and really enjoyed themselves. It was 2 hours of fun!!
The goodie bags for the end:
The crazy boys:

What Courtney dug up...

Courtney loves to dig in the backyard and the other day she dug up something that caused her to run in the house yelling "Come and see!!!" It was a giant root! The City planted a tree on the other side of the fence from our house and it's root has made its way into our yard. It's crazy how long and how big the root is. Now she wants to cut it off and try to find more. Crazy girl!

Pack Meeting

We had Pack Meeting last Tuesday night (it was a busy night). We were touring the fire station in Ivins. We have done this a few times but the kids still really liked it. First we had awards. Ethan got an award for attending scouts all through the summer. We didn't know about this so it was a fun surprise.
Then the Bear Den did a couple of skits. The picture below shows the "Execution Skit" they did. They had one boy in front of the others with the hood on and the other boys were in a line like the firing squad. The firing squad counted "1 - 2" and then the boy with the hood yelled "earthquake!" and he was saved from death. Another boy traded the hood and after hearing "1-2" he yelled "tornado" and was saved from death. It was Ethan's turn and after hearing "1-2" he yelled "fire" and was shot. It was pretty funny and definitely a 9-year old skit.

Halloween Party

On Tuesday night, Courtney had a Halloween party for her dance group. A month ago she decided she wanted to be a vampire. I was in Joann's about a week later and their costumes were on clearance and I found a vampire one for her! Yeah!! It was cheaper than buying the fabric and easier too.

After she got home from school, she put on her costume, we pulled up her hair into a ponytail, we put some white face paint on her and some black around her eyes, and then she waited for her ride. Ethan didn't like the way she looked because it kept "freaking me out!" So she was trying to pull all the scary faces she could. How does she do?

The Tooth Puller Strikes Again

Courtney had another loose tooth that has been hanging on for months. The poor girl doesn't lose teeth very fast. Last night she was intent to get the tooth out of her mouth. Lucky for her, she has a brother who was equally determined to pull it out for her!

After 15 minutes or so of trying to pull it out with tissues, trying to tie dental floss around it and generally tugging and wiggling, Ethan had had enough. He grabbed the tooth, twisted it, janked it and...out it came! They were so excited.

Courtney put the tooth in her tooth bag, put it under her pillow, and the toothfairy left 50 cents!! She is a pretty happy camper today.

The tooth:
The hole:
The very happy smile:

Dixie State Homecoming

On Saturday afternoon we went to the Dixie State College Homecoming football game with Ethan's flag football team. The flag football team played their last game of the season this week so they wanted to have an activity with all of them (kind of like an end of season party) and give out trophies. One of the dad's got us all tickets through his work so it was really nice.

The kids had a great time watching the game (until half time), watching the cheerleaders (that would be what Courtney did), squishing in small spaces on each other , eating treats, and playing around. It was fun!

Ethan and Courtney:
Brennon, Ethan, Carter, Cameron and Courtney all squished!Ethan and his trophy:
Courtney and the mascot (two points on this photo that I want to make: 1) Courtney has gotten a lot more brave in her old age because she would NEVER before have gotten close to a mascot and 2) I liked it better when Dixie was the "Rebels" because this bull looks a bit evil to me):
Dixie lost...big time...but it was fun to be at a football game. I think we may go to another one next week!

Soccer

Courtney had soccer pictures on Saturday. They always take them 30 minutes before the game so we had pictures at 8:30 a.m. before her 9 a.m. game. We had been up late the night before at a Snow Canyon High School football game (which they lost badly!) so we all slept in. But we made it in time for the photos. Courtney wanted a picture with her "coach dad" before they took the official photo. I think they are cute.
They went on to play a great game with every girl doing really well. They only have a few more games in the season.

What did you do Friday?

Since I have taken the Master Preserver class I decided to bottle a 40 pound box of chicken we had bought months ago. It took 2 days for the chicken to thaw (and it didn't ever completely thaw out) but on Friday I was ready to tackle the job.

I canned some hamburger a couple weeks ago with my mom's old pressure canner but it is a weighted gauge canner which means you have to listen to the weight shake and time it. It's a pain and I was nervous that I wasn't doing it correctly. So I broke down and bought a pressure canner. It's a good one but not the "ideal, dream canner" that I wanted to buy.

I first had to cut the fat off the chicken, cube it and cook it about 3/4 of the way.
I then rinsed it really well under warm water and put it in the fridge until I had a good amount of chicken cooked and ready to go.
I filled pint bottles with the cubed chicken and covered it with boiling water. I eased out all the air bubbles, put the lid and ring on, and then loaded them in the pressure canner. It's a double pressure canner, so it held 20 pint jars at one time (which was a huge time saver!!). You can tell it's new...look how shiny it is!! I was a bit nervous when I purchased it online that it wouldn't fit on the stove under the microwave, but it worked out great.
I let steam vent out of it for 10 minutes then it took about 35 minutes to get up to pressure and then the time really began. It had to stay at pressure for 75 minutes. After the 75 minutes, I had to wait another 40 minutes, or so, for the pressure to drop on it's own. After taking the pressure gauge off I had to wait another 10 minutes before I could lift the lid and take the bottles out.

It took from 7 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. but I did 2 loads of chicken which resulted in 38 pint bottles (3 didn't seal so we are using those this week).
It took a long time but I am so happy with the results! Now I want to go get some more meat and do it again!!

Sewing

I have been on a sewing kick lately. I went downstairs to clean out my fabric and organize my craft room last month and ended up sewing a bunch of things from scraps I found. I didn't get much organizing done but I found a lot of scraps that were big enough to make some bags/skirts/aprons/etc. out of. Here is an apron I made for Courtney that she wanted me to take pictures of. I think I am going to make these for her friends for Christmas.

Chess

Ethan wanted to play chess with Bryan the other day and it was discovered that he is pretty good at playing chess! Bryan was impressed and kept asking Ethan if he was playing at school, but he says that he hasn't. This game took them a couple of days to complete and they had a great time. Lucky for Bryan!!! Now he has someone to play chess with at home.

(This is Ethan's evil "I will beat you" look.)

Update...

on the tardy slip drama. The school secretary grabbed me yesterday when I was at the school helping in Ethan's class to tell me that she had taken the tardy off Courtney's record. She understood what happened and apologized but it was no big deal. I told her that she could have left it because I didn't care if Courtney had a tardy (it's only one) but she said it looks bad on our school statistics.

So now Courtney can rest easy that she doesn't have a tardy on her permanent record. ;)

For FHE tonight we talked about being a light of Christ. I had found a really cool craft online the other day and it fit the lesson really well. (http://www.candletech.com/techniques-and-ideas/water-balloon-luminaries/) I bought some microwavable candle wax at Michael's then filled up a bunch of grenade water balloons we had left over from a birthday party.
After we talked about being a light of Christ, we melted the wax and dipped the water balloons. You need to be careful to keep the wax below the water line or the balloon will pop. We dipped a couple of times and then let them sit to harden. We repeated dipping quite a few times then let them sit over night to harden.

This morning we held the balloons over the sink, upside down, and cut the top off them. After the water drained out we carefully used our fingers to peel the balloon away from the hardened wax. They turned out really well. We are going to put candles in them and set them around our front porch on Halloween night to guide the trick-or-treaters.

We were thinking that this may become a Halloween and Christmas tradition because the kids loved it and it was a fun activity to do. Next time I think I'll buy some candle dye so they will be a different color. I also think we'll hold up the balloons for longer after dipping so the extra wax will drip off and not pool around the bottom. And I think we'll use bigger balloons so the lanterns are bigger.

Who knew...

that a little yellow piece of paper could cause so much stress to a 6 year old?!?!

Courtney won the Lin's receipts drawing this morning so her teacher sent her to the office to pick up her prize. I think she must have gotten into the wrong line at the office (the tardy slip line) because while one secretary got her prize, the other secretary gave her a tardy slip. Courtney didn't know what it was for and what to do with it so she put it in her backpack with her prize.

When she got home from school she brought the yellow slip to me and asked what it was (I think she knew but wanted confirmation). I told her and asked why she was late. This NEVER happens because the bus drops the kids off at school 20 minutes early so none of the bus kids are late unless they dally and don't go in when the bell rings. But our kids are very ... what's the word?...super-conscious of time and so they aren't late unless there is a real emergency or a really good reason.

When I asked Courtney why she had gotten a tardy slip she completely lost it. She started sobbing and yelling that she didn't know why she had gotten it because her teacher sent her to the office to get her prize and they gave her a prize AND a tardy slip. "What's up with that?!?!" she yelled.

I finally calmed her down enough to realize that it was just a misunderstanding and that it wasn't a big deal. One tardy is not going to break her record. I emailed her teacher just to make sure that I knew what had happened and she immediately emailed back saying that it was a big misunderstanding. The secretary shouldn't have given Courtney the tardy slip but Courtney was in the wrong line and the secretary was on auto-pilot. The teacher said that she didn't mark Courtney tardy so it wouldn't show up on her record. Courtney asked me to look up her record on Power School to make sure it didn't show but it did show up. Oh well. That's life.

I remember what it was like to be little and have something just devastate me. Poor girl. But by the time Bryan got home from work she was fine and proudly showing off her tardy slip. What a goof-ball!!

Fall Break, Day 2

Today the kids slept in until 6:30 a.m. (I think). Hilarious! Bryan had made them a deal that he would clean their rooms on Friday/Saturday if they cleaned them really well on Thursday. So he spent about 2 minutes cleaning their rooms. They thought it was neat to have Dad clean their rooms but he got the better end of the deal since they were already clean.

Then we made our plan for the day! I pulled rank and decided that we wouldn't do anything until late morning because I needed to bottle some hamburger (don't knock it until you've tried it!). The kids had a free morning of painting wood, watching TV, playing outside and reading while I spent hours trying to figure out if the weighted gauge pressure canner was really up to pressure or not. Ugh! But it worked out.

We loaded into the van, got pizza, picked up Bryan and went to the Vernon Worthen Park to have a picnic. Since we hadn't unloaded all the sports stuff from the night before we were able to play catch and soccer. Bryan and Ethan made up a new game. Bryan had the football and Ethan had the soccer ball. Ethan would kick to Bryan at the same time that Bryan would throw the football to Ethan. It was pretty funny to watch. Courtney and I kicked the soccer ball back and forth. Then we had to take Bryan back to work.

We then went to use Ethan's coupons for Fiesta Fun. We had 2 free mini-golfing vouchers, a free bumper boat voucher and a free soft play voucher to use. So we took off for Fiesta Fun.

We decided to do the mini-golf first. Ethan is pretty good at golfing and takes it quite seriously....for the first few holes. By that time he realizes that Courtney is cheating and she is gaining on him so, since we don't keep score, he might as well cheat too. Courtney kind of just pushes her ball into the hole.

When we finished golfing (I made a hole in one!), we got Ethan's ticket for the bumper boat rides. There were only 2 other people going when he did but they all had a great time spraying each other and driving around. Ethan got caught under the fountain at one point and was completely soaked!! But he had a great time.

Then we went into building so Courtney could do the soft play. It was really for smaller kids so she got bored, but I cashed in $1 and got some tokens for them to use to play games. They ended up earning prizes. Courtney got some vampire fangs (to go with her costume) and Ethan got a glider and bracelet.
Then we went to Judd's Store (where I had never been) to get some ice cream. It is a fun old shop but I wasn't impressed with the ice cream I got.

We went by the Santa Clara Library on the way home to get some more books. Once we were home, I had just enough time to do some laundry.

We let the kids stay up to watch TV later than usual, although Courtney asked to go to bed earlier than Ethan because she was so tired.

It was a fun day!

Fall Break, Day 1

The kids had Fall Break this week on Thursday and Friday. While everyone else leaves for vacations, we stay home and enjoy what is in our own backyard without all the people around. It works great and it's a fun way to use all our free coupons.

Wednesday night we made a plan of what we wanted to do based on our free coupons (yes, we are cheap). The kids had to clean their rooms before anything would happen and they were both up at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday morning cleaning their rooms. They did a great job, after we pointed out what still needed to be cleaned. And then we just had to wait until things opened up.

*Side note: We did not WAKE THEM UP at 5:30 a.m. They wake up at that time when it's a holiday and they could actually sleep in. It's odd that way but our kids are morning people and we wouldn't have it any other way!

Ethan had earned a free jump pass to Anti-Gravity, so we decided to go there first. After 15 minutes of jumping on trampolines they were tired of being there. It's just not as fun without friends and/or a lot of kids your own age. But we stuck it out for our hour. They jumped on the trampolines, got the harnesses on for the bungee game and looked through the arcade. It's a fun place but, after you have been a few times, it's kind of boring.



After jumping we went to JoAnn's to look for some cloth for Christmas presents. The kids loved this because we got to think of all the things we could make and look through all the decorating that were 1/2 priced. We even found Courtney's Halloween costume on clearance! SCORE!!

We then went to Denney's to use some reading coupons the kids had earned over the summer. I think we have only been to Denney's a couple of times but Ethan was thrilled that he could order breakfast for lunch! The kid was in heaven and the manager was so nice because, as it turns out, you are only supposed to use one coupon per visit. But she let us use two because we didn't know. (Being married to an attorney should have taught me to read the fine print, but I didn't.)

When our tummies were full we drove over to my parent's house (grabbing the mail on the way). They are on vacation but wanted us to drive their Pathfinder once-in-a-while to make sure it would still work. So we loaded into their car, ran our errand to Costco, switched back to our van and then took off for home.

By this time it was late afternoon and we had to get home for dinner.

After dinner, we loaded up and went to the park where we played soccer, hit baseballs, played catch with the football and played on the playground equipment. It was such a nice night! Then the kids went to bed...late because it was a holiday but they should have been super tired because they were up so early!!

The Corn Maze for FHE

We decided to do something that was "actually fun" (according to Ethan) for FHE this week. So we ate dinner, loaded in the car and went to Stahli Farms in Washington to go through their corn maze and hang out.

We paid our admission fee (which was way too much, in my humble opinion) and then loaded onto a wagon that took us over to the maze. Luckily, a woman gave us a map so we could find out way while in the maze. The goal is to get to the flag that is in the middle of the maze. They have clues along the way in case you are nervous but we had Bryan and his trusty map reading skills.

It was a full moon, which was really cool, but Ethan got kind of scared as we were going through the maze. There were mounds once in a while where they had covered up an irrigation ditch but Ethan thought they were graves....and wasn't very happy about them at all. We got to the flag, took pictures and then got out. Bryan and I want to go another time on a date so we can spend more time in the maze.

When we came out we were surprised that there were Star Wars characters there?!?! We don't know what that was about and they weren't complete cast but Darth Vader was in Las Vegas (Bryan asked). So we took pictures with them anyway. Then we loaded back onto the wagon to go to the rest of the farm.

The kids got to jump on a gigantic "Pillow", we watched pig races (which Ethan thought were cruel), petted all kinds of animals and the kids did other games. My camera battery died at that point so I didn't get any more pictures. We had a great time!

We decided to get donuts as a treat but I didn't realized that the stores don't sell donuts at 8:30 at night. After a long debate (and I mean REALLY long debate) we bought a box of donuts and went home to make hot chocolate.

It was a really fun evening and the kids loved FHE....for once!! Yeah for us!!

Ethan in the corn maze:The full moon over the corn:
The Star Wars gang:
This is how Courtney went through most of the maze:

Courtney's Fake Hair

Courtney had to get a fake hair piece to wear with her outfit for her dance group. The song they are dancing to is "I Whip My Hair." It's a really catchy but annoying song. The dance coach sent the hair piece home so we could figure out how to get it hooked in her hair and have it stay there while she whipped her hair back and forth. Courtney loved playing with it and I think we figured it out. Now we'll have to wait and see if it works! (It actually only adds a few inches to her hair but she feels cool wit hit on.)

Busy Saturday

We had a crazy Saturday morning.

9 a.m. - Day of Service Project - weeding in the neighborhood which gave everyone allergy attacks so now we have runny noses and sneezes. But the weeds in the neighborhood are kind of gone.

9:30 - I leave the service project to change and run to the Stake Center to play the piano for the Stake Baptisms.

Note: Today is Ivins Heritage Day/Snow Canyon High School Homecoming/Ivins Stake Day of Service, so I was called to sub on the piano because all the other pianists said they were busy. No kidding!!

10:15 - The service project ends and Bryan and the kids go home to change and leave for Courtney's soccer game.

11 - Courtney's soccer game went GREAT!! The girls were on today and Courtney scored 2 goals. The final score was 8-1. She was pretty happy with herself, but it's the second game in a row I have had to miss. Ugh.

3 p.m. - The "best babysitter in the world" (minus grandparents, of course), according to Courtney, came over and Bryan and I did sealings at the Temple.

The kids are now in bed and I am not too far behind. Bryan has his Stake meetings at 6 a.m. tomorrow and I have Ward Council at 10, so we need our sleep.

Hopefully BYU will win without us watching the game. It's an 8:15 p.m. start and we don't get the game on TV (we usually go my parent's house but it's so late at night that we didn't want to) so the radio will have to do, if we can stay awake.

Flag Football Team

Here is the photo of Ethan's flag football team:


In the game last Tuesday Ethan made a TOUCHDOWN! I was so happy for him and it really fired him up for the rest of the game (as much as Ethan gets fired up). ;)

It had been raining all day long and we were out of sorts on Tuesday...forgot the treats, forgot the mouth guard, didn't wear warm clothes, etc. Poor Bryan ended up driving back and forth to our house twice to get things we had forgotten! Ugh! But it was a good game.

Master Preserver

I just finished a 6 week Master Preserver course through the Utah State Extension Service in St. George. We met for 3 hours every Wednesday night for 6 weeks. Each week we would have a 10 minute lecture and spend the rest of the time bottling something to enforce what we had learned about. It was chaos but I learned a lot.

The canning process hasn't changed much in years but there are a lot more regulations/rules that there didn't used to be. The old Ball Book that I have been using for years is now outdated and shouldn't be used. Because of the differences in foods now (tomatoes aren't as acidic, for example) there are new recipes you have to use to make them safe. I always used a steam canner and those now aren't safe according to the FDA. I learned how to process meats in a pressure canner (now I just need one instead of having to borrow my moms that I don't know how to work) and how to properly water bath bottles. I also learned that food tastes a lot better when you bottle it yourself, especially pineapple!

We had to process a lot of different foods to see the various processes. Some things surprised me and others did not. I really liked the peach salsa (yes, it had tomatoes and peaches mixed with onions and peppers), jicama is actually tasty unless it's dehydrated (then it's like eating bark), and garlic jelly is actually okay tasting when put on a cracker with cream cheese. I found out that I don't like dehydrated pastrami, orange jam made with orange juice concentrate is really yummy (my neighbors may get this for Christmas), cherry tomatoes are really potent when dehydrated, and I like to have sugar in my pie fillings.

I also found one way that Bryan won't eat mushrooms....PICKLED! I didn't taste them because I don't like mushrooms but he said they were too potent.

Anyway, there is an additional on-line preserver course from the FDA that I think I'll take just to have some more recipes/knowledge. It's pretty fun.

Ethan's Recital

Here is Ethan's performance at his piano recital last week at the St. George Tabernacle. He did a great job!!