Thanksgiving

We went to Utah for the week of Thanksgiving.I was getting homesick so I insisted on going for the entire week. And Matt didn't mind because that meant he could go to 2 football games.

The kids just had fun hanging out at Grandma's.

And I got to go to a BYU game.

I was a good wife and went to a Utah game with Matt in the snow.

And sometimes the kids are cute and play nicely together.

It was a fun trip, but took forever to get home!

Snowcones and scarecrows

Emily's class had a scarecrow day at school. This was her outfit and she was not very happy with it at first because she thought she needed patches in order to be a perfect scarecrow. Ha!

She also made this fun indian vest for a "tasting" feast they had near Thanksgiving time.

These were all the cute scarecrows.

And they had a scarecrow parade.

And there is a new snowcone place in Redlands that is so yummy! Finally!

Grandma and grandpa come to visit

In mid-November, my mom and dad came for a visit. We had lots of fun! We went to the Redlands Temple and the orange groves.

We went up to Oak Glen for some apple cider floats!

Matt and I got to go on a real date, since mom and dad insisted on babysitting one night.

And of course, we took them to Disneyland!

And Emmy convinced them to play games with her for hours!

It was really fun to have them visit! We love visitors!

A Disney Halloween

We went to Disneyland in the morning on Halloween. It was so fun! It wasn't too crowded, the weather was nice, and we (me and Emmy) wore costumes! Emmy wanted to wear her Snow White dress, so naturally we took some pictures by Snow White's wishing well. She also insisted on wearing her Minnie ears with the Snow White dress. She looked adorable.

She threw a penny in the wishing well and wished for cotton candy. This girl loves her treats and begs for them every time we go. I've started making her earn money for her treat at Disneyland when we go, and she gets one treat that she has to share with Zach each time.

We ran into Peter Pan outside the Peter Pan ride! He was hilarious!

He grabbed Emmy by the hand and told her they were going to go play a trick on the Evil Queen. So he took Emmy and ran over to the Queen and told Emmy to bow down and say, "Hello your ugliness!" The Queen of course was having none of that. She told Emmy, "Who is this boy putting lies into your head? Come to mother."

So Emmy went over and the Queen told Emmy to put her hand on her hip and not smile. Then she called me a rat (I was dressed as Minnie) and told me to take a picture. Then Peter jumped into the picture and then ran away.

Then the Queen told Emmy that I needed to take more pictures of them. It was so hilarious...I was dying! I love that we got to have this experience.

The park was all decked out for Halloween. Some of the characters were in costumes, and there were pumpkins and fall leaves everywhere.

My favorite was the giant Mickey pumpkin on Main Street. There were also character pumpkins above the entrance gates that were pretty neat.

And the Haunted Mansion was completely done over with a Nightmare Before Christmas theme. It was like a whole new ride!

And the Mickey plant was wearing a mask!

Zach kept asking if we could go see Belle and saying he wanted to give her a kiss. So adorable!

And Emmy wanted to go see Snow White to show her her dress. Snow White was adorable with the kids. She asked Emmy if she had been getting dressed in her closet since she had the same clothes. And then she showed Emmy how to hold out her dress for a picture. Then Zach wanted to hold Snow White's dress out for her. It was awesome!

I know I keep saying this, but I really love having an annual pass!

Halloween

Before I get into Halloween, October was kind of weird. It was still so hot, it didn't even feel like fall at all.So I had a hard time getting excited about Halloween. Normally it's one of my favorites, but this year I just couldn't get into it. I did think of great costumes though. Like the day before Halloween, which wasn't enough time to get them together. Maybe next year...

We have had some gorgeous sunsets though.

And it's been nice walking Emmy to school. Zach loves to stop and do a million things on the way home.

The other day they grabbed each others hands and were walking down the trail on the way to school. It made me smile.

Back to Halloween, for our ward party I said I would bring some sugar cookies for the kids to decorate. They turned out like this. Oops!

Our ward party had a chili dinner, carnival and trunk or treat. Emmy was so excited about trick or treating, she was counting down the days! She made the cutest little kitty.

And Zach nearly refused to wear a costume. He spent the entire party stealing pumpkins and running in and out of the door. What a stinker! I did finally get him to wear his Elvis costume from last year though.

Halloween itself was the strangest thing ever. It was really hot that day and we went to Disneyland during the day, which was fun. But it was getting to be almost 6:30 and nobody had come by yet. So I texted my neighbor who lives a couple streets down and asked if people trick or treated here. She said yes, they usually get a ton. Anyway, so I took the kids out, but less than half the neighbors had their lights on and were handing out candy. And it was so weird not knowing anyone whose houses we went to.

I really missed seeing all our neighbors and their cute costumes and knowing everyone. Anyway, we had to go twice as far because only half of the neighbors were even participating in Halloween. And we live on a hill so by the time we got to the bottom, the kids were tired. So I had to carry both bags of candy + Zach up the hill.

The other weird things was that of the neighbors who were handing out candy, they were all sitting in their driveways with their fire pits. And it was 80 degrees! And we hardly got any trick or treaters at our house.

Then, I heard that this lady in our ward who lives in the next neighborhood over made homemade donuts to give out on Halloween, so we decided to go over there. Well, it was PACKED! I'm not even kidding. There were cars lined up and down the streets of the whole neighborhood, you could not even park. And the line to her house for donuts was like 5 houses long! I've never seen anything like it. Apparently everyone from the whole city goes to her neighborhood. Maybe we 'll just go straight there next year.

Oh well, the kids still had fun and Emmy was proud of her costume and her candy she got.

Field trip!

Last week I got to go on a field trip with Emmy's class to the pumpkin patch and farm. It was so fun!The pumpkin patch was darling. The kids got to ride on a tractor, learn about how honey is made and try some, see farm animals, feed some farm animals, pick a pumpkin, learn about oranges and avocados they grow there, and go through a hale bay maze. And have a picnic lunch. Oh and ride on a bus. Super exciting!

We were pretty packed in the tractor ride!

Emmy's class. I have really enjoyed her kindergarten experience so far. Her teacher is pretty great. They are constantly doing the cutest things. I really like her schedule. She is in the "afternoon session" and goes from 9:45-1:50. The morning session goes from 7:45-11:50, so they overlap for part of the day. At first I thought that was super weird.But I really like that there are only 12 kids in her class for half of the day, which means she gets to do some of the things in a much smaller group, which has been really good for her.

She is loving kindergarten so far!

The Coliseum

Next stop on our college football stadium tour of California...the Coliseum in LA to see Utah play USC. Unfortunately, Utah stunk it up so it wasn't as fun. But it's still fun seeing all these famous stadiums.

It was fun to see the Trojan riding out on the field on his horse, they did red, white and blue fireworks during the national anthem, they lit the torch at the beginning of the 4th quarter, and one entire endzone was all decked out for VIPs. There was also no parking and we had to pay $40 to park. $40!!! That is ridiculous!

The Coliseum was used for the Olympics during the 1930s or something. And you can see the Hollywood mountain from there. And it was in the ghetto. Anyway, it was fun to see even if Matt was upset for days because they lost.