Friday, October 31, 2008

Halloween history

Our Halloween history anyway...

Halloween 2001:
Ethan as a lion.
age 2

Halloween 2002:
Julia as Minnie Mouse and Ethan as a pirate:

2 months

age 3


Halloween 2003:
Both kids as dinosaurs.

age 1



age 4

Halloween 2004:
Ethan as Spiderman and Julia as a Unicorn.

ages 5 and 2


Halloween 2005, many costume changes this year:
Ethan as Obi Wan and Julia as Belle at the ward Halloween party.
ages 6 and 3

Ethan as a prince at the school parade:

age 6


And dressed up as Batgirl and Batman for trick-or-treating:
ages 3 and 6

Halloween 2006:
Julia as Robin and Ethan as a Vampire at the ward Halloween party
(They don't quite go together do they?!)
ages 4 and 7


Ethan as Darth Vader and Julia as Robin ready to go trick-or-treating
(and these don't go together any better):
ages 7 and 4



Halloween 2007 (no costume changes this year!)
Ethan as a vampire and Julia as a cowboy:

ages 8 and 5

And finally HALLOWEEN 2008:

Julia as a pilot at the school parade
age 6


Ethan as a skeleton at the school parade
age 9


And right before trick-or-treating,
Ethan as Spiderman, and Julia as a pilot.
ages 9 and 6


We seem to have a pattern of indecisiveness,
good thing we have lots of dress up clothes in the play room!

Happy Birthday Kristen!

My youngest sister turned 19 today!
Before Kristen was born I begged and begged my parents to have another baby. They finally relented, and I am so glad!
On the day she was born we arrived home from school and walked in the front door. Instead of the usual greeting from my mom, my Aunt Jean was there to meet us.
We were so excited that our baby sister was finally coming.
Kristen is such a wonderful person to have in our family!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY KRISTEN!! We love you!

Last minute pumpkin carving

After school today we decided that it was our last chance to carve pumpkins.
Julia liked scooping out the "guts".
Ethan liked carving up the pumpkins.







These two belong to mom and dad.





This one is Julia's:

And here is Ethan's, his is "two face" so there are two faces.
#1:


And #2:


I don't think we'll win any pumpkin carving contests, but we still had fun!

The Halloween Tree

Every year when I was a kid my Dad would play the audio drama of
The Halloween Tree
by Ray Bradbury.
We loved it!
This cartoon of The Halloween Tree isn't quite the same, but it's close.














Long before Halloween...

I recently discovered Shorpy, it's an online archival of thousands of photos from the 1850s to the 1950s. These pictures are fascinating!



The following pictures are from New York, November 1911. "Scramble for pennies -- Thanksgiving."

Before Halloween came into its own as a holiday in this country, there was "Thanksgiving masking," where kids would dress up and go door to door for apples, or "scramble for pennies."





Interesting holiday! But I think I prefer our Halloween traditions now.

I don't think my kids would really scramble for pennies anyway, maybe for quarters!

Happy Halloween!!

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Ethan is a Cougar fan

Ethan at the BYU game.
Dad doesn't think about blogging possibilities as much as mom so this is the only photo they got.
I'm glad they got this one though!

Last Saturday for Ethan's birthday Derek took him to the BYU football game. Before the game he got an up close look at the team near the tunnel. He couldn't believe how big those guys were. Needless to say, the cougars won and Ethan had a great time. His favorite part was the nachos and frozen lemonade. :) It was a thrilling game that came right down to the end and BYU won 42-35 against UNLV.
Ethan was lucky to go to such an exciting game, it went right down to the wire!
Thanks to the Playstation 2 Madden game he actually understands what's going on!

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Bleach art!

Remember the post about bleach art? I finally did my first project!

I used freezer paper to do this project, you can buy it at Walmart by the Saran Wrap.
I found an image I liked online and tried to reproduce it on the freezer paper. You could also print a graphic, cut it out, and trace it onto the freezer paper, with the waxy side down.
Here is the sketch on the freezer paper:

I then cut out my image (this one is slightly different because it was my test image) and placed it where I wanted it to appear on the shirt:


Then you iron the freezer paper, waxy side down, onto the shirt.



I then took my project outside so I wouldn't get bleach all over random things in my house. I also changed my clothes, make sure you wear something that you won't mind a few bleach spots on in case some happens to blow your way.

I slid a piece of cardboard inside the shirt so the bleach wouldn't leak through to the other side of the shirt:

I put a 50/50 bleach/water solution in an old hairspray bottle (after I rinsed it our thoroughly) and started spraying the area of the shirt I wanted to concentrate on:


I had to be patient (which I hate!), the bleach took a few minutes to start changing the color on the shirt. I re-misted it a few times to get the concentration that I wanted.

Once it was almost dry I peeled off the freezer paper.


And my test shirt looked like this:


Here is my daughter modeling her finished shirt:


If you want to do something basic this should give you some idea of how to do it, the ultimate tutorial can be found here.

Ethan's first costume of the year

We have a little problem every year with kids changing their minds about what they'd like to be for Halloween.
This year Ethan was originally going to be the Human Torch. He has a pair of pajamas with flames on them so we were going to use those and come up with some kind of hat. He decided he didn't want to do that after all...
He then wanted to be Voldemort from Harry Potter. We had a Harry Potter cloak and he was going to wear that and paint his face white. But we weren't sure that anyone would know who he was supposed to be...
So we found a Death Eater costume online that was on clearance and had free shipping! We ordered it Thursday but needed something for the Ward Halloween party last night. So we found this cute skeleton costume on Family Fun. I ran to Walmart looking for glow in the dark paint, but they didn't have any. I ended up getting white contact paper. I printed out the shapes, cut them out, traced them onto the contact paper, and again cut them out.
I stuck the finished shapes onto a pair of black sweats, and he was set! (This did take forever, I suggest you start a little earlier than I did if you do this.)
I made the mask even though he can't wear it to the church party or to school, at least if he decides to wear it for trick-or-treating it will be ready!













And a little side note about Julia's costume...

She was going to be Wall-E. We had a box that we were going to paint and Derek had the plans for the body and the head all drawn up. So of course she changed her mind and decided to be Yoda. We went to the Halloween store and found this Pilot costume on sale. She liked it, so I was happy to get it and not worry about it anymore!

Hat day and Pajama Day



Friday, October 24, 2008

Happy Birthday Ethan!

We are so glad that Ethan is in our family. He is such a smart, cheerful, fun boy! Ethan is at the age where he loves to be a smart alec, sometimes it is funny and other times it drives me crazy. He is constantly asking "why" to everything. But he doesn't do it because he is actually wondering why, he does it to be funny. He is curious about everything and loves to find out new things. He's a great reader and reads an hour each night before bed. He's read two of the Harry Potter books and is so proud of reading books that are so long. Ethan is always trying to figure out ways to make money because there's always something he wants. Every summer he sells popsicles and has made several dollars at a time that way. He also likes to do chores around the house as long as I'll pay him for it.

I'll include Ethan's birth story. This might be boring for some of you, but I want to make sure I have this somewhere. I wish I had written it down sooner, I've forgotten a lot.


A few weeks before Ethan was born the doctor was a little bit concerned because I was getting really swollen and my blood pressure was elevated. October 12th he told me that I was effaced 90% and I was dilated to a 2. On October 18th I gave notice at work that my last day would be Friday the 22nd. My doctor had told me that I needed to take it easy to try to keep my blood pressure down and I figured that it would give me a week to get my house cleaned and ready for a baby since he was due on the 31st.

On the 19th the doctor told me that my cervix was really thin, and my blood pressure was up again. He told me to come back in if I wasn't feeling well. Two days later my car broke down at the intersection of 800 North and 900 West, there I was almost 9 months pregnant trying to push my car out of the middle of the road. Luckily someone stopped and helped me get the car out of the intersection.
My last day of work was Friday, October 22nd. We went out to dinner that night and I kept having contractions all through dinner. We visited my parents after, and the contractions didn't stop. They were getting stronger but I didn't dare go to the hospital yet, I didn't want to be sent home. We went home and I straightened up and vacuumed. We finally went to bed because they weren't totally regular yet.
On Saturday the contractions continued. We took a few walks and I made sure that my hospital bag was packed. I went to the store to pick up a few things I needed for the baby. At 9pm that night we finally decided to go to the hospital, my contractions were about 4 minutes apart and I was dilated to a 4. They checked me again after an hour and I was still at a 4 so we walked around the halls in the hospital for a while. I still hadn't changed but my doctor told them to keep me and at midnight he came in and broke my water. That started my contractions going much stronger and faster, they were coming every minute. I had an epidural at 1am and slept a little. At 5:45 they checked me and I was complete so I started pushing. It took an hour of pushing because he kept getting stuck, but finally at 6:46am Ethan was born. My family was out in the waiting room right outside our room and they were able to hear his first cry. He weighed 7 pounds 8 ounces, and 19.5 inches long. A great size, especially a week early!
I thought he was perfect and couldn't believe that he was mine! Ethan was very sleepy for the first few weeks and it was hard trying to get him to nurse because he would just fall asleep. Luckily he finally got the hang of it and did just fine.





Two weeks before Ethan was born:





Right after Ethan was born:







He loved to sleep during the day.






But at night he'd be wide awake.





Ethan's first Thanksgiving:




The day he was blessed:






A few pictures from his first year of life:






Ethan, age 1:




18 months:





Age 2:





One of his first obsessions was playing with the vacuum.

When we visited Grandpa Buzz and Grandma Susan with his cousin Drew's family he and Drew loved "cleaning":


Age 3:



When he became a big brother:











Age 4:








Age 5, this was when he was obsessed with dinosaurs:

Preschool graduation.


Age 6:



(The beginning of his Spiderman obsession.)













Age 7:

Age 8:
And now at age 9:

We love you Ethan! Happy birthday!