Goblins, Witches, and Pumpkins...oh my!!

Before I get to all the good Hawaii stuff I can't skip over Halloween. We actually flew out Halloween morning but our church was having a trunk-or-treat the night before so we were able to celebrate with the kids.

Carving pumpkins has become quite an ordeal having so many munchkins. As you can see from the above picture no one likes to clean the pumpkin out so it is a lot of work for mom and dad. This year much to our kids dismay we decided to only carve ONE large pumpkin and have them each design a different part of the pumpkin face.

Here everyone is submitting their drawn design for their assigned facial feature.

The final product!

This year we had:

Nate, the shining knight
Tyler, the gangster
Alysee, the medieval princess
Chloe, the cheerleader
Alex, the late Michael Jackson
Cooper, superman
(not shown...Birch-- Polynesian Cultural Center guide, Sara--a marshmallow)

My sister, Emily was a great sport letting the kids dress her up. Her adorable daughter Sage was the cutest Pebbles you have seen.
My mom brought this elaborate medieval fairy god mother costume. Nate, the shining knight, was very good at protecting these two beauties.
Isn't Sage just so sweet?!!

We had fun evening gobbling up hot dogs and chili, carnival games, and then a mad rush of trunk-or-treating. The kids all came home and dumped there candy out to pick out ten of their favorite pieces. The rest of the candy was bought by a local dentist for $1/pound and then sent to the military. Sure has been nice to not have all the sugar sitting around the house to be snuck all hours of the day.

Sneak Peak

I'm living on three hours of sleep right now but I just had to share a little snippet of the heaven Birch and I soaked in this past week. I truly think I was meant to be a Hawaiian girl. My body craves warmth, sunlight, and the fragrance of plumerias! The camera was in high workout mode the whole trip so lots more photos to come...

Monkey broke the record

On Sunday Alysee broke the family record of sleeping-in. Alex had held out as the winner for the past three years of sleeping-in until 10:30 am after recovering from a surgery.

Alysee was sawing logs until 11:15 am. HOLY COW!!! I couldn't believe it! I kept checking on her to make sure she was breathing. The even better part was that she woke up in a stellar happy mood.
She also earned her date with dad by completing her jobs for ten days. Alysee had a great time showing off all her "monkey" playground skills. I never knew Alysee has a "tongue" thing when concentrating.

This girl sure loves her daddy!

Up to no good

Yesterday Coop walked up behind Nate and just whacked him on the back. Nate hollered, "MOM, Coop hit me for no reason."

Coop quickly replied, "Yeah, I did it because it was fun!"

Where does this kid come up with all the things he says?

A Renewal

I know everyone is dying to see our remodel work in the mudroom/laundry room and the basement bathroom. These were both items that we had wanted to spruce up but hadn't quite saved up enough pennies to do so. Thanks to a split washer hose and some great house insurance we are now enjoying two beautiful remodeled rooms! I was wishing that I had a wide angel lens so I could better capture the rooms.

Basement Bathroom:

Here is a shot when we first moved into the house:
Right after moving in I ripped down the wall paper and went a little "yellow" crazy -- hey, I wanted to hide all the boy potty:

After the remodel:

Birch and I spent a late night painting the walls and ceiling before the tile was laid. The new Mystic Blue give the bathroom a whole new look.
Front face of the new maple cabinet Laminate countertop w/ maple edge trimming and tile backsplash Love how this tile floor came out -- we purchased all the tile from Home Depot The new sink and faucet were bought on a great deal from a plumbing appliance store that was getting rid of it's overstock. Love the old school metal plaques that I got at a fun little store in Spokane.

Mudroom/Laundry Room:

Mudroom/Laundry Room when we bought the house:
We didn't change too much to the mud room after we moved in. We did paint over the blue paint with a nice taupe color but we left the wallpaper up.

As a result of the water damage the floor was taken up to the sub flooring in order for everything to dry thoroughly.
We tore down all the wall paper (some was greatly damaged by the water) and then painted this really nice wheat color. We also added the great cabinets above the washer and dryer. I love having the extra storage. I was surprised how relatively "cheap" of an addition the cabinets were.
We put in these great lockers (purchased from IKEA) when we first moved into our house. They sure make a great spot to put all the kids coats and backpacks.
LOVE how this floor turned out! Again, the tile was purchased at Home Depot.

We were able to reuse the cabinet in the mudroom, though it did require a new toe kick to be built and some touch up work on the door faces still need to be done. After installing a new countertop and backsplash we put in a new sink and faucet. I found these fun prints while I was on my Girls' weekend in Spokane. I still need to add some vinyl something...Annie and Deena, do you have any ideas for me?

Thankfully Birch just finished all the dry wall repair in the shop. It was a disaster in there until just this past weekend. Birch also repaired the mud and tape on the ceiling so we are good as new.

I must put a disclaimer that most of the time when I said "we" did blaa blaa it was really our great sub-contractor guy that has done the other remodel work in the two upstairs bathrooms. In reality "we" painted the rooms and did all the shopping (and let me tell you it takes a long time to save money and go to a ton of different stores). If anyone in my town is needing any remodel work in their house we know the man!

The hardwood floors will be refinished Thanksgiving week and then the carpets will be cleaned the following week. After that we will be as good a new (really better than we were a couple of months ago). This whole experience has reminded me that God knows best and wants to bless us even if it doesn't always feel that way. I'm thankful for a beautiful home!

Nine Lives

Tyler was just treated to three days of celebrating his ninth birthday. His real birthday fell on a day when most of us all felt crappy. We still had pizza and sang to him. That night he had the time of his life going to our new Walmart and going on a little shopping spree with some money Grannie sent him. He came home giddy with all his new loot.
Then Saturday after we spent most of the day sanitizing the house to kill all of our friendly swine flu germs we opened some presents. Tyler had been DYING to get a Rubiks cube. He was delighted (the picture was his re-enactment of his delight) when we opened it up. I think he has been able to get one side put together so far.
That night we watched a movie and had popcorn mixed with skittles. Since we hadn't had a cake yet we had him blow out his popcorn candle.
Sunday we wrapped up the party fun with a real cake and nine candles.

Tyler is a great kid! He is fun loving, eager to learn, a skilled runner, great scooter rider, and loving to his siblings. This past year I would have to say that he had gotten a hair better at eating more foods. Hopefully his palate of yummy foods will keep growing as he gets older.

Like his big brother Alex, Tyler set a goal last year to read the entire Book of Mormon by the time it was his birthday. He actually finished a month early and really had some insightful questions that he asked. We haven't been able to go on his earned award yet of a movie and dinner with mom and dad but that is in the works. I'm really proud of him for accomplishing that great goal!!!

We love you Tyler!!!

On the mend....oink, oink

Just a little update on our household health...we are on the mend. Alysee has been the last to join the sickies but is feeling quite a bit better today. Birch made a chart a few days ago for each of our meds because it was getting way too hard to remember who had what when. I feel like we have a little pharmacy going on at our house.

All I can say is...thank goodness for TamiFlu, an anti-viral drug! I sure wish I had an inside connection so I could stock pile some for the future. It can also be used as a preventative drug if you are around people with influenza but in our community there is not enough to the drug to be used in that form, darn it!

Tyler went back to school today. We plan on celebrating his birthday tomorrow since yesterday we were all still on recovery mode.

I can almost feel the warm sunshine that will be coming my way in two weeks! I'm considering hibernating until then so we don't pick up some other bug.