The rest....DA DA DA DAAAAA

Here is a picture of all the pumpkins outside the house! :) Dan did a good job lining them up for me.

Every year Dan does a FLAMING pumpkin. It never ceases to amaze me how many people think it's an accident, and they come to tell me that we have a pumpkin on fire. lol...I just say, "Yeah, I know."

Here are the kids along with Dan in his NACHO LIBRE costume. What a hit! Connelly was a little ornery, so we didn't get an individual picture of him, and he wouldn't wear his mask. O'well.

Here are the remaining pumpkins. Overall we carved 49 pumpkins, but we did multiple patterns on a lot of them, so we did a lot more carvings than just 49. I have to say, the Mater and Lightning McQueen pumpkin that Dan's brother Mike did is my favorite. AWESOME!!

Only 364 days until Halloween next year!

And more.

DISCLAIMER: Yes, we know we look totally crazy, but we enjoy this, so please don't judge us! Also, we have NOT carved all of these pumpkins alone. Our neighbors have helped us, and multiple family members also helped carve some. PLUS-we actually aren't done carving yet, but I figured it would be easier to post the ones that we have done so that it isn't as hard to post them all at once. Hopefully you can click on the pictures so that you can see them bigger.

We have had so much fun staying up late with our neighbors. I seriously have laughed harder lately than I have in a long time! Our neighbors are so fun.

I thought it would be fun to make cupcakes again this year. If you can't tell, I LOVE THIS HOLIDAY!!!

This is my cute table centerpiece for my table. Dan actually gave me the idea, and I thought it turned out so cute!

Halloween Party!

Tonight was our Halloween pumpkin carving party. We had a blast having friends and family over to carve pumpkins. Here is the invitation that I made. We are steadily getting ready to put out our pumpkins tomorrow night. We have had so much fun staying up late carving. (Note: thank you to those of you who have been helping us carve). We really appreciate everyone being so nice about the pumpkins. We just love to make pumpkin carving fun for everyone.

Halloween part 2

First of all, several people have asked me how I made my window patterns. I blew up regular pumpkin patterns with a projector, I traced the patterns onto black poster board, cut out the pattern with an exacto knife, and then put yellow tissue paper behind them. If you would like more detailed information, leave me a comment, and I'll be glad to explain a little better. :)


FYI-my husband is a property manager, so that is why our front door has a sign that says "private residence" on it!

I thought this spider was AWESOME!

Here is my first carving of the year. If you can't tell it's Optimus Prime. I spent a lot of time on it, so don't look too close at all the mistakes! Stay tuned for pumpkins galore. If you don't believe me, I'll just give you a little history...we carve about 45-50 pumpkins every year. We are what we call PUMPKIN FREAKS. We will put all the pumpkins out on our driveway the night of Halloween (and sometimes the night after too). If you are in the neighborhood on Halloween, please come by, we carve ALL sorts of patterns to please almost everyone.

Halloween part 1

Over the past several years, my love for Halloween has grown and grown. I have to admit, I think it all began when my roommate in college, Katie, painted her toenails black and orange. Her love for the holiday planted a seed that has grown and grown ever since! We have had a fun time decorating the outside of our house for the festivities. These are our windows! The only bad thing is that the stencils block out all the sunlight during the day...I feel like I'm living in a cave...lol. I think they turned out GREAT! My hubby is always so nice to help me with my projects.



Stay tuned for more pictures.

"Medicine Juice"

Ok, I know this is pretty weird, but Dan has taught our kids that his Eggnog and Sprite concoction is called "Medicine Juice." The kids LOVE IT. Dan is obsessed with Eggnog and he was totally thrilled to find out that stores start carrying it earlier and earlier every year. Random post, but I think it's pretty funny how excited the kids get every year for daddy to make them their first glass of "medicine juice." I'm not much of an eggnog fan. It is just too thick for me to handle. :)

I'm ALICE!

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I know I'm a total geek, but I honestly can't wait for the Twilight movie to come out!!! I plan to go at midnight the night it comes out!!!

Disneyland!!!! Beware of picture overload!

Oh my gosh...I feel like I just ran a marathon! We just got back a few hours ago, and I have so much to write about. So, please, don't read this extremely long post if you don't want to! To those of you who know us well, Halloween is our favorite holiday. It was so fun to see Disneyland all fancied up for the occasion. It was great! My ankle didn't hold up so well though. I'm afraid it pooped out about half way through. (Thank goodness for ibuprofen!)

First of all, we took Londyn to my sister in law, and that was REALLY hard to leave her. But, we left her home so that the other two could have our non-stop attention. So, even though I MISSED HER TERRIBLY, we went without her. It was good because Dan and I got to take turns riding with each of the two kids.

Oaklyn and Connelly have been saving their pennies (literally) for months and months. We took them to "cash-in" their Disneyland jar and they got to take their money with them to buy souvenirs. Turns out they had $112.00. I was so surprised that they had that much! (Thank you to grandmas and grandpas who send money for birthdays and such...because that is where the money went automatically). By the way, feel free to click on the pictures, for a bigger, better look!

I can't even describe how much fun we had. The kids were in 7th Heaven. I think the best part of the entire trip was to see Oaklyn with the princesses. She dressed up in her princess dresses for two of the days, and she even wanted to wear make-up. Cinderella was so cute with her. The rest were great too, but Cinderella talked to her for awhile, and Oaklyn was just beaming!


Connelly was terrified of the characters at first. I'm not sure why. He loved them from afar, but as soon as one would come near him, he would FREAK out. After a couple of days, he warmed up, and we were able to get a few pictures of him with some of the characters. It was really cute, while Oaklyn was talking to the princesses, he was hiding from them. Mulan kept flirting with him...and he just kept smiling. He's pretty shy!


We stayed at the Crown Plaza resort just down the street from Disneyland, and it was SO nice. We loved it. Our room was extremely clean and nice, and the beds were SOOOO comfortable. The kids slept so good (mostly from exhaustion!) I had to take some pictures of them, because Oaklyn sleeping with her Minnie doll was just CRACKIN' me up! They fell asleep so fast each night, it was amazing!

Overall, I had the best vacation I have ever been on. The kids were pretty whine-free. And they both did pretty good on most of the rides. The tower of terror in California Adventure scared Connelly a little, but I got a little scared myself! The only thing that could have made the trip better would have been to have Londyn there with us, but I'm afraid that would have created problems of its own.

We went to the Blue Bayou restaurant with the recommendation from a friend. Holy cow, the Monte Cristo sandwich was DELICIOUS. If you know Dan, he's what I call a food connoisseur. He also had some delicious shish kabobs (spell?) at the Bengal BBQ. I will NEVER go to Disneyland again without that sandwich! :)

Oaklyn's favorite ride was the Matterhorn, and Connelly LOVED the Buzz Lightyear ride.


We managed to take a break from the parks and take the kids to the beach for the first time. They LOVED IT. Oaklyn just kept saying, "Oh Mom, can we come to the beach AGAIN?" We spent a few hours playing around in the sand.


I'm glad to be home, but honestly, I CAN'T WAIT to go back again. The look on their faces was worth every penny. They are at the perfect age where they think everything is real. They were completely STAR STRUCK by all of the characters. It makes me smile to even think about it. I can definitely say that spending four days in the park was perfect. We had just enough time to ride mostly every ride and then re-ride the ones that the kids loved. California Adventure was definitely Connelly's favorite with the parade with Buzz, Mr. Incredible, Lightning McQueen, Woody...etc. We had a great time. Now, I just need to catch up on the laundry!!!

I am so excited!

This space once contained a Disneyland countdown!

What a relief!

I wanted to update everyone on my thesis saga. I can finally say that I am done. I defended my thesis on Thursday and I PASSED. I was so nervous that I seriously almost threw up beforehand. I couldn't sleep the night before, and I couldn't get a deep breath in my lungs all day. I'm not usually nervous for public speaking endeavors, but this time I was honestly horrified.

Dan came with me, which I was so glad because I was able to present my paper, and he FINALLY knows what the heck my paper is about. The title of my paper is "A Toulminian analysis of arguments within the Wal-Mart crisis." It's hard to explain, so if you ever want a really long conversation, ask me. BOOOOORRRRRIIIINNNGGGGG!

One of my questions that my professors asked me is what I was going to do with my thesis now...I said, "Honestly...I'm going to BURN it!" That's exactly how I feel.

Here's a little glimpse of what I've gone through to get this bleeping thing:
-Cried a MILLION tears
-Got in 100 fights with Dan (It really turned me into a monster)
-Treated my family like scum
-Had 2 FULL BLOWN nervous breakdowns
-ONE POMPOUS JERK of a professor...and all that comes from that
-Several great professors who helped me a lot
-Had one miscarriage
-Taught 4 classes (this part was AMAZING)
-Had one baby
-THREE comprehensive exams
-Had a messy house a lot :)
-At LEAST 4,000 sheets of paper
-THOUSANDS of hours
-About 10 revisions (maybe more)
-113 pages
-90 references
-lots and lots of prayers
-A meeting with the dean of the department to complain
-Dan finally taking control and CHEWING out the program director (Ha ha, good times)
-more stress than I can explain
-The secretary forgetting to set up my comprehensive exam defense and waiting for 5 months because of it.
-wanting to quit more than I've ever wanted to quit anything before
-a lot of PRESSURE from many sources

FINALLY after all that...I'm FINALLY DONE! Funny thing is that, I don't think it's sunk in yet. What am I going to do now????

I'M GOING TO DISNEYLAND!!!!!!!!!!!!! For real lol. Love you all.

Lagoon!...and lake

We had a blast at Lagoon this weekend. The kids had a blast and it was really fun to see them enjoy the rides. Here are a few pics of the event.


We have had a blast having the boat down in St. George. The kids LOVE the boat, and they seem to think that we should go to the lake every day! I wish we could go every day actually! We live only five minutes from the lake now. It's freakin' awesome!

Thesis...DEFENSE!!!

This is probably not exciting for anyone else but me...but I get to defend my thesis on Thurs. Sept. 25th! WOO HOO!

Thesis update.

I just wanted to write down some quick feelings since this is my journal. About a month and a half ago, I submitted my thesis for final review. I was hoping to not need any more revisions...WELL...the short version is that I didn't need to revise most of it, but I still needed work on the discussion section. Well, after two more revisions of that section, I FINALLY SUBMITTED IT TO MY COMMITTEE THIS MORNING (all 113 pages)! I can't begin to tell you the entire story about this thesis, and a few select few of you know what I've gone through because of it. I think HELL is kind of an understatement. I will know soon if I need any more changes before I go to defend it. To those of you who don't know, in order to be done, I have to orally defend the paper. I will sit across from my professors and actually stick up for myself and literally defend the research. The thought of it terrifies me, and I'm usually not nervous about public-speaking. I know this road has involved sacrifices from my family, and my kids especially have suffered because of it. I can't begin to tell you how grateful I'll be when this is over.

Londyn is WALKING!!!

She actually started taking a series of steps about two weeks ago, but she is full-on walking now. I can't believe it. She's earlier than our other two kids were! CRAZY.

Dan's first water-ski run!

I know, it's pretty late in the year for Dan to finally get his first water-ski run, but we've had a little bit of a busy few months! I had to post this picture of him. I'm such a proud-soccer mom when I see my hot hubby out there skiing away. He's fun to watch!