ahoy all scalawags!

Happy 3rd Birthday Captain JACK!

my little man turned 3 today! this post is Colossal and has a gabillion pictures so you may want to just skim through this one... unless of course your little one was at the party and came home covered in chocolate, sand, and tattoos and you are curious why :)

any guesses on the theme???

the three year olds went on a boat ride to start the party off:

hahaha jack took a few "special" pictures today. we did tell him it was his special day, but he took it to a whole different level! this one is still making me laugh

then they all went on a treasure hunt to find all of the items needed to become a pirate and, of course, BOOTY!:

heres another winner!

catching fish in the "sea" to earn a tattoo and an ear ring

their last task was to find an X in the sand in order to earn their hooks and be able to search for the treasure

after all their hunting, the crew needed some nourishment. it was time for pizza and cake:

the 3 year olds received silly string as part of their treasure, but we didnt have time at the party to play with it. after ellie went down for a nap, jack and mommy played with silly string till our pointer fingers turned into nubs:

im not gonna lie and say "it feels like just yesterday i held jack in my arms for the first time", but it is incredible how much this little person has changed in such a short amount of time! i am still amazed at how much trust Heavenly Father has in us to raise these special little people.

happy birthday jackman! we love you so! thanks to everyone who helped make his day a special one!

pie pie pie!

in our attempt to be more social, we invited about 15 families to come over last night for pie. about 2/3 of those invited actually came and we had a grand ol' time! we had a total of 37 here to partay. our tiny house was filled to its maximum capacity, and thats how we like it! one of chris' school mates asked chris if he was going to make ribs to go along with the pie. that was MORE than enough of an invitation for chris. so yes, we had a party and served PIE & RIBS.... very random! but i think everyone enjoyed it, or at least we hope they did. we thought it would be fun to make this an annual get-together. october is the perfect time for pie because you haven't been pie-ed out yet from the holidays.

at one point i think there were even 3 more guys stuffed in my tiny kitchen. if only MY cooking could do that!

the kids had a concert in jack and ellie's room. they would all sit on the bed and take turns getting up to sing and dance.

jack snapped this pic of larissa and it was too cute not to post. he took several others, none of which were very flattering :)

all in all it was a great time! we had more pie than a circus would eat and ribs to fill the bellies of the entire elders quorum!

SpOoKtacular students!

this morning for preschool we had jenna's little sister, dani, join us and we really got into the halloween spirit! we painted pumpkins and made creepy crawly cupcakes. i just had the itch to whip something up last night with my new mixer! so, totally unneeded, i used my mixer for a boxed cake mix and let the little ones go to town :)

dani is one of the CUTEST little girls i have ever seen... and she was well behaved too, not fair!
all work and no play. complete concentration...

alright, she had some fun mixed in there too!

ellie belly on the other hand can't concentrate for anything. she definitely used the most paint, but not on her pumpkin. she had other places to put it.

wow, nice composition jack. i think we may have a petite picasso here :)

this is what our cupcakes were supposed to look like

oh well, maybe next year!

at least we all had fun and i only had to call in back-up (meaning chris) twice throughout our halloween shenanigans!

holy guacamolito!

this afternoon, while ellie was napping and jack was trying to stay out of mischief, i decided to organize my craft closet. this was a very scary undertaking. usually when i am done with a project (if i ever actually finish), i literally just throw my various tools/supplies back into the closet and move on to the next thing. so it was quite the project. about 3/4 of the way through this mighty project i received a phone call from chris, who was on a break at school. this was our convo:

chris: "what are you doing?"

me: "just cleaning out the craft closet! can you believe it?! its been.... (chris interrupts)"

chris: "have any packages come today"

me; "nope"

chris: "you sure?"

me: "positive"

chris "you sure? humor me and go check"

me: "fine, but i know no one has come by...wait, what are you waiting for anyways? what did you order this time?"

sure enough, there was a package. chris surprised me with an early gift for our 5th anniversary!

i am in heaven! needless to say, the 1/4 of the craft closet that i hadnt gotten to, was literally thrown back into place :)

last week i made 4 BIG cookie dough logs to put in the freezer because i had to return delayna's mixer to her this weekend. the recipe my family uses for chocolate chip cookies makes enough in one batch to cook up 3 dozen monster sized cookies. it takes a powerful machine to churn dough out like that! this puppy has got a 5qt mixing bowl, 350 watt motor, and this is my favorite part, 10-cup flour power! oh yeah baby! this is the cream of the crop! i smell tortillas and cookies in the near future....

happy thursday

can you believe its already OCTOBER???? we are filled with anticipation for the upcoming holidays!