Pumpkin Carving

As many of you may know we're expecting our first baby the first week of March. We thought we'd let you know what we're having. Happy Halloween!

Werewolf's Bar Mitzfa

I LOVE Halloween  its part of being a member of my family. How many of you can say that an entire 6 foot wide closet in the hallway was 100% dedicated to Halloween costumes while you were growing up? That's what I thought. :) I love decorating for Halloween almost as much as Christmas, so we thought we'd share a few of our favorite decorations around our new house. 

This can also be heard in our house as we decorate because its just hilarious. You may listen while you look through our photos to get into the mood. 

 This is my ultimate favorite that I inherited from my Mom, the Halloween Queen herself. 

 Every home needs a sparkly skull somewhere.

 Haunted Tree, dont mind our temple pic 

in the back. 

This one used to freak my roommates out so bad at college that I still to this day send them a pic of it in Oct every year just to remember how awesome it is. :)

BOO!!!

Green thunb

Green thumb: noun: an extraordinary ability to make plants grow well.

 I have lots of really great "growers" in my life. My dad is a tomato grower extraordinaire. As well as potatoes, peppers, squash and a list of other things in his garden. He's just more well known for the tomatoes. And why not bask in the fame, they're stinkin hard to grow. Some of you even know that my brother Nathan got his Ph.D in plant genetics. He's written a book people! Fact is, I am just not one of them. I have here for you today proof of that. 

Kallam will attest to the fact that every year I get super pumped up about growing stuff. "This will be the year" I always say. This was the year that there would be no excuse of "well the 110+ temp cooked my plants" or the excuse of "it would've kept growing, but its in a cup, and I don't have a yard to plant it in". This was the year that I was going to earn my green thumb!  We slaved all summer pulling weeds, tilling dirt, planting and watering. I even spoke to them, giving them pep talks when no one was watching. Around September I gave up. Nothing worked. Nothing happened. Things had sprouted and grown, with no fruit to be had. Then today my old planters caught my eye. I have neglected these things for more than a whole month. There, on a shriveled plant was a tomato. I ran to the back yard, and the whole back yard was filled with raspberries! Can you believe it. All this time, my plants just wanted me to get out of their way. Here's a look at what my plants did when I stopped trying. Does this work with kids too? Just asking for future reference. 

Its green I know, but its freezing every night so if it wanted a fighting chance it shoulda showed up sooner! 

My Dad's Homecoming

As some of you may know my Dad was recently honored at our home town homecoming assembly. Every year they pick two people in the community(man and a woman) to dedicate the entire assembly to. These are people that are loved by many including the graduating class that chose to honor them, and have made a great difference in the school and community. I was lucky enough to get to go to the assembly and mostly i'm just writing this post up so my siblings can feel like they were there too. 

Most people know that my dad is...shall we say easily embarrassed by a spot light being put on him of any kind, for basically any reason. So of course no one wanted to tell him until he was there and it was too late. They started talking about the person they were nominating without saying the name, but once they got to the graduating year of the nominee he made this face at us...

Then he knew :) That's the best face ever. FACT.

The cheerleaders escorted him from the audience to center stage as they continued to talk about all the awesome stuff he's ever done, and all his FABULOUS bulldog children. At this point there was also a group of faculty behind us that kept yelling things about how he was everyone's favorite coworker and employee. It was really sweet. 

Here is Mom pinning his flower on him

I think he looks like he's having a pretty good time. Mom was just thrilled that she was able to keep it a surprise for him.

 There is a lot of clapping that goes on at these assemblies. So much that you'll get fatigued.  Pretty much every song you need to clap along, and they do it twice, its just tradition. I didn't notice this until I grew up and was not a professional clapper(cheerleader).

 And here is after the assembly. It was so cute to see so many people come up to him and talk about how much he was really appreciated. I never thought i'd grow up to get to see my DADS homecoming :) We celebrated by treating the nominee and his wife to Dairy Queen on us where even more people congratulated him. Nice job Dad, way to be an awesome Bulldog for LIFE. You gave us a legacy to be proud of, and you still do. 

 SO CUTE!!!