Halloween 2011 (Finally)

We started the season by carving pumpkins.  Isaac cleaned out his own pumpkin and drew the face on it.  Brandon was kind enough to carve it out.  It was really tough to carve.  Isaac really liked cleaning it out. 

 Emily and Chip scavenged on the floor for dropped seeds and guts. 

 Then we also painted the pumpkins, so Emily could participate. 

 And she loved it!  She was in heaven with the paint and paintbrush.  And she did a really good job keeping it just on the pumpkin.

 These are their costumes.  Isaac wanted to be a skeleton again, so I made a skeleton costume for Emily, Gayleen and I, and we all were skeletons together. 

 I even included the baby...

 Gayleen had to work on Halloween night, so we stopped by Kohl's so visit her for a little bit. 

 A family of skeletons!

Random Pictures

Here are a bunch of random pictures. 

Emily was helping Dad fix something on the car.

 Eating some fruit snacks...

 When she finds her snow boots, she likes to wear them all over the house.  It's pretty funny to watch her. 

 When I get out the camera and tell Emily to say cheese, she heads for the door to stand in front of it.  I think this comes from Halloween when I had them stand here to take their picture. 

 Isaac putting on his pirate stuff. 

 Emily causing mischief.

 Watching Elmo on Dad's IPad from work.

 Isaac preparing a landing pad I think.

Yellowstone

Okay, I am finally doing a little bit of catch up.  And this is mostly just pictures.
This summer we were able to go with all of my family and spend a week in Yellowstone.  It was so much fun.  I grew up going to Yellowstone all the time, so it brought back a lot of fun memories.  And it was fun to share it with my kids and husband. 
Isaac in front of a pool.

 My parents rented an RV, and so most of us all piled in there to drive around.  The boys spent their time in the little loft above the driver.  They thought it was the best thing in the world. 

 The rest of us just sat where ever there was a seat.  Annabelle did enjoy watching out the front.

 Uncle Wayne was our navigator for most of it. 

 This was at Old Faithful, waiting for it to start. 

 Old Faithful going off...

 The kids generally found ways to amuse themselves when we were stopped. 

 I think this was in front of Castle geyser, but I could be wrong. 

 Isaac as usually was very interested in the map and where we were going.

 This was at the mud pots.  If you've never been, the mud pots really stink!  So the boys were demonstrating to us how bad they stink.

 One of Yellowstone's waterfalls.

 Notice Isaac's chin?  He tripped while running around a tent and cut up his lip and chin pretty bad. 

 Naps were not a very real possibility, so Emily was tired often. 

 This was at the bottom of a very long hike.  It wasn't so long in miles, just in vertical drop.  There were lots of stairs to climb back up once we were at the bottom.  It was very pretty down there with a great view of the waterfall though.  Brandon was a trooper and carried Emily both down and up.  Isaac did pretty good too.  He made it most of the way.  I only had to carry him a little bit. 

 Phillip and Claire enjoying the view.

 One of the pools. 

It was so fun to be able to go.  Yellowstone is such an amazing place, so full of the wonders of nature.  If you've never been, I strongly suggest you at some point in your life make the trip.  It is well worth it.  And doing it with family is so much the better. 
(Side note:  Art and Sierra and kids were also there, I just didn't get any pictures of them for some reason.  Probably because they opted for the less crowded option of their own car, so they weren't around when I had the camera out the most!)