A Whale of a Tale

For Mason's 1st birthday we had a whale theme. I had rented the room and pool at the YMCA for us and a few of our friends (26 to be exact).

The center pieces where fish bowls with pebbles and little whale erasers I found at the dollar store. Then we stuck the cake cookies in the middle and surrounded it with blue "waves" and starfish and seashells.

The food table was all about blue. We had blue baskets full of chips, star bowls filed with gold fish, bottled water, and submarine sandwiches. My mom made this awesome sign. It is so dang cute I loved it.
We played a couple of games: whale walk, and starfish ring toss.

My boys!
The cake: It was so much easier to do a cookie! He loved it and ate the whole thing.

Grandma Mitchell was able to come out for the party.
The presents.

Mason's girlfriend Paygie. They get so excited when they see each other.
Thanks everyone for the presents, and for coming to the party. We had a great time!!

Mischievous Mason

He may look all sweet and innocent....

But we don't call him Mischievous Mason for nothing!!

Notice the cupboard doors and the granola bars spread around.
Emma has this ribbon twirling thing that he loves to put the end of it in his mouth and then walk around with the ribbon following behind.
Q-tips and other items scattered about my bathroom.

And of course the favorite bowl cupboard. Try cooking dinner with all these bowls under your feet :)

I love Halloween!!

I love Halloween! I love getting the kids dressed up and showing them off. This year our neighbor had an awesome set up so we took pictures in front of their house.

Emma- Butterfly
Aiden- Ninja

Mason- baby ninja

THe family. You can't tell but I dressed up as a farm girl. And Spencer is hold mason but he is like the invisible ninja :)
The kids had fun going around even though it was really cold. We went around with the Barlow's. Aiden and Ashlyn didn't last very long but Emma and Haylee made a haul. I ran out of candy in 45 min!! It was crazy.

Halloween Parties

Today was a day of parties. Emma's school party was lots of fun. They got to dress up for it and go on a parade around the classes of the other kids. Then there were games, tons of snacks, and activities.

Aiden had gymnastics today so everything they did was all about Halloween. He has the best coach ever!

And we started out the morning by trick or treating at the high school. They let all the little kids come and the big kids dress up too and line the hallways and hand out candy. Aiden's bag got so full he couldn't carry it any more!

Trunk or Treat

We had our first Trunk or Treat in WA and it was super fun. They had lots of fun games for the kids to play, a haunted house that was actually pretty scary, a parade, and of course Trunk or Treating.

On this game they had to fish for eyeballs and then they got real fish. Amazingly they are still alive even though they haven't had anything to eat but Cheetos :)
Mason's favorite part was crawling all over the stage. Isn't he the cutest baby ninja?
Emma and her friend Jena
Aiden and his ninja buddy Hudson
The kids loved the Trunk or Treat part. They really wanted to decorate so we made spiders to hang from the ceiling, had our skulls and large skeleton out and of course our super cool pumpkins. We got second place!!

Doc Dinner

On Friday we had a "doctor dinner" . Spencer had been at an all day seminar with other dentists and then that night the wives got to join them for a nice dinner downtown. One of the things at the dinner was that everyone had to wear these hats. They say if you aren't so worried about what people are thinking of you then you open up more. And knowing that everyone looks silly makes you not worry so much.

To bad Rebecca still looks gorgeous! I was just excited to meet the wives and to see Niel and Rebecca who I haven't seen in over a year!

Carving Pumpkins

On Thursday night we carved pumpkins. This year we were able to get really big ones so that was fun!! The kids get to pick a pattern that they want and then they help gut it, poke the pattern in the pumpkin, and even cut a little with the knife.

Here is the finished product.

Aiden with his scary pumpkin
Getting out the guts. Aiden thought it stunk!
Emma actually did a lot of the de-gutting this year. I was impressed.
This is one of my favorite Halloween activities. Maybe next year I will do two!