Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Sara

At Max's pre-school they have a friend named Sara. Sara is a stuffed frog. Every child gets a chance to bring Sara home to play with. She even has a journal for us to write in about the fun things that they did during Saras stay. Max got to bring Sara home on Monday. I usally try to do fun things or go fun places while Sara is here but I've been watching a little boy which causes car seat issues and I've also been sick so I wasn't feeling up to much excitement. Today is Max's Halloween party at school so we thought it would be fun if we took Sara back to school in a Halloween costume, this was something we could do at home and lucky for us Grandma Hale has lots of random fabric & a sewing machine.

This is Max and Sara. We decided that Sara should dress up the same as the rest of the girls in the family. She is Batgirl. Unfortuantly you can't see the bat sign in the pictures. Sara is missing an eye because Emma broke the rules. You see Sara doesn't like animals or babies and Emma introduced Sara to her dog and the dog ate her eye. She hasn't been the same since then.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Happy Halloween

Yesterday was the annual Heumann Halloween party and as always it was a blast. The party always starts out with the kids carving pumpkins. Steven helped Max make a batman pumpkin of course. The top was cut out in the shape of a batsign and Max loved telling me all about taking the "guts" out of the pumpkin. He wanted to be sure that I knew they weren't real guts so he clearified that they were just pumpkin seeds. This was a lot of fun for him this year because he has always been a little to young to enjoy it in years past. The front of the pumpkin is a batman face. Steven's artistic talents amaze me.

Then come the chili dogs, yummy sides and cookies.

Now for the games. (I downloaded the info on how to create cute cologes but I'm not really motivated to learn how to use it right now so here are my ramdom pictures).


It started with the ever popular doughnut game. Elese just stood back and watched for a moment so she could figure out what was going on. Unfortunatly I missed to photo op when she was ready to dig in and opened up her mouth as wide as she could and stuck her tounge out. Max asks me several times a year when he can play the doughnut game again. He looks ready to go in the photo.

The doughnut game is always very competitive espesially between Mark and Heidi.

As we all watched Mark using everybit of skill he had to keep the doughnut off the ground his little sister Katie gracefully and humbly won the game and quietly went to tell an adult. Poor Mark, it took him 7 years to finally beat Heidi and then he was beat by his little sister. Max was also out doughnuted by his little sister.

Then came the popcorn game. The object of this game is to transport the popcorn from bowl to the other and the first team that finishes wins. This is always boys against girls which is unfortunate for the boys. We have the same number of girls & boys that live in Utah but the oldest boy is 14 and the closest in age to him is 8 going down to 3. The girls are all older so they have more capable hands for this game.

Max did great running back and forth to help out his team. Elese had another idea of how to help out her team. Eat as much popcorn as possible because then they have less to move to the other bowl.




We ended with the always clasic and germ infested bobbing for apples. Max eventually picked up the apple and stuck it in his mouth. Way to be creative buddy!

("Hello Beautiful")
The evening always ends with everyone getting in their costumes,

a pinata (the bateries died before I could get a picutre of Max grr...), and "Uncle Stevens" ever popular spook ally. This year Max even went through it with the lights out he was very brave and said, "I just made an angry face whenever anyone tried to scare me." Elese went through with the lights on and thought it was great until Uncle Tim growled and held up a bloody knife. We had him take off his mask and then she just clunge to me and said, "Scary Tim" over and over throughout the rest of the night.


After this party we went to one with the "Nerd Herd" where we ate brains, kitty litter cake and all sorts of other gross things. BLAH! We played games and had a good time together. Unfortunately for Lacey she has a major fear of clowns and couldn't even look at Steven during our evening of fun.

Hooray It's over....until next year.

Today was the Primary Program and being that I am the Primary Chorister this is a relief. It was so much fun to have Max participate this year. About a month ago I told him what his part in the program was and after telling it to him only 2-3 times he memorized it and even added to it.

His original part: "After I die I will live again with Heavenly Father and my family because of Jesus' atonement."

What he said: "After I die I will live again with Heavenly Father and Jesus and my family because of Jesus' atonement."

I thought this was a great part for him to have to say. Since my nephew Justen died just over 2 years ago he has had lots of questions about death. His first question was why we were all so sad, he couldn't quite comprehend why it was sad that Justen was with Heavenly Father & Jesus & PaPa Hale. It didn't take long for him to realize that he missed Justen being here too. It was special to have Max talk about something that he understood and has a testimony of. As he said his part you could tell that he knew the meaning of the words he said. He did a GREAT job!

I had the sunbeams sing the 1st verse of I am a Child of God together. They stood around the mic and you'll never guess who the loudest singer was (ok maybe you will), it was Max. I think I have a little performer on my hands. He loves to sing and to his joy, and my embarassement he out sang all of his friends. At one point Reed (also singing in this group of sunbeams) covered his ears because Maxs singing was just too loud, that got a good laugh.

Elese seemed to be very well behaved because Grandma and PaPa Heumann were there but then I was sitting on the stand so maybe I just didn't notice her loud outburts. I think that it went really well and I hope that we were able to bring the spirit to the meeting.

The measure of greatness.

Max has a hard time taking naps so I lay with him to help him and we always have the most interesting conversations. Today he told me that he would "never, ever, ever" smoke, drink coffee, drink wine, drink Monster drink, or drink wine. Then he proceeded to tell me that people that drink or smoke those things make bad choices but that they are not bad guys and that he will "never, ever, ever" be a bad guy.

Shortly after this conversation he told me that I am the "Greatest Mommy in the whole wide world." I can only assume that he was just trying to put off his nap a little longer. He then told me that some mommy's are really mean. I then told him that most mommy's are pretty great though and this was his response. "Yeah, like Ben's mom. And Reeds mom too because she said that she is going to take him to McDonalds in a couple weeks."

There you have it, the measure of greatness. Take your kids to McDonalds and you will be considered a great mom. (I'm not sure how successful this would be with teenagers).

Friday, October 24, 2008

O-BOISTEROUS!

Does anyone remember O'Boisies potato chips? They were my favorite and occasionally I get very sad and miss them. Today is one of those days. They were the best chips ever!


Thursday, October 23, 2008

We had it ruff! :)

I stole this from my friends blog and I had to share it....


When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking 25 miles to school every morning ... uphill BOTH ways …yadda, yadda, yadda.

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!

When I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!

There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter ... with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3's or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and mess it all up!

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it!

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3­D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like “Space Invaders” and “Asteroids” and the graphics were horrible! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with big hair or a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on!

And there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons!

And we didn't have microwaves...If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove or go build a fire...imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing or a pan with HOT oil and Real popcorn kernels and shake it all over the stove forever like an idiot.

When we were on the phone with our friends and our parents walked in...we were stuck to the wall with a cord, a 7-foot cord that ran to the phone - not to the phone base, the actual phone. We barely had enough length to sit on the floor and still be able to twirl the phone cord in our fingers. If you suddenly had to go to the bathroom - guess what we had to do.....hang up and talk to them later.

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!

Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd

Friday, October 17, 2008

I hope...

that that last post makes sense since it doesn't look the way it did when I typed it...grrr...

Pros & Cons

Recently I have noticed the good and about having my kids grow up so here are a few:

PROS

1) They are more independent

2)Their vocabulary is larger

3)They can start doing chores like putting away the silverware.

4)They are helpful

5)They can turn on lights and open doors

6)They can draw sweet pictures

7)They are more observant and aware
of their surroundings

CONS

1)They make bigger messing while being independent

2)They are better at arguing

3)Sometimes you find forks in the strangest places.

4)They think that eggshells & sneezes in cookies are no problem

5)They can turn on lights and open doors

6)They show you pictures that they drew of you at school and they say, "mommy
this is a picture of you when you yelled at me and spanked me."


7)Occasionally they yell things like "mommy look at that guy, he's big." or "WOW! Do you see that little guy! He's really short!"

Cute Elese


Elese wishes that she was big like Max and had friends to play with. The other day she put on Maxs shoes and walked over to the door and said, "See ya, mommy. I goin' Reeds." I told her that she was to little to go to Reeds by herself so she said, "OK, I go Ryans, see ya."

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Lack of Gratitude

My dear sweet Max has a very hard time keeping a positive attitude. If he doesn't get his way then suddenly everything in the world is wrong and he remembers every time he didn't get his way. Just moments ago Elese saw me cleaning up her toy phone and then said, "Phone please" so I gave it to her and continued cleaning. Then Max says, "You didn't give me anything. That wasn't very nice." First I let him know that his sister asked and he didn't ask for anything and then I took away his toy he was currently playing with and told him he needed to be grateful for what he has and that he could get it back when he could be more grateful. Then I decided that we needed to be more grateful as a family and that we should start saying what we are grateful for every morning at breakfast starting now. I told Max that I was grateful for a place to live and that I have a floor to sweep (I was sweeping at the time). I asked what he was grateful for.
"I'm grateful for nothing." I reminded him that he needed to tell me something that he is grateful for, so he said, "I'm grateful for my toys. I'm grateful that my toys are boring."

So...how do I teach him to be more positive and grateful for what he has?

Monday, October 13, 2008

Girly Hair

So I was on my friends blog and she had a link for this website. I have spent the last hour playing with Elese's hair. I never know what to do with her hair and this gave me some ideas. So I wanted to share. Elese doesn't have a tone of hair but I did find a few things I can do with it and it made me even more excited for her hair to get longer. Thanks Emily!

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Thanks Rin!

More Heinz Please

A little over a year ago Steven & his friends entered the Heinz commercial contest. I'm pretty sure that it didn't get submitted correctly because the one that one was very lame and we didn't even make the finals. Anyway Max and I were just watching it and I wanted to share because my husband and his friends are very talented and my son is very cute!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpD-wHHt9Js


PS How do I put a video in here? :)

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Appreciating the Fall

Thanks to www.100daystochristmas.com I have really been enjoying this fall. There have been several days where our job for the day has pretty much been just to enjoy the fall. Suggestions like going apple picking, go on a hay ride, cook something fallish...things like that have made it really enjoyable. If I'm feel this good about fall I can imagine that Christmas time will be pretty awesome! Last week (monday I think) we made pumpkin chocolate chip bread...yummy! Saturday we were supposed to go out and enjoy the fall weather. It just so happened that my friend had sent me an email about Cornbelly's Corn Maze, they had coupons for $.93 a person, it is normally $10.50 a person. Steven had to work so my mom and I took the kids.

Elese got to dress up like a princess and despite the look on her face she was thrilled about it and said her favorite word, "FINE!" when I made her take off the costume.

This was a very scary monster maze that Max and I tried to go in. The little girl in front of us started screaming once she turned the corner so Max started to run back out but insisted he wasn't scared so we went back in. When we turned the corner it was pitch black, we couldn't see a thing and I ran into people because we couldn't see so once again Max and I (with Max in my arms) turned around again. I was a little paniced and didn't want to go back but Max did so we started again. He looked terified and finally said, "OK, lets go back". Elese didn't even want to stand anywhere near the thing. You can't tell from this picture but the entrance is through the monsters mouth...pretty scary.
(I hate that my kids never smile for pictures! If I'm lucky I can get one of them to smile & look at the camera but they won't ever do it at the same time).
We also enjoyed the corn maze, Tractor ride, wagon ride, slides, and pig races. Elese LOVED the pig races and would laugh and scream while Max threw rocks...grrr....We had so much fun and I was very happy it only cost us $3 instead of $30, thanks Heidi!

On Monday we made carmel apples, very fun!

(See what I mean about the not smiling for pictures?)

THE END

PS can someone teach me how to make my pictures in coloages or at least put them next to each other?