I was so worried our Halloween would be ruined with the girls being sick, but they made their recovery on Friday just in time for some Halloween fun. Too bad they had to miss their preschool party, a party they were invited to, and trick-or-treating at Westech with Daddy.  But after missing the fun during the week, they had a great Halloween day!

We kicked it all off by carving pumpkins on Friday night, then when the girls woke up Saturday morning we made Halloween pancakes, yumm (well, yumm for the kids, I really would rather eat something other than pancakes and i especially don’t enjoy them with chocolate chips).

Then we headed to Barnes and Noble for a special Halloween story time (we love story time at B&N) and some trick-or-treating throughout the store.

Ready to head to B&N!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After B&N we came back home for some rest (after all we are still recovering from illness), and then had our traditional chili and finger breadstick dinner, and got dressed up in costumes.

Jaycee chose to be a NICE witch…

 

 

and Rylee chose to be a MEAN fairy…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(she doesn’t look so mean)

And then it was off to trunk or treating and some trick-or-treating to family members. First stop was Aunt Margaret’s house, then Aunt Jenni’s, Aunt Jodi’s, Aunt Tammy’s, and Grandma Wales house!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They both got a great loot!

And I must give a great big THANK YOU to Margaret, Jenni, Jodi, Tammy, and Lindsay for the special trick-or-treat prizes. The girls loved them!!

It was a great night! 

So on with the fun stuff from SC. Our trip was really nice. We flew in Thursday night and got in just in time to greet the Woods family and say goodnight. It was so great to see all of their faces again and being at their house just seemed like being at home. We really appreciate them letting us stay with them and borrow lots of their tools and stuff.

Friday we headed up to the house and were shocked at what we found. Not only were the paint colors horrible, but the renters used super glossy and oil-based paints that made it look even worse, and hard to repair - and they did a horrible job painting. Had they ever heard of painters tape? I think not. We also found they stole curtains and fixtures, which was not fun, and pulled out some of our shrubs and killed one of our trees in the yard, plus removed all of our landscaping rocks. nice. We spent Friday and Saturday mostly working on the house, but I caught some fun time at the pool with Heather and the girls. We also spent time watching movies and hanging out like old times.

Sunday was fun. We got to go to church and see most of our old friends there. Rylee really didn’t remember anyone but she happily walked right into nursery without a word and began playing. That made me happy. We spent a lazy Sunday afternoon with the Woods family eating delicious food, watching movies, and just spending time with each other. Jaycee was thrilled to be playing with Marissa and Sam, and Rylee loved it to - not sure if she remembered them so much from her own experiences or just from us talking about them and showing her pictures of them,but still she was happy and comfortable with them.

Monday was Labor day and we decided to go to the Labor Day parade in Chapin. It was great. We got lots of candy and saw some great friends, sitting with the Woods and the Meyers.

One of the great parts of the parade was this float:

Craig misread their sign and got all excited for the “Fancy hot ladies” only to be disappointed by the senior citizen women wearing elaborate southern hats.

After the parade we had a fun BBQ lunch with some good friends at the Gardner’s house. They had some delicious food, fun stuff for the kids to do - like big rope swings, boating, and trampoline - but also some great company. It was so nice sitting and catching up with everyone there. Thanks Nikki and John.

Tuesday was back to work, and more work Wednesday. Thursday we decided to take a break from that work and headed to Charleston - just us four. We of course went to the market. I love it there.

We took a carriage ride through Charleston, which was okay but the kids got bored too fast. It was fun though to see all of the old places and hear some of the old stories. Here are some of our pics from that:

And we of course ate at Bubba Gumps. yummy!

Oh, and if any of you are in the market for a house in downtown charleston, we found this nicely priced one:

1,200 square feet and priced at only $3.2 million

Taxes and insurance are only $74,000 per year.

And then Friday we finished cleaning up the house, completing our final touches, wrapping up business with property management and realtors, and then spent a nice evening with friends. The Meyers and Slusses came over for dinner and desert, and it was so much fun to talk with all of them. Makes me really want to move back. I miss my old friends the nice greenery - and the beach - and the church - and i could just go on and on. But Utah is good too, right?

Our ride home was miserable to say the least. We flew out of Charlotte to save money, so had to leave to drive up there at 4:00 in the morning Eastern time. We had a layover in Chicago - but due to lake effect we couldn’t land there, so we circled for a while and then re-routed to Dayton Ohio to refuel. It’s a small airport with no flights out anywhere to get us to SLC, except back through Chicago, so we waited there for over an hour and then finally made our way to Chicago.

Having lots of fun at the Dayton airport

Then of course we get to Chicago and even though all departures and arrivals were late (or cancelled) - our flight to SLC was of course one of the few flights that was cleared to leave Chicago while we were still en route from Dayton. And of course there wasn’t another available flight until 7:00pm. Just our luck. So we sat around in the airport for 7 hours. fun stuff. I do have to at least be thankful that we were at O’Hare. It has a lot to look at (like dinosaur and airplane exhibits), but most importantly a children’s museum! That really helped keep the girls entertained.

By the time we got home it was almost 11:00 in Utah (1:00 eastern) and Craig and I had been up for 22 hours. We were absolutely exhausted.

I’m sorry for those I didn’t get a chance to spend more time with in SC. The house was a lot more work then I thought it would be, and our visiting time was limited.

Miss ya’ll so much. Thank you for a wonderful trip!

(Oops… wrote this September 1st but apparently never published)

August flew by so fast but we did have a lot of fun. It’s hard to

The girls spent the end of their summer mostly playing outside with our neigbor Mirae, who is an absolute doll.

Playing in the backyard

Jaycee had a lot of fun with her new bike. Her old bike was getting really small for her and hard to ride, so she sold it on KSL and bought a new one.  The girls have spent a lot of time riding around the cul-da-sac

Early in the month Rylee finally learned how to use the potty. She loved teaching her new doll how to go potty, and once she got passed the “mom can’t tell me what to do” phase she was a pro.

We also spent a relaxing weekend in Park City with Jimmy and Tammy and fam. Thanks guys! It was a nice condo and a lot of fun - and very relaxing.  Here are the girls snuggling on the couch in the condo.  Jaycee loved how big the condo was. She has only ever been with us when we went to smaller hotel rooms, so this was great. She immediately took our suitcases and unpacked them into the closets and drawers in our room, and thought it was awesome that there were 2 kitchens and 2 “TV rooms”.  the fact that there were 2 swimming pools was also an exciting part for her.

August also brought with it the start of singing classes for Jaycee, with her first performance in September. Family reunions (with free cotton candy, mmmm).  And the news of our need to visit South Carolina to fix up our house. Our renters had to be evicted and apparently have done some customizing in our house. $2800 was our low bid for painting, so we’ll fly there and do it ourselves.  I’m excited to be seeing everyone, but not excited about the expense and the work to fix up our house. We don’t trust our property management company much, so we feel like we’ll be in for a surprise.

Thursday night we went to Boondocks for a party hosted by Westech. It was a lot of fun -but it was very windy. Playing miniature golf was a bit of a challenge when your ball was constantly changing directions in the wind - not to mention hair in your face.  but we still had a great time!  We also did bumper boats, lots of arcade games, and had a ton of good food. It was great!

Then on Friday night we met some of Craig’s fam at the Weber County Fair.  Lots of animals to see, but not much of anything else except booths, expensive food, and expensive rides. The kids had a lot of fun though looking at the farm animals.

It was a great start to the weekend. Saturday was no fun for me - I had an exam and then spent the day pulling everything out from the walls of our house to spray for spiders and then putting it all back. exciting let me tell ya.  The spiders we were getting in our house were huge. I can handle little spiders, but when they are bigger around then a quarter they totally creep me out, so I hope they stay away for good. yuck!

Last weekend we were able to go see the Traveling Tribute, including “The Wall” honoring those who served in Vietnam, as well as the “Cost of Freedom” display, and a field of over 5,000 American flags displayed in the shape of the U.S.A. - one for each soldier lost in the War on Terrorism.  It was a very neat and humbling display.

This year we had a lot of fun for Pioneer Day - especially being back here in Utah.  We had a ton of fun.  At the beginning of the week we took the girls to Prarie Schooner for family home evening. We talked about the pioneers and the girls got to eat in covered wagons. They thought that was so cool.

Keeping with a tradition from my childhood, Grandma helped the girls make covered wagons out of square cookies, marshmallows, pretzls, life savers, and animal crackers.  The funny part was that we thought we had regular animal crackers that we could get horses from, but all we had were other animals, so their covered wagons are being pulled an elephant and a bunny rabbit.

On Pioneer Day morning we decided to skip the parade and the fair. We were burned out with all of the other activities of July and just wanted to take it easy. The girls had a sleepover party with their cousing Brianna and Brooklyn the night before, and watched the parade on TV in the morning. Then the girls had their own little parade with their bikes.

They had a lot of fun decorating the bikes. Well, most of them did.  I so thoughtlessly forgot little Brooklyn is scared of baloons. She was fine until a couple of them popped and then she ran into her bedroom crying, and ended up falling asleep. Poor girl.

Here is Brianna, Jaycee, and Rylee making their way around the block.

They seemed to have a really good time.

Rylee ended up being the only one who rode the entire way. Both Jaycee and Brianna got off to walk and we had to carry their bikes the rest of the way home.

GO RYLEE!

To keep with our low-key mood, we had a nice BBQ at home for dinner and then did our own fireworks. The girls loved playing with the snaps while we waited for it to get dark enough, and they had a blast doing the fireworks in the driveway.

It was a good time, and as always, Pioneer Day is a great way to keep our past in perspective and be grateful for everything we have today, as well as being grateful for our ancestors who did so much for us.  I am glad my ancestors had enough faith to sacrifice all they had to keep the gospel in their lives and keep their families safe, giving their decendents a chance to hear the gospel and live in peace.