One year older....

 

 

I love these pictures of Tyler trying to blow out his candles on his birthday cake!  It perfectly shows his personality and the way he acts with his friends.  Nate was trying to blow out the candles before Tyler could so he ended up holding Nate back with his foot while he did it.
Tyler turned 14 last week.  He wanted to go to a wrestling tournament on his birthday so we celebrated a day late.  He wanted to have Nate over for elk steaks and twice baked potatoes with pumpkin cheesecake.  Tyler is a good, crazy, funny, athletic kid who loves to wrestle and play football and is always teasing someone, either me, his dad, sisters or friends.  He makes life so much more fun!

 

 

*For the recipe for this delicious pumpkin cheesecake, go here.

The Top Of The Hill

Joe turned 40 years old this year!  I always thought it would be fun to throw a big party for his 40th birthday for him but he insisted he didn't want a big party or anything, which is very uncharacteristic for him.  We had a soccer game in the morning and a football game in the early evening and a few other things throughout the day so it would have been kind of tricky to get something going anyway.
I hope he had a good birthday.  He is an my favorite person in the world.  He lives his life trying to do everything he can for our family.  He loves to help and serve others, he is funny and loves to joke.  He is tough but he also has a soft side which I love.  I feel so blessed to have him in my life.
We went for a little bike ride in the morning and my parents came to town and took us out to dinner before the football game. The kids and I made a candy gram for him and he got a new socket set. 

 He wanted a layered cherry chip cake with cream cheese frosting.  I couldn't resist putting 40 candles on it!

 

He was able to finish the day off by watching Tyler play football, one if his favorite things to do.  He likes to go to practice after he gets off work and help out.  He loves the boys and they seem to really like him there.  He likes to tease and joke around with them and they do the same with him.  Before the game I guess he told them that he wanted the score to be 40-0 because he was turning 40.  They won the game.  Guess what the score was?  40-0!

 

 

 

A pirate, a princess, a witch and

a LOT of pumpkins!
When we first started planting a garden about 15 years ago, we would plant pumpkin seeds but we would never get very many pumpkins and the ones we did get were really small and then we would get those nasty squash bugs that are so hard to kill so we decided to not grow pumpkins anymore.  That, and it was fun to go as a family to the pumpkin patch.
This year, though, we went to our local nursery in the spring and they had this little free activity where the kids planted some seeds in some containers to take home and grow.  One of the seeds that Braelynn planted was a pumpkin seed.  That little seed took off and grew into a little plant.  When it was time to plant our garden Braelynn made sure that we didn't forget to plant her pumpkin plant and I made sure to have her plant it on the very edge of the garden where I didn't think the little plant would grow very well.
Well, bad karma came back to me and that little plant grew into this HUGE pumpkin plant that just grew and grew.  It produced about a dozen big pumpkins and a handful of little pumpkins.  It choked out my cucumbers (my very favorite garden vegetable) and eventually killed my pepper plants. 
Since it is tradition that we go to the pumpkin patch we still wanted to go and take a hay ride or something but we could never get everyone's schedule together at the same time that they had the hay rides going on.  It makes me sad to think we didn't get to do that this year, especially since next year will be the last year that Veronica will be living at home.  These kids are just growing too fast!
We did get to carve pumpkins and we had a fun Halloween.
Veronica didn't have to dress up this year for anything and went to a movie party at her friends house but she let me take her picture!

Tyler had football practice and then went with his friends to the haunted woods.  It was fun to hear about the three macho boys who got so scared and then made a pact with each other not to tell anyone else that they were so scared.  It still makes me laugh when I think about it!

Samantha is a ball girl for the SUU volleyball team and they had a game Halloween night but she was able to go trick or treating for a little bit.  She had a little bit (ok, a lot) of drama surrounding her costume last minute but she ended up being this cute pirate that we had the stuff for around the house and in the Halloween tote.

Brenna wanted to be a mean witch with her face painted.

Last year a few weeks after Halloween we had to go to Mesquite Nevada for Tyler's football game.  The girls and I went to Smiths to kill time for the hour that they were warming up before the game started.  We walked by the clearance section on the way into the store and saw this beautiful dress that Braelynn fell in love with.  It was $8, complete with gloves, and the skirt underneath that make the dress poof out.