Halloween 2009

Halloween 2009. This was probably one of my most favourite Halloweens ever. I loved all the decorations, the costumes were fantastic and everyone had a great time!

Amie as a spider

Lachlan in his prize winning costume. he was very upset the year before because Amie had won. He came up with this idea all by himself!

Haylie trying to get some lollies off the decorations!

A hobbit and someone from Star Wars, I think. I've never really seen Star Wars but I remember being told that that is who he was!

All my potions and concoctions!

Haylie my little ghost buster. This was her first Halloween. The year before she was only a baby and slept through the whole night! I hardly saw her all night. She had such a great time running around and of course eating lots of lollies!

Jessie from Toy Story.

Caitlyn as a ballerina.

Lara Croft. Tomb Raider. I think! Looking fantastic after having Seth only a month before.

The Flintstones. Their car won for the best decorated trunk!

The Super Mario Brothers. Fantastic. They won for the couple and Jamie won her second best adult costume award!  They had the music (You know from the computer game) playing on their phones in their top pockets the whole night!

Casey. What can I say, it's not much of a costume!!

The Wally's! I loved this idea!

Seth at his very first Halloween party. I think he was dressed as a pirate!

Zombie prom king and queen!

Gross!

Those pinatas can be very hard to crack open. All the kids usually get a couple of turns!

Halloween 2008

Ok now we are getting a bit more serious. The competition was on and everyone wanted to get the award for the best costume! Our collection of Halloween decoration was slowly building up and every year we were trying to do something better to wow everyone!

Here is our very first cemetery, complete with bones!

Amie won this year for the best child's costume. She really did look very freaky. I took a very long shower to get all of the pink out of her hair!

Lachlan looking very scary!

Bob the builder, can we fix it, yes we can!

Indianna Jones!

Jamie as a firefighter. This was her first year of winning the best adult costume prize!

Me and my massive bowl of M&M's! Yum!!

Nathan and Aurelia about to enter under our giant spider web! A couple of people actually wouldn't enter through the front door because of the big spider web, complete with giant spiders!

Caitlyn as a ghost!

The Ramke's

Zoe as a kitty.

Transformers and pirates!

Buzz is his most popular costume ever.

Doesn't he look good as a girl!

Here are the kids getting ready to play the donut game!

Sorry Jess and Casey, but I would never let you operate on me!

Check in tomorrow for pictures from 2009! I hope your enjoying this trip down memory lane. Some of you have been their from the start and others have joined us along the way, but we have enjoyed seeing what you all come up with every year!

Halloween, a look back!

So it's only one month until our annual Halloween party. I hope that everyone is thinking about their costumes and planning on how to decorate their trunks! Our family is very excited about it. The kids change their minds constantly about 'who' they want to be for Halloween. Hopefully they can decide soon. Invites should be out in the next week or so!

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to take a trip down memory lane and see where it all began.

Our first party was in 2005. I don't actually have any pictures from the night. We weren't sure if people would get into it or not so we chose fairly safe costumes ourselves. I don't remember what Buzz was, but I remember being a hula girl!

Our next party was is 2006 and we went a bit more full on. Everyone looked great! Again I don't actually have a lot of pictures of the actual night. (If anyone does can you please comment to let me know and I'll work out a way to get them from you, thanks!)

Here are a few pictures from the night. We started out by playing the mummy game. You use toilet paper to wrap up your 'mummy', when the toilet paper breaks you have to hand the roll off to the next person in your team. Your team wins if you are the first to completely cover your 'mummy'. We haven't played this one for a while, maybe it's time to bring it back!

I think that's Melanie being wrapped up!

Look how little Lachlan is in this picture! I love it! Oh, I think that is Adam being the 'mummy' for this team!

Another favourite game is the donut game. John, dressed as the Phantom of the Opera, won the best costume award that year!

I love how Amie is helping her big brother so that he can win! Again she looks so little and she has no hair!

I just had a look for some pictures from 2007 but I couldn't find any! If you have any please let me know. Thanks.

Check in tomorrow, and the rest of the week, for more pictures. I know I have pictures for these years because I got smart and organised for someone to take them!

Haylie and Me

Since Caitlyn started school this term Haylie and I have been spending a lot of time together. She is my little buddy. Wherever I go, she goes.

 Most of the time she is pretty good and will go along with whatever I have going on that day. She will go to the shops quite happily, as long as she gets a treat! She likes to go and visit Grandma and our friend, Aurelia. She is happy to sit in the stroller while I go for a walk or play at the park while I run laps around the oval.

I think she also likes to have the whole house to herself. She gets to choose what is on TV and she gets to play in the girls room with their stuff. She gets the whole trampoline to herself, which she absolutely loves!

Even though she is very happy to have some time to herself she does get very excited when we go a pick up the kids from school. She loves to tell them what we did that day and join in with whatever they decide to do that afternoon.

Ever since Buzz and Lachlan went to America she has it in her head that her bedroom is scary and she wants to sleep in the girls room. Most nights she throws a tantrum at bedtime because she isn't allowed to sleep with the girls. We have thought of putting all the girls in one room, but to start with the rooms in this house just aren't big enough. Her bed wouldn't even fit in there and if it did they would have no room to play, walk or move! Secondly, the times that they have been allowed to sleep in the same room they talk and play and take forever to go to sleep.

One night, about a week ago, she got very upset at bed time. She had taken her little Dora fold out couch into the girls room with her pillow and blanket. But it was a school night and I didn't want to have to go in a tell them to go to sleep 50 times so I took it all back to her room and the screaming started. When she is like that the best thing to do is to just leave her. After about half an hour she finally fell asleep.

Later that night, after Buzz and I had gone to bed she woke up crying. She likes the door open, but Lachlan can't sleep with it open so he closes it when he goes to bed because she is always asleep by then. Then we usually open it a little bit and make sure the nightlight is on the the hallway. Anyway this night we must have forgotten to open her door so she got a bit upset. Buzz got up, opened her door and then left our door open as well so she felt closer to us. She was happy and went back to sleep, or so we thought!

Buzz gets up about 5:30 am and when he gets up he shuts their bedroom door so that they don't wake up. When he went to close it though he noticed that Haylie wasn't in her bed. Now she is an early riser but that was too early for her. He noticed that the girls bedroom door was open and there she was fast asleep. She must of gotten up and dragged her Dora couch and pillow and blanket around to the girls room and gone back to sleep!

I'll say one thing for her she is definitely determined. When she sets her mind to something there is no stopping her!

Oh, for all of you who are wondering, we still have one more day left for our bedroom challenge. So far the kids are doing great and have kept their bedrooms clean. They have also been much nicer to each other. If their rooms are clean at bedtime tomorrow night then we will be off to see the new Smurf movie this weekend!

Sunday Thoughts . . .

As is common on a Sunday evening the kids are all in bed, the dishes have been done and Buzz and I are sitting down at our different computers tinkering away.

Today at church it was the Primary children's turn to do their Sacrament Presentation. The kids were very excited about their parts and the girls wanted to look their very best. They chose what outfits they would wear and then we spent some time straightening or curling their hair. 

When we arrived at church they went off to the primary room with the other children to get ready. Right before the meeting started they all walked in and took their seats. As Amie and Caitlyn walked past Haylie saw them and wanted to go and sit with them. When she realised that she wasn't allowed she started to get very upset. We told her that she could go and sit with Poppy, who was also sitting on the stand, but she didn't want to and she soon decided to sit down with Buzz.

 As the sacrament was being passed I noticed how quiet it was. Our ward has about 40-50 primary aged children so this was quiet a feat. All of the children did really well. They sang beautifully and remembered most of the words. That was really nice to see because up until a couple of months ago I was in there teaching them all the songs. Nicola did a great job with them and they sang wonderfully.

 Caitlyn, Amie and Lachlan all did really well with their parts. They spoke clearly so everyone could understand what they were saying. The only problem was that they were sitting on the other side of the pulpit so I couldn't really see them. It was a special presentation and you could definitely feel the spirit there.

Next year Haylie will be in Sunbeams so she will get to sit up on the stand as well. It's actually a little bit scary to think that next year all of my children will be in primary and be in the primary presentation.

I'm so proud of all of my children and I love them so much.

Hayfever

Oh how I hate this time of year. I love the weather but my nose and mouth hate the pollen in the air.

In some ways I guess I'm lucky, I only get hayfever during the end of September, through October and sometimes into November. Other people suffer more than I do. But it sure is annoying.

I don't know what it is that I'm allergic to but while it's blossoming I have an itchy nose with sneezing and running. But I think what's worse and more annoying is the itchy mouth! I don't know if you've ever had an itchy mouth but it is not fun. I try eating or drinking to get rid of the itchiness  but that doesn't work. So then I bite down on my cheeks, but that doesn't help much either.

I guess it's time to go and get some hayfever medication, again!

Apart from the hayfever, I do really love this time of year. The weather is starting to get warmer with the days being nice and sunny and the night still being cool and crisp. The countdown is on to our annual Halloween party (I've got so much work to do to get ready for it still), after Halloween it's time for Thanksgiving and then it's Christmas! Scary, I know. I'm not is any way shape or form ready for Christmas. We still have one more birthday in our family before I start thinking about that.

Oh, last week we got a new trampoline for the kids. When we moved into this house we gave our big trampoline away to my sister. It would have taken up the whole garden! But recently we saw a really good deal on a smaller trampoline. The kids weren't really using the garden because they didn't have anything to really play with out there so we decided to get this smaller trampoline. It is only a 10ft, but it's big enough for all of them to play on at once, without taking up the whole garden. It has been well worth the money because the kids are out there all the time. They get ready for school in the morning and then they go out and play, Haylie uses it while the others are at school and then when they others get  home they are out there on and off until dinner and then they go back out after dinner. I have to call them back inside when it's dark and time for bed! Oh, their favourite game to play on it is the put all the balls they can find and then jump around without any of the balls touching them. It's funny because I remember playing the same game with I was a kid!

Smurfs

Right now the kids are a bit . . . well . . . .  obsessed with the Smurfs.

The new movie came out yesterday and they are all dying to see it.

It all started about a year ago when we got a game on the iPad. In the game the surfs grow crops and do other things that Papa smurf tells them to do. This was their first introduction into the world of the smurfs.
It's a fun game that all the kids like to play.

While looking in the toy aisle on various trips to the shops we have seen some smurf lego and some smurf figurines.

Then about three weeks ago Buzz discovered that the old surfs cartoons were playing on tv every morning so we started to record them.

They absolutely love them and are always asking if they can watch the recorded episodes.

So they are all very excited to go and see the new movie.

We made a deal with them though . . . . they have to earn the treat of going to the movies to see the surfs.

The deal is that they have to keep their bedrooms clean for a whole week! Tough I know! They also have to try really hard to be much nicer to each other. There are lots of little fights that go on and I'm getting a bit tired of being told that, "Amie touched me," or "Lachlan hurt me," etc.

Anyway, today their rooms were cleaned and the challenge begins! I don't care if they get their toys out and play in their rooms as long as by the time they go to bed it is all cleaned up again.

I think that there will be a lot of reminding going on all weeks, but hopefully next week they will have finished the challenge and we can enjoy some fun family time together!

Motivation

Life lately has been . . . . . .  stressful. I guess that's why it's been a little while since I did a decent blog post. I've been stressed and that stressing has made me very unmotivated and a little bit depressed.

But in the last few days I've decided that stressing about things doesn't really help. It just makes you feel miserable. I can't really do to much to fix the problem but I can change my attitude. To help with that I decided that I needed some new goals and ideas to keep myself motivated.

One of the areas of my life that has suffered lately has been exercising and eating right. I've still been doing both of those things but I had been fairly slack and not working as hard and I knew I could. So last week I became a runner!

When I told Buzz he laughed at me and said that he would like to see me run! Well I'm no athlete, that's for sure, and I'm sure that I look pretty funny while running but I can say that I'm enjoying it so far.

The first thing that I did as a runner was to find an app on my phone to help me with this goal. I found one that helps you go from a non-runner to being able to run 5k's in eight weeks. Using intervals of walking and running  you slowly get to the point of being able to run the whole 5km's with no walking.

Of course, I have Haylie with me every day and running with a stroller is pretty tricky, especially when just starting out, so I decided that we would go to a park, with an oval so that I could do my exercise while Haylie plays on the playground. Win, win!

The app says that you only need to do it three times and week so on the other days I'm going to continue with my regular walking.

So far I've done it three times and it's been pretty easy. But I'm not expecting it to stay that way!

Anyway . . . hopefully you'll be hearing a bit more from me about the goings on in our family!

Birthday Boy!

Happy Birthday!!