Act 5; Scene 17: Holiday Season (Thus Far) in a Nutshell

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted. And we have been doing a lot! There are always so many fun things to do during the holiday times. Here's a brief (in a manner of speaking) picture tour of the last month and a half!

Thanksgiving in St. George:

A round of family pictures:

Sam, Carson, Luke

Because he can't resist an empty garden and a shovel!

A trip to the Lehi Christmas Parade:

Grandma and Tommy in action--always running

Decorated our Christmas tree:

No pants is the new fashion

Tommy decided all of the ornaments should go on a select few branches

The Ancestry.com 1920s  Christmas party!

8 month pregnant flapper!

A visit to see St. Nick:

Waiting in the looooooong line

He was very excited to sit on St. Nick's lap, although he wouldn't tell him what he wanted for Christmas...

Decorated a felt tree:

Saw some of Santa's reindeer:

Thomas and his best friend, Jack

I tried out a hippy headband:

We took a trip to Build-a-Bear to create "Babs" for little girl, arriving sometime very soon:

A McFarland extended family party:

And a visit from the Moses Lake cousins. We had so much fun with them! So much fun that...I only took one picture!!! These are the cousins jumping at the Museum of Natural Curiosity:

Tommy is constantly asking that his cousins come back to his house. We loved having them stay! Come back soon!

 

And that takes us pretty much to today.  Maybe I'll even be able to get a Christmas post in about the next two days :-)
Hope you have a fun-filled and relaxing holiday!

Act 5; Scene 16: Robert Thomas Center, 28 months

Tommy still loves running laps anywhere and everywhere. He has added screaming to his running routine. Something about screaming while running, you know?

Tommy's favorite movie: How to Train Your Dragon, which he calls the "Drag Show"

He loves whispering to himself

He always asks for a hug (quite voraciously) when he thinks you're mad at him

He LOVES his "big boy bed"

He likes to "sneak" into our bedroom in the morning and peek in to see if we're awake

He insists on clasping his hands and making everyone else clasp their hands instead of folding arms during prayers

He says "Oh" after everything

Tommy's favorite foods: pizza, olives, ketchup, and plain bread

His best friend: Jack (whom he calls "Rack")

He asks frequently if he can go to St. Nick's house

He must start every day with milk and the "Drag Show"

He is still obsessed with Grandpa

He thinks there's a dog at every house we go to, and backs up to protect himself when we go to knock on the door. 

His favorite toy: Lamby

He likes to sleep with as many stuffed animals/toys as he can. This has included but is not limited to, his cement truck, his holiday card from Grandma, his severed hand from the Halloween costume, and about 6-7 different stuffed animals. 

 His favorite games: red light, green light and hide-and-seek

Act 5; Scene 15: October Wrap-Up

I have to say I don't think I've ever been happier for October to be over.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE October, but it was just crazy this year! November came (only yesterday!) and we spent the whole day cleaning the house and other random chores, with no other plans.

It was heavenly.

I am trying very hard to not schedule much this month to soak in the fall cleaning and relaxing feeling of November.

BUT! We did not fail to celebrate Halloween with gusto!

Here we are just about to head out trick-or-treating:

I had to put all three so you could see the struggle we had in trying to get Mr. Shark in a picture!

Of course the one time he looks at the camera...ha!

Tommy had a hard time understanding the take-a-piece-and-put-it-in-your-bag technique. His was more of an eat-it-right-when-you-get-it technique. It actually turned into him clutching onto the most recent piece of candy until we went to the next house, where he would get a new piece of candy, and then put the older one in his bag. And what did he choose?!? Here he had his choice of all this delectable chocolate candy, and he chose dum dums and smarties every chance he got! Come on kid, you're supposed to be making good candy selections for your parents!!! I guess he knows how to keep us out of his candy stash :-)

After some trick-or-treating and scone-eating at a neighbors, we settled in for some Halloween games with our good friends and their little man, Sawyer. Doesn't he look insanely adorable as a little golfer?

Fun times were had by all, and this little minion even got to stay up a whole hour late. 

Robert tried so hard to get a pic of him wearing these goggles, but the kid will not hold still!

After the guests were gone, the child in bed, the trick-or-treaters done (or at least our millions of pieces of candy were all gone so we turned off the porch lights...) we washed off our fake blood and crashed for the night.

As I said, November has felt so relaxing thus far.  I'm hoping this will happen on more November weekend mornings:

Happy November, all! 

Act 5; Scene 14: Happy Halloween!!!

This week wraps up our final Spooktacular meal and Halloween festivities. 

On Wednesday, we had a more traditional-looking Halloween dinner:

Tomato basil soup with the last of our garden tomatoes

And pumpkin rolls!

Not actually pumpkin, but pumpkin shaped

And it was delicious! I forgot how good tomato basil soup can be. I'm glad we got to have it at least once this season! And the pumpkin rolls turned out pretty cute, too.

That night we carved our largest pumpkin into a Jack-o-Lantern.

 Thomas absolutely loved it. He was obsessed with getting the "yucky" stuff out of the pumpkin. He was saying "yucky" over and over again, until I started filming of course....he spent most of the time stirring up all of the juices inside the pumpkin.

I love the big stem!

That's a pretty happy guy sitting on our porch.

We're having a pretty chill Halloween. No carnivals, no fancy dinner--just trick-or-treating, and then a few friends coming over for about an hour to make Halloween pudding graveyards.

It should be really nice.

I'll update you this weekend.

And for now, Happy Haunting!

Act 5: Scene 13: Halloween Costume Reveal 2014

It's a little early, but since we had a costume party last night, we figured we'd better reveal before the word gets out!

Here are our Halloween costumes this year:

Tommy is Jaws, and we are his victims! (notice his severed hand...haha)

He was pretty stoked about his shark jacket. So stoked that it was very hard to get a picture of him!

And let me tell you, that jacket was a labor of love. I thought making that simple jacket would be so easy with the sewing machine. And it probably would have been if I was a bit more savvy about problem solving with the machine. BUT! 4 hours after starting the project, we finally completed it. And it's sure cute.

Our other labors of love were our wounds:

Robert's bloody gash got a lot of attention at the ward party

The shark got my arm!

The food coloring really worked well to die my shirt! I looked pretty bloody. Lots of kids at the party came up to us and asked to touch our blood--asked if it was real. Ha! Thanks to my stage makeup class at BYU and some extra fake blood I landed there, we looked pretty cool.

This is definitely the most gory costume I've ever had.

And! We won the family costume contest. Woohoo! Winning costume contests has to be one of my favorite things in life :-)

Us with our prize medals. And Tommy with his, like, 6th piece of candy in a row. 

Are you ready for Halloween?! Less than a week away!

Happy Haunting!