Thursday, November 17, 2011

holiday head attire

I love brody's preschool!  Not just because they take my child for a large chunk of the day, but they do super cute projects!  Last Christmas i mentioned the brody caroler which was quite amusing, and this year, especially recently, he's come home with a slew of holiday hats.  Here's what's come through our doors:
Halloween Boo
His class started discussing native americans in preperation for thanksgiving and each kid was given a native american name.  If I were to choose brody's name I probably would have chosen "He-who-talks-without-stopping" but his teachers are much nicer and gave him the cute name Fire Wolf.
The day of his thanksgiving feast he came home with this pilgrim attire:
Yesterday was my favorite... gobble gobble!
So take this as inspiration and design your own holiday head attire!  Make it work!

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

halloween

i've got three young boys, so naturally when halloween rolls around i want their costumes to be fun and have a cohesive theme. the first year they were lions and tigers and bears (oh my!), last year was jedi, c3po and r2d2, this year was an astronaut, earth and the moon:
my idea came before the construction. i searched online and didn't have much luck, did you know planet costumes don't exist? apparently it's not a "popular option" for kids these days. justin and i put our heads together and with two extra large paper lanterns, white duct tape for reinforcement, spray paint and craft paint, we were finally in business!! i LOVE how it turned out! they're skinny little legs were so cute coming out from the big old planet!
halloween night we had a mini halloween party and cousin jacob came trick or treating too:
after that it was out for trick or treating! at first there was some apprehension, but crew got in the zone real quick and was pretty much on auto pilot after that!!
the night was really fun! it's always a treat to watch your kids discover holidays and traditions you remember loving as a kid!

as a funny side story, since the costumes were paper the boys didn't get to put them on until halloween night (for fear of ripping.) i put the earth on kade and the moon on crew. they both fussed, started freaking out, and began wiggling out of their costumes. i thought my dream had ended. after the costumes were off kade went to the moon and crew went to the earth and they put them on a were perfectly happy after that!! these guys are crazy sometimes, but i love em with everything i have, after all, they're my whole world!

preschool halloween

the thursday before halloween were the halloween festivities at brody's preschool. the morning started off with a costume parade, which is always really interesting, it's so fun to see what all the different things kids want to be for halloween. that being said, here's our guy:
and here he is in the parade:

doesn't it seem like he's really going to go walk into a space shuttle and take off? after the parade there was the class costume pic:
i was able to find a baby sitter to go to his class halloween party, they made a hershey bar into a mummy, a classmate into a mummy:
ate some spooky snack like gummy centipedes
concocted a witches brew of swamp water (green lemonade), spiders, eyeballs, centipedes, and dragon scales:
it was such a fun day! i love being able to watch brody in a classroom setting, and his teachers seem to enjoy him. after watching his "dance moves" since the year's began, one of his teachers recommended i put him in break dance lessons so he can go on sycytd one day.... hmm, it's a good point. i guess if he doesn't pursue the whole astronaut thing he can always be a B boy.

byu v. tcu

So before Justin started at his job the company didn't have any lds doctors. Since Justin started, another lds guy from SC started, and his boss (Chris) has opened a new office with an lds guy. suddenly mormons are popping up all over the company and when Chris heard how many people would be attending the byu vs. tcu game at cowboy stadium he arranged for a suite. yup, a fully catered (texas bbq), all you can drink (not really an option for most attending), with comfy leather chairs in. a. suite. to say the guys were excited is probably a really big understatement. they loved it!
ryan, rob and mike watching the game
view from the box
the boys and grandma. the boys all knew about the suite and grandma thought she was attending the game in a seat like a bunch of other fans. to say she was surprised and delighted is also an understatement!
Chris had a little "wager pool" that rewarded the person who matched the score at the end of each quarter. it wasn't actually gambling since Chris supplied everyone's money, but people still won. grandma won first, $75.
no one won the second quarter so the pot rolled over. ryan won $150 the third quarter.
Chris ended up winning the fourth quarter but said he'd rather give the money to grandma if she would "make it rain downstairs." here's the video:

she said it was one of the funnest things she's ever done! Seriously who wouldn't want to throw a bunch of money out to people?!
The boys and grandma had a great time and really enjoyed the suite, despite the loss. here's a pic with all the doctors and his boss Chris in the red Texas Rangers (ouch!) shirt.

zoo

the byu v tcu game (at cowboy stadium) was last weekend so naturally we had some visitors! justin's parents, his brothers mike and ryan, and his grandma lil came to visit. we kicked off the festivities with a trip to the zoo. we figured the kids would love it and zoo animals can always provide some sort of entertainment for adult as well. speaking of kids loving it, crew kind of didn't. he was a little freaked out the whole time and seemed to come around right as we were leaving. he needed a constant comforting companion for the day, which knowing crew, shouldn't have surprised me in the least!
our resident animal lover, kade, really enjoyed the day! he was super excited to watch the turtles swim. he also tried to squeeze through the fence to go play with some baboons.
he can't read, but he seemed to know that this was the door for him:
brody enjoyed tour guiding everyone around, and learning to read the park maps. at one point we didn't want to even look at the elephants because there was a map station near by. you guessed it, his new obsession is directions (N, S, E, W), he loves the compass iphone app mike showed him. now whenever we're in the car he asks which direction were going. like every. single. turn. super fun.
the boys were able to find the strollers to take a little break in.

another highlight: riding the train. this is the best behaved i've ever seen my boys. i'm thinking of ditching our car and taking a train anywhere we need to go.
family pic

it was a busy morning but we all had fun, the weather was perfect and we really enjoyed the animals!