Spooky Town Fair

The city put on a "Spooky Town Fair" today so we headed down town to see all the fun events.  First, we started the day with the Dixie State College Homecoming parade:

Colby and Emily has a blast because they got so much candy!  It seemed like every float threw them handfuls of candy.  They collected a bag full.  After the parade, we walked down to the Main Street Town Square where the Spooky Town Fair was going on. 

There were a lot of spooky decorations.  These were our favorites.  I liked the scary Transylvania truck with the skeleton bride and groom inside.  Emily's favorite was this inflatable ghost horse and carriage. 

The town fair had many booths and carnival games for the kids to do.  Some of the games required tickets but I was to cheap to buy tickets so we did all of the free games, which was just fine. 

There were also a lot of people dressed up in their costumes.  Emily saw Cinderella and had to get a picture with her.  Cinderella willingly said sure. Like I said we played a lot of games like bean bag toss, digging for buried treasure, obstacle courses, and even playing on the Lifetime swing sets on display.  Colby was getting very good at bean bag toss.  Oh and I can't forget, everyone handed out CANDY!  We came home with even more candy.  One craft Emily really like was the candle making.  At this booth, a lady dressed like a witch showed the kids how to dip candles in her smoking cauldron.  Emily got to make her own candle by dipping her string in the hot wax.  It took quite a while but she finally had a two good sized pink candle sticks.  After having checking out all of the booths, we went for a ride on the St. George Carousel.  That was a blast and both kids had huge smiles on their faces.  We had fun at the fair.  We are looking forward to Halloween.

Corn Maze

We went to the Staheli Corn Maze last night and we all had a great time.  Before heading to the Maze, the kids wanted to have fun at the farm village and play on all of the fun toys.

Colby and Emily loved the horse swing merry-go-round and the huge water pipe slide into the corn. They also loved the teeter-totter, the rope swing, and racing the ducks down the rain gutters.  It was one of the first pretty chilly nights here in St. George so I didn't want them playing with the ducks for too long because I knew they would get soaking wet.  After playing for a while, we went to check out the farm animals at the petting zoo.

We were able to pet sheep, llamas, goats, a donkey, and a pig.  We also saw cows, horses, turkeys, and chickens.  Colby loved them and kept quacking and mooing at the animals.

While we were waiting for the hayride to take us to the Maze, we took a few fun Fall pictures.  As you can see Emily wanted to be very silly and Colby didn't really care for the camera.

And we made it to the Corn Maze to get lost!  This year there was a kids' maze which was really fun to go through.  As we walked through this Corn Maze, we were able to read a story as we went.  We read about Spookley the Square Pumpkin and how he saved the other round pumpkins from the big storm.  It was a really cute story.  The kids loved running from picture to picture and listening to the story.  I hope the Staheli's continue to do this kid maze along this the big maze each year.  After finishing the story, we walked over to the big maze to see if we could find our way.  A big sponsor of the Maze this year was Biggest Loser so the Corn Maze was shaped like the Biggest Loser logo.  We had a good time running through the corn and trying to find our way. Then we all got cold hands and decided it was time to head home out of the wind.  I am excited for Fall and the cool weather.

Fall Festival

Emily had been asking to go to the park all day yesterday and I was feeling very lazy so I didn't want to go.  Finally I gave in though and told her that if she slept during her nap time we could go.  Lately she has decided that she doesn't need naps anymore so she will lie down for about a half hour and read books and then tell me she is done sleeping.  Because of this, I was sure I was safe in not having to go to the park because I didn't think she would actually sleep this time.  Well she must have really wanted to go to the park because she proved me wrong and took an hour or so nap.  The moment she woke up, she told me it was time to go to the park.  So we had to go.

It  was a good thing we went to the park that day and at that time because we soon found out from some of the other people at the park that there was a Fall Festival at the Tonaquint Nature Center starting in a few minutes.  I didn't even know about it but it sounded fun so we walked over to check it out.  The Fall Festival had a bunch of crafts, kid games, pumpkins, popcorn, and of course a lot of candy and people dressed in costumes.  We had a good time playing all of the fun games.

Emily loved eating a donut off a string.  She kept trying to use her hands but the people in charge kept telling her no hands.  After she had taken one bite, she walked away and was done.  I told her to go back and get her donut.  She also liked digging in the hay and finding spiders.

Colby loved the bean bag toss and got every bean bag into the holes.  Mostly he loved the candy he got after each game.  Another fun game was the Candy Corn Bowling.  Colby and Emily both rolled the ball down to knock over the pins.  Colby got all but one so when he went to get his treat, he knocked over the last pin with his hands.  He had figured out the game.

After playing all of the games, we walked along the nature path and searched for hidden pumpkins in the Scavenger Hunt.  There were probably 20 pumpkins hidden and all painted differently.  The kids had a good time searching for all of the pumpkins.  Colby was even pretty good at spotting then and would sometimes find them before Emily. 

The Fall Festival was really fun and I am glad Emily made us go to the park that day or we would have missed out.

Emily's New Room

We finally got Emily's new room painted and put together.  With the new baby coming we decided it was time to split the rooms into a boys room and a girls room.  This is definitely a girls room now.  Here is what the room looked like before:

...and here is the after shots:

Russell repainted all of the walls white and an accent wall purple.  Then we added flower decals to the walls for that girly touch.  Emily also got a new bed with the move.  We actually purchased this bed at a yard sale when Emily was only like a year old and we have just been storing it until now.  We couldn't pass up the great deal we go on the bed and we love that the bottom drawer under the bed can also fit a mattress so it can be another bed if we need it to be.  Emily absolutely loves her new room and also loves her new bed.  She was getting a little too big for the toddler bed.  She has told everyone we know about her new room and has invited all of them to come see it. 

The room kind of has a "Tangled" theme to it because Emily loved Rapunzel.  She even picked out the "Tangled" sheets for her bed and the first night she slept on her new bed she had to wear her "Tangled" pajamas to match.

Here are some more shots of the finished room:

We added the purple sun banners from the movie to the walls after using then for her birthday as well as the paper lanterns and the 15 foot long yellow hair braid.  I had worked too hard on these decorations for the party to just throw them away so we added them to the room.  I think they make a nice touch.  In the closet (which I didn't take a picture of) is my old Barbie house.  I decided Emily was now old enough to play with my childhood prized possessions, my Barbies!  She loves the Barbie house and will play for hours just like I did.  

One great thing about this new room is that Emily will keep it clean!  She will pick up her toys a lot better than before and she even takes pride in her new bed by making it each morning!  I am really shocked and so happy about this change.   I still have curtains for the window and a quilt for the bed in the works and the goal is to get them done before Christmas.  I love how the room turned out.  So far this is the most finished room in the whole house.  It will be nice to get the boys room done next and then move on to the bathrooms. 

With all of the pictures being take of Emily and her room, Colby didn't want to be left out.  He said "I ont picture!"  Which is funny because he usually avoids the camera.  So he struck a pose and actually smiled for the camera!  After taking this picture I realized how big he is getting.  He is starting to look more like a little boy than a baby.  I was sad and asked him who said he could get so big.  Kids grow too fast and I know he and Emily are going to seem so much bigger when the new baby comes too. 

Aladdin

For her birthday, we got Emily tickets to the Tuacahn show Aladdin.  We took her to the show last night.  The show was awesome and the special effects were great.  At one point, we even wore 3D glasses to watch the play!  There was even a flying carpet.  Emily loved the show.  She said her favorite part was Jasmine.  All of the actors and actresses were great and the Genie was really funny. 

After the show we got to take a picture with Aladdin, Jasmine, and Genie.  They were so friendly and loved talking to all of the kids as they got their pictures taken.  Emily had been looking forward to seeing Aladdin since the beginning of the season.  Finally we were able to go two weeks before the season ended. During the play, Aladdin and Jasmine fly on a magic carpet right above the audience.  When they came near us, Emily excitedly waved her arms at them.  She was excited to see them so closely as they flew.  Like I said before, the show was great and worth going to.

There is a funny story behind getting the tickets to the show.  We kept waiting for some deal on the tickets to Aladdin but we never found anything.  Finally we just broke down and purchased three tickets at full price.  We had to get nose-bleed seats so that we could somewhat afford them and still ended up paying $105.  At work, my friend, Stacy Richan, does the payroll for all of the Tuachan employees so she kept asking them for any deals on tickets too.  About a week after we bought our tickets, Stacy told me they had send her a promo code that would enable us to buy tickets for only $10!  I was so mad that we had bought them for full price.  I told Russell to call and see if we could cancel and get our money back so we could buy the tickets for $10 instead.  When he called they told him sales were final and no refunds.  We were bummed until we remembered KSL.com!  So we posted our tickets on KSL for $100 to see if anyone would buy them from us so we could get our money back.  We had a few bites and then on Sunday a guy from Lehi called and said he really wanted them so we took the tickets to his uncle in Bloomington and got our $100 back!  Then we turned around and purchased new tickets for $10 each so we saved ourselves $70!  We were excited and to top it off, our new seats were right in the center so we had a lot better seats than before.  Aren't we good bargainers!

Primary Program

Our Primary Sacrament Meeting Program was September 30.  My Primary kids did great.  We had a practice on Saturday the 29th and I bribed all of the kids to come and practice by promising pizza afterward.  Of course that practice didn't go as smoothly as hoped but I wasn't too worried because I knew they would do much better on Sunday in front of their parents.  They did great on their speaking parts and my music leader, Lori Olsen, and I got a lot of complements on the music too.  The theme of Primary this year is Choosing the Right.

I wrote the Primary Program while driving through Oregon on our trip.  I was stressing about it for quite a while so I asked for the help of my counselors and the input of the children. With this help, when I started writing, it came together quite quickly.

After the Program and during Primary, we just had a chill day.  First I had all the Primary kids and teachers go outside for a group picture.  Then we had popcorn and watched two church movies about making good choices.  Here are my Primary kids:

We had to through in a silly picture too!  Actually the sun was in every one's eyes so each picture had someone covering their face or looking away.  Oh well good enough right.  This is actually only about half of my Primary kids but these are the active ones that come every week.

I have enjoyed serving as Primary President so far.  These kids are really good most of the time.  I am excited to have a week off this Sunday though because of General Conference.  I am glad to have the Primary Program over and to have it be such a success.  This was also Emily's first Primary Program and she did great on her part too.  She memorized it perfectly and told it to everyone.  The next big thing to plan is our Halloween Primary Activity and Trunk or Treat.