Family Pictures

We got some pictures taken by my friend Brandi. I just wanted to post a few.

Squash smoothies!

I know what you're thinking. Disgusting right? But it really was pretty good! This morning for breakfast I made smoothies for the kids using a jar of bottled apricots, 1 c. of pureed hubbard squash, a tangerine, a half eaten banana and a bunch of ice. I really liked it. You couldn't taste the squash at all and there was enough sugar in the bottle of apricots that I didn't need to add any sugar either. I feel almost healthy :) We also had squash muffins (with chocolate chips, can't really be that healthy) and oatmeal. Yes, I'm turning into my dad. I didn't tell the kids there was squash in any thing so they did pretty well with everything. I had leftover muffins for joy school (it was my turn) and lots of the kids had seconds. I just feel so proud.

Halloween

I forgot to take pictures of everyone this Halloween. I don't know what came over me except that I was in charge of the cake walk at the ward halloween party and was busy making a few cakes that day. I did get this snapshot of John a week before when he went to a friends b-day party. He was Darth Maul. His makeup was pretty awesome if I do say so myself. Joey was a zombie, Samantha a witch, Nathan cookie monster, and Michelle was a cat. Justin was Clark Kent and I was also a witch. I made Samantha and John's costumes, but everything else was pretty much thrown together from the costume box which was nice. Halloween was great. We went to the ward party, ate our fill of chili, played games, did the trunk or treat and then drove into town to do a little extra trick or treating. It was great and we ended up with way too much candy. John counted 220 pieces in his bag (and that was after he had eaten a ton all day Sunday and Monday.) I finally confiscated most of it the other day and am still trying to figure out what to do with it. I usually just let them eat it up until it is all gone, but this year they just had too much to do that with. Anyone want any more candy? I will mail it to you!

These are our sad but economical pumpkins. They are actually acorn squash. When we went to visit my parents at the beginning of this month, they sent us home with a box of about 10 acorn squash. So we used some of them for our jack o lanterns this year. They actually worked pretty well, but are a little bit harder to cut than a normal pumpkin. Joey and John cut their own and stacked them to make a totem pole.
These last few pictures are of Nathan's joy school field trip to the pumpkin patch. It was a lot of fun. Nathan's favorite thing was to climb on the hay tower and to go through the hay maze. The tower was pretty tall, but he had no fear.
The hay tower. Nathan is on the second bale from the top. He went to the top too, I just didn't get a picture. I was a bit nervous with him at the top as he kept jumping up and down. boys will be boys.

Nathan's school friends. Levi, Isaiah, Aiden, Mikayla, Nathan and Luke. They had a great time on the hayride.