Halloween festivities

We started our Halloween festivities by going to our neighbor, Brian Pali's to pick out our pumpkins. He is a guy in our ward that really enjoys growing (a ton) of pumpkins every year and then calling all the ward kids to come and pick a pumpkin. The kids like it too. Kace picked a pumpkin that was shaped like a peanut, because his classes theme for their pumpkin walk was outer space so he thought he would be able to make it a pretty cool alien.

The boys wanted to paint their pumpkins this year. I was perfectly fine with that.

Ty is learning how to write his letters and numbers so his pumpkin consisted of his favorite colors blue and green and a variety of "letters". You may see some E's, Y's, X's, T's and other letters. He is getting quite good at his letters and only doesn't recognize about five of them. I was getting worried because he had shown NO INTEREST in learning them, but in the past month he has been writing them, saying them, and wanting to do flash cards with me. I don't know what the change has been, but I like it!

Ty wanted the biggest pumpkin there was. Brian had to load it in a trailer and bring it over on a four wheeler. I love the look of pure excitement on his face!

After our ward carnival (which I was in charge of this year along with the YW...and am sooooo glad it is over :) ) Kace had the grand idea that he should set up a booth at Kent's in the parking lot and try to sell his face painting skills. He got a little bit worried when I told him that he would have to get a business license to do it, but he thought he could make the money back pretty quickly. He practiced his skills on Ty! At first Ty didn't want to have his face painted and Kace was devastated, but quickly gave in (by quickly I mean, 2 or 3 hours later). I think he did pretty good!

For Jessica's birthday we went to Calloway's in full costume and had a dinner. People were giving us crazy looks, but it was fun! I couldn't get enough of Mac's costume. Jess had warned me and said that when I saw Mac I would pee my pants and sure enough it was HILARIOUS! Kace now wants this costume for next year. Probably not going to happen though.

For my costume I just got a wig and sunglasses. I am not much of a dresser upper. I told everyone that I was dressing up as my sister. I think I look kind of like her. I have absolutely NO IDEA what Nate is. He just started putting things on. On the way to the restaurant he kept looking at himself in the rear view mirror to see what he looked like with hair. We almost got into an accident more than once!

Kace's school always does a costume parade on the Friday before Halloween. The kids always get so excited to parade around in their costumes. Kace was in perfect character. He is pretty proud of his costume. He wanted to be something that would bring lots of laughs. I picked it out all by himself. I was ordering the carnival prizes on Oriental Trading he started looking for costumes and found this one. He wanted it as soon as he saw it. I was worried that it might be inappropriate (because of the nipples, they are really life-like!). Nate didn't think it was that bad and Kace couldn't stop talking about it, so we got it. As soon as his friend Easton saw it he wanted it too!

Every year at the costume parade Ty and his friends have had a great time playing in the leaves. This year was no different.



All year Ty has wanted to be black spiderman for Halloween. We went to WalMart as soon as the costumes were put on the shelf and he wore it all over. By the end of the month he no longer wanted to be black spiderman, he wanted to be Optimus Prime. Good think we already had that costume. So he went as a Transformer. Good thing I bought the black spiderman costume :)

Ty was pretty proud of his pumpkin on head trick!

My boys :) I sure do love them!


Kace is ALWAYS in character.

The Sunday before Halloween we celebrated Erik's bday at my parents house. The boys came in their costumes to go trick-or-treating to grandma and great grandma's. When we went over to MY grandma's she was probably flabbergasted because she thought Kace was a pregnant lady. I had to (gently) explain that he was a SUMO WRESTLER (two very different things). I found out later that the younger kids at the costume parade thought he was a baby with a big diaper! Whatever he was he got lots of laughs.

Notice Ty's pumpkin trick!

My whole point in doing the ward carnival was so that no one would do a trunk or treat. I do not like trunk or treat at all. I think it is parents being lazy. We have always taken our kids trick or treating, but are sometimes the only kids that go out. The older people in our ward don't go to the trunk or treat and always look forward to kids coming to their home in costume and then are always disappointed when hardly anyone comes. It makes me feel bad. SO it was decided to ban trunk or treat. That meant there were a TON of kids out trick or treating this year. I loved it!

Even though it was bed time when we got home we still had to sort our candy into piles (i.e. candy bars, tootsie rolls, fruity things, suckers, etc). They then put all their candy in different baggies and they are perfectly organized. I used to do this as a kid. After we would sort our candy the bartering would begin. We would trade the things we didn't like as much for things we did.

Ty is pretty proud of his loot. He didn't want to put it all together this year. He wanted to keep his separate. I think he is going to be sick!

Football in a nutshell

When Kace took his helmet off he usually always had this small stripe of sweat right in the middle of his head.

Football season for Kace has come and gone. We had been counting down until it started and now it is hard to believe that it is all over. We had really high expectations for his team because they were all eight-year-olds playing in a league with teams made of 7 & 8-year-olds (it was the opposite last year as they were the youngest kids in the league.)

Their first game was against Syracuse and Kace was so nervous. Our bishop had told us of a "secret weapon" he taught his grandson to use before each game and that was to go away privately and have a personal prayer. We thought this would be good for Kace and so he did this before each game (he did forget once and that was probably his worst game). Anyway, when Kace gets nervous he gets sick to his stomach so he had a bit of a stomach ache before the game started, but once he started playing you never would have known. He played very very well the first game. He ran like crazy, scored 3 touchdowns and had multiple tackles in the backfield. (I am going to say how well he did because this is my journal and I don't want to forget, so PLEASE if you are reading don't feel like I am bragging)
They won Syracuse 29-0. They probably went into the second game a little too confident.

I can always pick out Kace very easily because he was one of the only ones with long black socks on.

Like I mentioned they were probably too confident and sure of themselves that they were going to win every single game going into the second game. They had a terrible week of practice. And for their second game they played Kaysville @ Kaysville. I say that they played @ Kaysville because they definitely had the home field "advantage" with the clock running and officiating. We, however, did not do our part and played AWFUL. This was not Kace's best game. They lost 13-6.

We all pitched in a little bit of money so that some of the moms could make this sign for them to run through before each game. Sometimes I think they were more excited to see who could break through the sign first. Not going to lie.........I always wanted to do that!

So going into the third game against SV they were definitely a humbled team. They played fairly well, but still lost 13-6. Kace did okay. He scored their only TD and played awesome on defense. He was in on almost every tackle. Nate was really excited about this fact. Coach Christensen called him a defense animal which Kace thought was pretty cool.

It was after this game that we found out that we were in the toughest region and that our region had teams that were all made up of only 8-year-olds.

I put this picture in because it shows Kace with his hand up to his mouth messing around with his mouth guard. He was ALWAYS doing this. It drove me CRAZY!

We then played Roy. After three away games we were excited to finally be at home. We played SO GOOD and won 33-0. Our defense didn't allow them to have one first down. They played awesome. Kace ran very well and was able to score three times.

The next game we were playing Mountain Crest. It was a week of storms and we were thinking that it would probably be a stormy game. It was cold and the wettest game I have EVER been to. On the first series of the game Kace hit someone and split open his arm. He got it taped up and went back in. There were puddles all over the field. When we ran it we would slide out of bounds in huge puddles. It was like a big slip and slide. It was seriously a crazy game. Kace ran the ball very well and played good on defense but had a bit of a fumble problem. He scored our only two touchdowns this game.
We went into OT and Kace got the ball every single play. On two occasions we could have won, but had a holding penalty that brought us back. They ended up tying in double overtime 12-12.

Our next game was against West Haven. We played awesome on defense again and won 25-0. In this game at the end of the game West Haven kept calling time out so they could get one more shot with their offense. Coach Payne decided to try this trick play where all the lineman line up to the side, Kace is behind them, the qb gets the ball and throws the ball to Kace who follows his line of blockers up the field. We scored on it! Kace ran 95 yards in the last seconds of the game. He was so excited that the play worked.

Kace has made some of his best friends playing football. Right from the start of the season he and Easton decided that they were ninjas. They told each other that whenever the each of them

scored they would run to the other one and say, "I'm a ninja."

Again, after the West Haven game they were feeling pretty confident and had a terrible week of practice. They played Box Elder in the last game and you could show just how awful their week of preparation was. They played the worst game I have seen and lost 25-0.

Kace always had a lot of fans come to watch him. I didn't get a picture of Kami, Jessica or Ryan, or Shirleen and Curt, but they also came to watch. Kace is blessed to have so many people that love him that come to support him. Not only does he have grandparents that come, but also his great-grandparents!

Ever since last year I have been so grateful that Easton has a little brother, River, that is Ty's age. That way they can play together every single game and have a great time. I never have to worry about him because they are always together. He LOVED going to football and loved going to practice to play at the playground with the other kids. It was a great out for us every day.



Kace's team decided to do a post season tournament called octoberfest. They play two 10 minutes running quarters and that is the full game. It is a lot faster paced. We knew it would be tough. The first game we played against Layton. It was crazy how fast it was. They played great and won 19-6. The funnest part of the game was when Devan Greer scored on a reverse and just before he crossed the goal line he did a front flip into the endzone. It was so funny (if you weren't a coach).

They won the second game against Roy 6-0. They were then matched up against that same blasted Box Elder team for the championship. They were all about revenge and really really wanted to win. They played their hearts out. Kace was doing a potty dance most of the game and finally Nate went down to tell Clint that Kace needed to go to the bathroom. Clint looked at him like, "Uh, what do you want me to do?" So he let Kace race to the bathroom while we were on defense and he only missed a little bit. With the running clock you really had to hurry because if you were gone even 5 min. you missed 1/4 of the game.

It was pretty even and luckily we had the ball for a lot of the time. The score ended 0-0 and so we went into overtime. We got the ball first from the 50 yard line and on the second play Kace broke a couple of tackles and ran all the way! We were going CRAZY! We then held them and ended up winning 6-0! CHAMPIONS!

Some of Kace's best friends on the team were Easton and Josh. They were numbers 5 & 6. It worked out perfectly since Kace was number 7!

Now I am going to end. This post has taken me TOO LONG to do (and I have probably made a ton of mistakes......and I am not going through it again right now), but it was such a fun time for our entire family that I don't want to forget it.

quotes of the week

This past week I had the opportunity to go to a John Bytheway fireside with the youth of our ward. He told of a quote from Elder Holland that I don't want to forget. It really simplifies things. It went something like this, "In this game of life we already know the final score. We know who is going to win. The final score is lit up on the scoreboard. We just have to decide which jersey to put on and know which team we want to play for."

When of course we want to play for the winning team. It is really a no brainer. I really liked that. It makes life and life choices seem so simple.

Also yesterday Kace's little league football team got their butts kicked. It was very frustrating to watch. At half time an adrenaline charged Nate, jumped (literally) off the bleachers jumped the rope to go and make sure Kace understood something. On the last play of the half we tried a pass play, the pass went up and it was intercepted. The kid started to run it back to score when the half time buzzer went off and our team just kind of quit. They didn't realize that the play was STILL GOING ON. We finally got him, but Kace had a learning experience.

Anyway, when we got home he was in his room saying, "We played alright." and then a few seconds later, "No, we didn't. We got our BUTTS KICKED." Nate asked him who he was talking to. Oh, no big deal, just himself. HAHAHA We all got a good laugh out of it.

Those are the things I want to remember from this week.

Birthday Boy

I can't believe Kace is NINE! I think I write that same line every single year, just change the year.

Kace had a great birthday (at least I think so! But I think he had fun as well) He went to school and then came home and opened up his present from Ty. Ty was so excited to give it to him. We went shopping a couple of weeks ago and Ty found this Hot Wheels shark set. He knew Kace loves sharks and he loves hot wheels so he figured it was a perfect combination and Kace would love it. He did a great job of keeping it a secret, but he would sneak down to the basement to look at it and push the buttons every chance he could. I loved how excited he was to give it to him.

I found 2 pedal go-kart's on KSL and got them for Kace's bday. Of course the little snoops had found them within 2 (that's right TWO) days. So he decided that he wanted them early. I was nervous that he would feel bad on his birthday not having much to open, but he didn't seem to mind. I did get him some scriptures and scripture stickers as well. I thought that he was (hopefully) now old enough to not lose his scriptures.

We then headed to football practice. They did a great job of making Kace feel special and making a big deal for him. They had everyone run a lot because that is what Kace likes to do at practice. They do these things called, "journeys" where they run a long distance race and Kaces LOVES it.

We then took a couple of his football friends, Easton Lish and Josh Payne to Mack's to eat with Grandma and Grandpa Andrew, Great Grandma Andrew, Marci and Brandon. They were maniacs. Seriously, I don't know where they come up with this stuff. They were being ninja's, rabbit hunters, and just being crazy.

On Friday Heidi hooked us up with ICON Lagoon tickets. We always go there on ICON day near Kace's bday so we say it is for his birthday. It is always a great time and the best part is that there are no lines (although Nate's favorite part is the buffet dinner).

Here are some fun facts about Kace at age NINE:

**He loves to tell jokes and loves to be the center of attention. He remembers lines from movies, jokes from school and has a joke book and loves to tell them.

**He LOVES to wear nike basketball shorts and T-shirts every single day. Also in the winter, sweats.

**He loves to read. He will read anything. He loves non-fiction and loves to learn how things work, move, grow, etc. He also loves animals.

**Kace does NOT know how to sleep in. He is up before 7 nearly every single day (most of the time earlier), no matter how late he goes to bed.

**He loves all sports, but right now football is his favorite. He never complains for the daily practices. He enjoys it. He also loves basketball. Baseball is probably his third favorite.

**I have taught him to cheer for BYU. He likes to watch their games with me and tries to watch and see what specific positions do so he can imitate them. (Nate's mom made me this BYU hat for my bday!)

**Kace loves pizza, cheeseburgers and tacos.

**Kace is very competitive and always wants to win. We were playing one-on-one the other day and he got very angry when we finished (he didn't win) and went to pout in the shed. He doesn't like to lose.....at all. He is also pretty tough. He doesn't cry very often.

**Kace is always trying to do his best. He tries hard to be the best he can in everything he does.

**He is a thinker. He gets deep in thought and is not easily distracted from what he is doing whether it be watching a movie, playing a sport, playing a game, etc. You have to say his name (loudly) multiple times to get his attention.

**He loves school. His favorite part about school is.......RECESS.........and then math. He likes to play two hand touch football at break.

**He is a great big brother. He regularly says how grateful he is for his little brother in his prayers. He is a great sport to let Ty tag along with him and his friends. He lets him play with his stuff and a lot of the time Ty breaks something or ruins Kace's things and he is very patient.

Kace is a great kid and I am so grateful to be his mom.

First day ALREADY!

Where in the world did the summer go? I had all these big plans and all these things to do and while we did some of them a lot we didn't get too.

The first day of school has come and gone. Tydon really thought that he could go to the big school this year. I had been telling him and telling him that he was going to preschool for one more year and then the big school, but he didn't get it.

Kace was pretty excited for third grade. He has a boy teacher this year. That will be a new experience for him. I hope Mr. Fisher pushes him to be the best he can. He seems like he will be an excellent teacher for Kace. They play outside a lot and use PE to learn as well.

The bus comes at 7:20 this year, so it is 10 minutes later. We cherish that extra ten minutes. Hopefully he will make the bus a little more this year!

Kace kept crossing his finger's in hopes that the bus would come and he would get to stop taking pictures.

Ty is going to Mrs. Francom's preschool this year. Kace went here and I LOVE her! She is so good with the kids. They love her, but she is strict and runs a tight classroom, which I also love. They need the structure. Ty got up and got ready and came downstairs all proud that he did his own hair. I didn't even have to really fix it!

Ty has been very different than Kace in the school area. Kace loved to learn and wanted to do puzzles and play games and read, read, read. Ty is too busy for that. Kace was reading books by now, but Ty has absolutely no interest, he doesn't even want to practice his letters. I know I shouldn't compare, but with two boys it is hard not to do that.

Tydon is very smart when he wants to be, but he definitely has to be in the mood to stop and do something. I hope he loves school. I think it will be good for him to have Mrs. Francom as his teacher.

Catch up!

So in order to get caught up I am going to steal some of Heidi's (my sister) about our family trip to Willard Bay , the Trenton 24 of July and Seven Peaks.

Just click on the links and you will see the stories. Maybe tomorrow I will get up the first day of school and football :) maybe!

Bear Lake

For the past couple of years we have spent a weekend at Bear Lake with some of our favorite families in our ward. This year we went with the Nichols and the Mechams.

The Nichols have an awesome cabin on the beach and every water toy imaginable. The Meachams also brought up their boat and so there was never a dull moment.

I wondered how Ty would be since he had his scary experience last year in the water. But he did fine. At first he just wanted to go slow, but after about 5 minutes he was ready to do 'no hands' and wave and wanted to go faster. He trusted Krissy at first and liked going with her.

Then he went with Jesse and Syd and practiced doing no hands.

Kace LOVED IT and never wanted to get off the tube. He rode with everybody. He loved going fast and doesn't have much fear. Tim told him a secret about how to get his dad off the tube. Kace was supposed to jump on his dad's tube in the middle of the run and knock him off. He did it, but Kace was the one that ended up in the water!

Jace was a good sport and rode with him for about 2 hours straight Saturday morning.

Nate was good for his once a year water ski and I, well, I tubed........a lot. It was so much fun!

Nate didn't like to get his shirt wet.

Krissy and I tubed so hard Friday afternoon. I didn't get any pictures of us, but we had a great time. I had this problem about my swim bottoms coming off when I was about ready to crash and so I would have to let go and just go in the water so I wouldn't be indecent. The next day I was sore in places I didn't know existed. My muscles ached and I had a rash on my knees from lying on the tube.

(Please notice how I am being modest)

I wish I would have got pictures of the Mecham's tube because it was crazy. It is a four person tube. It is pretty hard to flip, but Jace flipped us (Kace says that he held on under water until he couldn't breathe....I don't know about that). We had to convince Jace to drive a little nicer after that.

The weather was perfect, the water was perfect and we had a great time!

I think I am going to send links to Heidi's blog for my next two posts.....then I will be caught up!