Happy Halloween...

We had a very busy and fun Halloween. It started with my mom coming into town Friday morning. We headed to the boys' school for some party fun. I was in charge of planning Luke's party and got to help out. After school our neighborhood had a hot dog dinner and costume parade before trick-or-treating. Then the kids hit the neighborhood running.

Here are some pictures from our fun day...

1. Ethan's Fall Party

I didn't actually have a chance to visit Ethan at his party, since I was helping with Luke's party. But my mom ran down to see Ethan at his party and took this picture for me. He had a fun time.

2. Luke's Fall Party

I had the pleasure of planning and helping out at Luke's fall party. It was SO much fun and I just love being there with the kids.

This is a picture of Luke's whole class in costume. Luke is the little one in the back with that HUGE smile on his face:) He is a basketball player, though you can't even see his costume at all.

Luke playing Halloween Bingo

Here is the Witches' Brew I made for Luke's class.

Luke and his best friend Gavin decorating cookies. I don't know if you can tell from the picture but Luke decorated and eyeball cookie. They got to choose from making a pumpkin cookie or an eyeball. Luke made his daddy proud and chose to make the eyeball cookie.

Linz had fun playing in the "house" area of Luke's classroom. It was very cute















Luke got to get wrapped up like a mummy.
3. Modeling costumes
We tried to get a semi decent picture of Linz as a cute little cheerleader, but this is all we got of her.

Here are our super CUTE kids. Ethan and Luke are the basketball players and Linz is the cheerleader. She would shake her pom poms and say, "Go Ethan, Go Luke."

Ethan got really sad right before we went out trick or treating. He saw some of his friends in Star Wars costumes and decided he wanted to be a Star Wars guy this year literally 10 minutes before we went out trick or treating.

Were we mean to say that he couldn't switch his costume 10 minutes before going out????


4. Neighborhood Hot Dog Party

We are really enjoying our neighborhood so far. We had a fun hot dog dinner and costume parade.

These are all the kids in our neighborhood all dressed up and ready for trick-or-treating.

Us eating our nutritious dinner before the candy fest.
5. Trick-or-Treating

This is what it looked like all night. Linz was such a trooper all night long and was constantly trying to keep up with them. She did a GREAT job all night and never complained once.

We had a fun night and the ABSOLUTE BEST weather we could have asked for. It was beautiful. The kids all had long sleeve shirts on and we didn't even need a jacket on top of that. It was fun to have a Halloween with my mom for the first time in many years. She got to go to a few houses with us and then stayed home to pass out candy while Nate finished up the rest of the route with us.

Halloween FHE

We decorated cookies AND carved pumpkins for FHE tonight. IT was a wild, crazy night but SO Much fun.

DECORATING COOKIES

Linz is SUCH A GIRL. She spilled sprinkles on the table and would not look up to let me get a picture until she had cleaned up the mess. The first picture is her sliding the sprinkles into her hand; what a cutie!!!

Here they are with their cookies, they sure are getting SO big.

CARVING PUMPKINS

Before we could carve our pumpkins, the boys had to design their pumpkin faces. This is what

they came up with.

Luke wasn't very interested in carving his pumpkin after he designed the face. He had just done (the last Friday) some pumpkin science in his class at school where they carved a pumpkin (which I was lucky enough to be able to help with.) So, I think he had gotten his fill of carving in for the year.

But, Linz and Ethan had fun digging and scooping. She was not afraid to get her hands dirty. Ethan did a great job too, he pulled up his sleeves and went to work.
Even Nate got in on the action. Here he is carving Linz' pumpkin for her.

Luke and Linz had to take a break from carving to practice their ballet moves. Not too bad... (in the background you can see our next project going on. We have one wall painted in our family room, yeah!!!!!)


Showing off the finished products. Ethan actually carved a lot of his. He was very careful and did a great job.


Here is our family of pumpkins. The first one is the pumpkin Luke helped carve at school, then my haunted house, next Nate's pumpkin that he is saving for the seeds, Ethan's and Linz'. Aren't we a cute family of pumpkins?!?!?!?!
Things I learned from tonight:

• my kids aren't huge sugar cookie fans. They had fun decorating them, but they weren't as excited about eating them. So, we'll have to be better about delivering them to neighbors next time.
  
  

Linz isn't afraid of slimy pumpkin guts

Luke has less of an attention span than Linz (sometimes)

I guess I need to sign Luke up for ballet

I have cute, fun, wonderful kids!!!

First House Project

Living in this house has made us realize how glad we were that we didn't own while in school. Maybe a Condo would have been doable, but definitely not a house (because the only house we would have been able to afford would have been a fixer-upper.)

WOW, houses are a lot of work. When we bought this house we were excited because there weren't a ton of things that we thought would need to be done to the house. Well, living here, we have definitely found plenty and the list gets longer every day.

So, in our attempt to get started on our list, we started and finished our first project...our MAILBOX. Now, this is probably not the first thing most people tackle when in their new homes but I think is just sounded like a fast, easy project that could be completed quickly. So, here is our new and improved mailbox and our first completed project in our FIRST house.

Here is the before picture of our house with the original mailbox.

And here is our house now with our new mailbox.

Let's just say, no one will miss our house now.

Nate's Work Party & Ward Trunk or Treat

We had a fun fall party for Nate's work. We had a potluck dinner with fishing and a bonfire and then we went immediately from there to our Ward's Trunk or Treat. It was a fun, busy day.

So, last time we went fishing, Luke caught like 6 fish and Ethan only one or two. This time they switched roles. Ethan caught about 5 fish and Luke didn't catch any. Ethan was ecstatic, he had SO much fun.

Linz had to check out the fish, she didn't want to touch it though.

Luke tried, but no luck this time. He actually had a fish catch his pole. He had set his pole down and Nate was helping Ethan get his fish off the hook; the next thing we knew, Luke's pole was "going out to see."

Then we headed to the Ward Trunk-or-Treat. Sorry, no pictures from that. I'll post Halloween pictures soon. But the best thing is I am almost caught up on my posts. Instead of a month behind, I am only a week or two behind now!!!!!!!

Trip to St. Louis

So, my cousin Courtney has lived in St. Louis for a few years now and she is moving away, so we took a last minute trip down to see her and my other cousin Nathan before she left the midwest.

Thanks for letting us come, we had a fun time!!!

Courtney and the growing Melinda

My cousin Nathan and his wife Kim have twin 5 month old boys and Linz was in HEAVEN. She just couldn't get enough of the babies and she was in awe when the second one woke up and came down and then there were 2 babies. She held Adam (sorry Kim, not sure if I got this right) forever. I kept asking her if she was done and if I could take him and she kept saying NO.

She talks to my baby everyday and is very excited for him to come play with her.
This is Seth and Liam with Linz. They had so much fun jumping on the couch together.
Here are Luke, Ethan, Jeremy and Katya. They had fun too. The Boyces have a trampoline that kept the boys busy most of the afternoon.

Thanks for letting us come visit, we'll have to do it again soon!!!

Life Since Jarom left...

Don't you just love WONDERFUL uncles?!?!?!?

Well, I think Jarom is the top of the list right now for favorite uncle. Sorry all our brothers, it's gonna take a lot to outdo Jarom on this one. Jarom brought a gift for us when he came to visit and this gift has been used almost nonstop every minute possible (by the boys.) X BOX!!!!!

The boys wake up early every morning to play and they do their homework really well every day after school so they can get onto the bigger and better things like XBOX. They have been wanting to get Lego Star Wars for the Nintendo DSes for about a year and we've been able to hold them off...until now. But instead of for the DS, we broke down and got Lego Star Wars for the XBOX.

They have had SO much fun with this game. I don't think they really play the game to win or get to the other levels, it is just more about playing for fun and switching guys and trying to buy all the guys they can. They haven't beaten the game yet, but I bet they've logged enough hours on the game to have beaten it three times over so far. They have fun and they do really well playing together (mostly because they know if they start yelling at each other or fighting, it gets turned off.)

THANKS Jarom for the FUN gift and know that is it getting lots of love and USE!!!

Ethan's Second Tooth

Ethan lost his second tooth today!!!!

This tooth was SO loose he could feel the bottom of the tooth with his tongue. He woke up and came into my room at 4:15 a.m. and said, "mom, I was just sleeping and I woke up and my tooth was gone." I asked him if he swallowed it and he said no, it was right in his mouth. I told him congratulations to go put the tooth in a baggie and go back to bed.

I don't think he ever went back to bed that morning; he was WAY too excited. I think he just stayed up and played Lego Star Wars until the rest of us got up.

To date (of his 2 teeth) that was the easiest loss so far.

P.S. The tooth fairy did much better this time around with his tooth. He got his money by 10 p.m. this time!!!!

Our first VISITOR... Jarom

We were SO lucky to have our first out of state visitor!!! My mom and dad have both visited us already, but they only live an hour away. So Jarom's visit was EXTRA special.

We had so much fun with Jarom here for a week and we hope he enjoyed it too. We picked him up from the airport in St. Louis so we thought we'd stop by the FREE zoo as well as the famous St. Louis arch.

Hold on, there are tons of pictures!!!

It is a HUGE understatement to say that Ethan and Luke were excited to have Jarom here for the week. We headed to the Zoo right from the airport and Ethan and Luke wouldn't let Jarom leave their sides.

It was SO Cute to see them so happy to be with Jarom.
I loved watching Linz get SO excited about the animals. It's been about a year since we've been to the zoo and Linz was too young then to remember it.

Can you see the snake right up to the glass? Linz thought that was pretty cool.
Here she is looking eye to eye with the gorilla.

This lioness was so funny; she stared us down the whole time we were there.

I thought this peacock was pretty cool too.

Here are the kiddos with brothers Jarom and Nate.

Jarom with his three fans.

This is literally what the boys looked like with Jarom the entire time at the zoo. They walked hand in hand with Jarom every second they could.

She makes her daddy proud wearing her sunglasses so well. She looks darn cute in them too!!!

Ethan and Luke posing at the zoo.

St. Louis Arch

Just can't climb up it...

If you've never been, there is an enormous amount of stairs leading up to the arch. I think the kids each went up and down about 4 times (Linz included, she was such a trooper.)

Isn't it beautiful???

Luke and Ethan racing Jarom up the stairs.

More arch beauty

Linz was an incredible trooper. The second picture is of Nate helping her use her left foot to walk up the stairs. She still walks up stairs using the same foot to lead each time and her poor right leg must have been ACHING.

Surprise 30th Birthday Party

Jennett and Dave and kids came for the weekend and since Jarom and Dave are both turning 30 this year (and Nate turned 30 last year) we'd throw a surprise 30th birthday bash for them.

They couldn't have been happier to have fun Dora party hats to wear!!

I took the kids to the dollar store and let them each pick out a gift for the three birthday boys. Luke picked a box of boogers for uncle Dave; very appetizing.

Luke just had to get this scary Halloween mask for Jarom and Ethan's choice was a chain necklace for his wonderful Uncle.

What would a visit to the Noakes be without a group shot at the park????

And, we couldn't let the adults feel left out so one with them as well.

We had such a fun time and were SO glad Jarom was able to come visit!!!! Nate's parents will be coming to visit in about a month and we are super excited to have more fun with family. Come see us again sometime Jarom!!!!

And anyone else who wants to visit the wonderful Land of Lincoln is welcome here anytime as well!!