Happy Murray Day

I sadly did not get any pictures of Happy Murray Day! But it was fun! Katelyn got the Masterpiece Murray Award, for her very detailed and beautiful drawings of late. (Whitney's drawing skills have exploded in the last couple of weeks actually- she is doing really well!) And Whitney got the Movie Murray Award, because she loves movies so much that she is willing to work very hard for them! Except for special occasions, if Whitney ever wants to watch a movie, she has to do 5, yes FIVE chores. I purposely set the bar so high to discourage movie-watching, but sometimes she just amazes me with her energy and focus as (for example) she does dishes and helps me clean her room and the toy room and both bathrooms in order to watch a movie!

For our Murray celebration we went out to dinner, and then were going to see How I Became a Pirate, a Theater for Young Audiences production at the SCERA. During dinner though, I remembered that I left our tickets at home! So Eric jumped in the car to drive all the way back home, and I got on the phone trying to find out if we could get in without the tickets. 15 minutes later I finally discovered we could get in, but by then the girls and I decided to walk the half-mile to the theater and meet Eric there. So it became a fun and memorable adventure walking down State Street in Orem at night, at least it wasn't too cold! It did rain a little though, and we ran for a minute, and someone stopped to offer us a ride a block from our destination. Then we met Eric and got to enjoy the awesome play. It was the second show we have seen there and it was great, very high quality. So much fun, great songs and age-appropriate acting. Whitney was smiling and laughing in delight the whole time, clapping and dancing on the floor in our row during the musical numbers. Katelyn just stared and smiled. We love theater!!

Anyway, it was a fun night.

Halloween

Ha! I did it, I am posting about Halloween before Thanksgiving, barely!! We had lots of fun. Here are our pumpkin carving efforts:

I thought this was hilarious- Eric hacking away at the rock-hard shell of this big pumpkin with an ax! He did a good job, but apparently I did not get a picture of his completed pumpkin.

Whitney digging out seeds

Katelyn making a funny face with the pumpkin she designed. This was her first time actually doing the carving herself too! Very nice.

Whitney with her pumpkin. She is ridiculously photogenic!

me and whit before we went to Katelyn's class party- I went with the easy witch costume, and isn't Whitney the cutest clown ever?? The best was when she was mad once, we couldn't stop laughing at her trying to make a mad face with that smile painted on. :)

this year all we bought was some face paint and a pirate sword. Yay for using costumes you already have!

a close up of Katelyn's awesome whiskers! They really made the costume.

funnies

I decided that I need to save some of my facebook posts on here so they become part of this record of our family! So here's Tuesday's:

Big news! No cavities for me, Katelyn, or Whitney! Most successful trip to the dentist ever! Now we will celebrate by eating a caramel apple, haha.

And todays:

My kids learned a lot about electricity today when the power was out for a couple of hours! Whitney freaked out at first and kept trying everything in the house to see if it needed "lectrictity". She was like "will the doors still open? do the cupboards still open? do books still work?" it was hilarious.

Let's hear it for the boy

Almost 2 weeks ago my little brother came home from his mission in Denver, CO. And 2 days later made the trek to Utah to see a bunch of us! Party time! It ended up being just as fun, memorable, and action-packed as I hoped it would be. And I got to have more meaningful one-on-one conversations with individual people than I thought I would in all the chaos.

Mostly it was great for my girls to get to get re-acquainted with Derek and have SO much fun with him, and my sisters, and my parents, and Donny and Christine and Taylor! After they all left for the last time Monday morning, Whitney said sadly "I'm going to miss them a lot." Uncles and Aunts, Grandparents and cousins are the best!!

And I also had fun remembering just how much fun Derek is. He's not just the spiritual, hardworking missionary we've heard from for the last 2 years, he's also hilarious and caring and knows how to be a bit silly. :)

So here's my pictures and a few I stole from Melissa.

So Friday night I stayed up until close to 2am- the latest I have in a long time! Everyone got there around 10 and we had a party until it was finally time to sleep.

The next morning we were up at 8 and Grandpa Jamie was making pancakes. What a fun wake-up for my girls! A house full of people to play with!

Soon we were off to Provo to eat lunch before the BYU game.

Taylor kindly offered her cute apartment for our use.

I got shots of everybody:

Donny and Christine

Katrina, Phillip, and Melissa (with Lydia on the ground, she is SO CUTE I'm sad I didn't get a picture)

Jenae, Kate and Eric, our cousin Ryan, Dad, Derek, and Taylor

Whitney and my mom (Whitney is a pizza-eating machine by the way! Katelyn of sourse packed a sandwich to eat since she doesn't like pizza...)

Then we walked to the game in the gorgeous October sunshine!

The game was a total blowout win, which was nice. We got to sing the fight song about 8 times!

I love watching football with Eric. :)

and with no children! My mom babysat my girls and Lydia so we could enjoy the game.

Thanks mom!

Group shot of almost everyone

In addition to the fun game, the afternoon was also full of

fashion statements

and girl trips to the bathroom. :)

(I got up to go-pregnancy calls- and as I walked down the row everyone followed me! I turned around and there was a line of girls joining me, it was funny.)

I didn't get any pictures at dinner at Katrina's, or my house that night or Sunday night. This is Monday morning before they left. It was inside-out and backwards day at Katelyn's school, thus the strange clothes. :)

Anyway, I'm still feeling the lingering happiness from that weekend.

Along with the sadness that I wasn't there for the party this last weekend for Derek's Homecoming talk in church. Ahh the difficulty of living 12 hours from my family... oh well at least they come up here a ton and I get to live by whoever's attending BYU at the moment. :)

It's a good life.