We can't get enough Halloween!!

Nobody is interested in a nice fall picture...they just want candy!

Isn't that one Pretty Pumpkin?

I know it is still 4 days until Halloween but we have already been busy celebrating...and we still have alot more Celebrating to GO before Friday! We were invited to a halloween party for the kids with some friends from our ward. Brittanie was by far the most interested in the organized activities. They had a table for painting and decorating pumpkins and another table for decorating your own sugar cookies. Britt was torn about where to start! After decorating her pumpkin then she decorated cookies for everyone in our family. Then she went back and added more "embellishments" to her pumpkin....and then she went back and decorated another round of cookies! Her princess costume was splattered with alot of paint and frosting but it all came off in the wash. Nathan had no nap and was a party-pooper for the 1st 30 min but he soon warmed up and put several coats of paint on his pumpkin. The highlight of his night was play vaccum he found and played with all night!! (Note to self: Get Nathan trained on using the REAL dust buster!) Saturday morning brought an event that Scott and I both vowed we would never do again and that was Boise's Boo at the Zoo. We went last year and it was wall-to-wall people/strollers and hardly any candy. Well, this year Albertson's was a sponsor and Scott got FREE tickets...so we all know how he feels about getting Free Stuff! We decided we had nothing better to do so we washed Britt's costume and headed into Boise with the masses! It was still wall-to-wall people but since we got in for Free we didn't feel as pressed to get our money's worth. We loved seeing the new African exhibit with the Lions and Giraffes. Britt showed us how smart she is. She would trick-or-treat to the people handing out candy on BOTH sides of the person that was dressed up!!! Her Dad has taught her all about VALUE! Britt and Nate came away with a bag of loot that made them smile. It was a much better Boo at the Zoo this year.

Our new home....

It is our new home, but we are not moving.... at least not yet. We made sort of a sad, but happy decision this summer. We felt it was finaly time to sell our first home. Our little duplex we bought in Pocatello in 1999 was a sweet rental for us since we moved out in 2003. We've debated every year whether or not we should sell it. We finally felt this year was right. The market in Pocatello had remained fairly strong, and we felt like there was opportunity to find a good deal here in Boise. We ended up selling the home in August and rolled the equity over into this home. It took us a while to find something we liked, something we thought would work for us in the future. The home has 4 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths. The best part about the home is that it has an unfinished basement. We have really missed the wonderful breakthrough builders have discovered in East Idaho called basements. For some reason builders don't build many houses in Boise with basements.

We closed on the house just over a week ago and had renters move in the same day we closed (I love Cragslist). We plan on renting it out for at least a year and then go from there.

I like that the locataion of this home would cut my commute time in half every day. We also like the grade schools in the area it is located. So someday this may be our new home, but for now I hope it is a good investment (anything seems to be better than the stock market this week...)

Who Knew: Kindergarten can be stressful!

So I signed up to go with Britt on her 1st field trip. We were walking to the fire station and I thought Nate would love it too, so he came along. It ended up being the coldest morning we've had in a long time with a light rain. Nathan walked about 1 block before he started complaining about his legs hurting. So I carried him nearly 1 mile to the fire station. After a fun visit where we learned STOP-DROP-ROLL and Don't hide-Go outside, the kids got to take turns sitting in the drivers seat of the fire truck. As we were about to leave Nate said he needed to go potty so I quickly found a bathroom and told Britt to stay with her class and we would catch up soon. Well Nate heard me say we were going back to the school so he refused to use the potty at the fire station because now he wants to wait and go at Britt's school. He was pretty cranky at this point and I tried to force him to go at the station--but I was not successful. So we are walking back to school in the cold rain and Nathan made it about 2 blocks before he starts to squirm (I'm still carrying him on my back) and he says "Mommy, I need to go potty. Can I pee on those rocks?" I knew that traveling in a long line of kindergartners that we could not sneak in a quick wilderness potty break. So I'm trying to distract him by talking about other things when suddenly I hear Britt screaming. I turned around and she was face down on the road. While walking with her hands in her jacket pockets she tripped on a rock and couldn't get her arms out to catch herself. She scraped her little nose pretty bad and kept screaming at me to "Get the rock out of my NOSE!" Well, there were no rocks in her nose but it did start to bleed. So now Nate is screaming at me "Mom...Mommy...MOMMY I gotta go Potty!!!" and Britt is crying hysterically that she has a rock in her left nostril and we still had to walk another 5 blocks before I could really help either one of them. Once on the school grounds Nate,who is now riding on my shoulders because Britt needed to hold my hand, is really REALLY squirming and starting to panic that he is not going to make it to a bathroom. So now I'm REALLY, REALLY starting to panic that he is not going to make it to the bathroom either and that he is going to pee down my back and I'm wearing a new shirt! Needless to say, once the teacher opened the door to the classroom, I think I mowed down a few kids to get to the bathroom ASAP. After Nate went potty, and I cleaned up Britt's nose, I felt like I had really earned my honorary fire fighter badge today. Because it was only 11:oo a.m. and I have already put out 2 fairly serious fires!