Halloween Fun

Our Halloween festivities began last weekend when we traveled down to Phoenix to spend time with my Uncle Charles, Aunt Dixina, Cousin Brett, his wife Nancy and their adorable kids - two of which are twins. Anyhoo, we kicked off the weekend with the traditional Halloween swim =). Brett and Nancy's home is absolutely gorgeous and we had such a nice time. The pool was a bit cold (it was only 85 that day) so the two sets of twins played and played. Then we headed off to their wards trunk-or-treat. It was SO much fun. They had a potluck dinner, a bounce house, cake walk, bean bag toss, dunk booth and a spook alley in the church foyer (I know, never heard of that one before). The twins and Livvy had so much fun - they got in some good trunk-or-treat practice for tonight.





Last night we were invited to a Halloween Party at our friends the Heaton's. When Tina called to tell me about the party she said that the kids could dress up and if Jer and I wanted to we could - she told me that her and Corey (the hubby) would have costumes. So last night, at the last minute I decided to put on my Applebee's uniform for my costume. I walked into the party and was the ONLY adult dressed up - and everyone there didn't even think it was a costume, they thought I just got off of work. Jeremy thought that was pretty funny. A few of the kids didn't finish their dinners and just left their plates out - Livvy ate 2 1/2 hot dogs from the other kids plates, oh well. They had some games for the kids - one of them was a pinata, which was a bit "hit" (ha! ha!) And some of these fell out:





Tonight was our ward trunk-or-treat. Here is a picture of the fam (as you can see I opted out of wearing my "costume" tonight):

We had such a good time - there were a bunch of people and loads of candy. I really loved the twins costumes this year - Gracie is actually wearing MY witches costume from when I was 8 or 9 (it has been altered, she is tall, but not that tall), and my mom graciously made Whitney's costume. We bought them some plain hats and decorated them:



We also had fun carving pumpkins - which didn't end up getting done until yesterday afternoon. The girls chose the patterns and mommy & daddy did the carving - but they did help scoop out the guts.


We went trick-or-treating down our street when we got home and hit the 5 houses that actually had on their porch lights - I forgot I was wearing this on my head until we got home:

Happy Halloween!

My New Blog

I would like to invite anyone who is interested to start reading/following my new blog called This Is Me Now. It is about my weight loss journey - I have already been blogging for about a month now but just had it set to private so my family could read it. I'm really excited about the direction my life is going - as a mom, wife, daugther, sister and friend and also just me, Emily, a daughter of God. Here is my blog address http://emily-sorenson-thisismenow.blogspot.com/ - I still haven't figured out how to make things a link.

Happy Halloween!

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What To Do When You Have The Swine Flu

I was "diagnosed" with the swine flu on Thursday - I'm pretty sure that Gracie had it last weekend and Whitney & Livvy had the same symptoms as I did so we pretty much have been home for the past week - if I wanted to go out in public my doctor told me all I would need to do was wear a mask - totally tempted to do that - but decided against it. We were supposed to go camping this weekend but couldn't due to the oink oink flu. Today we took the girls up to the spot we were supposed to go camping at (we are all feeling MUCH better and haven't had a fever, etc) to have a little fun outside where I could cough and sneeze all I wanted to without being a "detriment to society". We had SO much fun - well, I had a lot of fun, the twins and the baby had a lot of fun and I THINK Jeremy had fun - outings like this tend to stress him out a bit because for some reason he thinks that the 4 of us know how to do everything (like roast hot dogs, hello! the twins have never done that before) and he gets pretty worked up about it - it makes me giggle when I think about our first time taking the twins fishing when they were 2 1/2 and he would get SO mad because "they keep tangling their lines - I've shown them how to do it like 10 times and I'm sick of casting for them"... Men.

Anyway, here are some pictures of our adventure. My favorite part was when we were making s'mores. I roasted a marshmallow for Livvy which she dropped on the bench next to her, Gracie was sitting down by her and gave Livvy her extra marshmallow - then Gracie stood up for something and sat down on Livvy's marshmallow she dropped - totally mooshed and stuck to her butt - Jeremy was thrilled. While we were trying to get Gracie cleaned up, Livvy picked up the marshmallow Gracie had given her and just kind of smooshed it all up in her hand, then started rubbing her eyes and ended up having marshmallow stuck in her eyebrows, her hair and her eyelashes. I personally thought the whole thing was hilarious - betcha can't guess who didn't.









I think that my girls look "a little bit" like their mom. What do you think?




By the end of the day Livvy was absolutely wiped out - she was SO dirty - she would slip and fall and just sit there and play in the dirt until one of us would stand her back up.






We made s'mores with peanut butter cups and they were VERY GOOD. Then I started thinking that a melty tootsie roll inside a roasted marshmallow might be good - SO GOOD. And THEN, I decided to roast a marshmallow, then put 1/4 of a pb cup on the tip of the roaster so when I slid the marshmallow off it would melt the pb cup a little and that was THE BEST - only got a picture of the tootsie combo though.



This was our view driving home - my camera didn't quite capture it, but it looked like a postcard.


And this was MY view when I turned around to get back in the Ped (my nickname for the Expedition - very original). Try not to be jealous ladies - he is all man and he is all mine.


This was a very good day.

Jim & Pam

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