Light Up The Night

Halloween is almost here, and that means it is time for Red Butte Garden After Dark. This has become a tradition for our family. This year we were joined again by Kevin, Alisa and Asher, and Grandma and Grandpa Bolander. That makes it even more fun.

Garden After Dark is also a good place to try out our outfits, before the big day. Valerie was happy to put on her princess dress, so I took a few pictures of her smiling in it before we left.

Ryan joined in the Angry Bird fun and dressed up as the King Pig.

The theme this year was "Light Up The Night."

As always the kids had fun with the simple yet creative spots along the path. The first stop was to paint our pumpkins. We only get one pumpkin per family, but Grandma and Grandpa let us have theirs. So the girls painted one, and the boys painted the other.

We stopped at the face painting booth next. They have a couple of people who will paint for you, but they also have places where you can do your own. We opted for doing our own.


After we got the painting out of the way, we headed into the garden for some glow in the dark fun. We colored owl masks with highlighters so they would glow in the black lights.

Then we wished upon a star with a yellow highlighter, and hung our stars in black light lit trees, so our wishes could be seen. Joe wished for an i-phone. He will be wishing for that for a long long time.

We made mushrooms out of white lunch sacks and planted them in the black lit mushroom forest.

In The rose garden we made tissue paper flowers, and spayed them with something that would glow in the black light.

And to end our adventure we walked through the kids favorite part of the trail. The spooky forest. Where everything glowed.



Before we left the garden we had a treat of hot chocolate and caramel apples.

By this time Emily, had decided that fake fingernails would not be part of her costume anymore, and before she could enjoy her treats she had to take them off.

This year I got in on the Angry Bird action too and dressed as the slingshot. Because our whole family dressed up, I wanted a picture, but I didn't think of it until the end of the night. So this is the best that we could do. Sometimes the character shot are the best ones anyway.

We always have a good time together at the Garden.

This year I loved the black lights throughout the path, because that is one of my kids favorite things......Mine too.

A Cat, A Princess, And Some Angry Birds

This year as the kids browsed through the costume catalogs that arrived in Grandma Bolander's mail box, they were having a hard time finding something they liked. There were things that were okay, but after the success of last years Phineas and Ferb costumes, the kids needed more than just the generic superhero. The boys were willing to settle for Thor and Captain America, but they continued looking through the catalogs hoping for something a little more exciting.

September rolled around (Remember from my post last year, we start thinking about Halloween in early August.) and there was still no winner. So one night Grandma Bolander and the kids sat around trying to figure out what to do. Emily had some drawings she had done, and was hoping to turn one of them into a costume. Which seemed very possible.

Valerie is still young enough that I had a lot of influence on her, and had her convinced she wanted to be a witch or a princess. (I could never get Emily to dress up as either one of those.) It was just a matter of finding the right costume.

The boys were a little harder. Grandma sat and talked to them about some of the things they liked this year, because a lot of times you can get great costume ideas from that. I can't remember all of the things they talked about, but once the conversation got to Angry Birds, the discussion was over, and the costume planning began.

So for Halloween 2011 I give you,

Princess Valerie, Mittens the Bounty Hunter Kitten,

and the Angry Birds.

After we got all of the costumes put together Grandma and I decided that this year we needed to get some pictures taken, and thanks to Mike at Foto Fly we got some great ones. This post is a little long, so if you don't have time to read, just enjoy the pictures. If you want to know the story's behind the costumes, read on.

MITTENS

Mittens was a costume Emily designed based on a Star Wars bounty hunter and well, a cat.

While her costume looks fairly simple, if you look a little closer there is a lot of thought that went into it, and a lot of looking through stores to find just the right pieces. Luckily we were able to find everything she wanted.

The bottom layer is a black turtleneck and tight pants Grandma Blander helped her find at a sporting goods store, and we had purchased the back boots during our back to school shopping.

The next layer was a little tricky, because Emily knew what she wanted, and I thought I did, but after we started looking, I found that I really didn't know. I was picturing color or glittery, and Emily was seeing all black. Luckily there are stores like Ross, that have rack after rack of completely different things. That is where we discovered the perfect shall like shirt, all black, and she was able to adjust it just the way she wanted.

The pants were another area, where I was not quite sure what we were looking for, and I don't think Emily really knew either, but when she tried on the shorts over her outfit, she knew it was right.

Now for the finishing touches, I bought Emily cat ears when I was at the store one day, and figured we were done with that, but Emily was picturing a mask. So we headed to the Halloween stores. The first store we went to had at least ten masks to choose from, but non of them were right, so we headed to the next store. When we looked at their cat masks it was more of the same, so Emily found one that she was willing to live with, and we went to look for gloves. As we were walking over to the gloves we saw it, THE MASK. It was just what Emily had pictured. And lucky for me it was sold separately from any costume. For an added bonus it came with fake nails.


Even though it meant going to at least 7 different stores to find just the right pieces, It was so worth it to see Emily so excited about her costume. I love it!

I also love how the photographer not only captured mittens, but also captured the sweet little girl behind the mask.

Princess Valerie

On a trip to the fabric store with Grandma Bolander, we started compiling fabric for a purple witch costume for Valerie. That was what she said she wanted to be, but as soon as she saw the pattern with the princess on it, the witch was no more. Not sure if Valerie would change her mind again we decided to wait. A couple of days later, I sat with Valerie at the computer looking at both witch and princess costumes. It was clear princess was her first choice. This made me very happy.

Grandma was busy getting started on the boys costumes and realized she would not have time to make the princess dress too, so I started looking a little harder for a dress we liked. then I found the princess dress of my dreams. It was perfect, and Valerie liked it too. )

We ordered it and waited for it to arrive. While we were waiting, Valerie would ask to look at her princess dress on the computer. She started asking so much, that I finally printed the picture for her so she could carry it around, and she did.

then the dressed arrived, and it was perfect, except they sent the wrong size. I had ordered a size 3 and they sent a size 4. when I tried it on Valerie to see if we could make it work, she wanted to walk around in it, but it was too big. So I contacted the company to see about exchanging it. After a couple of days with no response, I started looking into it further, and discovered that this was a common occurrence, not to expect any reply, and in fact, I was lucky to have gotten a dress at all.

So our only choice now was to alter it.

Before I did anything I got some advice from Grandma and a couple of my friends who sew. Then I went to work trying to make it fit, and to make it a little harder on myself I wanted to do it in a way that kept it a size 4 for future use. Unfortunately Valerie had realized that her dress didn't fit, and decided that she didn't like it. Getting her to try it on so I could adjust it was a chore. But with a little hem tape and a needle and thread I got the dress to fit.

Once it fit, Valerie was a little more willing to wear it, but she still was not sure if she liked it. Now that she has seen pictures of herself in it, she has decided that she loves her dress again.

When we went to get pictures, I wanted a picture of her smiling in the dress, but that did not work out so well. In the end it was okay, because I love these pictures. They have so much of her "personality" in them.

The Angry Birds

Once The boys decided on their costume, we began looking on the internet at what others had done for costumes. There were a lot of good ideas, but Grandma and Joe had other ideas. They talked about things they liked and things they didn't, and then Grandma went to work. Grandma tried to talk me into having Valerie be a bird and even tried to get Emily in on it, but she did not succeed. However My nephew was willing to join in the fun. (at least his parents were)

I met Grandma at the Fabric store and we started looking for fabric, but it couldn't be just any fabric. We needed texture. We were excited to find some really fun fabric. One feature that was decided on was feathers. Most of the costumes we found online, did not have feathers, because in the game you don't realy see any unless they are floating in the air, but it was decided that these costumes needed feathers. Joe was very specific that he did not want the face on the belly like most of the other costumes. He and Grandma agreed that the face should be on the hat.

Grandma spent many nights after working at her job, home working hard on the costumes. The only pattern we could find was for 4t and smaller, so she had to adjust it for Joe and Josh. We had a few fittings during the process, and as we watched the costumes come together, it got more exciting, and when Grandma was finished, they were perfect.

The boys love their costumes, and I think they look awesome. Grandma did a great job. On a paper at school, Joe wrote that it is the best costume he has had yet.

It was really fun to watch the boys get these pictures taken. The photographer was just as excited about the costumes as we were. He even took the time to draw the pig face on a pumpkin they had in the studio, and build towers out of blocks they had in the waiting room.

He got some really great pictures, but the thing that surprised us the most,

Was when he had the boys smash the pumpkin.

They had so much fun, and I love how the pictures show just how great the costumes are. Grandma went to a lot of work, and they look so great. Thanks Grandma for always helping make Halloween so fun.

Now we are ready for the Halloween fun to begin.

Going To The Zoo

Thursday was the first day of the UEA weekend, so we headed to the Hogle Zoo. Some friends came with us too which made it even more fun.

It was a really nice day

So the animals were all outside playing.

We tried to see how much everyone weighed together, but someone (we wont name any names, but she is the youngest in the group) wouldn't stay on the scale

The line for the carousel was a little long, so the kids had a lot of time to pick out the animal they wanted to ride. Luckily we ended up being first in line for our ride, so they got the one they wanted.

I also want to note that Emily had her animal picked out. When I asked everyone what they wanted to ride she was the first to call out "The Cheetah." She may be in Young Woman's now, but she is still a kid at hart.

Just like the animals,

We had a lot of fun playing outside.

The Great Mouse Trap

We have lived in this home for over 5 years now. It is a rental and there are a few things that we have fixed, but there are also a few things that we have just left how they are. One of these items is the floor boards. They are cheap and brown, and in a few small spots they are missing all together. One of these spots is the little space behind the door in the kids bathroom. The space is only about an inch wide, and makes it so you can see the gap between the floor and the bottom of the Sheetrock.

One day near the end of September, I picked Josh up from Kindergarten as usual. When we arrived home, he ran right into the bathroom. When he was finished he came out with a few questions. The conversation went something like this............

Mom you know that hole in the bathroom? The one behind the door?

Yes. What about it?

Well......Can mice be brown?

What!?

I know that mice are gray, but can they be brown?

Did you see a mouse in the hole Josh?

Well I don't know it had little ears and a tail, but it was brown. Can mice be brown?

I quickly went into the bathroom and started looking around. I was horrified. I have never had a mouse in my house before, and I did not need one now. I even told myself for a minute that maybe Josh didn't really see anything and it was just fine. But I knew he saw what he said he did. He had too many details about how it had come out from under the stool we have in front of the sink and ran towards the door. Josh was not sure if it actually went in that hole, or if it just went out into the hall.

To me it didn't really matter where it went, it was in the house. I called Ryan and told him to pick up some traps on his way home, and I went into major fall cleaning mode. I spent the next few days not just cleaning, but scrubbing out everywhere I could. I pulled out the fridge and the oven and cleaned out all of my cupboards. I watched for signs of the mouse. hoping that it had not been in my pantry. Luckily the only place I found droppings was behind my stove. We placed a nice pile of poison there and moved it back.

A few days passed and there was no sign of the mouse. The traps were not working. Than late one night I went into the kitchen and caught a glimpse of our friend over by the stove. By the end of the week we still had not caught it, so I called The landlord to see if they had any suggestions. They sent out a mouse person who placed bate boxes in a few places where we had had sightings of the mouse. I kept telling myself that it had to be only one mouse, because we were not finding droppings everywhere, and also because we had not caught any yet. It there was more than one we would have caught some by now.

Every day I kept checking for droppings in places. Especially my cupboards. Than one day I found some in my hot-pad drawer and my towel drawer. So I went through and cleaned everything again. And instead of putting my clean towels and hot-pads back in those drawers I placed bate boxes in them. As I moved the bate boxes around to the places that I knew the mouse had been, I noticed that one of them had been chewed on. But not enough to make me think we had more than one visitor. It gave me some relief to think that the mouse was eating the poison.

But then I began to wonder, how will we know when the mouse is really gone? Will it come out from hiding before it dies or will we never see it.

A little over three weeks after the first mouse sighting I was beginning to wonder if the mouse was gone. We had not had a sighting for days and the poison was being snacked on. That Saturday morning I had a hair appointment at 8:00am. As I drove home from my appointment I was thinking about what I could do that day to figure out if we still had mice. When I pulled into the garage the kids came running out yelling,

" We caught the mouse! We caught the mouse!"

I was so happy and I asked, "Which trap did we catch it in?"

Their reply was a little surprising to me. " It's not in a trap! We caught it under a bowl in the bathroom."

So I headed to the bathroom, and sure enough, there under one of my best Tupperware bowls was a mouse. Alive.

So I got my camera and took a few pictures while I decided what to do.

The story the kids told me was that they saw the mouse come out from under the fridge and head down the hall towards the bathroom. So they quickly got a bowl and caught it. I could tell that the mouse was suffering from the effects of the poison, and so it must not have been going very fast. But now we had a live mouse under a bowl. Ryan was at work, and I did not want to do anything that would cause me to accidentally have to touch the mouse.

I realized that Ryan's parents would be finishing up with their temple shift at any moment, so I decided to see if Grandpa would come take care of it for us. He was happy to.

He got a cereal box out of our recycle can and slid it under the bowl, keeping the mouse inside the bowl. The kids got excited at this point because when Grandpa did this the mouse started squeaking. When he brought it out I asked him how he was going to kill it. He told me that he was not going to kill it, he was just going to let it go outside.

At this point I remembered that Grandpa Bolander does not kill things. His job at work is to protect threatened and endangered species. Even when it comes to spiders he tries to catch them alive and release them outside. I told him he could not release it anywhere near my house, because then it would just come back in. Even if it was under the influence of the poison and going to die any day, I did not want it back in my house.

Joe did not want the mouse killed either, so he and Grandpa went for a ride and released the mouse back into the wild.
I hope our little visitor enjoyed his last days outside free in the wild.

Having one mouse caught and gone, we would now find out if we just had one visitor, or if we had a problem. Fortunately there have been no more mouse sightings. The droppings have not returned and we have been mouse free for a couple of weeks. I hope to stay that way for a very long time. The rest of my life if possible.

Grandma's Pirate Party

Grandma Bolander was ready for the boys to come and have their first fitting for their Halloween Costumes. She had discovered Pirate O's recently and decided it would be fun to have a pirate party for the fitting. She bought a package of Pirate band-aids that the kids used as patches.

She bought a couple of interesting pirate drinks

and to finish the party she had everyone try a tasty cricket for dessert.

The kids were not sure at first. Josh was not going to try it at all, but Grandpa talked him into just trying a leg. After that he decided it was not so bad and ate the rest. I think Joe gagged on his a little, but in the end they all liked it.

The costumes are looking fantastic. I can't wait to see them finished.

The Late Night

Joe had been wanting to invite some friends over to play night games in our yard. I told him last weekend that I thought Friday would be great for that. Then the weather turned and I realized that Friday was going to be cold, and maybe a little wet. So I told Joe we had to have a change of plans. Now instead of inviting anyone he wanted to come play outside, he needed to narrow it down to no more than 4 friends, who could come over for a late night, where we would play indoor games.

Joe thought that sounded great too, I told him to only invite three or four kids, because any more than that would make it hard to find games to play, and I didn't want things to get too crazy. Joe knew right away who he wanted to have come and started inviting them. I got busy looking for games that 6 boys (Josh of course was going to be in on the late night too.) would have fun playing. I really considered just having a movie, but Joe wanted games.

Friday night arrived and the late night began. We started off with just having the boys play with Lego's. I put out a few goodies (mini candy bars and popcorn) and the night was starting off nice. When the Lego building started to slow down, I brought out the first game. Being October we decided to have a mummy race. I divided the boys into two teams. One boy was the mummy and the other two boys on the team had to wrap them in toilet paper. The first team to run out of toilet paper wins. The boys loved this. At the end of the game the two mummy's ripped themselves out of the toilet paper. I asked the boys if they would pick it up and put it in the trash. They picked it up all right, and then the toilet paper fight began. Before too long there was toilet paper everywhere, and the boys were having a great time.

When the toilet paper throwing starting getting too crazy we put it all in the trash. Then we went for a calmer game and started playing Apples to Apples. We ended the night with a good old fashioned game of charades. Which somehow ended in a big wrestling match.

I am still not quite sure how that happened.

It was a great late night, and all of the boys had lots of fun. I am sure we will have a few more of these, but for some of them I think we will watch a movie...........Although I have a feeling that could end in a wrestling match too.

Out Of Her Comfort Zone - Killer Bees

When the time arrived to sign Emily up for Fall Softball, I found myself with a dilemma. We liked the girls Emily had been playing with for the last four to seven seasons, but we also felt like Emily had been at somewhat of a standstill when it came to her progress in the game.

The way the league had been set up in the past there were two age groups. When Emily turned 11 she was supposed to move up to the older age group. I was really excited about her getting to play with older girls who would push her a little bit more. But when it came time to register we found out that they had now divided the league into three age groups. Putting Emily towards the oldest of the middle age group. The last two seasons we had her play in this age group. By the end of the last season I was a little frustrated that it was pretty much the same as playing in the younger age group, with not much development for Emily.

So this season I told Emily that I thought we should bump her up into the next age bracket just to give it a try. We talked about how this move might mean she will not get to play her favorite position as catcher, and she may spend a lot of time in the outfield, but in the end playing with the older girls would help her become a better player. She agreed. So this fall Emily played in the 15 and under league.

When I say 15 that means the girl was 15 as of January first. The fall season being in September meant some of the girls were 16. I took her to her first practice. I was a little intimidated by her new team. Most of the girls on her team were 15 and 16. A couple had played on the school teams, but there were also a couple of girls who had never played before. Her coach asked Emily what positions she likes to play. She told him catcher and 2nd base. So he had her try them out at practice.

After the practice Emily was really excited about playing. I asked her if she felt okay playing with the older girls. She told me it would be fine, and she didn't fell intimidated at all, because she knows what she is doing, and there were a couple of girls at practice who had never played before.

The coach must have liked what he saw in Emily, because she got to play catcher for at least two innings at every game. When she was not playing catcher he rotated her to 2nd base or outfield.



Moving her up to the older group turned out to be just what Emily needed. She really sharpened her skills this season. Her coach was very positive, and also really great at telling Emily how she could improve.
The girls on her team were great too. They made sure Emily felt like part of the team. It was a fun season to watch. We won a few games and lost a few, but the girls were all into playing, and that made the games really fun to watch.