Halloween 2014

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have a couple days off of work so I thought I'd keep plugging away at the blog posts I haven't done yet.  Even with it being Thanksgiving, I thought I'd finish up with our Halloween :)

We dressed up as a family of pirates this year.  Several of our ward members told us at our ward party that we should have gotten a prize for best costumes (if they had given out prizes for that). Several people didn't recognize that Jack Sparrow was really Darwin at first.

Rori insisted on taking a picture of the two of us after we got a family picture taken.  She's a cutie!

On Halloween day we had lots of fun throughout the day.  After lunch we ate some yummy cake pops my friend April brought over for us.  The girls LOVE her cake pops and kept begging me to eat one :)

Savy's serious face cracks me up!

 After Daddy got home from work we ate a quick but yummy dinner and then headed out for some trick-or-treating at my cousins houses and a quick visit to my great aunt and uncle who live close by.  Then we met up with our Aussies! I hope it's okay that I stole a couple pictures from your blog, Trace!

It was so warm to start of with, but we had jackets with us because we knew it would get cold once the sun went down, and it did :)

Our cute little pirate girls being pulled in the wagon by their pirate daddy

It was a little windy so Rori had to hold onto her hat, until we finally just took it off :)

Beautiful Halloween sunset!

Guess who got to join us after flying in that afternoon from the East coast?!  Auntie Geo! Woo Hoo! Rori was thrilled that Aunt Georgiana got to come trick-or-treating with us!  She made Georgiana carry her almost the whole time. We all love when Aunt Georgiana is in town!

My cute pirates!

To top off the night, Grandma and Grandpa gave us these adorable owl cupcakes.
They were cute and delicious!

Happy Halloween!
Until next year...

Boo at the Zoo!

Darwin won entry for 2 adults to the Salt Lake Hogle Zoo at a conference he attended last winter.  It was only good for this year so we knew we'd be going at some point this year.  Our first attempt failed when our kids got sick over Memorial Day weekend when my cousins and their kids went.  We were pretty bummed we didn't get the chance to go with them.  Then we planned to go over fall break.  It still didn't happen because I was swamped with work stuff and Darwin had deadlines for an online course he was creating.  I really wanted to take the girls before the weather got bad, so our last shot was Halloween.  We ended up going the Saturday before Halloween and it worked out PERFECTLY!  We've never gone to the zoo around Halloween time, but it was a blast because not only did we get to see the awesome animals at the zoo, we got to wear costumes and go trick-or-treating too!  Well, at least the girls did ;)

I felt like we did pretty good getting out of the house by 9am to drive the hour-ish it takes to get to the zoo from our house.  When we got there my heart sank a little bit when I saw how far away people were parking because the zoo parking lot and the over-flow parking lots were both full!  Yikes!  I was beginning to think we should have picked another day for our zoo adventure.  It worked out fine though.  It was crowded, but it was really fun too.  We saw probably 50+ girls dressed like Elsa and about half that number of Anna's.  Those were definitely the most popular costumes.  I personally think our girls made the cutest little pirates ever!

Right when we got inside I noticed Savannah had lost one of her brand new boots!  Seriously?!  Luckily some nice person had turned it into the lost-and-found already.  Once everyone had two shoes on again we were good to go!

The giraffes were first up
(and last for us too!  Aurora liked them so much we had to see them again before we left)

We got in line for the choo-choo and didn't realize until we got to the train entrance (after standing in line for 20ish minutes) that you had to buy separate tickets to ride it.  So, the girls and I held our place in line while Dar line-jumped to go buy tickets.  Again, it all worked out :)  Unfortunately for Aurora, we ended up being in the very first train car right next to the "noise".  Don't worry.  She survived. ;) This was the only picture we got of the 4 of us while we were there, so it'll have to do.

We saw all kinds of animals that day.  It was pretty special.


If you know Savannah, you know she LOVES animals!  I think it's safe to say her very favorite that day were the elephants.  She kept making elephant trumpets over and over again with the biggest grin on her face.  She melts my heart a little bit sometimes :)



This is the oldest elephant in North America!  I love how majestic she looks--wrinkles and all ;)

Savy watching the elephants :)

A momma and baby elephant

Standing next to the not-so-real, but still very-cool-looking elephant

There were fun Halloween decorations all around the zoo.  This is the only one I got a picture of.

A white rhino


Pretty birds


They weren't animals, obviously, but the girls were pretty excited about the princesses they got to meet that day too!


We thought the gorilla looked kind of grumpy.
We were the only ones standing by the gorilla this time, but we came around by the gorillas a little bit later and there was a HUGE crowd so Rori and I went down again to see what was going on.  There was a man down there dressed in a very real looking gorilla costume causing quite a stir for the gorilla.  He was freaking out a bit and banging on the glass.  We only stood there for about a minute when a zoo employee came over and asked the man to take his mask off because of how the gorilla was responding.  Poor gorilla!



Seeing how we measure up!

The eagles have landed!

Savy was afraid of this otter statue.  Silly girl.  I guess she only liked the real animals!

Crawling through a log

It was surprisingly hot that day!  I was thinking it might be nice to go for a dip with the sea lions ;)

I love that they have observation windows so you can see the animals under the water too.  Awesome!

I think Savy ate half her Halloween candy before we left the zoo :)

They'd get super excited when the sea lions would swim by the window.  I'm not going to lie. It was pretty cool to see.

Daddy accidentally took some pictures while we were standing in line to buy souvenirs.  This one cracked me up a little bit :)

After buying the girls each their own sea lion, we sat down for a yummy lunch!  The garlic fries were delish!  It was way past nap time at this point and I had to get home to make my food assignments for our ward Halloween party that night so we didn't get to see the reptile house or anything.  We didn't get pictures of some of the other animals we saw: monkeys, lions, tigers, polar bear, brown bears, llamas, etc.  But we saw lots of really cool animals!

Before we left, Daddy gave the girls a science lesson :)


And we took one more look-see at the giraffes before we headed home.

It was such a fun day!  The weather was awesome and the animals were fun to see.  But, most of all it was just SUPER nice to take a break from our busy life to spend a fun day together as a family.  Those are some of the moments I live for!

More Halloween Fun!

Decorating Pumpkins
Carving pumpkins with little tiny kids can be challenging.  So, we take the easy route for now and let our kids paint pumpkins instead.  Our Aussies came over for FHE on October 13th to paint pumpkins with us.  I didn't get good pictures of them or their pumpkins this time, but I promise they were there!  Jared missed out because he was in training for his new job as a commercial airline pilot!  Way to go, Jared!  We missed you, but we're so proud of you!!

Rori loved it so much she kept asking to paint another one.  I think she painted four pumpkins!  It's a good thing we grow our own! :)

I wish the picture wasn't fuzzy, but Rori's a cutie no matter what!

We thought paint was a little too messy for Savy, so she got to decorate her pumpkin with markers.  She loved it but only lasted so long.

I feel like a bad parent because I didn't take any pictures of their finished products.  Hopefully we'll be better with our picture taking next year!

Halloween Goodies!
One of the best things about the holiday season is making scrumptious goodies.  Last year my mom introduced us to this delicious pumpkin dip!  I LOVE pumpkin, and I LOVE whipped cream, so this is like heaven to me!  The girls love it too!  They think it's the best thing ever when I let them lick the beater any time I'm cooking :)

 
 For FHE one night I decided to make a festive refreshment so we ate Worms in Dirt.  The first time I remember eating Worms in Dirt I was in elementary school, and I've loved it ever since!  Dar and I enjoyed it...

...and the girls thought it was a pretty fun dessert to eat too :)




Mmm!  Tasty stuff!

 Savannah made my heart jump while she was eating because she swallowed an ENTIRE gummy worm whole!  I panicked because I thought for sure she was going to choke on it, but she was fine.  Looking back, her reaction was hilarious because she looked like Aubrey Hepburn on My Fair Lady when she accidentally swallowed a marble.  Dar and I got a good laugh out of it once we realized she was totally fine :)