Rachel's Last day in Primary

Rachel had her last day in Primary today. She turns 12 this coming Friday and so today she had her last day. I can't believe that she will be in Young Women's next Sunday. It is really exciting but also a little sad. She is growing up way too fast. In our ward on your last Sunday in Primary the Primary will ask for your favorite song and then the Primary will sing it. Rachel wanted to play one of her favorite songs on the piano so today she did a duet with her piano teacher and played "When I am baptized". She did so fantastic. I cried listening to her play. Her actual favorite song is "I know Heavenly Father loves me" but we couldn't find it in a piano book that she could play from so we did her 2nd favorite song. Enoch and I were so proud of her. She is actually going to play this at Jacob's baptism with Grandma Heileson in June

This week too she has New Beginnings. All the young women leaders are so excited to have her come into Young Women's especially because there are only 3 that come in in the next few months and then there is none till the end of July beginning of August. There are 13 total coming in but everybody else doesn't come till later in the year. She is going to love young womens because she has the greatest leaders. My best Friend DeAun is her young women leader and then my other very good friend Emily is her Young Women's president. She can't go wrong with the amazing women in there with her.

It will be so strange to have her in Young Womens each week for mutual and also class time. She will give her first talk in church in March. They wanted her to give it in February but because of us having a baby I asked to have it postponed till March. Wow that will be crazy to have happen.
I can't believe how quickly kids grow up. It is sad actually. I remember when she was baptized and thinking wow in 4 years she will go to Young Women's. Well that is now happening. I can't imagine her 4 years from now at 16. I am not ready for that stage of life. I am grateful that I do have 4 years to wait for that.

Rachel is nervous for Young Women's especially since she will be the only girl her age (born this year) for a while but the other beehives are really awesome and it will be nice for her to get to know them better now.

I filmed her playing the piano in Primary today so you all could hear it. Enjoy it.

The exact same shoes

So something I said I would never do is wear the same clothes as my kids. Well a few months ago I bought Rachel these really awesome flats. I love them. Well a couple of weeks ago I went to the store and they were half the price of what I paid for them for Rachel so I couldn't resist. I had to buy a pair for myself too. So now Rachel and I have the same pair of shoes and even more we wore them to church today. It was kind of fun to have everybody tell us that we look so cute wearing the same shoes. I love it. It is so fun. Rachel doesn't mind either me wearing them. Now we need matching shirts and skirts to go with them. Just kidding. Shoes is plenty.

3 weeks till due date

I am three weeks to my due date and getting very anxious. I keep wondering when this little girl will come. We spent yesterday getting her room ready so we are pretty much ready for her to come. Now we just wait. Here are just a few pictures of me.

Toy Story

For Christmas Kaelen got a bunch of Toy Story toys. It was one of the best gift he received. He got a movie size Buzz and Woody and then he got an Andy's room pack. The pack came with Buzz, Woody, Jessie, Bullseye, Rex, Ham and an alien. He is constantly playing with them. He has so much fun. He will watch Toy Story with them (which he watches everyday) and he will have us play with him with them. Andy's room set is small enough that he even brings a few of them to church. We also put his name on the bottom of the toys like they do in the movie. Kaelen loves it. It is so fun for me to have him have something that he loves so much. He loves the movie which he is calling "Rex" now or all the movies are "Toy Story One." It is fun because we know that if we ever need to get him a good toy or clothes we can never go wrong with anything Toy Story.

Where is Kaelen?

In Kaelen and Jacob's room they used to have the baby change table in their closet to put stuff in it. It was used for the baskets on the shelves. They had clothes and diapers in the baskets. Well Kaelen recently started to climb up on it and hide on the top with the shirts hanging over it. It was funny because the first time he did it I had no idea where to look for him. I finally found him when I saw his head poke out. I had to get pictures of him hiding in it especially since I knew it wouldn't be long before the baby took it for her room. I love that Kaelen is becoming more adventurous. It is really fun.

Rachel and Hallie

Rachel and her cousin Hallie are 5 years apart but that has not stopped them from hanging out. This last Christmas Angie and her kids were in Idaho Falls for a month. Every time Hallie and Rachel got together they has so much fun. Hallie and Rachel were always wanting to play together. They would call each other and get together to play. When ever we would go to Grandpa and Grandma Heileson's house they would run off and we wouldn't see them all night. It was so fun. It was fun too because it isn't always going to be that way. Rachel will get older and not want her cousin around. I hope it doesn't happen but I am sure when Rachel is 16 she won't want her 11 year old cousin hanging around. I hope though that their friendship will help them that when they get older they will have a good relationship and want to spend time together.

When Hallie was heading home Rachel and Hallie were so sad. They ran off and hid because they didn't want to say goodbye. It was hard for them to leave each other. These pictures were taken that night. I love them. I love how happy they look together and how the 5 years between each other does not effect their friendship right now.

Making Our Gingerbread House

Every year we will go and look at Christmas lights as a family. We always will go and look at the dancing house lights they have in Iona. There are 2 houses that are pretty amazing. Kaelen absolutely loved it. He would scream and get excited and yell "Dancing Lights." It was so fun to watch him.

Every year when we get home from watching the lights we will find a gift wrapped on our table, left by our house elf that we have. For the last few years it has been a gingerbread house making kit. The kids look forward to it. It has been a fantastic tradition that we've started.

The kids love putting the gingerbread house together. We will spend an hour or two sitting around the table all helping to put it together. This year it was not as quiet as it has been. The kids all wanted to do the same part and so we had some arguing and after it was said and done the roof started to fall off and the kids were freaking out. It was an adventure. Over all had fun and it was fun to not have a perfect house once it was all said and done.

Weeks later after this was all done anytime we would drive by a house with Christmas lights Kaelen would yell "Dancing Lights". It is just the cutest thing.

Kaelen Sleeping

Kaelen has not been the best at taking naps this last year. If he does take one it is because I lay down with him and fall asleep or he falls asleep on the couch watching TV. It is funny to come in and see how he has fallen asleep when he does. He has fallen asleep many times in ways I am not sure how he can even sleep that way or how is neck is not killing him. This was one of those times where he looked so cute asleep.

Trick or Treating

After trunk or treating we went back to our house and neighborhood to go trick or treating. The joys of living in a mostly LDS population is Halloween is never on Sunday. It is always done on Saturday when Halloween falls on a Sunday. We love it.

Kaelen didn't want to go at all when we got home from trunk or treating so he stayed at home and watched a movie while I handed out Halloween candy to the kids that came to the house. Enoch was wonderful and took Rachel and Jacob out. Rachel's friend from behind us Meriell came with them. They went trick or treating around 6 PM and came home at 8 PM. Rachel wanted to go out with her friend so Enoch made her stay with Jacob till 7 PM and then she was able to go on her own and Enoch took Jacob everywhere. Enoch is such a good Dad to do that. I can handle walking around for maybe 20 minutes and then I am so sore. It was nice of Enoch to do that and he seemed to enjoy himself as well.

Once the kids got home we had to get pictures of them all out in front of the house together and with their pumpkins. It was light when they started so we waited till after. Rachel, Jacob and Kaelen were good sports about it and cooperated during pictures. Kaelen was even happy to get his costume back on for the pictures.

We had a bunch of kids this year like we always do but I didn't recognize half of them. Most people from other neighborhoods come to ours to get candy. In total between the trunk or treating and trick or treating we handed out over 350 pieces of candy. Wow that was a lot.

After we were done with our candy we blew out our pumpkins, turned off the lights, gave the kids baths and showers and went downstairs to watch How to Train your Dragon for the first time. Yes I will admit we had never seen it even though Jacob was Hiccup from the movie. Kaelen went to bed and didn't watch the movie but the rest of us did. Wow did I love that movie. It was so good. It is one that I would eventually love to own. It is funny with great characters.

We had a really great day. We loved being at Grandpa and Grandma's house as well as the trunk and trick or treating.

Happy Halloween to everybody.

Trunk or Treating

After being at Grandpa and Grandma Heileson's house we went to their ward for trunk or treating. They do it every year and the kids enjoy it. I also like how it's an easy way to get candy. Our ward never does it because our ward is pretty much the neighborhood and they figure that we would all end up buying twice the amount of candy to give to the same kids. So since our ward doesn't do it we always go to Grandpa and Grandma Heileson's. It lasts about an hour and the kids enjoy it.

Kaelen this year didn't really like it. He doesn't like big crowds and so he was not sure what to think of all the people that he didn't know around. He also doesn't like people in all of their costumes. Kaelen is so different from our other kids. He is social around us and talks all the time but when he is around people he doesn't know he is very quiet and to himself. heck it has taken us now over a year for him to finally go to nursery without us in there with him. He loves being around family but that is about it.

We had to drag Kaelen around to all the cars. A few cars he went to himself but after 3 or so cars he decided he was all done. We had to pick him up and carry him around everywhere or hold his hand.

Rachel and Jacob enjoyed themselves. It didn't take long for them to be done but once they were done the ward was doing homemade scones and hot chocolate. Rachel and Jacob really enjoyed that. It was fun for them to get candy with all their cousins. The weather outside as well was perfect. It was supposed to be cold and rainy but we didn't get any of that. It was a little cool but nothing to complain about. It was perfect weather for trunk or treating and trick or treating later in the evening.

Halloween at Grandpa and Grandma Heilesons

The Saturday (October 30th) before Halloween we went over to Grandpa and Grandma Heilesons for lunch and then pictures of all the kids. It was a nice afternoon and the kids really enjoyed playing with their cousins. We went and got the kids together after lunch (different soups) and tried to get their pictures taken. I say tried too because getting 8 kids to all sit together for a picture is not the easiest thing. The kids all looked awesome. Rachel was a 80's Diva, Jacob was Hiccup from How to Train your Dragon, Kaelen was a dragon which went with Jacob's costume. Evie was a witch, Carter was Darth Vader, Collin was Batman and Lucy was a little fairy. Spiderman in the pictures was Gavin Evie's very good friend (actually Madeline's best friends little boy).

Kaelen was not very excited to get his costume on so we took him out and showed him Gregories new kitten and then he was happy. Rachel did a really good job with getting Kaelen to smile and play in the leaves too. I was really happy with how the pictures of the two of them turned out. Jacob was not very happy so he didn't get into any picture till after all his cousins came and sat down. I was hoping to get pictures of our kids together but it didn't happen till later in the evening.

After picture the kids went and decorated cupcakes. They loved that. Rachel went a little overboard with the frosting and sprinkles and Kaelen didn't want anything on his. He was just happy with the cupcake. If I ever tried to get him to put frosting on he would get mad. Jacob was my in between and didn't put too much of frosting or sprinkle on.

Carving Pumpkins

We carved pumpkins Friday evening the 29th. We started a little later than I would have liked but I figured it would take 2 hours tops to do it. Well it took us a lot longer than that. The kids did have a lot of fun but they took a long time deciding how to carve 2 pumpkins each. Jacob would take a half hour cleaning out his pumpkin and then you would look inside and see that he still had half his seeds and pumpkin pulp inside of it. He was taking so long. He also drew on his pumpkin about 30 times trying to figure out what to do.

Kaelen wasn't around for carving this year. He had been sick for a few days and then Friday he started throwing up and had a fever of 104 degrees. He spent most of his day laying on the couch watching TV and then in the evening he was asleep when we carved pumpkins. Enoch ended up carving Kaelen's pumpkins for him. He did 2 things though that we knew Kaelen would absolutely love. He carve a puppy on one of his pumpkins and a balloon and moon on the other.

Rachel's pumpkins she did a ghost face and then her name and peace and hearts on it. She did a great job carving herself. She scares me still carving when she has really sharp knives and is digging into the pumpkins. We only had 1 carving kit and so we had to share. I am going this week when everything is on clearance and am going to buy 3 more kits. We need a kit for each of us.



Jacob in the end didn't finish till midnight (yah I know it was late and I am a nice mom for letting him stay up to finish them). He carved a bunch of his but then was having a hard time so I finished them for him. Enoch had gone to bed with Kaelen who was just coughing and crying and needed somebody to sleep with him and so I finished with the kids and then cleaned up the very large pumpkin mess.



I had a really big mess too because my favorite thing in the whole wide world is saving all the pumpkin seeds and then baking and seasoning them. Jacob and I love to eat them. This year as well we got well over 8 cups of pumpkin seeds. It was so awesome. So I had to clean up my mess from those as well when cleaning. I didn't get to bed till 1 AM.



Carving pumpkins did take way longer than planned but it was really fun and I am glad that the kids were able to design their own pumpkins and have tons of fun doing it.

Directions on baking pumpkin Seeds:

Clean and rinse pumpkin seeds in colander with cold water.

Place seeds on paper towels to dry as best you can. (I never get them very dry, but just a little more than when they were just rinsed)

Place in bowl with 2 T olive oil and your favorite seasoning. I will do some with season salt, salt and both. I use anywhere from 2tsp to 1 T.

Place on a cookie sheet and bake in a 350 degree oven. (I have read over the years about cooking them at 200 degrees but they take so long.) I like mine crunchy so I will cook it about 15 minutes then stir the seeds real well and then put them in for another 15 to 2o minutes. Once the seeds don't look oily and wet anymore then I know they are done.

Let the seeds cool and then enjoy eating them. I will store mine in an airtight container till we eat them. They will last quite a while but ours never does because it is one of our favorite things to eat.