Super Stars

Our boys did great for the first trimester of school.

They both came home with stellar report cards, and they both received awards for being "Leaders of the Herd".

Trenton did super excellent and came home with straight A's, which he has been working very hard to get.  We are so proud of him for all of his hard work.  Way to go boys!

You Know You're Tired When...

You fall asleep on the hard wood floors.

 

I guess his day at the zoo with grandma tuckered him right out!

Just a Few Things...

We had 2 major occurrences happen in the last couple of days.  Strike that, 3 major occurrences.  First off, it was Janet's birthday this last weekend.  And can I just say, I could not have asked for a more wonderful mother-in-law.  I can't even begin to tell you how much she does for our family, and how much we love, adore, and appreciate her.

 We had a birthday dinner for mom at Sherril and Roger's house, which is invariably a treat because Sherril always makes super yummy food.

The kids always have to help with blowing out the candles.  Thank goodness grandma is such a good sport to let them.  I mean, those are her birthday wishes after all. ;)  We are so grateful to live near family so that we can spend these special days with them.

Second, you'll never guess who my family and I got to meet last night... The Pioneer Woman!  We went to her cookbook signing at the Tattered Cover.  We got there right on the dot at 7:30 (which was when the book signing began), thinking we would only be there an hour, tops.  I guess a lot more people had shown up than they had anticipated.  I was talking to one of the ladies that works there and she said that for 90% of the book signings that they do (and they do a lot), usually only 30-40 people will show up.  They estimated that there were 400-500 people there last night.  Whoa!  Way to go Pioneer Woman!  So we ended up waiting in line for 4.5 HOURS!  With children in tow.  Like I said, we hadn't expected to be there that long, or I would have gone by myself, but after already waiting so much time, we figured we might as well stick it out for the long haul.

Trent was an incredibly good sport.

He must love me an awful lot to endure a 4.5 hour wait. ;)

Can you tell the boys were starting to get tired?  The kids were remarkably well behaved.  Luckily the book signing was right next to the kids section of the bookstore, and my kids literally read all night long, book after book.  They actually enjoyed themselves quite a bit.  If you've never been to the Tattered Cover, it is an amazing book store.  There are never ending walls and walls of books, so my kids were quite content to sit and read the night away.  I don't think we even had any melt downs.

It also helped that we met this fabulous lady here.  Liz was so kind to help us entertain our kids, and she was even willing to share her snacks.  She also had countless pictures of tractors on her camera that Preston looked at with her for quite some time.  Hopefully we didn't wear her out too much.  Thanks Liz for all of your help!

We finally made it up to see and chat with PW.  What a beautiful and incredibly nice woman.

And here it is, my signed cookbook.  It says: "To Kiffon: Thanks for bringing your cute family!  Ree/PW".  I can't wait to start trying the recipes from it!  I got quite a bit of time to peruse it while waiting in line, and my mouth was just a watering.

So was it worth it?  Definitely!  It was pretty exciting to meet Ree/PW.  As you can see, Preston totally crashed.

Not even two minutes into our drive home, this is how things were in the car.  Complete silence... except for the occasional snore here and there.  Thank you my darling family for being such good sports!

Third, and possibly best of all, these two do actually love one another.  I was starting to wonder for a few days there.  They have been at each other like cats and dogs, but after church on Sunday, I found them snuggling on the couch together.

I just love these two.  I especially love when they are getting along.  Two weeks of fall break was starting to put a damper in their relationship. ;)

Life is good.

Happy Halloween!

We had one partying Halloween this year.  I think I'm partied out.  Seriously.  Candied out too.

The boys had a little party at the end of their Hip Hop class on Friday.

Look at those moves.

After Hip Hop, we went to our ward's Halloween party, and guess what?!  I won first prize for the white chili category in the chili cook off.  Considering I had just thrown a ton of things into a pot  hoping it would taste okay, I was a little shocked!  We had a super fun time though, and the kids came home with gobs of candy.

On the actual day of Halloween, we went to mine and Trent's parents ward for their Halloween party.  Now do you see why I'm partied out?
 

This is what the kids wore to that party, and yes, Preston did make it out the door in the sequined cheerleader number this time.  He was done with the monkey (until today after church that is... he wore it all afternoon!)  Trenton decided to go as a headless butler this time.  He was pretty thrilled with how it turned out.  And that is one witchy look on that little girls face.  Ever since learning the "Mean Old Witch" song at school, she's been dying to be a witch.  Cutest little witch I've ever seen.  Colson just barely squoze into his Darth Vader costume from last year.  He definitely won't be fitting into it next year.

Here is the ginormous pile of candy that the kids got, between the four of them, at the two Halloween parties.  It took up a pretty good amount of counter space.  In an attempt to get rid of all of the candy, I bought it from my kids and used it to pass out to the trick-or-treaters that came to our door Halloween night.  Well, it took care of this pile of candy, but the kids came home from trick-or-treating with an even bigger pile.  It might have to make it's way to the trash sometime in the next week.  I don't know if I can handle one more sugar induced melt down from any more of my kids.

Preston decided on another costume change for trick-or-treating.  He wanted to be the lion this time.  I would say he got good use out of several of the costumes in our costume box.  Aside from all of the emotional melt downs due to lots of stimulation and SUGAR, it was a pretty fun Halloween.

And now Fall Break is over, and after two weeks of fun, fun, fun, the kids get to go back to school on Monday.  While it has been so much fun having them home, I am ready for a schedule again.  This momma is a little funned out. ;)

Fall Break Continued...

The partying continues.  We started this week out by going to watch Vivi in her dance class on Monday.  This last month she and her class have been learning a tap dance to the "Purple People Eater" song to show the parents before Halloween. 

They got to come to class in their costumes.

They also got to show us some of the dance steps they have been learning in class.  Preston must have been paying really good attention because when we got home that afternoon, he kept saying, "Shuffle, ball change. Shuffle, ball change."  What a funny boy.  The girls got to bring in a treat to share, and they had a little Halloween party at the end of class.

Tuesday we went to the pumpkin patch at Nick's.  They always have fun things to do around Halloween.  The kids did the straw maze about 20 times.

They even had a hay ride, pulled by none other than a tractor.

So guess who is all talk and no show?  Preston!  If I had a dollar for every time I've heard him say he wants to drive a tractor, I would probably have a thousand extra dollars in my bank account right now.  So we get in the wagon being pulled by the tractor, and he won't sit anywhere other than my lap.  He was so nervous being that close to a tractor, and he was gripping my pointer fingers so tight, I thought they were going to fall off.  Yeah right, he'd drive a tractor.  He could hardly handle being in a wagon that was being pulled by a tractor.

  After the ride was over and we were a safe distance from the tractor, he looked up at me and said, "Mom!  That was awesome!"  What a nut!

He did have a super fun time scooping up corn kernels with these tractors though.

Can you tell Vivi and Preston are saying "cheese" for the picture?

Here is our "Mean Old Witch with a Hat".  She loves that song.  She sings it no less than 10 times a day.  Even Preston has it memorized now.

My cute little Pumpkins.

Trenton and Vivi had to get pictures in every one of these things.

Preston was content to just pull the wagon all through the pumpkin patch.  Luckily, he didn't run anyone over.  It has been known to happen.

The last couple of days we haven't done much other than try to stay warm.  We have gotten so much snow!  Trent and I were just watching the news, and it said 23"!

Trent doesn't mind though.  He loves being able to use the snow blower.  (Thanks heavens we have neighbors that don't mind sharing!  Thanks Hogeweides!)

All Preston talks about since the snow started is his snow shovel.  He loves being outside shoveling the snow!

Colson does too.  Any time it snows, he just can't wait to get out and shovel.  Now if we could just get his older brother to be that excited about it.

Vivi just likes being out in the snow to be out in the snow.  She just kind of runs around looking busy while everyone else is working.

After all of the fun in the snow, we came in and carved pumpkins.

Preston was pretty thrilled with the pumpkin carving.  He helped everyone scoop the "guts" out of all of their pumpkins.  He quite enjoyed that part of it.  Whatever cooks his goose I say.  It was a good thing too because the older boys are not very good about scooping pumpkin guts.  The first time Colson ever carved a pumpkin, he was 3.  I cut the top off of his pumpkin for him, then told him to stick his hand in the pumpkin, and pull all the insides out.  He put his hand in the pumpkin, felt around the inside for a second, turned really pale, then threw up all over the floor.  So as to not have a repeat of that, I have gutted his pumpkin every year since.  I told him he was on his own this year.  I did end up helping him a bit though.

Look at that concentration.

So focused.

  Things were pretty quiet at our house while the carving was going on.

Even Preston was quiet.  Only because he fell asleep on my lap halfway through the carving of his pumpkin.  That is not normal.  He must have been really, really tired.  All that shoveling wore him out I guess.

On a side note, here are a couple of my favorite outfits that Preston chose to wear today.  He insisted on having this life vest on.  It goes really well with the boots, don't you think?  He even had it on under his coat the whole time he was outside shoveling.

The last few nights he has been putting these kitty socks on over his pajamas.  I love that they go all the way up to his knees.

Just a few more days left of fall break, then the party will have to end.  For a little bit anyway.

Fall Break: Week 1

It has been a fun, and full, fall break for us Stocks.  We'll just start with the first week for this post.  Last week we went to the museum with both of the grandmas to see the Ghengis Khan exhibit that is there right now.

We learned lots of neat and interesting facts, that sadly I can't remember any more.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that I spent most of our time in the exhibit with Preston checking out the statue of a war horse carrying a soldier.  I would try and get him interested in looking at other things, but somehow we managed to end up next to the war horse again.  The boys, on the other hand, can tell you all sorts of things they learned.  We all enjoyed ourselves, except the kids were a little disgruntled by the fact that there is absolutely no food or water allowed, so of course I got to hear, "Mom, I'm starving!" no less than 1,000 times.  You think I'm joking.

Preston also loved the exhibits with all of the animals.  You know, the dead ones that have been stuffed.  At first he didn't get why the animals weren't moving, so we told him that the animals had died.  So after that, every animal he saw, he would say, "Yep, it's dead!"

All of the kids love to see the dinosaurs.  We can't ever go to the museum without seeing those.  We even got to see fossilized dino poo this time.  The older boys were thrilled!  Vivi was just mostly grossed out and stepped back several feet hearing that she was just mere inches away from dino poo.

Let's see, the kids also had play dates last week, sleepovers with grandma, movie nights, and a Halloween party.

I was lazy (and a little cheap... well, mostly cheap) this year and had them choose a costume out of the bazillion that they have in their costume box.  So this is what they chose to wear to the Halloween party we went to.  Do you love Preston's choice?  A sparkly, sequined little number.  He cracks me up.  Without any prompting from anyone, (yes, I was going to take him out in public like that... priceless I tell you) he changed his mind at the last minute and decided to be a gorilla, which he hasn't taken off since by the way.  I have been able to talk him out of wearing it to bed at least... and come to think of it, I don't think he has worn it at all today.  Trenton changed his mind at the last minute too.  We ended up safety pinning tons of Smarties to his pants because he is such a smarty pants, you know. ;)

You'd think they'd be worn out (heck, I am), but they are still going strong and are ready for more fun!

You're Gonna Freeze Your Tail Off!

Lovely weather we are having here.  Just lovely.

So of course Preston insists on having his swimsuit on all day.  Why, do you ask?  How in Heaven's name should I know.  Maybe just because he is the most stubborn and obstinate child I have ever known.  After hearing him say, "Mom, I'm freezing." for the 10,923,872,932 time, I finally convinced him to put his swim suit on over a pair of pajamas.

Super stylin', I know.  Whatever keeps him happy... and warm. :)

What Happened Here?

This is ridiculous!  How do my counter tops get like this?!  They didn't look like this 2 or 3 days ago.  I think I can only see a few inches total of counter top.   After spending the better part of my day throwing away millions of school papers (I love when my kids just empty there backpacks right onto the counter), going through mail, having kids put their lunch boxes and toys back where they go, and finding places for all the misc. crud that somehow ended up on the counters, I could finally see my counters again.

Ahhhhhhhh... that's better.  It looks like I'm going to have to turn into the counter top Nazi again because if I find one more Lego or bouncy ball on my counters, I just might accidentally let the garbage disposal eat them up!