Halloween

 We crammed a lot in on Halloween, since we'd been in Boston.  We carved pumpkins while we ate our halloween dinner of mummies, pumpkins and bats.

 Brandon helped Ryme carve her baby pumpkin.  She was very excited about it!

 Tanzen with his pumpkin...it's a pig :)

 Kett with his scary pumpkin

 The Winnie-the-Pooh theme happened by default.  I was looking for costumes at a thrift store and the only one they had that was the right size and decent was a Tigger.  I went back a week later and the happened to have Winnie the Pooh in Kett's size.  Once I had Tigger and Pooh I decided Ryme had to be Piglet, so I found her costume on Ebay.  They were very excited, and requested we call them by their "real" names.

 My brother, Chaz, and his wife, Hayley, stopped to give the kids a little Halloween treat.  Can you guess their costume?  Chaz is a tree, and Hayley is a tree hugger.  Very appropriate for the newly weds :)

Kett got tired after a bit, but Tigger kept on "bouncin, bouncin, bouncin!"

They were super excited to leave their candy out for the Great Pumpkin, and got some cool Angry Bird's balls they're very excited about.  I LOVE the Great Pumpkin!  Now what to do with all that candy...?

Our new pets

 We get a lot of deer in our backyard, which we love.  My camera wasn't cooperating, and this buck got tired of the photo shoot and left before I could get a good picture.  He had a huge rack and was really pretty.  I loved looking out the window and seeing him taking a nap in the middle of my lawn.  

Makett named this deer Jack-rack....which is funny, since he didn't know their antlers were also called racks.  He looks like he's wearing a hat, but he's always easy to spot!

Boston

Brandon had a conference in Boston, so we left the kids with my Mom and I went too!  It was the longest I'd left them (Friday to Tuesday) and we had perfect timing with Hurricane Sandy!

 Luckily we went on a Duck Boat tour when we first got there- at the time we didn't realize it would be the only touristy thing we'd be able to do!

 This was the weirdest house boat?!

 We had a fundraiser for Radiating Hope, which was great as we had a good turn out, and were able to tell Radiation Oncologists about our mission.  It was at the Boston Children's Museum...my kids would have like it :)

 The hurricane headed in right after- the entire city shut down.  We'd been looking forward to going out to dinner and adventuring, but public transit, restaurants and store's were all closed.  We ended up buying food from the grocery store...so much for sushi night!

The highlight was getting to spend time not only with Brandon, but also with our friends, who did residency with us.  They now live in Florida, and it was so good seeing them.  

They cancelled almost all flights on Monday and Tuesday, and we were supposed to fly out Tuesday afternoon.  I was so worried about missing Halloween!  I would have gone home Sunday if I'd been able.  Thankfully, we were on one of the few flights that left Tuesday. It was a bit eerie, the airport was deserted.  We were so grateful to get home!  I need to get a little better at being gone.  My kids had a great time, but I was pretty (ok, kind of embarrassingly) homesick for them.  Once I was back Wednesday morning, with kids throwing fits and a mountain of laundry, I realized I should have appreciated the break a bit more!

Utah's First Snow

 Words cannot describe how ecstatic Makett and Tanzen were when we woke up to snow.  They ran to each window..."Look!! There's snow out this one! It's on the trees!  Our mailbox!  Look! Snow on our neighbor's mailbox! And on the road! And on...."  You get the idea.  VERY excited.  It took convincing to get them to wait till after breakfast to run outside to play.

We made our first snowmen-- our first life size snowmen, that is.  Tanzen and Makett rolled the balls all by themselves, and Kett collected chunks from the street for his snowman's hat.  It was a great day- I'm sure we have a few more snow days in our future :)

A few pics...

Ryme loves her "colories"...she'll sit at the table and color for a half hour straight.  

Tanzen and Ryme look so much alike!  I think this picture shows it well.  He's a great brother and was playing baby with her.

The boys love running around in their underwear...our drive way was being repaired, which was very exciting for them!

We decorated a witch's house, which all 3 loved to play in

Kett is such a happy boy!  He's full of questions, and I love hearing him question and reason through new concepts.

Ryme doesn't have very many 'girl' toys...she does really well with train tracks!

Doing a puppet show with friends.  Tanzen and Makett love making things, and have used over 500 pages of construction paper in the last few months.  I love seeing what they come up with!

Reading stories

Tanzen meets his name's representatives...

The day after Uncle Maketh came to meet Little Makett, Lhakpa Sherpa came.  Tanzen is a Tibetan name, and Tanzen was excited to meet "people from my name".  Lhakpa and his son are amazing people, and incredible examples for Tanzen!  It was fun for both boys to meet their name sakes in one weekend!

Makett meets his namesake, Maketh

Makett's Dinka name is in honor of our dear friends, the Lost Boys of Sudan. The original Makett (who spells his name Maketh-- we Americanized the spelling ) has wanted to meet his "little Makett" ever since Kett's birth.  Maketh moved to South Dakota when we moved to Phoenix, so we haven't been able to see him.  He promised he'd come out once we moved back to Utah, and, luckily for us, he kept his promise!

Little Makett and Uncle Maketh

Modeling our Halloween costumes for him 

Thanks SOOOOO much for coming Uncle Maketh!!!  We LOVED seeing you!!!

Radiating Hope's Night of Inspiration

Radiating Hope had our "Night of Inspiration" to raise money for a cancer center in Nepal.  I was so very proud of Brandon- it's a ton of work and coordination, and the event went off beautifully!  Kristin Sumbot, a cancer survivor (who I used to babysit :) spoke about her expedition climbing in the Himalayas to raise awareness of the plight of those with cancer in developing nations.  Her talk was incredible!

Lhakpa Sherpa, the record setter for climbing Everest, flew in on his own dime to speak and raise money for us.  He's from Nepal, and has had several family members die from cancer, as they had no treatment options.  His story is incredible, he was truly inspiring!  He climbed Everest in just over 10 hours, something that takes most people 70 DAYS.

The lucky winners of an ice ax, signed by over 15 famous mountaineers.

Us with Lhakpa, such a sweet man!

Witches House

When we lived in Philadelphia we would take the boys on a hayride to the witches' house.  The witches would give them cookies.  Ever since Makett saw his first autumn leaf he's been asking if there was a witches' house in Utah.  I googled it and was excited to find that Gardner village had a hay ride to, not just a witches' house, but to a witches' village.

Our friends, Dawson, Everest, Ashley and Kapri came with us.  The hayride part was great...

We got to the much anticipated witches house village, I was glad to see the witches were dressed cute and chic, not scary and morbid.

 They taught us the monster mash, how to get moon dust to make broom's fly, and how to make a potion that would get you king size candy bars trick or treating.

All was well, until after the potion.  I didn't realize Kett had been scared, but all at once he started crying, the deep, gut, can't breathe sobs that usually take a long time to work up to.  I felt so bad!  Makett had been the most excited for the witches house!  I even let him get candy from the candy machine to try and sweeten the experience for him, but he still says he doesn't ever want to go back :(  Darn!

Powell

We made a very quick trip to Lake Powell-- driving down after work on Friday, and returning Sunday.  We had a great time, it was worth the quick trip!

Brandon's brother has a houseboat there, which Makett and Taznen have been super excited to see!

Makett was really brave to go down the slide-- which has a huge drop off at the end.

Tanzen loved pulling a little boat around on the sand

My brother Kao is the same age as Brandon's nephews, and it was fun to have him come along.  They loved catching lizards.

Ryme was a little sweaty when she woke up!

Surfing

The deepest sand hole I've ever seen!

Jessica telling Kett and Tanz stories...she's so cute to entertain them!

Grandpa Fishy

Grandma Fishy