Jack the Pumpkin king

We went to Disneyland over thanksgiving and this was kelty's highlight of the trip! if you don't know kelty very well,... lets just say she is drawn to somewhat morbid ideals. I try to instill a love for princesses and such but her favorite things are monsters, bugs, villains, and secret agent stuff. For example: while we are watching sleeping beauty, I tell her that my favorite part is coming up (when rose is singing in the forest and her prince comes to sing with her) kelty then says, "that's not my favorite part, my favorite part is when she touches the spindle!"
So last christmas kelty made us watch The Nightmare before Christmas like every day (even christmas eve) until i had to lay down the law and told her that we cannot watch the show until next christmas! Needless to say, kelty loved the ride at disneyland and she loved talking to Jack the pumpkin king (she also told me that she will be naming her children Jack and Sally).

St. George girls trip

The first week in november i went to st. george with some friends to scrapbook. I got a lot done and it is always fun to get away from the kids for a bit. i never get any good pics of us girls...probably because i don't want to scrapbook it.

My favorite fall

We rode our bikes to Bridalveil falls before it got too cold outside...its a tradition i feel like we must do! It was beautiful and peaceful and it reminded me of when i was little riding up with my parents and buying a snack, back when Bridalveil was more of a happening place.



These are pictures of the kids playing in the neighbors yard. Kelty has a new bestest friend named Brighton (sort of a cousin i guess). The Millers moved in down the street while we were gone this summer and we just love having more kids in the hood! Kelty asks me all day long "when is brighton going to be home from school?"
I just love the colors of fall, the smell, the crisp air, the sound of crunchy leaves....I could never live anywhere else because i love the seasons so much.

Ghouls Night Out

Halloween was long but fun... Kelty had a little parade at her pre-school friday morning then we had our ward party and trunk-or-treat on friday night then we had a party at our house on saturday. Kelty was insistent on being a blood sucking vampire this year despite my begging for her to be strawberry shortcake or Wednesday from adam's family. She did play the part very well and in her mind she was scary enough to frighten everyone at the ward Halloween party... She would walk up to strangers and scream BOO! everyone would give a courtesy jump and then she would laugh with pure satisfaction as the person was looking for the owner of the overly confident little vampire (lucky me). As for walker, he was spiderman so naturally fights would break out throughout the night and walker was found trying his superhero kung fu on the other kids in the ward (i'm half joking)....my kids are too cute and i love'em!

Monster baby shower

I threw a baby shower for my little cuz Brookie! I wanted to do the monster theme cause the graphics i found online were so cute (and it is almost halloween). ANd BTW the little marshmallow monsters are actually really tasty, i will be making a scarier version of them for our halloween party (in case you want to try them:)!

Big red barn

We picked our pumpkins at the Big Red Barn in Santaquin this year again...it is well worth the drive. The farm reminds me of my favorite farm in philly and the barn is full of fresh fruit, veggies, home made doughnuts, ice cream, apple cider, and did i mention the yummiest apples ever!

Bad to the BOne!

Matt and i rarely take pictures of just us, and i rarely post them on my blog...matt always gets upset that i never take pics of myself or us together so here we are...thanks to the amazing camera on my iphone, we can take pics on the fly. So, we took a little date on the alpine loop and the scenery was amazing (plus matt looked kinda smoldering in leather and his handlebar mustache).

a BERRY special birthday!

We had kelty's 4year birthday last weekend. She asked me about her birthday every day for the past month..."Is my birthday going to be after my nap?" because of so much waiting and anticipation she did not believe me when i told her it was actually her birthday...."is it really my birthday mom, are you just kidding?...i'm not really 4, your just joking," she said this all morning until it was her birthday party.
Kelty loves lots of attention and is such the social butterfly, so i couldn't help but throw her a party with all her friends. She would list all the people that she wanted to invite (it included all of her 2nd cousins, Ellie's grandma, and kids she barely knew) it was hard to condense her list of people she wanted to come but honestly she has too many friends for a 4 yr old!... it's because anyone she meets she becomes best buddies with (especially people who look like a grandma). Kelty had the time of her life at the party and is now asking frequently about when her next birthday party will be (hopefully this will die out quickly). Oh, how I love that yummy little strawberry!

Back to scrapbooking

Went scrapbooking over conference weekend and although I am a bit rusty I got a lot done! Some of them are kinda repetitive (one for kelty's book and one for walk's book) but i need a digital copy posted of my favorites. (not digital scrapbooking BTW, i just take pics of the pages)

TImp cave

Matt wants to turn our kids into extreme hikers so we decided to hike to timp cave last week. Kelty did the whole thing by herself (she actually has pretty good endurance) but walker only made it 1/4 of the way up and then had to be carried (it's a little harder for a boy that thick:). I have never hiked to timp and was pretty suprised at how the whole trail is on a cliff!!! Other than high risk for fatalities the hike was really pretty and the weather was perfect, and the cave looked like the inside of a persons ear full of earwax. If you haven't been on this hike i would highly recommend it but its like a refrigerator in the cave, so remember to bring a sweatshirt or you might have to buy a pretty sweet timpanogos cave hoodie from the gift shop.

Cool park

These are some pics i took at the new AWESOME park in Spanish Fork. It's about time southern utah valley got a cool kiddie attraction.

Camping in moab

My kids are always so full of energy (its exhausting for me) so hiking to the arch was easy for them. Walker hiked all the way there and almost all the way back...he did not want anyone to help him or hold his hand.
In the morning after a long freezing night's sleep i looked over at walker and found him with this big strawberry in his mouth, just staring at the fire pit (totally out of it).
These are some pics of my dad's first experiences rock crawling on the Razor. He did not understand the concept of going nice and slow up the rock so that you grip to the rocks...he gave it a full throttle kick and ended up riding up the rocks on just his back two wheels.
It was a fun weekend (not really relaxing) but fun. My children just love camping, hiking, getting dirty, and playing with bugs & flashlights.

Back to school

It was kelty's first day of her second year of preschool. Kelty loves school, the poor girl is going to have to go to 3 years of preschool because she barely misses the deadline for kindergarten. She chose her curious george shirt to wear for the first day and she let me do braids (rare occasion). I will never forget my preschool experience...i still remember going to Mrs. Ginger's basement and fighting over the pink cup at snack time and singing the ice cream flavor song with my head sticking out of a big ice cream cone cut-out.

Mrs. Shaw

Well, for the past 2 weeks I have been helping my little sister Megan (A.K.A. Mrs. Shaw) pull her classroom together. She got hired 4 days before school started so i came to her rescue and drew these cute animals for her room and i thought my theme "It's a Zoo in Here" was very appropriate for any Special Ed room with 13 students ranging from kindergarten to 4th grade and a first year teacher that was hired 4 days before school started! I have never had the opportunity to teach special ed students but Megan has roped me into teaching a couple times a week (since she does not like teaching in front of a class)...and i love working with meg's cute little students. Seriously it has been the most rewarding experience to work with them (I have cried occasionally because i care about them so much). If any one has some extra time on their hands you can volunteer to help her class anytime, cause she really needs the help! I think i really would love to teach my own classroom someday....and i will be taking my animals with me:)

Raspberries

Picking fruit just never gets old...kelty loves it. Houston was too hot all summer so we never got to go berry picking, so the raspberry patch in Mapleton satisfied our berry picking needs.
Walker was such a mess afterwards that the owner of the farm just had to take a picture of him.

Beautiful bride

I came home early from Texas to go to my cousin Jamie's wedding. I like to think that i was the one who brought this lovely couple together... last year at about this same time i invited Jamie to go boating with me and one of matt's sales buddies, thus on the boat that day was her future husband SCOTT(he is a red head BTW)!!! I am so happy for them and the lemonade served at the wedding was well worth driving home early for, i devoured 6 cups of pink lemonade. Congrats to Jamie and Scott, and welcome to the Little Bankhead Compound.

Waterpark

The kids loooooved this! We went to a waterpark by our house and the kids went down this waterslide over and over. Kelty has become quite the accomplished little swimmer. She is very determined (competitive almost), she taught herself how to swim(she would not let me help in any way shape or form). The last time that the office dove for quarters she dove down and collected more quarters than i did!(I gave up after 50 cents) I was never a good swimmer so it was best that she learn on her own. If she would have learned from me, she would be plugging her nose and there would be no diving!

Goodbye Grandma...

I went to my grandma's funeral today and it was beautiful...38 great grandchildren letting their balloons go in honor of Grandma!

Friends

Walker and Kelty were in heaven playing with Ellie and Cody at the pool when we visited them last weekend. They were in desperate need of quality friend time!