We are ready for Hallooween

So yesterday I went grocery shopping and candy shopping. I think I bought too much. All the candy just looked so yummy. We have a fun thing our association does where kids just walk around the park with their costumes and the parents hand out candy. I never seem to have enough, so this year I guess I am prepared. We have already started eating it though.

Here is Erica at preschool. They are having a Halloween party. She is the penguin. Julie gave us this costume long ago when McKay was just little. It is still a favorite and will be passed down to Kason next.

Things that are going on around here

Here are a few old pictures I needed to put on the blog. Erica is in this cute little ballet class. It is fun to see all these cute little girls dancing around to beautiful music.

These two are buddies since McKay is back to school.

I turned 31 in the middle of October. I took the day off from work and had fun with the kids in the morning and then read in the afternoon. We went as a family to the mall where I could buy a new white shirt and then ate out at Cafe Rio (yes, we have a Cafe Rio now here in Boise, yummmmm) and then got a quick pie from Marie Calendar and had a quiet night once the kids were in bed. It was a good birthday!

I cut all three boys' hair one day. Kason's was the most dramatic. Here he is with his long hair. He was not too happy to be getting it cut.

Here he is afterwards, so handsome and grown up.

Life at the Hall home

I am a lousy blogger. I just cannot seem to sit down and post pictures and talk about them. Lately life has just been normal around here with its ups and downs. So, I am going to try and be more consistent and not just blog when I have a picture to talk about or some great thing our family did, but just about our day to day lives. I don't see many of my family because of how far away everyone lives and all of our busy lives, so hopefully this can give you a little glimpse into our daily life.

So to start, our family is beginning to be plagued with sickness. It always comes on strong and suddenly. Kason was hit first, and his was mild with just yucky nose goopies. Next comes McKay who caught his yesterday. His is worse with runny nose, cough, and body aches. I am guessing I will be next followed by either Kory or Erica, I can't decide. Luckily Mckay's illness came at a good time (blessing from the Lord). He is off from school for two days and he does not have a soccer game this weekend. However, we are planning on getting the kids' flu shots next week as Kory's work offers them to all the dependents for 2 days at a discounted price. He needs to get better before then and the rest of us need to not catch it until the flu shot is administered, then the sickness may continue.

Well our garage opener broke today. It has been extra loud lately and making a big clank/crashing sound when it opens and closes. We knew it was only time. Today a sprocket finally broke. Kory went in search of a new part at Lowe's and Home Depot and returned saying that he could either by a kit with all sorts of parts, but it may not even have the one part we need, for $130 or we could just buy a new opener for a little more. I guess we are getting a new opener. When it rains it pours. Let's see what breaks next around here.

Our New Bed

We have been at another project but for some time now. We decided to get rid of our old 70s style waterbed and get a new one. We never found one that we liked and they were all very expensive, so Kory decided to build us a new waterbed. We bought a headboard and footboard that go to a regular bed and he built a brand new base using a few pieces from our old waterbed to make it all work. When Mom and Dad were up here last, Dad stained all the wood to match the headboard and Mom and Dad both varnished it. It took a long time and after many months of labor, we finally were able to put it all together and we love it! It looks like a regular bed and we have tons of new storage underneath the bed. It is a lot higher up and fills our room, but we really like the end result. Thanks Mom and Dad for all your hard work. Thank you Kory for this great anniversary present, even though it is a month or more late, it was worth the wait.

Nighty, night.

Pioneer Breakfast

For Pioneer Day (July 24) we had an early breakfast at the park that is across the street from our house. Our Bishopric put it together and provided the pancakes and the rest of the ward members provided all the trimmings. There was a lot of food and fun visiting with each other and watching all the kids play together. We had a great time. Here are some pictures from the event.

Good-Bye Tooth

We had something terrible happen last Wednesday. I was making dinner, McKay was playing with Legos on the kitchen island, and Kason was on a kitchen chair playing in the sink and watching the rest of us when all of a sudden he slipped and hit his face on the edge of the chair and fell to the ground. I hurried and washed my hands, as I had bacon grease on my fingers, and picked him up and noticed blood in his mouth and a huge tooth on the rug in front of the sink. He must have hit the chair just right and out popped one of his top teeth. IT WAS HORRIBLE. What was amazing was that the tooth and the root came out with one nice hole left behind and no other damage was done. He was truly blessed. He could have fractured something or lost more than one tooth, so we feel he was protected from above. Amazingly he got over it very quickly and was able to calm down just fine and eat dinner like nothing had happened and he has been fine ever since. The worst thing is now he has a huge missing tooth and it looks funny. Our poor baby has had a really hard time with his outward appearances ever since he was born and this just adds to it. His eye doctor is going to check his eye sight on his next visit in November to see if he needs glasses (one more thing to add to his poor face). Oh well, he is still a cutie to me!!! Now I have to prepare myself for all the people who are going to ask, "what happened to his mouth?!" It get a lot of people asking about what is wrong with his eye, and now I will get to answer more questions down the road. What fun!

Baseboard Fun

Since Mom and Dad were here visiting, we decided to put them to work and get some of our long awaiting projects done. We decided to replace our baseboard all over the house. It started with when we did the tile in our kitchen and entry way at the beginning of the year. We had to rip up the old baseboard and replace it. Kory found out at that time that our baseboard was not really baseboard but the casing that goes around our windows and door frames. So we put in taller, true baseboard on our lower level. It looked so nice we said to ourselves, "Someday maybe will will replace all of our baseboard." Well that "someday" came a lot sooner than planned. Mom did such a great job caulking, puttying, and painting the new baseboard, we knew we needed her expertise to do the rest. So Kory slowly began ripping out the old and putting in the new baseboard and when Mom got here we hurried and finished putting the new baseboard down almost throughout the entire house. Mom was able to finish it all and it looks fabulous!!! It was a lot of work, like all of our projects are, but worth it in the end. We are not completely done, still have a few closets and the office to do, "someday."

New baseboard.

Our house was a mess as we had to move furniture, toys, closet stuff out away from the walls.

Mom working away.

Family Time

I love taking pictures of my family. This was on Sunday and we we were bored so we decided to get our cameras out and start clicking. We got some good ones but most were blurry and had to be deleted. Oh well!

McKay Turns 7

McKay turned 7 on June 26th. We had a fun day. I took the kids to a place call Monkey Buizness with lots of inflatables while Kory had to help a coworker with sprinkler problems. The kids had a fun time, even Kason went down the slides and over the obstacles.

We had a little friend birthday party that afternoon at our house which involved lots of water games.

McKay picked out his own cake from Costco.

That night we ate at Red Robin and opened presents. McKay got lots of new balls and sports things for the outdoors, some books, and picture for his wall and his favorite, Legos.

I think Kason enjoyed the cake most of all.

Recycled Castle

This summer the Library near us had a fun activity where we were to build a castle out of recycled material. The kids wanted to do it and we spent an afternoon creating a fun castle which they painted all over. We brought it to the library where McKay and Erica were able to stand in front of lots of people and tell about their castle, get their picture taken with it, and got a free T-shirt and water bottle for participating. They also painted a picture with sponges and went fishing for prizes in a fishing pond at the Library. It was fun and worth all the work!

Tuba on the Roof

We were in our house one day and heard a really loud tuba sound. We looked out the window and saw our neighbor who lives behind us on his roof playing his tuba. We thought it was really funny and took a picture. They are great neighbors and full of fun!

Last Day of School

McKay looks so old in this picture. This was his last day of school. He gave a Book of Mormon and a reed diffuser to his teacher and his bus driver with a letter including his testimony. I was so proud of him and was excited to have him home and done with 1st grade, which he really enjoyed.

Zoo

These are kind of old pictures. I took Erica and Kason to the zoo by myself just before school got out. I thought I could handle taking 2 kids to the zoo but not 3, so we went while McKay was at school. Suprisingly it was crowded and Erica after a short time wanted to go home and had no interest in looking at the animals. Oh well, its a memory.

We paid $3.00 to feed a giraffe. I thought Erica would like it but she freaked out and I ended up feeding the giant thing and it was not fun. You put some lettuce on your hand and it sticks out its tongue and scoops up the lettuce. Feeling the giraffe's tongue on your hand was yucky, slimmy, and disgusting. Never again.


The penguins were definitely our favorite. Erica was a little scared they were going to somehow jump out of the glass and get her.

Merry-Go-Round, also a favorite for Erica, personally it made me sick going around and around and around and around......

Playing in an old jeep.

Kason was an angel the whole time, enjoying snacks, milk, and a ride.

Pretty lake. It was downhill after this picture and we soon went home.

Easter, Birthday, Soccer, etc.

Wow, I got behind on the blog. For some reason I have just been lazy and had not had the desire to update it. I felt guilty enough and finally found some time to record what has been going on the last few months with our family:

Easter was fun this year. It was Conference time and we luckily live right next to the park that they have the Easter egg hunt so we went over and got some candy to eat while watching Conference. I also volunteered to help the poor lady in our ward in charge of it, she needed someone to go around and pick up the dog poop (YUCK), so we basically missed the first session of Conference. Luckily it was recorded and we have it in the Ensign to read.

Kason had his first birthday on April 30th. We kept things simple with just our family. Kory had gone down to So. Utah for a baby blessing for his brother and so he was not here for the birthday. McKay was sick with the stomach flu in the morning and when he felt better we went to the toy store and picked out some presents. We then spent a lot of the afternoon making Kason's crazy cake that ended up yummy but kind of a mess. We did not know what we were doing. I have learned I am a lousy cake decorator. At night we ate pizza, opened presents, ate cake and off to bed. It was a great day. The best thing was giving Kason a sippy cup full of whole milk! He hated it and spit it out. It has been almost a whole month now and he still does not really like whole milk. He is getting better very slowly though, except he only drinks it if I mix some ovaltine in with it. Some day soon I am hoping to cut that out.

McKay got some new rollerblade hand me downs from Jefferson and all winter has been practicing in our house. He can now go outside and anywhere on his rollerblades. He puts them on almost daily to ride around in our house. HE LOVES THEM!! I am glad we have tile now, our old wood floors would not have liked them very much.

We enrolled McKay in soccer this Spring. It is his first year and it has been hard for him to learn the game. He has made some new friends and has enjoyed going to practices and playing around with them. We have had many cold games and rainy weather. It was a good experience for us as a family. I am not sure we will continue it, but we will see.