Happy Halloween!

We had a pretty fun Halloween! I spent the day with my cute preschoolers. Then I came home and made pumpkin sugar cookies, we ate the traditional broccoli cheese soup in pumpkin bread bowls, passed out candy to trick-or-treaters and visited some friends and family. We were going to watch Casper-but Steve got too involved in ESPN and before we knew it, it was bed time. :-)

Anyway, I just love Halloween! My favorite part is dressing up. So naturally, Steve & I like to have matching costumes and we love it! So here's some Halloween pics to enjoy to show off our cool costumes. :-)

Last year we were Mario & Luigi

This year we were Granny Wolf & Little Red Riding Hood

I can't wait to see what we'll be next year! :-)

I'm all about decorating for holidays. So here's our festive outside Halloween decorations. We even had spooky music playing through the kitchen window. My preschoolers made the milk jug jack-o-lanterns. So cute! If you look in the bottom right corner you'll see Danny's pumpkin man. :-)

Here's us with our favorite friends-Brian, Matt & Mike

Brain didn't know what to think about Steve's costume

The Christensen "teen" cousins
(Taylor, Colby & Cody are Mexicans :-) )

With my mom. Yes, she borrowed our Luigi costume.

Can you guess who this might be?.....
(Shhh... it's my daddy :-) )

Say Cheese!

Here's me (Cinderella) with my adorable preschoolers.

Stevie's New Toy!!! (& VERY long project)

For the past year or so Steve has developed a new hobby in mechanics. He asks for tools for his birthday and Christmas. While he does his homework, he surfs the internet looking at classic cars and monitoring Corvettes on KSL. He even got the ultimate job that he loves-an installer at Pep Boys. His job is a great learning experience for him and if he stays with the company for at least 6 months, they'll pay for him to go to mechanics school. He would LOVE that. He's now considering being a high school Spanish AND auto teacher. (Talk about having a job you enjoy! :-) )

He's been talking about wanting to buy and restore an old car for a while now. Well, after much convincing-I finally let him buy a project car yesterday. (Thanks to Josh for making it possible by letting Steve use your trailer and such.) Steve was so excited about it. I had never seen him so gitty and happy before-it was so cute! It was definitely a can't pass up opportunity. So we currently have a 1975 Corvette Stingray sitting in our driveway waiting to be restored. I can't wait! (Too bad I have to wait several years before I can ride around in a fancy Corvette.) :-)

Vroom! Vroom!

Gooey Pumpkin Carving

Last Saturday we had a pumpkin carving party with Todd & Jordan, his friends Doug & Katie, and my dad. We had a delicious dinner-Steve's BBQ chicken & some cheesy scalloped potatoes. It was a blast! Let me tell ya! :-) I was very entertained by Todd's carving skills. :-) And all the pumpkins turned out great!

The carving begins...

Todd & Jordan

Doug & Katie

Silly Me & Steve

Todd was VERY focused on his work...

He's proud of his finished product

Ta Dah!
(Happy, Mickey, Spooky, Donald, Skeleton & 2 Face)

Halloween Time at DISNEYLAND!!!!

In case you haven't noticed, Steve and I pretty much love Disneyland! This is our second visit this year and we loved it! Steve's family went for fall break and we decided to tag along. Steve, Adam, Spencer and I left Tuesday after school, stayed the night at my grandparents in Mesquite and arrived in Anaheim Wed afternoon. We didn't waste any time-once we got there we went straight to the park. We went to the park Wed, Thurs, Fri & Sat then drove all the way home Sunday. The rest of the family arrived Thursday evening.

Even though it's very difficult to keep every person in a family of ten satisfied-we made it work and we all had a great time! The Halloween decorations were awesome, the Haunted Mansion was decked out with the Nightmare Before Christmas-Steve's favorite, the fireworks show was awesome-they had Tinkerbell fly across the sky, and the best part was that we got in front of all the lines because Steve was in a wheelchair. The wheelchair really came in handy because it was very crowded on Fri & Sat. Oh, the new Toy Story Mania ride is pretty cool! It's like you're in a life size video game. We loved it!

Here's some pics to enjoy...

Candy Corn CALI boys (Adam, Steve & Spencer)

Ya, we're cool!

Showing off our bug eyes in the Bugs Life Show (I LOVE this pic!)

Um, secretly there's a wall behind us...

"It's our first time on the Peter Pan ride"

So in love-this is where it all started

The whole family with pumpkin mickey

Yeah-Alice in Wonderland (Mary, Mom & Dad)

Mary is a speeder!!!

So I randomly saw all five Disney princesses at the carousel ride in California Adventure. Now, that's something you don't see every day. Sadly, this is the best picture I could get of all of them. I did get one of each princess by herself but I don't want to bore you with that. :-)

River Rafting baby!

California Screamin (Mary, Me, Adam, Steve, Aaron & Dan-Mary wasn't very excited about this one...

We like to make silly posses for the roller coaster pics

This picture is so cute! We went to take a pic with Mickey because there was no line (surprisingly) and just as we got there, Mickey decided to move to another spot so he could be in the shade. So he grabbed Mary by the hand and took her with her....


Muppet 3-D baby! I think mom has a goofy group of kids...

Mary, Mom & I went to the Princess Fair where the princesses tried teaching us how to dance and bow like a princess. It was entertaining trying to watch an ungraceful Mary dance. :-) Mary also got to color princess coloring pages, take pictures with some of the princesses, dance around a Mulberry Pole (I think that's what it's called), and get her face painted. We had fun!!!

Princess Ariel

Princess Belle

Princess Jasmine-I have no idea why she's sitting down...

Mary's beautiful butterfly

I think we had a little bit too much fun going on Splash Mountain over and over and over again. We got socking wet! Here's all our goofy poses... (sorry, some of them are blurry)

The Unexpected ER Visit

So Steve's body decided to get appendicitis the day after Steph's wedding and two days before we're supposed to leave for Disneyland. He went to bed Saturday night with a stomach ache, woke up Sunday with it still aching, went home early from church to 'sleep it off', stayed in bed all day, didn't do any homework and emailed his teachers to tell them he wasn't coming to school the next day. By this point I figured it was probably appendicitis because he kept complaining that most of the pain was on his right side. I decided to take him to the hospital Monday morning before I went to work. But when I tried waking him up he insisted that he'd be fine-he'd just sleep it off. When I got home from work, Steve was at his parents house still sick in bed. So I took him to the hospital....

We spent about 4 hours in the Orem Community Hospital ER while they torted him with an IV, anema, and CT scan to see if he really had appendicitis or not. Sure enough-he did! We then drove down to Utah Valley Regional Hospital where we waited a few more hours before he finally went into sugery at 9:00 pm. The surgery only lasted about an hour and all went well. Steve had to stay in the hospital over night which wasn't the greatest experience for him-the nurses kept waking him up at odd hours of the night so he didn't get very much sleep. Tuesday morning I scrambled to find someone to sub my class while I went back to the hospital to be with Steve. He was released from the hosptial around noon and Steve insisted on us still driving to Disneyland that day. So while I went back to work, Steve packed up the truck for our road trip to Disneyland. Crazy huh?

It's been a fun adventure and he's recovered pretty well. Disneyland was fine for him-we just kept him druged up with pain meds. :-) We're still waiting to meet with the doctor again to give us the all is well.

Here's some pictures of his hospital visit...

"Get me outta here"

The three bandages soon to be scares and his newly shaved belly
(They did the surgery through his belly button)

Stephy's Wedding-October 11, 2008

Me, Steph & Tiff have been best friends since 7th grade-a decade ago! :-) It's so fun to have them around! I love them so much!!!! Now that Stephy is married we have Aaron and Mark to add to our fun! Steph's wedding was so beautiful. I had so much fun spending time with Tiff and Aaron at the reception and getting in on all the 'behind the scenes' work. I am so happy for Steph and Mark and I can't wait to go on a triple date sometime soon! :-)

Here's Me, Aaron & Tiff being cheesy
(we tried taking this pic ourselves-can you tell?)

Me n Tiffy B.F.F.!!!

The Unseperable Three 0r Three Musketeers
(whatever you wanna call us)

Cutting the cake very carefully.... (just wait)

BAM!! Face Smack! :-)

They got it ALL over each other-even on Steph's dress

The new Six Amigos :-)

Let's just say Aaron got in a lot of trouble for this one... :-)