Happy Halloween

We had a fun Halloween with the kids. Aside from the small bout of being scared for Ezra from random Halloween displays at stores, it has all gone well. Although, I must say he's handled it better than last year.

We took the kids to a pumpkin patch to get pumpkins. Could have probably got them somewhere cheaper, but it was fun all the same.
Both of them were really proud of their pumpkins. They carried them around everywhere for a couple of days.
We carved the big pumpkin, and the kids colored their pumpkins with markers. Emma kind of got her face a bit too, but they really enjoyed it.

The kids had fun at the ward trunk-or-treat. Ezra still keeps asking when we can go to the Halloween party again. Ezra dressed as a knight, and Emma as Snow White.

She was originally going to be Cinderella, but it didn't really work out that way. They both liked their costumes quite a bit.
Ezra thought that the plastic sword was the best. He especially liked that there was a loop to hold it.

When we got home, Emma had to have an apple. Kind of ironic, don't you think?

Apparently, we didn't get any pictures of our costumes, but that's usually how it goes. The pictures are always mostly of the kids.

Travels

We were able to have a couple of good trips the last few weekends. We went out to Kelly & Cameron's to watch conference. The kids liked spending time with them, and it was good to see them.

The kids had fun with some balloons and figuring out how static works...
Emma kept trying to share her little kaleidoscope with Kelly ...


And Kelly introduced Ezra to watercolors. He thought it was great.

The next weekend we made a trip out to California to Disneyland with Susan's family. It was fun to get to see everyone there as well, even if the trip did end up to be a bit exhausting.

When we first got to our hotel room, we were getting situated and both kids disappeared. Going around the corner we found them, but not before they found the box of tissue.


The kids generally enjoyed the trip. They loved seeing the characters and parades and such.

A couple of mornings we went to have breakfast where they had some of the characters. Ezra warmed right up them, but Emma was hesitant at first.

One of the bears even "attacked" Shawn, and Ezra had to save him.

The kids didn't hold it against him though.

They really didn't care too much for most of the rides though. Guess they're still a bit small. The few rides that they did like were the bumper cars, a little kid caterpillar train ride, small world, the jungle cruise, and the storybook land ferry. Ezra got to spend some time alone with grandma and grandpa, which he thought was the best ever. It did kind of wipe him out though coming "home" that late.
Some of the biggest hits were the fountain area and the ball that "floats" on water. Those both kept the kids entertained for quite a while.


As they get to be a bit older, I think that trips like that will be more fun for them.

Last weekend we got the fall garden planted. Hopefully we'll have quite a bit of stuff out of that. We all loved just being outside, now that it finally is starting to not be so hot. Seems like summer was late in coming and also late in leaving this year.

Where does the time go? The last month and a half have been pretty busy, but that isn't too far from normal.

The kids keep us going pretty well.

Emma is getting to the point where she can tell you what she wants a little bit more, although any type of fruit is apparently an "apple". She tried to eat an orange by just biting into the skin, but lost interest fairly quickly.


Ezra keeps himself busy with his various toys. He has a pretty good imagination, and always has his toys playing and "talking" with each other.


Recently, both of the kids have been on a popcorn kick. They both ask for popcorn on a daily basis. Some days they eat more, and some less, but that's okay.

Last weekend Shawn's parents came down for a visit. The kids loved having grandma and grandpa around. We got to go see Kelly & Cameron as well. Both of the kids had a great time wrestling with grandpa.


Of course, Emma got pressed into service...

... well, not really.

Emma has finally got to the point that she'll let Susan do her hair sometimes. As long as you tell her that it is pretty enough times, she will sometimes leave it in.


Ezra decided that he needed his picture taken that day too and posed for it:


The kids are big enough that they can kind of help when we bake things. They helped Susan make cookies yesterday. They're so good!


Ezra ate one, and he was pretty careful not to get too much chocolate on himself.

Emma, on the other hand, wasn't quite so worried about it.


We set up a fish tank again. The kids have liked watching the fish, and we'll see how this one does. Made sure not to get mollies again, there were just way too many of them last time.

Busy days

The last month has been fairly eventful for us. Ezra is potty trained now, which has made the diaper bill quite a bit less.

The summer has been a pretty decently warm one, and we will all be excited when it cools down and we can play outside more.

The kids have been continuing to grow in leaps and bounds.

It's amazing how quickly they get big.

Both of the kids love looking at books, which we obviously encourage.

Susan was able to get Emma to leave some pony tails in a couple of weeks ago. She was so cute with them.

The remains of our garden are basically a very large melon patch. We've got quite a few watermelons growing and a decent amount of cantaloupe. The cantaloupe are harder to tell when they're ripe, so we've only really had 1 good melon off of it.


The kids are always entertaining. They got so excited today when we went for a simple ride in the car to the store.

Maui!

So over the week of the 4th, we were able to make a trip to Maui. Shawn's parents were gracious enough to watch the kids for the week. We really appreciated it. It was the first time since Ezra was born that we've been without at least one kid around for more than 24 hours.

It was nice to get out of the heat for a bit (and not to mention the dust storm), and also nice to just relax for a week. We did end up doing quite a bit, exploring Lahaina (the town that we stayed near), watching the fireworks on the 4th, and seeing some of the other sights.

We got some really good fresh mangoes and apple bananas from a nearby farmers' market.

We also found a really awesome pizza place up north of Lahaina. It's called Pizza Paradiso, and we both highly recommend it. The food was generally good, though the better food was to be found more at the little places than the places that try to show themselves to be "upscale" places for tourists who focus more on their advertising than their food.


The weather was pretty cooperative for us. It would rain a little bit every day, but then there would always be rainbows. There was only one day where it rained most of the day.
We did get to do some snorkeling, but there was a big swell which didn't allow us to go as much as we had originally planned. It makes for great surfing, but not so much snorkeling.


We ended up going on two of the mornings to two different bays: Kapalua, and Honolua. Kapalua was smaller, but we were the only people there pretty much (probably because it was raining on us on our way up there).

We saw a few Moorish Idols and quite a few Humuhumunukunukuapua'a (reef triggerfish)

We also saw some unicornfish, and a zebra moray eel.


The second bay was about the only one that was protected enough from the swells for us to go to later in the week.

Honolua bay was really cool, though you had to swim quite a way out to the reef.

The trail from the parking area to the bay was awesome too. That area of the island is quite lush.

There were quite a bit more fish in this area, since it is a larger bay and part of a reserve. We saw quite a few fish as we swam along out to the main reef area. As we swam along, we both thought we saw someone else snorkeling toward us, but as we got closer we realized that it was a sea turtle. We were both pretty excited to be able to see one.

A while later, Susan saw something moving in the rocks at the bottom, and realized that it was a second turtle. We both were happy too see a second turtle as well.


The sunsets were great to watch on the days where it wasn't too cloudy in the evening.



We really enjoyed the beauty of Maui. There are a lot of flowering plants growing everywhere. Some of our favorites were the big hibiscus growing all over as hedges, and the plumerias.


The scent from the plumerias is amazing. We're trying to see if we have a place in the yard for one of these, as you can apparently grow them in Phoenix.

We went to the Old Lahaina Luau one evening. It was great.


The food was great and the dancing was amazing.

Our last day we went inland a bit to the Iao Valley state park and walked around a bit. The canyon that it is situated in is amazing.

We also drove up to the Kula Botanical gardens. It was interesting to see how drastically the climate changed as we started to drive up the side of the volcano. The gardens were kind of separated from everything else, and nice and peaceful.

The views were amazing.


The gardens themselves were great too. There were a lot of beautiful flowers and various other plants.



Though it was nice to get away, and the kids had a great time with their grandparents, it was also really nice to come home again.


When we got home, we found a very large, ripe watermelon waiting for us in the garden. We had left it, since the last one hadn't been quite ready a week before we left. The watermelon was almost as big as Emma and definitely weighed more (which would put it somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 pounds).


It tastes good, though I'm sure we'll be tired of watermelon by the time we're done with it. Cutting the melon was interesting, since the largest knife we have didn't look like it would even be close to adequate. It worked out okay though, because as soon as the knife pierced the rind, the whole melon split in half from its own weight with a loud popping sound.