Happy Halloween

I hope everyone had a happy and safe Halloween. I know that we sure did. We started off the evening by going to the church for a "Trunk or Treat" and the kids loaded up on candy and goodies. We then went home and trick or treated for 2 hours and the kids still weren't ready to come home when we made them. They got more candy then should be legally allowed. It is out of control. When we were a couple of houses into our trip we were tracked down by a little girl in Dylan's class. It was really cute, they stayed together for the rest of the night. A friend of ours who was helping with the kids said that they were making plans to hang out at one of their houses after trick or treating was over. Sadly for them, we made them go their separate ways at about 8:30. The kids had fun and then Dustin and I had fun after the kids went to bed and we got to pick out all the good stuff for us.

If you can't tell the boys were firefighters and a dalmatian

My 1st Halloween!

I even turned the stroller into a firetruck complete with head lights and lights on the top, but with the flash you couldn't see that the red things on the top were lit up.

Last weekend we went to a pumpkin patch and here are a couple of pictures from there.

Cute pictures

This is a summary of the three times we have had the boys pictures taken in the past month. Dylan's 6 year old pictures, Kolton's 3 month old pictures, Hayden's 3 year old pictures and Halloween pictures. Enjoy!!

Happy Birthday Hayden!!

If you thought we through a big party for the boys two weeks ago when we had a horse and all of their friends over you should see the celebration we had today. There was a bounce house, a giant slide, a giant carnival swing, face painting, karaoke, a dunking booth, cake walk and a ton of other activities. Actually it was the annual "Carnival at the Creek" hosted by the PTO at his school, Willow Creek Elementary, as a fundraiser (beats selling stuff right Erin). Since it just happened to fall on Hayden's 3rd birthday we told the kids we were doing something special for his birthday by going to it when we would have gone no matter what weekend it was on.

We really dragged the celebrating out a lot longer than just going to the carnival. We woke up early this morning for day two of the biannual subdivision garage sale. Originally Paulette was not going to participate today since we had other plans but since it so horribly yesterday we decided to give it a go for another two hours this morning. Yet another bust! We had our stuff and a ton of stuff (junk?) from Paulette's mom and I think that total between the two days there were no more than 30 people stop by, not counting the ones that drove on by, which brought in a whopping $45 to be split between us and her mom.

We did have one thought during the garage sale this morning though, is there something that magically changes in a kid once they turn 3?

Erin are you sure we didn't accidentally switch kids that one summer we all went to Lagoon together? This kid looks like he might have some Boehme blood in him. Both boys are blonde and cute, it could have happened, right?

Hayden makes garage sales seem a lot more fun than they actually are.

Never mind Erin about the whole switched child issue. Based on his "awesome" sense of rhythm I am relatively certain he belongs to us.

We had to cut the garage sale short to go get pictures taken for Hayden's birthday. I don't know, it's some sort of weird fetish that Paulette has about getting the kids' picture's taken ON their birthday, no sooner no later. I'm surprised she doesn't tell the photographer to wait to snap the picture until the exact minute. We went specifically for Hayden but she always tries to get all the kids together too, just in case something good comes out of it, which is rare. Today we got really lucky though because we got some REALLY good pictures. I am sure Paulette will post them or at least email the link to see them, they really are incredible pictures.

After pictures we went to Shogun, basically it is exactly the same thing as Kobe for those of you familiar with our celebratory eating habits. Dylan insisted that we go to Kobe for his birthday too, but we told Hayden that it was too far since we were staring at Shogun from the JC Penny parking lot. One thing I can say about taking the kids to these type of restaurants is that none of the food gets wasted, really, though devour it.

After lunch we went to the carnival where we thought we would just redeem some of our tickets for some cheap food which didn't happen since some friends asked us if we wanted to go to dinner afterwards since they were certain that the food would be no good. We ended up going to eat at Willie's Icehouse. We rarely go there for the same reason the family that we went with usually goes there, the sandbox for the kids. At least their kids ate, my kids didn't hardly eat anything until Paulette finally forced some food down Hayden and Dylan decided to eat right as we were getting ready to leave. My kids don't usually like sand boxes but I guess since their friends were there they decided to pretend like they were boys who like to be boys.

Now for the funny part. Anytime Hayden was asked "how old are you?" his response was "I be 5, I go cool" which in English means "When I am 5 I get to go to school." Of course it's funnier when you see it in person.

PS: We saw gas for $2.49 today!

PPS: Cute pictures

Every time we saw his horns off he's sweet for a little while.

What's not to like about this picture?

Hello! Baby smiling, can't leave it out.

YES!! and TADA!!

YES!!

TADA!!

I've been tagged

Dustin wants me to say that I was on base so you can't tag me.

Okay, so I am going to answer everything twice. One for when we first met as teenagers and one for when we met again as adults.

1. Where did you first meet your husband?

Culhane's Gymnastics...He came to pick me up at my house.

2. What was the first thing you said to your husband?

Ummm. Probably, "Hey". I mean what else do two 15 year olds say to each other....Ummm. Probably, "Hey". I mean what else do two people say to each other who haven't seen each other in 4ish years.

3. Where was your first date?

Wellll, the first date was illegal (Dustin was only 15), we told our parents that we had to work at a gymnastics meet and then we met at the gym and went to see Ace Ventura and ate at Fudrucker's, with a group of gym friends. The first date that Koren knew about was when I asked Dustin to go to a school dance, Lady's Night. He graciously accepted much to his mothers dismay.
The second first date was prearranged before he even got home from his mission. He picked me up and we went to Astroworld for some roller coaster fun.

4. Where was your first kiss?

I would have to say probably in my car while parked in his drive way. The second first kiss, we went to Klein High School one night after a date and walked around the outside and talked then we sat down by the ag building and talked for a while and then somehow we kissed.

5. Did you have a long or short engagement/courtship?

We started "going out" in the 10th grade (1994). We broke up in the 12th grade. We started dating again when we were 21 (October 1999). We got officially engaged in Feb. of 2000 and married in May of 2000. So, you be the judge of long or short.

6. Where did you get engaged?

In December of 1999 we went to visit his Uncle Jack and picked out a ring, but did not buy it then. I think it was probably a little overwhelming for my mother-in-law to be. I went back home to Houston and Dustin stayed up at BYU. I came up to visit him around Valentines day. When he picked me up from the airport I was so happy to see him all I wanted to do was talk to him, and all he wanted me to do was get in the center console and "pick out a cd for us to listen to". Finally I reluctantly opened the console and saw the ring box. I got the box out and he said, "So do you want to?" Obviously I said yes. So, I guess to answer the question is that we got engaged in the old blue Honda my father-in-law now drives while driving down I-15.

7. Where did you get married?

Bountiful, Utah temple May 27, 2000

8. How did the reception go?

We had two. One in Utah right after the wedding that was very small, and was pretty easy. The second was about a month later in Houston and was a little larger and little more stressful, but all in all not too bad.

9. How was the Honeymoon?

For a honeymoon we took a road trip and moved Dustin back to Houston permanently. We took about a week and drove from Utah to Texas and tried to earn as many pennies as we could along the way. (wink wink) The goal was to earn 100 pennies on that road trip, but we didn't make it and are still working on it.

Birthday Party MAYHEM!

***POV CHANGE - DUSTIN IS WRITING THIS ONE

Yesterday we had a joint birthday party for Dylan and Hayden (Erin, in case you are curious, we did NOT have our first snow yet, the weather was awesome, JEALOUS!) If any of you have ever attended a birthday party that Paulette throws for one of our kids you know that it is a well thought out, orchestrated event that is envied by other mothers everywhere. This year was no different except Paulette only had 50 weeks to plan instead of the neccessary 52 due to having it two weeks before Haydens actual birthday, not to mention the disturbance of pushing out a 9 lb baby. The birthday invitation was just as elaborate as any other year (think of the pirate party Dylan had with the really cool invitation in the bottle) and the party was bigger than ever thanks in part to more people moving in on our street. We all know you can't leave the kids on your own street off the invite list to the party of the year so that alone was 11 kids (not including our own), cousins add another 5 and contrary to popular believe we are not total hermits so we do have some friends with kids so there is another 5. Paulette's parties all require adult interaction so we had a mad house yesterday, the good part about it though is that we only have to do it once since we had one party for two kids.

The theme of the party was western so Paulette wanted to do something cowboyish. Leslie (Haines) and Gordon have some horses so we asked if they thought we could have the party at the place that they keep the horses but the lady who owns the property shuddered at the thought of having that many kids running wild on her property so we did the next best thing.

That's right, when you can't take the kids to the horse you bring the horse to the kids, even if it means having a full grown horse graze in your backyard for 5 hours. The kids absolutelly loved it though, I mean, why wouldn't they. How many times have you showed up to a birthday party at one of your friends houses and got to go on a horseback ride? There are now about 20 kids that don't have to answer "Never" to that question. In addition to horse back riding we had cattle roping (sorry, no real cows), stick horse races (Paulette found stick horses at the dollar store to give to each kid), a shooting gallery (we had to drink a lot of Root Beer to have the bottles for the kids to shoot) and bull riding.

These videos are too funny not to post. Enjoy!

We both thought things were going pretty well until we finally got to open presents which we tried to do like Christmas morning with everyone taking turns. That worked until they had each opened one and then Hayden proceeded to dig right in to all the rest of the presents while Dylan was too busy concentrating on what he had already opened. Paulette's mom was trying to keep track of who gave each kid what but we ended up asking each parent that was still here what they gave and the rest we asked tonight when the kids were all out playing.

Needless to say, everyone had a good time and Dylan and Hayden got more toys than they could have asked for.

Funny side story, we were going to Paulette's parents' house today for Kendra's birthday party (her real birthday was the day Ike hit). Hayden was pointing out to Dylan an airplane that he saw and said "Dylan, Dylan, see that airplane?" to which Dylan replied that he did. Hayden asked him if he knew where it was going and Dylan said that he didn't know. That was immediately followed up by Hayden telling Dylan "I know, it's going to WalMart."

Yes, we do still have a third child

Oh wait, that's not him! We found this bug in the grass in the front yard. Here's a picture of Kolton, sorry no videos, he's not that interesting yet. He sure is good looking though, he must take after his DAD. Obviously he is the only one besides me that is aware of this fact as you can see by his shirt.

More funny and/or cute pictures.

Hopeless was getting a bath and Mattie couldn't wait to have her turn. When it was her turn she wasn't so excited anymore.

Hayden being Hayden. He is standing on the counter top in the kitchen with his head in the void created where the two sets of cabinets meet. One day I just know he is going to figure out how to shimmy his way up through this hole and get onto the very top of the cabinets because that is where we put stuff when they are in trouble and we know they can't get to anything up there.