Halloween FHE

Occasionally, I try to bring some sense of spirituality into the Halloween Holiday, like the year we had a FHE about how carving pumpkins can help us think about "letting our light shine".

This year, I've stolen an idea from my mom and kind of tweaked it a little for our family.  I share it because I know there are others who are always looking for new ideas for FHE.  So here it is (or at least the plan, we'll see how it all goes down later tonight). 

(We have paper ghosts already floating around our home, and five have taken up residence in our family room.)

What can you tell me about ghosts? 

We are going to talk about a special "ghost" tonight, the Holy Ghost.  How is the Holy Ghost similar to pretend ghosts?  How is he different?

The Holy Ghost is a gift given to us from our Heavenly Father to help us.  He goes by many names and he helps us in many different ways.  Tonight, we are going to talk about five of the names he goes by and how it helps us.  (After each scripture we'll have a short discussion on how this helps us and I'll ask if anyone wants to share an experience they've had.  I've printed out each scripture, so we'll tape them to the ghosts in our room to help us remember that the Holy Ghost is our friend and he helps us in many ways.)

• Comforter  (Romans 15:13)
• Protector (D&C 8:2,4)
• Teacher (John 14:26)
• Witness (Romans 8:16 and 3 NE 11:36)
• Revelator (2 NE 32:5 and Alma 5:46)

I'll end with my testimony and then we'll have a yummy fall treat. :)

Oops

Has this ever happened to you? (Please tell me I'm not the only one. lol) You're busy getting everything and everyone ready for church Sunday morning, running to and from meetings and choir practice, etc. Finally, everyone is in the car and you're heading to church and someone asks, "So, what's for dinner tonight?"

OH NO!

I always make a menu plan and I take into consideration that Sunday is a busy day, so I plan to have crockpot meals, or frozen meals, or just plain easy meals. This week was no exception, I had a crockpot meal on the menu and it wasn't going to be very hard to throw together before leaving for church. Except, I totally forgot!

Oops.

So, we tried a different new recipe yesterday than the one I intended to try. ;) Quick Chicken Noodle Soup. And you know what? It WAS quick! (For a chicken noodle soup, especially since I had the chicken already cooked and cubed sitting in the freezer waiting for an emergency like this. And also because instead of slicing carrots, I just added a couple cups of frozen peas and carrots instead of just peas.) And it was really good, too! So, the next time you do the same thing, click the link and give this recipe a try. :)

Halloween Party #1

We have a lot of Halloween Fun planned for this year and it started with a super fun party at the Hills house last night!





Of course, anytime we're with the Hills, we can count on two things: 

1)  Good food...



And 2) Lots of fun!



And last night, there was plenty of BOTH!  :)

Milkin' the cuddles out of ol' mom.

Rori was slow eating dinner tonight. (She is still at the table even though the rest of us are done.) A couple minutes ago, she came to me and gave me a hug, I pulled her onto my lap to hug her, but also told her that she needed to go eat dinner. She told me she needed "cuddles". But she said that one cuddle was too little, she needed TEN cuddles.

Okay, so we sat, cuddled, and counted slowly... 1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...10!

As I started to put her down, she looked at me and said, "Wait, let's do 14 cuddles!" Okay, so I started where we left off, "11...12..." But she interrupted me, "No, let's start at the 'ginning."

uh huh. Okay, why not (I was getting good cuddles out of this!)...

1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...10...11...12...13...14!

But just as I was putting her down, she looked at me and said, "Let's do 20 cuddles! From the 'ginning."

1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...10...11...12...13...14...15...16...17...18...19...20!

This time I did put her down and patted her bum, sending her back to the table.

"Now my bum needs cuddles...?"

Nice try. Go eat dinner, you little cuddle monster!

Fall Curb Appeal

After we visited the pumpkin patch, we stopped by a farm supply store and got a bale of hay.  We used it, with some of the dried corn stalks from my garden, to help display our pumpkins in front of our house:





(The lone pumpkin on the walkway is the one that Cadi wants to carve, I think we'll leave the others whole, however, to keep as a display and then possibly to can.  I'm also planning on using the hay to cover my garden beds once we're done with the display.)

Family Fall Fun

Saturday was gorgeous and quite possibly the last really nice Saturday we'll get for awhile, so we took advantage of that and spent the day at the pumpkin patch!

We began by taking pictures right away - before we became muddy and covered in hay. ;)



Then we climb aboard the hayride to be taken to the pumpkin patch!




After finding our pumpkins, we took another hayride back to the farm and got them all washed, scrubbed, and cleaned up.  Then we deposited them in the back of our car so we could continue having loads of fun at the farm. :)



We started by letting the girls climb and play on the huge hay pyramid while I got our hot cocoas and some freshly popped kettle corn and cheese flavored popcorn.  Yum!  When the girls were done playing, we found a table near some live music and enjoyed our little snack.



The popcorn long outlasted the hot cocoas and we were thirsty by the time it was gone, so we headed over to watch them press fresh apple cider and enjoyed the samples.



After our thirst had been quenched by the delicious cider, we visited the petting zoo...





The donkey had an itch on his back while I was watching him:



After the petting zoo, we took our chances and entered the corn maze.  After about 20 minutes I noted that we probably should have visited the bathrooms before entering... thankfully, no one ended up having any problems and though we had fun wandering and getting lost for about an hour (we'd come across people who would ask us if we were on the right track and we'd tell them we have no idea, we're just following a four year old, lol), we did eventually make it out safely.



We had been at the farm for a few hours already but wanted to do one more thing before heading home... so we launched pumpkins!  And this year, instead of giving Ryan my tickets (he LOVES launching the pumpkins, lol), I actually launched a couple, too. :)



Finally, we called it a day.  It was a great day, filled with lots of family fall fun! :)

Soccer Monster

Rori has had fun playing soccer on Friday mornings for the past several weeks.  This little informal soccer team has had it's last game of the season and (though no one was really keeping track because it wasn't important and didn't matter), we won all of our games!  What's really cool, is that Rori scored a goal in all but one of the games.  And for all the times she played goalie, she was only scored on once!  But most of all, they all had lots of fun! 

Here are some pics from a few weeks ago:



And here are pics from the game last week:



After the game, all of the kids, from both teams, received gold medals for doing such a great job and having so much fun:



Before the game, we had taken some pics, including a team pic, though there were a few missing kids.  (The above pic, with the medals is the complete team.)



We had such a fun time and it's all thanks to my friend, Sidnee who put this team together, organized it, and coached the kids.  They are planning on doing it again next year, and already there is talk of more stakes wanting to create their own teams too, so there will probably be at least 3, maybe 4, teams so they can play different teams each week.  But, this will be the last year for us since Rori will be in Kindergarten next year.  We had a great time and hope that the Yellow Lions go on to have a lot more fun for years to come! :)

YELLOW LIONS RAWR!!!