The good, the bad and the ugly...

Today's post pays tribute to that old Clint Eastwood film. Who, by the way, looked exactly like Hugh Jackman when he was younger.
See?

If you're not seeing it there, check this out:

I think Clint Eastwood was slightly better looking, if I do say so myself.

Anyway... As I was uploading pictures off our camera this week, that movie title came to mind.
We've had some good moments, some bad moments and even some plain ugly ones.
So here goes.

The Good

Sweet bonding moments between brothers. These cute moments make me so grateful I can be a stay at home mom. I'm so glad I don't have to miss them. They are rare and come at the cost of lots of other frustrating moments, but they make all the hard stuff I do so worth it.

 An adorable 1 month old baby.

 Secret handshakes.
(I admit I don't always watch people's videos, so I get it if you don't... but this one will probably make you smile. Just sayin'.)

 An organized pantry.

A cute six-year-old earning her white belt.

And a 5 year old boy playing catch with his dad.

The Bad

This picture encompasses two bad things.
1. I have a lot of baby weight to lose.
2. I have to clean all the time. Kenz wanted to take a picture of me while I was picking up Kyle's room.

And the ugly

I won't go into a lot of detail, but Kyle fell out of the cart at Sam's Club. He was in the back with Makenzie and I turned around for 2 seconds when he decided to reach for a button on a toy display and slammed his head straight onto the concrete floor. It was terrifying, but luckily he was just fine except for the enormous goose egg on his forehead. My poor baby.

Well, I'm happy to say after putting this post together that it looks like there has been a lot more good than bad or ugly around here. This is a good reminder that even though there will always be some bad or ugly, for the most part, life is good.

Halloweeeeen!

Halloween is starting to be a busy day around here! 

With my kids getting older (Kenz is almost 7!?!), Halloween has a lot more going on. 

We had Makenzie's costume parade at school, Jarom's preschool Halloween party, and bringing stuff to Makenzie's class party in the morning.

In the afternoon, I did a little cleaning and the boys relaxed and watched their current fave movie, Meet the Robinsons. They loooove that movie.

Makenzie had a Halloween party/birthday party after school, so while she was there and Justin was at our rental house showing it to people, Jarom, Kyle and I got started on our yummy potato soup and cleaning out the pumpkins.

Jarom did most of the work. As you can see in this picture, he loved it. Kyle did not. This was his first time dipping his hand in. He said, "gwoss" and was done, haha.

He did really like holding the pumpkins on the outside, though. :)

Justin got home and I walked over to the party and grabbed my little vampire so she could choose her pumpkin design. She drew this bat on it and I carved it out. She did a pretty good job!

Justin carved Jarom's into a scary face (at first Jarom wanted a mummy but we couldn't produce that in our limited time... or ever?... so we settled on "scary.") I carved Kyle's into a happy classic Jack-o-lantern. He approved.

We had cream cheese potato soup and garlic bread. My Halloween fave dinner. Kenz is getting in trouble in this pic, haha... gotta be nice to your brother!

Here's Dad and his cute little giraffe. You had to see Kyle walking around in this to get the full effect. His chubby bum with with the little giraffe tail was soooo cute!

Mom and her vampire, skeleton?, and happy giraffe. :)

So... Jarom had 4 costumes to choose from. After Halloween last year, I bought some costumes on clearance for him since he loves to dress up. I got a mummy, frankenstein, Bumblebee (transformer), and Thor. They were all dirt cheap and not the nicest costumes, so when he really wanted to be Batman for Halloween, I found one on clearance last week, too, and got it for him. So he was Batman for the two trunk-or-treats we went to, but then on Halloween night he decided he now wanted to wear this- the mummy shirt and this freaky skeleton helmet thing we've had forever. I will tell myself I didn't totally waste money since I have two more boys that will fit all those costumes. I'm sure we'll use them sooner or later. And if not, we are fully stocked on boys' dress ups.

We had record-breaking heat this Halloween, it was so nice! The kids didn't need coats for once, it was awesome. So I brought little Micah out for a pumpkin pic, but I had just finished feeding him and he was all burpy/gassy so he's not looking too happy. Oh well!

Trick or treat...

I brought him inside, and after a couple of good burps and a poopy diaper, he was feeling happy again.

This was the first time the kids trick-or-treated in our new neighborhood. They had so much fun running from house to house with their neighbor friends. Micah and I stayed back to hand out candy. We didn't get as many trick or treaters as I thought we would, but we still almost emptied out our big bowl of candy. Halloween is such a fun night, I seriously love it. When we said our family prayer before bed, Makenzie thanked her Heavenly Father for giving us Halloween... gave Justin and I a good chuckle. But it was cute, the kids were sooo happy. Hope you all had a Happy Halloween!