Trick or Treat! (Tri-Tree!)

Halloween 2009 was memorable for us because this was Zach's first year actually being able to run from house to house saying trick or treat and getting candy in return! We were also lucky to be able to spend Halloween with Jen's Mom and Dustin's Dad. After carving pumpkins we threw on Zach's costume (a quirky little three eyed alien) an hit the streets to see what kind of goodies we could score.

Thats a lot of pumpkins huh! 5 Large / 3 Small.. and we carved all but one! Dustin saved one so he can impress Jen with his home made pumpkin pie making skills.. We'll see.. ;)

Zach already speaks "alien" quiet well, so this was a perfect outfit for him. He loved it and would giggle every time he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror.

Hard to tell, but he actually has 4 arms! Quite handy if you ask me!

Zach ran from door to door.. hardly skipping a beat. He started out a bit shy, but by the end of the night he was saying "Tri-Tree!!" (Translation: Trick or Treat!).. then he would pick out his candy and say "THAY" (Translation: Thank you very much kind sir or mam! This is my favorite candy!)

Along the way we came across a Bobcat.. Zach absolutely loves tractors.. He started saying "Tractor" months ago and now says it any time he catches a glimpse of a tractor of any kind.. pretty funny.. Well after about 10 minutes of him running around checking out the tractor, we headed to the next house.

These were Zach's favorite houses because he could take his time to pick out the perfect piece of candy.. The only problem is that once you pick out the perfect candy, you really don't want to have to put it back into your bucket.. you want to eat it! But after eating a few suckers he figured it was ok to part with a few candies after visiting the candy buckets.

Once we made it home, Zach proudly showed us all of his prize candies and toys he had collected.

Zach was pooped out, but only until his next sugar rush. :)

Even Dustin's Dad got into the fun while walking Zach around.. Doesn't he make a great Homer? We think so.

Well, even though Halloween came and went way to quickly this year, we had a blast taking him around the neighborhood, and we know for sure that Zach is already planning out which candies to collect next year. And Dustin has noted each and every house that gave out full sized candy bars, so we won't accidentally miss them. :)

Pumpkin Carving at the Grays!

This year we ended up with 8 pumpkins.. which is nearly 3 times as many as we usually get. Since Dustin's Dad and Jen's Mom were going to spend Halloween with us, we figured, we could all carve one or two and have one or two left over for pumpkin pie!

Zach was really excited to help with the pumpkins.. First we washed the pumpkins off!

Then we washed the floor off! Yes as you can see from this picture.. the pumpkin wasn't the only thing to get washed.. heh heh

After the pumpkins were all clean, we put them on the kitchen table to let everyone pick out their favorites and start thinking of what they would carve on them.

Dustin's Dad picked his using the Homer Test. If his Homer mask fit on it, then that was his. LOL!

Janice showed off her skills by making a pumpkin say "BOO!"

Zach helped us by pulling the seeds and stringy stuff out of the pumpkins

It was pretty funny to watch him try to fix the pumpkins.. When we would cut out parts for the faces, he would try and fit them back in place.

Zach finally gave this pumpkin his seal of approval.. Good job Mom!

As you can see, they were very happy and worked well as a team. They even came up with the same pose for the camera! Cute!

Another shot of their team accomplishment

Dustin's Dad called this pumpkin "Batman!"

As Glen started working on his next pumpkin, we caught Dustin clowning around with his pumpkin saying.. "This is what I want mine to look like"

Here is Dustin carving away at his skeleton head

Dustin's Dad is quite the pumpkin artist. What do you think of his Pumpkin King?

Dustin's Skeleton lit up for the Trick or Treaters to enjoy

Janice's happy pumpkin in the background, and Glen's Pumpkin King

Jen and Zach's Big Eyes pumpkin, Glen's Batman pumpkin, and Jen's crazy pumpkin.

Not bad huh? We had a lot of fun carving these. Hope you enjoyed seeing them as much as we enjoyed carving them!

Utah Jazz

Dustin has some co-workers with season tickets to the Utah Jazz. They apparently couldn't attend tonight's season opening home game so Dustin seized the opportunity to attend with his Dad.



They had a great time - the Jazz beat the Clippers 111-98

Croup

We knew something was up - Zach has been a bit cranky the past two evenings. This morning he woke up at this normal time with that nasty croup cough....yes the barking seal noise. We checked his temperature - 100 degrees. No babysitter for him the rest of this week!

We took turns staying home with him...for the most part he acted his normal happy self - when he was drugged with Tylenol or Motrin. The cough was just horrible though - he barked like a seal for almost THREE DAYS. Friday afternoon he finally started sounding normal and his fever went away.

Lucky for us he actually slept well at night...humidifier worked its charm.

Our first snow

We had our first official "snow storm" today...yes it is still OCTOBER!! We dressed Zach up in his snow gear and let him have at it. He just wanted to eat the snow...not much playing this time. We only had a few inches on our lawn....no shoveling required ;)


We sure hope this isn't a sign of an early LONG winter!

Piggy Piggy

Ever since Zach was born we have been filling one of his piggy banks with coins...mostly the extra change Dustin has in his pockets and coins Zach finds lying around the house. I think Zach even smooched coins off his grandpa's when they come visit! As soon as Zach finds a coin he goes RUNNING to his piggy bank and put the coin in the slot.

After 21 months - the piggy bank is FULL! We couldn't cram any more coins into it. So we decided to go "cash in" the coins to empty the pig.

That piggy bank held $82.00 all in COINS! Not bad for spare change for almost two years. The money is going into Zach's savings account...and now his piggy bank is empty and can start taking spare change donations again!

Pumpkin Patchin...

Today we went pumpkin patchin.....we found this place in South Jordan (Maybey's pumpkin patch) last year and decided to go back again this year. The weather wasn't cooperating very well with us (ending up being a windy rain storm when we left)...but we did pick out our pumpkin haul rather quickly, it seemed like there were a lot of "perfect pumpkins" to choose from this year.

Zach was excited to see all the pumpkins, ride in the wagon and play with will the dried up pumpkin vines. He didn't even mind the few rain sprinkles here and there. We ended up picking out FIVE larger pumpkins for carving (one for Dustin, Jen, Zach, Dustin's Dad, Jen's Mom) and three smaller pumpkins for decorations.

Now we need to start thinking of how we are going to carve these things next weekend!

All hands...

Zachary has reached the height now that he can grab ANYTHING off the top of counters if it is six inches from the edge. He also likes to get into ANYTHING that looks like it is hiding something inside. Right now we are just laughing a these things...but I am sure that will change. These pictures are from this week alone.

Bust #1 for the week - our Halloween decorations. They were nicely sitting inside Tupperware tubs....until Zach got a hold of them. He got a kick out of these in our Halloween costume stash:

Dustin Says that in this picture Zach looks a little bit like Sid the Sloth from Ice Age.. hah!

Bust #2 for the week - kitchen drawers. For some reason he just likes to empty them out and then play with the gadgets on the floor.

Bust #3 for the week - a shoebox full of old makeup/lotions on a shelf in our master closet. This one actually kept him entertained the longest...and surprisingly none of the containers got opened!

The joys of parenthood...

Distractions...

How am I suppose to get work done when this is the view from my desk? Every morning brings another beautiful surprise.....

Why can't I have it all?

The title says it all.....that is the American dream isn't it?

It has been a frustrating few days. As I am sitting on my couch this Tuesday evening at 9:44pm longing for my comfortable bed.....and I can't help but look around my house and think of EVERYTHING I should be doing. I have lived long enough to know that my "to-do" list will never get completed in the timeline I originally plan on. So how is it possible to do all this in only 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?

- Work as a full-time engineer (yeah - 60 hours of needed work a week that somehow gets crammed into 40 hours - lunch hours no longer exist)
- Teach a class at BYU every other week (I am loving it...but how did I think I would have time for this?)
- Put up ALL my Halloween decorations (half of them are still sitting on the living room floor)
- Manage to get EVERYTHING off my kitchen counter tops (how many piles can I make?)
- Make adjustments to Zach's Halloween costume (my kid has a big head - his costume needs some sewing adjustments)
- Actually FOLD the laundry...heck maybe even get it out of the dryer!
- Plan a meal schedule and follow it (I am tired of going out to lunch because I don't have time to make a lunch before I leave in the mornings).
- Do my grocery shopping before 10pm on a weeknight.
- Do my grocery shopping BEFORE Zach is out of milk...I think the gas station up the road is starting to wonder why someone would regularly only buy a gallon milk in their mini-mart.
- Get 8-10 hours of continuous sleep on a REGULAR basis
- Take a bubble bath
- Play more with Zach (I love this kid)
- Date nights (what are those again?)
- Decide on a window curtain designs and fabrics (it has only been almost 3 years....)
- Work on Zach's baby book
- Heck, when was the last time I scrap booked period? Maybe when I left Austin 3 years ago....
- Actually watch the shows I am recording on my DVR
- Exercise - what is that? I am glad I bought that 4 year gym membership....
- Have a social life with my neighbors. I seriously see them as much as I see my parents.

I could go on and on...but now it is 10:02pm and I REALLY want to go to bed.....

Megerle Visit

Our good friends from Austin - Jeff and Rushell Megerle were in town for a wedding and we were lucky enough to be able to spend a FULL day with them! We started off the day by hitting up the farmers market in Salt Lake. Today was the last day of the market for the rest of the year. It was quite an interesting experience - lots of food to choose from and some "hippies" singing or playing music. The "hippies" and "bums" hanging out at Pioneer park didn't seem to phase the Megerle's...it just reminded them of the "keep Austin weird" type people back home.

Next on the agenda - it was a perfectly beautiful Saturday afternoon and the Fall colors were in bloom. We decided to head up the American Fork Canyon for a drive and stop in on Sundance. We have made this drive several times in the past....normally only once or twice a year. Apparently this year we made a completely WRONG TURN. The GPS on Jen's iPhone looked like this:

What is the first thing you notice? The "no service" status in the upper left corner. The red dots are where Sundance was...where we were suppose to be headed. The blue dot on the far right of the screen is where we were...not on the yellow "highway"...just a "white road" on the GPS map. Well this "white road" did connect up with Provo Canyon on the GPS map so we thought we would just follow it instead of back tracking. Good thing we took the 4 runner. The road went off-roading crazy on us. The guys LOVED it...the girls looked like this:

Probably about an hour later after several rocky dirt roads, crossing two rivers/creeks and finally getting STUCK on an up hill incline with the 4 runner on three wheels with no clear end in sight (the main highway) - the woman called it quits. One pregnant lady with a full bladder and one car sick lady were TIRED of being bounced, jerked and almost killed (in our minds....). The boys made a 3 point turn on that nasty incline at a switchback and we re-tracked our hour drive in about 10 minutes. Some of the "fun" pictures we snapped:

We ended up getting on the more paved road heading to Heber....we were a bit worried when we saw this sign - but then saw a small SMARTCAR going the other direction and knew we could handle it!

This adventure gets better.....right now it is high season for hunting. So we were passing people left and right with bright orange gear and rifles strapped to their backs. Once we FINALLY made it to the major highway what did we have run across the road right in front of us??? A deer...yes a DEER! Of course there was no hunter with a rifle around anywhere....so the brakes went a slamming and the deer kept going and lived another day.

We blame this all on Jeff - before we left our house this afternoon he said wanted to test out the 4 runners new gear (the tires, lift kit, etc....the 4 runner didn't get upgraded until we left Austin)...we were jinxed from the start. Little did we know that we would actually test it all out and manage to destroy a CV boot that was already on its last leg...at least we hope it was the CV boot.....something did break and doesn't run quite right with the front right axle area.

Now back to civilization it was time to hit up Tucanos for dinner - the Megerle's had never experienced the Brazilian feast before.

Also - a proud Dustin of the mess he made of the 4runner:


We had an awesome day with the Megerle's - an unexpected adventure we all survived! We are sad to see them head back to Austin but am sure we will see again soon!