Happy Halloween!

Lions, & Tigers, & Bears, Oh My!

Well here is our Halloween photo.  It all started out as Avery insisting that he be a scary tiger for Halloween. Well after finally figuring out a costume for him (orange fleece and black paint), Amanda got his costume made.  Then we decided to let Lily just wear a costume someone had given us last year, and it was a lion costume.  Once we told people that is what they were going to be, they filled in the rest: "Lions, & Tigers, & Bears, Oh My!"  Brian was a good sport and was the Bear and Amanda went as "Oh My."
   We had a Halloween party for our ward as well as doing trick-or-treating around the neighborhood.  The kids got loaded!  Needless to say we didn't do have of our ward and our buckets were full and our kids were tuckered out.  They had a lot of fun though.   Lily was really enthusiastic until a gorialla answered the door one time and then we had to take her all the way up to the doorstep to get the candy.  She would say "scary, scary" (she doesn't like Halloween decorations at all."  We were also glad that the weather was really nice and actually kind of warm that night to make it a very enjoyable Halloween!

I'm 4, I'm Big.

 Our little, or "Big" boy Avery turned 4 a couple of weeks ago!  In fact, it was on 10-11-12, a fun date!  He had some really great times celebrating his birthday with family and friends.  He got to go birthday shopping with Grandma & Grandpa and go out to dinner with all of us and cousins.  It is his Grandpa Downs' birthday too (54), so we had a great time.  



What was the big item from Mom & Dad?  Well Avery is Brian's kids because he wanted (or atleast wanted with some pushing from his Dad) some of these:

his very own skis!  He is pretty excited about them (he went with us to get them, but thought we left them there...)  He is all ready to hit the slopes, all we need is snow...oh wait we got some last week!

For Avery's birthday party with his friends he wanted a "dirt bike" party.  We were planning on having it at the park and having all the kids bring their "dirt bikes" (or bicycles).  Well ofcourse it rained like cats and dogs that day and so we had to have it in the garage.  It was a little crazy with all those kids, but they had fun.  They did a bike course around the garage, made license plates for their bikes and played "Pin-the-Helmet-on-the-Biker."  Then we had some yummy dirtbike cupcakes and played around.  Its crazy that Avery is already 4 years old!  We love our "big" guy!

1st Day of Preschool

Here is Avery on his first day of preschool!

A lady in our ward volunteered to do a little preschool for her son, Avery, and two other little boysin the area.  Avery goes 2 times a week for 2 hours.  He absolutely loves it!  He was so looking forward to riding the bus to school and was disappointed that it didn't come.  However, he loves to ride his bike since it is only a couple of blocks away.  He asks every day if it is school yet.  He seems to be more interested in learning already!  We love our little (or should we say BIG) guy and are so proud of all he has already learned in preschool.

Fairmont Fun

We went to Fairmont, Montana for the annual Labor Day weekend condo time that Brian's family has.  This year, we only had Brian's brother, Bret and his family and Brian's sister Taunya come with us. On our way up we went to the Brigham City Temple open house, (we forgot to take pictures).  It was really beautiful inside and really nice to have our kids their to see the inside of the temple (since it is normally closed to people other than endowed members (who are older)).

Afterwards, we took the long drive up to Montana.  On our way, we stopped at Crystal Park which was really neat.  We all dug in the dirt and found actual crystals!  It was a little addicting to dig in the dirt.  The kids had fun to climbing all over the hillside as well as finding cool rocks and crystals.  We will have to do that again sometime.

Then we went to to Fairmont.  At Fairmont we did the tradition hunt for golf balls on the golf course (in the weeds where people lose them).  We sure did get quite  a few this year!

Then ofcourse, we played at the swimming pool.  We rode down the waterslide quite a few times as well as jumping in the pool and playing "Marco Polo" and freeze tag.  One of the times, Avery accidently dove into the pool.  He thought that was pretty cool.

The awesome water slide:

Lily's ride down the waterslide:

 

 Some other fun things we did at the condo were: visit the smoke stack in Anaconda and the Lost Creek waterfall.

It was a long trip up there, but we had a lot of fun and were glad we went.  It was fun to do some new things while staying at the condo.  It was also just fun to be able to relax with our family!