Bird Halloween Party

My mom held her Halloween/Birthday party again this year. I love this new tradition. We all get to dress up and have a fun Halloween dinner and play games. This year Matt and I (okay, I made Matt agree) decided to be Ghostbusters and Ethan was Slimer. Let me just give a big "Thanks" to my mom who made the body of the Slimer costume and helped me figure out his hat. Though he ended up looking more like a green pepper from "Veggie Tales," I think everyone got who he was supposed to be.

My brother Kirk dressed up using tattoo sleeves, his wife Heather was a nurse, Seth was a rapper, Dakota a groovy gal and Hannah and Jacie were witches. Justin, Shelly and Ava were the Scooby Doo gang. Justin was Shaggy, Shelly Velma and Ava was a course a cute Scooby Doo.

Jaime came as a fabulous Cruella Deville, Phil a cowboy, Curt Ryan a pumpkin and little Caycee a pink leopard.

Krista, Taylor and Trigger were Little Bo-Peep, Little Boy Blue and a sheep. Check out Krista's blog, House of Payne if you want to see costume pictures.

For dinner we had wonderful onion rings, monster toes (homemade corn dogs), a barf salad (pistachio salad), a graveyard dip and ghoulish punch.

After dinner my parents gave each family a big pumpkin they had grown in their patch to carve. Then the carnival games began. We had bobbing for apples, bean bag toss, a straw blowing contest, and my favorite, the donut eating contest. Ethan was so cute he loved the doughnut contest. I was surprised he got it. He would lay down on the ground with Curt Ryan and Ava to eat his doughnut. He quickly figured out that wasn't going to work then got up and grabbed his doughnut.




Afterwards, my parents had set up a spook alley in the basement for the little kids. Complete with strobe lights, scary sounds, skeletons, spiders, mist and black lights. Ethan loved it and wanted to keep going through again and again.


Thanks Krista and Mom for taking pictures. Our camera is not working.

Pumpkin Carving

Matt and Ethan carving pumpkins for the first time. Ethan was so excited.

September 2009: Laura's Visit

The last week of September, Matt's sister Laura and her family came to Utah for a visit. They stayed in Salt Lake for a few days before heading up to Logan so Ethan got to hang out with his cousins from Arizona.

The first day we hung out with Laura and her family, we went to the zoo. It was so fun to go again and see all the baby animals, the giraffe, tigers and snow leopards. Unfortunately the baby elephant wasn't out yet.


The next day we went to the Discovery Gateway children's museum. Out of all the exhibits Ethan loved the beehive ball center and of course the cars.

This car is especially cool since it has two wheels to turn.

The last day we hung out Brian, Laura and the girls were on their way up to Logan and stopped at the Dinosaur park in Ogden. Matt and I have been meaning to check it out, but had never gotten around to it yet. Ethan was still a little young to full enjoy it, but he still had a great time. I thought it was a great museum. Especially the outside dinosaur displays. It was great to just let the kids run around and not have to worry about them breaking them. The museum was decorating for their October spook alley, so there were little skeleton men and Halloween figure everywhere. It looks like it would be a cool haunted forest to check out.


It was so great to see Laura and her family and for Ethan to play with Bailee and Eli. I think he was only 9 months old the last time we saw them. Thanks Laura for letting us tag along.