Yes, we are still alive in Bloggerland

Well, hello there! Nice to see ya'! Sorry it's taken me so long to get some of these pictures up, but my excuse is definitely that my computer is so infuriatingly slow! It takes a very long time to do anything.
We had a great Halloween, despite still fighting a little sickness. Here are our fall festivities in pictures!

Alex has been looking forward all year to carving pumpkins again. He drew his own face on his pumpkin and cut most of it out, with help for the mouth.

This picture is fuzzy, but doesn't he look so happy to be working on his pumpkin?


A few days before Halloween we took the kids to a Pumpkin Walk in Shelley. It was only a can of food to get in and they had pumpkins everywhere painted and dressed up to look like movie scenes and favorite characters, with backdrops and everything. And we all got a full size candy bar, too! Maybe instead of having us bring food to give to the hungry, they should put the money from the candy bars to a good use. But I didn't complain and took mine happily!

In addition to the pumpkin scenes, they had lots of these cut-outs (I can't remember what they're called) and the kids thought that was fun, once they figured it out.

Danny, finally in touch with his feminine side.

My two wild things, embracing their true character.

The final result on the pumpkins. Alex's is on the right and Tristan's is on the left. I "helped" Lainey with hers, and I hope you can see it all right, because it turned out pretty cool.

Lainey in her kitty costume. Whenever someone asked her if she was a kitty, she would twirl and say, "Meow."

Tristan was a dragon and wanted to breathe fire. With my limited artistic abilities, this is what we came up with in 3 minutes. No one with or married to anyone with artistic talent is allowed to look. (This includes you, Maria!) Tristan was happy with the final result and breathed fire on anyone who asked if he was a dragon. Just doing our little part to help spread germs. :)

All three, ready to head out for candy!

I kind of forgot to take pictures once we were trick-or-treating, but I got this one of Lainey. This was how she held her bag most of the time.

That's all the pictures I have! The kids loved it and were totally happy to just do two streets (Evergreen and Pinion). Tristan asked the people handing out the candy several times if they were going to come with us or if they would like to come to our house, and always told everyone "Happy Halloween!" before he left. Alex always tried to reach in and get the piece of candy he wanted the most, and once after Tristan got his candy he stood there and then asked the lady if he could have some more. (She gave him some, but afterwards we talked to him about being polite.) Alex also told several of the ladies as we were leaving, "Bye, Grandma!" Luckily, they all were Grandmas and just laughed. Lainey just thought it was great fun, but couldn't understand why we wouldn't stop after the first house and let her just eat her piece of candy.

After Tricks-or-Treats we went to the Campbells, where they all dumped out their bags to see their loot and eat too much. On the way home, Tristan was sitting with his bag next to him and said, in a very weary kind of voice, "I don't think I will eat any more, or I am going to be sick." I kept seeing his fingers twitch toward his bag, and then he would sigh and drop his hand back down.

That night we took all the candy from their bags except for their bags of popcorn, hot cocoa and four or five pieces of chocolate each. The next morning Tristan asked me, "Does Daddy have all the candy?"

"Yes," I said.

"Where did he put it?"

"I don't know, Tristan."

"Oh." And that was all he ever said. I love it when they're little!

They can earn a piece or two a day now and that makes them happy and keeps the memory alive.

Oh, but Alex asked every night for at least the next week to go trick-or-treating and seemed very confused that this great idea wasn't done every night! I'm inclined to agree.

I do, You do, Who wants Swine Flu?!!

Yes, we are having our own little party here in Idaho. Actually, once we got over the actual being sick part, and it's only been me and Alex so far, this whole self-quarantine, don't go out in public, cancel all your meetings thing is pretty okay. We're a little stir-crazy at times, and I don't want to know how many movies the kids have watched, but it's really nice to be freed from some of your responsibilities and appts. and things without feeling guilty. The last time I left the house was on Thursday to go to the doctor, and that is the only place I have been since last Tuesday. Literally. As I have started feeling better, I have complained to Danny that I want to be sick again because it is so nice for a change to not have to worry about anything except staying alive! As soon as I feel better, I start feeling this pressure to get lots of "things"done and be all productive, but I am fighting it.
Yesterday we made a fire and brownies and resisted eating the rest of them until 11 this morning, which I thought was pretty good. We've played Candy Land with the kids and Danny and I have been playing Scrabble. We found out we're not that good, but at least we're evenly matched!! Every other minute finds one of us banging our fist on the table saying, "If only I had this one letter!!" See, the problem with Scrabble is that even though you can think of nice, big long words, you never have the letters for them. So you have to know lots of weird short words, like "zareba", which is a small enclosure made out of bushes in Northern Africa. I did make a word that was worth 75 points- it was "quotes" with the "q" on a double letter square and the whole word on a triple word play. Definitely the highlight of my week!! And several times we have nearly spelt out swear words in desperation, but have always been able to put something else down. (But not until after we told the other one what we were thinking of using.)
Alex has been watching Oklahoma a lot and really likes "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' " and has started singing it around the house in his best Gordon McRae-like voice. I love it, but Danny can't stand listening to the same parts on the tv anymore, so he gave Alex headphones so that he can watch the tv but we can't hear. Now we just have to get Alex to understand not to use the headphones when other people want to watch something.
I've started reading Catching Fire and wish that when I was sicker and just in bed I had felt like reading then!
Other than that, we're just laying around, kind of enjoying being left alone by the world. Having something contagious is the next best thing to moving out in the woods by yourself. We're thinking about catching ebola next!

Wild and Wonderful West Virginia

Here is my trip in pictures. Unfortunately, I really don't know why, a lot of my pictures turned out so blurry I had to delete them. And, I forgot to take pictures a lot of the time because we were having too much fun! But, here you go with the few that I did get.

Notice Audrey is giving me the "look." She was very excited to see me, I hear, until I actually got there. But she warmed up after a little while.

Anya crabby pants
I think these next two pictures qualify as "wild and wonderful," while serving the dual purpose of paying Megan back for a couple of pictures she put on of me. Hehehe.. revenge is sweet. :) But those cookies do look really good right now. When Danny saw this picture he asked if Megan was using the cheese sauce as toothpaste. I didn't want to say anything but, well, they are in West Virginia now. They say that toothbrushes were invented in West Virgina, because if it had been anywhere else they would have been called teethbrushes.

Their very pretty and huuge back yard. I must have taken this picture the one day it didn't rain while I was there. The day I left it was 70 degrees. I don't think the weather likes me.

Huuge deck

Audrey wears her pink cowboy boots everywhere and gets lots of compliments on them.

This is Audrey "smiling" for the camera. It looks painful.

This is blurry, but it is Anya putting her dolly in the stroller. Very cute.

Aiden's room- I love it and so does he!

Anya's room. I took pictures of Audrey's room, but my stuff was kind of everywhere, so I won't post those. I'll let Meggie put some on. But if she doesn't soon, I can threaten her with the pictures I have of the room NOT CLEAN!!! (Insert evil laugh.)

The family room as seen from the stairs. The kids had little gold coins on the floor.

I think this is the only picture I got of Aiden that wasn't too blurry to use. He was at school the first two days and I think that he thought we just stayed at home while he was gone, waiting for him, because when he got home on Friday he told me, "Aunt Mel!! You have to come to my magic show tonight because you have been here two days and you haven't done anything fun yet!!"

This is a horrible picture of me, but I am putting it on here to show how tired I was on Sunday. After this we took naps. Look at the bags under my eyes! Yikes!

Just to reassure everyone that Brooks is still the same Brooks. Whew! We were so worried!
Very blurry pictures of some of the party food. It was all soo good! Relish trays and spinach dips and chips and cookies and homemade bread and cornbread and caramel corn and pumpkin cake and chili and hot chocolate and root beer! It makes me want to have a party!

Here are some of the pictures of the cool old houses. Mommy, you would loove them! I wanted to go inside all of them and Megan tried to convince me to go knock on one house and ask them about it and maybe they would invite us inside to look around. But I was too scared. I'll bet when Danny comes next year he'll go and ask for us. I love my husband!

I know Meggie put pictures of this one on her blog, but I just love it!! You need to zoom in so you can see all the cute details. This was the one that she tried to get me to knock on the door of. The next picture is of the back of the house. The picture doesn't capture how really huugge it was. You have to look to the far right and see that behind the trees it keeps going further and the bushes cut off the bottom fourth floor. The camera couldn't get it all in. Just the garage part is like my whole house. Can I have it, Danny?

On our hike, the day I left. Wahhh! See, Anya is upset just thinking about it!

This was the last picture we took together before I left for the plane.

There were so many fun things we did together that we didn't get any pictures of. Like going to a million cute little stores, watching High School Musical 1 & 2, craft stores, furniture stores, lots of stores where we didn't have any money and wanted lots, the big neighborhood garage sale, looking at houses and so on. Isn't it amazing that I could visit Meggie across the country and that we would find all the same things to do?! Best of all was just being there and visiting together and getting to see her family and friends and the wonderful new life they have there! I can't wait to come again next summer with my family and stay for longer. And this time I will have my huge truck that I can stuff full with all of my garge sale finds!! Thanks for letting me come stay Meggie! I did have the time of my life!

A few funnies

Here are just a few funny things the kids have said-

We all know how much Alex likes to quote movies. He had been watching Harry Potter and he loves the part with the Sorting Hat. He came upstairs quoting the line, "It must be... Gryffindor!" But every time he said it, he pronounced Gryffindor wrong. I was trying to help him say it correctly, when Danny stepped in to "help." He was telling him all kinds of silly ways to says it- gryffinsocks, and so on. But Alex topped us all when he said in his best "sorting hat" voice, "Must be.. Gryffindorks!!" Danny was dying laughing and so Alex thought he must have it right and kept going around the house saying "Gryffindorks." We think he might be a Slytherin at heart.

Tristan tells everyone we see that there is a baby in his Mommy's belly. But to make it even better, he then tells them that they should come and see when it comes out! And yesterday I was bringing the crib back up from the storage room and Tristan looked all excited and asked, "Is the baby coming out now?!"

In Sacrament meeting Alaina likes to tell me about what she did in Nursery. She always tells me about snacks. Well, this week she couldn't say it quite right, but she made up for her poor linguistic skills by talking louder. So very loudly in Sacrament meeting she kept saying over and over, "I had sax! I had sax!" And I could not get her to stop saying it!

Alex has been bringing the old infant car seat upstairs and putting Alaina in it. (I should have gotten a picture.) Anyway, our car seat is the same as Haley's, so Alaina loves to get in it and then says, "I Hunter!!"

And last, but not least, yesterday while I was reading to Tristan, I started wondering what Alaina was doing. Well, I went into the bathroom and she looked at me and smiled really big. "I putting on makeup!" she says with a proud grin. Well, she had probably started out okay, because there was lipstick on her lips. But from there it went to her forehead and eyebrows. And the worst part is that I wear the long-lasting kind, that only comes off because your lips peel frequently. So we have scrubbed and scrubbed and it will not come off. This is a picture of her this morning, after sleeping in it and taking a bath. It hasn't budged a smitch. She is pointing to herself and saying, "I do eyebrows! I do eyes!"

Then this afternoon she found it again, added more lipstick and did her own mascara. Actually, I was quite impressed by the mascara. I tried to take this close-up shot to show that she actually got it on both eyes really well and just smeared it some on the second eye.
Not bad for a 2 and a half year-old! So she went to bed tonight wearing it, again. Someone suggested trying Mary Kay eye makeup remover, so I will try that tomorrow.

Also, here are a couple of shots of the book shelves we got from Mommy to put in their room. They look really cute in there and the kids looovve them!! We have to read the books off of them all the time now. So I make sure and keep the books that I like reading on there!
I don't know why this shot is so blurry!

I just can't wait unti I can do beadboard in here and paint! I think it will be super cute then! But in the meantime, it is still a fun room for them to play and read in.

Oh, and tonight when Danny put Tristan in bed, Tristan came running out saying, "Lainey's not dressed!!" Danny told him that she was, it just didn't look like it. "No!" he said. "Look!" and he pulled back the covers and there she was sleeping, totally naked. I guess her nudist colony is open night hours now, too.