A Halloween Nursery Rhyme

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet

Eating her curds and whey,

Along came a spider,

Who sat down beside her

And frightened Miss Miss Muffet away.

Happy Halloween!

P.S. This cute Little Miss Muffet won "The Cutest Costume" award at our ward Trunk of Treat!

Ethan had a blast being a scary spider and loved every minute of eating candy, drinking lemonade, and playing all the games at the trunk or treat. Holidays seem to be so much more fun and exciting with kids!

Robbed

Justin is in Guadalajara, MX this week for work (which is why I have had a ton of catch -up posts in the past few days) and he called me the other night with some bad news. He got robbed. I have a feeling our parents are probably reading this shaking their heads and wanting to call me up right now and say, "See. We told you so! Stay out of Mexico!" :) I was just happy that I was talking to Justin and that he was ok. It could have been a lot worse.

Apparently he and his work companion down there went into a restaurant to eat, locked the doors of the truck, and when they came back out they noticed that someone had busted into the car and had stolen both of their suitcases. Luckily, Justin had his backpack in the restaurant with him with his camera and computer but he had ALL of his other personal items in the suitcase. He only had his backpack and the clothes on his back. Clothes, shaver, toothbrush, that is all replaceable but he was most sad about having his scriptures and his journal (which was from the past 5 years of our marriage) stolen. He has had those scriptures for a long time and had so much great info in them- quotes, inspirations, etc. I just wanted to cry for him. Those two things are priceless and I know that whoever stole them has, without thought, thrown them in the trash. It makes us sick to our stomachs to think about it.

Well, I'm just glad that Justin wasn't held at gun point and that the suitcase was the only thing we lost. Him traveling to other countries has never made me nervous before, but now I'm a little bit more apprehensive about it. He can't not stop traveling though. It's his job. I just pray everytime he is gone that he will come back to me safely :) I couldn't deal with losing my sweet husband :)

So Patriotic....

Ethan learned his Pledge of Allegiance from preschool and here he is showing us his patriotism!

I know I probably should have had him stand up and put his hand over his heart but I'm just glad I could get him to do this much :)

Weaver's Needle Hike

Last Monday (Columbus Day), Justin had off work and so we decided to be a little adventurous and take the kids on a hike up to Weaver's Needle. Our neighbors, the wonderful Wagenman family, joined us for the hike with their 3 cute little girls. We probably should have started about an hour or two earlier because it got super hot about half-way into the hike.

Here we are at a look out spot looking back at where we had come... I'm still trying to convince myself that the desert is pretty :)

The Wagenmans

After our little photo-op, we kept hiking but we had a few melt-downs from Ethan who was mad that he wasn't the leader, and Ellie decided that she was super hungry, and overly tired and cried and cried. The Wagenmans' had to turn back since they had a family lunch planned for Joel's birthday and I was ready to turn back as well but my sweet husband really wanted me to see the top, so I kept going.

So we kept hiking, and hiking, and hiking. It was hot, Ellie was SUPER tired and DONE by this point and I still couldn't see where this hike was ever going to end. So we stopped and had some water. I felt bad for being grumpy and grumbling the whole time so I tried to cheer up and kept going- this is where I questioned our sanity though :)

Finally, after like 3 hours, we made it to the top....

It was a really pretty view but will I ever go hiking with a 3 yr. old and a 7 month old in the middle of October again? Probably not.

My cute husband resting before we headed back down. Justin was so great. He carried Ethan on his shoulders the whole way up and down, and probably would have carried Ellie as well if I would have asked him. He is so great! Oh and Ellie FINALLY fell asleep by his point! Hooray!

Only to wake up 10 minutes later...

Ellie wouldn't keep her oversized hat on and her poor, bald head was going to burn so I got a little creative with my nursing cover....

I knew those things were useful in more than one way. It actually worked really well!

The kids really did do really well considering what we put them through, but we probably won't be so adventurous again anytime soon :) We were happy to be able to spend a day with daddy though!

Oh What Fun In Mazatlan!

Two weeks ago, we once again accompanied Justin to Mexico. This time we went to beautiful Mazatlan for the week! I'm always up for a trip down there! We met up with our good friends, The Sanchez Familia, and while Justin and Eduardo were working hard in the fields, we had a lot of fun swimming in the pool....

Anette and Ethan...

Miss Ellie in her cuteness at the pool... that swim suit was mine when I was around her age!

And sweet Ethan getting ready to swim. We are still working on the awkward camera smile :)

We also tried to have nap time, but who could sleep when the beach is so close?!

We had this beautiful view from our hotel balcony...

One afternoon, the boys had off from work and so we all played at the beach together! Ethan had a BLAST playing in the waves with his daddy. He has no fear of the waves and loved every minute of it!

Justin and Ethan waiting to catch a wave.

Is this not an awesome picture or what?! Ethan was eating it up!

I could watch a beautiful sunset like this every night of my life and would never get tired of it..

Me and the kiddos

Gladyss and Ellie

Anette, Eduardo, Gladyss and Ellie. Gladyss loved holding Ellie and taking care of her. She is one of the sweetest people I know. She has a heart of gold!

And I couldn't resist taking a few photos of our cute little girl on the beach

We had so much fun and always love going back to MX (much to our parents dismay:) Hopefully we can make it back down again soon. It's so great that we can take our kids with us on trips and we hope that we can expose them to many different cultures and languages!

Rascal Flatts

My sweet husband took me out on a surprise date a few weekends ago to the Rascal Flatts concert here in Phoenix. I had no idea that they were in town and I still didn't know which concert we were at until we were standing in the ticket line and I hear some drunk girl say, "This ain't Rascal Flatts!" referring to the girl singing (who I later found out was Kelly Pickler) .

I love Rascal Flatts and we had such a good time singing along to all the songs that remind us of when we were dating. They were celebrating 10 years together as a group and sang all their good "oldies." What an impressive band. We had so much fun!

Thanks sweetheart for taking me to my first concert ever! I had a blast!