Halloween Fun

Our Halloween lasted about 2 weeks! First we attended a Fall Festival at the local library. The kids and I made different decorations to hang around the house, inside and out! Some of the decorations were made at the Library's Story-time (we attend story-time every Tuesday) and the rest we made here at home. We made bats, scarecrows, and lots of ghosts!

We went to a pumpkin patch...

Then we had a church Halloween party. We took three of our neighbor kids with us. The kids had so much fun. Our ward decided to do the party out at the Bishops family ranch. There was so much for the kids to see and do.

"Hello! I know I'm cute."

We carved pumpkins a few days before Halloween. David had a great idea! He drew several different types of eyes, noses, and mouths on a piece of paper and had Peter and Evelyn pick separately, at different times, what features they wanted on their pumpkin. Peter wanted his to be scary and mean looking and Evelyn wanted her pumpkin to be nice. See if you can tell which one is Peter's and which one is Evelyn's.

Then on Halloween Day, I made all sorts of fun Halloween snacks with the kids

Banana Spiders

Mandarin Orange & Peach Pumpkins

Witches Brooms

Mini Mummy Pizzas

and we handed out several of our witch hat cupcakes.

Witch Hat Cupcakes

Then, Halloween night we made a special visit to one of my favorite older ladies from our church and then we went to another friend of mine's home. My friend had all sorts of goodies for the kids! She made their Halloween with glow-sticks! We hit a few houses on her street for candy and headed home. Too much fun for the littles! They were exhausted come bedtime :).

 So, Peter designed his costume! He told us what he wanted and mom and dad figured out how to make his dream come to life. He requested lasers on his arms, he wanted buttons that were red and green circles... We had so much fun putting this together for him. And it was worth it! Peter loved his robot costume!

Shooting his lasers to destroy the asteroids in outer space.

The Kids and I Visit KC

Towards the end of David's eight weeks in St. Louis. The kids and I escaped Bolivar and visited family in Kansas City. We always love to visit Paige and Robert and their beautiful kids. Peter and Evelyn had been wanting to see their KC cousins for sometime. A visit was over due.

We are so grateful for Paige and her hospitality. She is an awesome gal. I am sure glad she is my sister-in-law. I guess I like Bob too ;).

Paige took us to the Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead. They have so many neat things to see and do. The kids loved it! We had a good few days with the KC Reynders before we came back to our life here in Bolivar.

We stopped for a snack :)

Peter had fun using all of hid cousin's chalk. Sorry Paige. We will replace :)

A Quick Trip to Illinois

While we were living in St. Louis during David's clinical rotation, we made a quick trip to visit my Aunt and Uncle in Belleville, IL. I don't know many of my extended family members on my dad's side (the Murphy side) of the family. We didn't do a whole lot with them growing up. In fact I can only remember meeting this particular uncle (my dad's brother) and my aunt along with their youngest daughter once before this. They are awesome thought! I am so glad we took the time to go out and see them and their beautiful home. I hope we can stop by again while we are out here in the Midwest.

Their backyard is a lake! It is beautiful! They also have some chickens. It was a fun place to visit. I wish we could have stayed longer. We had a fun time playing outside. The kid threw acorns into the lake with their Uncle Bill and Peter "went fishing" with cousin Cassie. He mostly just got the line tangled in the sticks and leafs... but he had fun. Uncle Bill joked that he caught a fish stick!

Then Peter had fun playing with my cousin Breezy's son. And we enjoyed a delicious meal together.

Family is wonderful. I am grateful for the instant love and connection you feel with family.

Five Gifts from St. Louis

We had the wonderful opportunity to stay in St. Louis for two of the eight weeks David worked at SSM Physical Therapy. It truly was a great experience, for multiple reasons. First, We got to be a family every night! Second, His Aunt and Uncle we stayed with have a beautiful, organized, peaceful, spirit filled home, in a beautifully calm neighborhood. Third, they have two (well, four kids, but only two still at home) awesome kids we got to "help take care of" while their parents were out of town. We had the opportunity to pray with them in the morning before they faced the world and read and pray with them at night. They are responsible and were great examples to us. And we were able to see the examples of their parents faith and diligence in teaching the gospel shine through these two kids. Fourth, my kids had more toys than they knew what to do with! They had so much fun exploring the bins and bins of toys and puzzles and books. Fifth, we were able to see a little more of St. Louis. We decided it would be a wonderful place to live, but we wouldn't want to be "in" the city. We would want to be on the outskirts, like his aunt and uncle, but perhaps, out even a little more.

While we were there we took the kids to the St. Louis LDS Temple and had several great short discussions with them about the importance of the temple. We visited several parks as well. Here are some pictures from our time in St. Louis:

 Basketball with cousin JJ.

Playing with the bundance of toys!

Bedtime stories with Aunt Jana.

Playing at the park while the cousins are at mutual.

Fountain in front of the temple.

It is so beautiful there!