Pigs and Jesus

How do I begin to tell about Sam and his love for pigs and Jesus?

Well, first I have to go back to the Christmas after Katelyn was born. The primary gave Sam a little baby Jesus with a manger. Sam fell in LOVE with this baby Jesus (with no prompting from me) he just latched onto this baby Jesus. He carried it EVERYWHERE. Baby Jesus was a wooden ball hot glued onto a piece of felt, with two black dots for eyes... no mouth. It became very dirty, his eyeballs got rubbed off and I had to redraw them, his aunt Jerusha fixed him by re-hot glueing him together. As you can see from these pictures, baby Jesus slept with him, and also if you look really closely to the picture of Katelyn and Sam, he made his way into pictures without us really meaning it. Sam would even nurse Baby Jesus when I nursed Katelyn. This was about all Michael would put up with and he wanted Baby Jesus to disappear. Well, eventually (seriously, MONTHS later) Michael hid him (I wouldn't let him throw it away) and Sam forgot about him.

Sam's next obsession (I don't know if it was technically next but the one that lasted a while) was his fascination with pigs. I don't know if it started with watching Charlotte's Web or not... but for a while there he was all about the pigs. He collected all that he could and usually had one with him, in his hands or his pocket. He ended up collecting over 20 different pigs of various sizes, and they were ALL named Wilbur. I went to the county fair last year and you would have thought he went to heaven with seeing the real pigs and the pig show. If you can see that he is holding his pig up in the second picture to watch the show. He ended up getting pigs for Christmas. His grandpa, his primary teacher and aunts and uncles would find a pig or a forgotten toy pig and give them to Sam. (I should take a picture of all of his pigs for this blog... ). Anyway, Steve (Michael's brother) gave Sam a pig and this became a fast favorite because it was so tiny (again... I should have a picture) but it is seriously smaller than a quarter. Well, needless to say, this little Wilbur got lost after a while, because of it's size and we found it the other day. Well, Katelyn likes all things small, and this has been a major source of fighting lately.

Well, back to Jesus... In primary a little while back Sam got a little clear rock the size of a dime with a picture of Jesus modge podged to it. Well, he lost that too, but Katelyn found it and you know, finders keepers. Well, tonight Katelyn has been proudly walking around with Mini Wilbur. I was surprised that Sam wasn't throwing one of his ultimate tantrums. I said, "Katelyn, is that Sam's pig" "No, it's mine" I let it go because Sam wasn't there. So when Sam came in the room, and saw her playing with it. I said, "Sam, that is nice of you to let Katelyn play with your pig" and he said "I traded the pig for Jesus. I love pigs but I totally love Jesus."

Flashback Friday, even though it's Sunday

Some of my friends do a "flashback Friday" on their blogs... and since I feel like I have had nothing to blog about lately I thought I'd do a flashback thing myself.

It seems like it is CHRISTMAS everywhere and it's not even Thanksgiving so I'm pulling us back the other direction a little bit. So, my sister always had a huge Halloween party (and now she lives so far away... ) anyway, at the time they lived close. Anyway, they invited us up to their party when Michael and I were dating. To my SURPRISE, Michael said we were going to wear costumes. Well, Michael decides to wear this costume to my family's Halloween party. He was a hit of course (especially since most of my family didn't wear costumes, we're duds) and I was surprised that he would wear that. Afterwards, we went and knocked on his parent's door and his mom didn't know it was us. Well, as you can see from the picture (No, this is not the picture from when we were dating -- we did not have Sam when we were dating) that he wore it again for another family Halloween party a couple of years later. He showed up to surprise me because he was supposed to be working and he wasn't going to come to the party and ended up showing up. I'm not so sure he'd be happy about this picture on my blog.. but he never reads it and if he has worn it in public he wouldn't mind me posting it here right?

Leaves

So, I love the trees in our back yard. They were planted before Sam was born, so they're almost 5 years old now, and they are probably the best thing we've done with our yard. I have to say I am incredibly sad that the leaves on our trees are beginning to fall off. The kids sure had a fun time playing in the leaves... and in the end Michael didn't put them in the garbage because they were having so much fun in them, and there's a lot more to drop.

I'm not ready for the winter... especially the holidays. It seems like they've snuck up on me this year and it's almost Thanksgiving!

Halloween that doesn't end...

Well, I think this year Halloween just didn't end. It seemed like we had stuff all week. Starting with the ward party, preschool party, trick or treating at Michael's work, trick or treating and then ended with a family party on Saturday. Sam was sick this weekend and I think it had everything to do with all of the partying! I'm glad it's over. We always have potluck soups at our Fall/Halloween party and we had some yummy soup and it was fun for the cousins to play. (Not all of the cousins made it due to distance or sickness.. and they were missed). My brother, Josh, usually puts a lot into the party and he did again this year by making cookies for the kids to decorate and gave them all a whoopi cushion... (you can tell he doesn't have kids right!?) and of course the kids loved them and laughed until their tummies hurt...

Plus we ended up painting pumpkins too! (While dad was at work which was a good idea.) This wasn't as fun as I remembered it. I was so worried they would mix the colors, I kept on having them wipe their brushes etc. I don't remember worrying about that at all when I painted pumpkins. But the kids liked it.

Sam got tons of these teeth this year, probably 5 pairs. Both of the kids loved theirs, especially the glow-in-the dark ones. They would walk around the house in them but their mouths weren't big enough to completely get their lips around it so they would drool all the time. Sometimes you'd walk across the floor and step on a pile of drool. Gross.

My kids got these eye patches while trick-or treating. Every time we'd try to get her to say "Aurgh!" she would say "Arf"

Katelyn loved dumping her loot out and sorting it by suckers and other same candies. Then putting it all back in the bucket. She did this I don't know how many times. THEN, when we went out to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood I took all the suckers out of her and Sam's buckets and put them in our give away bucket for Michael to give out to trick or treaters. I hate the big suckers... especially the blow pops with gum in them!