Cornbelly’s!!!!

We love Cornbelly’s!  It is now tradition to go every October to kick off fall.  This year was my all time favorite.  They have added some fun things and mixed it up a little and I loved it.  Get ready for picture OVERLOAD!!!  If you get this as an email you might want to go to our real blog www.dandysfamily.blogspot.com to see it :)  Enjoy!

Nothing like having a little hay thrown at you at the end of the slide!

Ben got called up to be apart of the pig races!  Andrew of course wanted to join :)  There pig didn’t win…but they got a cool spider ring to take home…and promptly lose :)

 

Hmmm, Ben really was happy about getting called up…I’m not sure what this face is all about :)

They has a trampoline covered in hay.  The kids went crazy throwing hay at each other….good thing there wasn’t a lot of other kids there ;)

 

Isn’t she adorable!?!??!

It amazes me that Andrew could ride this car all by himself.  He kept going around and around and around the course.  He is one strong little man!

This car was as big as Ben!  He had to really stretch to get his feet to the peddles but could power it just fine.  My kids are buff!

Look at her go!  Amy and Ava had fun watching all the races :)

Chris and Alex racing…

Amy and I racing.  I’m happy to report I won…and almost looped her!  To be fair she tried to get an unfair start and got herself stuck…ha ha.  Cheaters never prosper Amy! :)

Chris and Alex…”watching” the kids :)

 

Who really watched the little kids?  KALLIE!  I can’t wait till this girl is old enough to babysit!  She is already my favorite babysitter!  I love her!

 

One of my favorite stops.  The corn box!  Sierra loved playing in the corn!  She was so adorable!  She even braved a huge spider and killed it…with her Mom’s help :)

Can you find Kallie?!?!?

Ben and Lisa had a blast going off by themselves every once in a while.  It is so nice as my kids start to get a little older and can do more on their own.  Ben didn’t want to do all the baby things we were doing :)

Kallie sharing her sno-cone with Sierra.  I caught her too late to smile…she really was happy to share..I promise!

The must do family picture in the oversized Cornbelly rocking chair.

Isn’t he handsome!

Goodbye Cornbelly’s!  Until next year!

Kallie’s fieldtrip to Pumpkinland

Chris and I were so excited to get to go on Kallie’s fieldtrip with her class to Pumpkinland.  There is nothing cuter than watching tons of little first graders run through the corn maze or be fascinated by all the animals.  Andrew was nice enough to come with us on our little adventure.  Since so many parents in Kallie’s class signed up to go with their kids we only had Kallie and her little friend Allie to watch over.  It was great!

Andrew sitting on some massive pumpkins!!!

Kallie and Allie in the corn maze.  These two girls are such cute little friends!

 

Andrew loved all the animals that are there to pet and look at.  Chris showed him how to feed this goat corn and pet his chin.  I did get cuter pictures, but they are all blurry!  Dang!

Andrew and his handsome Daddy

Andrew and Kallie on the huge pumpkins

Kallie with a few girls from her class

It took a really, really, really long time to commit to the perfect pumpkin!

Getting back on the bus to drive back to school!

Ben is a CUB SCOUT!

Benjamin can’t wait for his 8th birthday in a few days.  One of the things he is most excited about (besides being baptized) is finally becoming a scout.  The Cub Master was kind enough to extend Benjamin an invitation to join scouts a little earlier.  He couldn’t wait!  Tonight was his first Pack Meeting where they introduced him to the Pack.  He looked so sharp in his scout uniform!  Chris and I got to say the parent promise with Ben and everything.  He has had his scout book since Wednesday and has already passed off his Bobcat.  (He can’t actually get awarded it till he is officially 8, but he doesn’t care).  He carries his scout book around and is always trying to pass off new things with me.  I think I’m going to love being a scout mom  :)

The cub scouts provided the entertainment tonight by putting on a skit.  Here is Ben as “scary monster” who tries to scare the “brave scout”.  None of the scary monsters could make the brave scout run away…only the cub scout master could…who was our good friend Sis. Pottymouth.  It was pretty funny :)

Cute monster huh?!

Kallie loses her first tooth!

Big, Huge News!!!

Kallie has FINALLY lost her first tooth!  She has been dying to lose a tooth.  All her friends, cousins, and random friends she meets at parks/McDonald’s/Cornbelly’s, etc have already lost a tooth…but NOT Kallie!  This has caused her much frustration.  At her last dentist appointment the gal who cleaned her teeth told her she had two loose teeth and we haven’t heard about anything since.  All day, everyday she has been asking us to feel how loose her tooth is…or too look and see how far she can twist it.  Chris promised her today when he got home from work he would pull it out.  She told her whole class at school today that tomorrow she wouldn’t have a tooth anymore.  The pressure was on!  She even had Ben try and pull it out tonight while I was making dinner.  As soon as Chris got home tonight she reminded him he promised to pull it out.  She was so brave!  Kallie didn’t even cry or whine or complain.  Chris pulled it out with a few tugs and Kallie hasn’t stopped smiling or proudly showing off her new smile.  Before she went to bed tonight she asked me if I would put it on the internet for everyone to see.  She will check on it when she wakes up :)  I have one very happy girl tonight :)

Dinner Time Conversations

I had the rare opportunity of having dinner alone with the kids yesterday. Somehow the conversation came upon careers. I have no idea why my kids are so worried about what they want to do for the rest of their lives, but it seems to occupy a significant amount of their thinking.

Ben declared that he was either going to be a dentist or a teacher. He proceeded to ask which I thought he should do and started diagraming the pros and cons of each profession and how one goes about getting the experience they need to get those jobs. Ben is an incredibly analytical person.

This started to get Kallie all worked up. She was showing some serious signs of anxiety over what she was going to do for a job. Finally she asked which one I would pick and then listed off about a hundred different careers.  Ben, sensing her distress, offered her these words of advice:

“Don’t worry about it Kallie. I used to have a list like that when I was 4 or 5 [years old]. Then over time it got shorter and shorter as I thought about what it really meant to do each job. Finally, I got down to these two jobs because they both include things that I would like to do every day. And who knows? I’ve got a long time to think about it still, maybe I’ll go back to one of my other options!”

I don’t know who is raising my kids because I’m pretty sure Katie and I aren’t doing anything in particular to generate such high level conversation between them.

Driving the Nebo Loop

We have been talking about driving the Nebo Loop for years, but just could never find the time to do it. We decided we would pack up the kids, pack a picnic dinner and check it off our “to-do before we leave Utah list”.

Nothing is ever really that simple though, right? We got a late start leaving the house, then we had to do a 15 minute detour since Utah loves road constructions and randomly shutting down on/off ramps…so in traffic it was more like 25 minutes. We finally made it to the loop and started up about an hour or so later than planned. It is one of the prettiest places I’ve ever been to. The leaves were changing and the views were amazing! We stopped at this lake to have our picnic….

In our rush to get out the door I didn’t think to grab any jackets for the kids. Why would I need jackets? It was 75 degrees when we left home! When we took this picture (at 8000 ft) it was only 51 :). The kids aren’t pretending to be cold…they were FREEZING!

But we are picture people so I made them suffer through the cold to get come cute pictures in front of the lake with the trees. Yep, I’m that mean :)

We decided to just have a picnic in our van! I folded down our stow n go seats and we had the perfect, warm, dry place to eat our dinner. The kids loved getting to “camp out” in our car. :)

After we cleaned up dinner we realized it was getting dark faster than we had planned. By the time we were back on the road it was pitch black. And guess what? All the amazing views were still ahead of us! So yes, we drove the whole Nebo Loop….but we only saw half of it (and didn’t get any of the pictures I wanted since it was so dark). On the drive down in the pitch dark blackness we were accompanied by narrow, twisty roads, steep cliff drop offs, cows standing in the middle of the road (or too close to the road for my liking), pouring down blinding rain, and a sense of being all alone on a long forgotten road with no cell service. (Yes, I still might be a little nervous driving after our little tire blow out) We didn’t see any cars passing us once it got dark. Everyone seemed to know it wasn’t a good idea to drive those roads in the dark but us :) Even with the scary parts at the end I’m so glad we did this drive! I want to go back and do it again…but this time with more daylight and jackets!