Ezra's Last Soccer Game

The season has officially come to an end. I have loved watching little Ez grow and become more comfortable through practices and games. What a difference there was from his very first game to his last.

Daddy was only able to make it to two of his games this season and they were the only two games Ezra scored in. We've decided Daddy is his good luck charm :)

He scored 3 goals in his last game!!! It was awesome. He ran to me during a water break and said with pride, "I'm not sharing at all!" That's right, I have taught my child not to share in soccer (at least in this stage). He was so happy to have daddy there and ran to him for high fives and confirmation that he saw the goals after each one.

Me: Wait a minute... how many goals did you score?!

Getting his medal. It even has his name on it. 

He was so so proud. I love when he feels proud of himself.

Makai keeps asking to go to "Shoccer game, Za Za." With which he'll always follow with, "Shoccer all done." He's a little sad we can't go watch Za Za any more, but he seems content to know there will be more games to come when it's warmer out.

If he has to get older, at least there are fun things like watching him play soccer  to help me cope!

Trick or Treating

After James was called into work on both of his days off during the week and was not even allowed to come home at night, his boss decided to be nice and let him off early on Halloween to take his boys trick or treating :) We went to the mall to start our trick or treating. It was lame, lame, LAME. It was supposed to go from 5-7, but more than 3/4 of the stores either weren't participating or ran out of candy the first 30 minutes and the "treats" were weird. We left disappointed and cranky.

We went to find some dinner and then found ourselves right near a fancy neighborhood that we had jokingly discussed trick or treating at earlier. Well, we went there. We drove into the secluded neighborhood, parked right in front of a strangers house and knocked on their door for some candy.

It was an AWESOME neighborhood. Even though it was cold, people were sitting on their porches or at the end of their driveway greeting us with candy and free beer. That's right... awkward. It seemed like every other house had a cooler filled with beer. Never seen that tradition before, but I guess it's big in their neighborhood.

The residents, aka "our neighbors" were very friendly and gave the boys handfuls of candy. There were fun decorations, crowded (but not too crowded) sidewalks and streets. It was the perfect place to go trick or treating.

Ezra dressed as a pirate and Makai wanted to be a monster. I promised to take pictures, but then forgot my camera in the car, so James snagged a couple with his phone.

Mr. Mak could not wait long to tear into his candy. He was content chewing through wrappers and stuffing his  face. He would go to the houses and say, "Treeeeat!!" Major sweet tooth. Totally my fault. You can usually find him hiding in the corner somewhere with sugar drool dripping to his chin and an "it wasn't me" look on his face. Trouble trouble!

Pirate Ezra and mommy trick or treating. This year I am happy to say that I resisted the urge to tell Ezra which candy to pick and I let him choose whatever one he wanted even though it was the 40th lollipop he put in his bucket..

We came home stocked up on goodies and sooo tired. Wish I could say I'm one of those mom's that sells back her kids candy or throws half or all of it away, but I have to admit that I am one of those mom's who steals more than half of her kids candy for herself and then bribes them with treats on a daily basis until it's gone. Sorry to disappoint you.

Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Disney On Ice

A couple of weeks ago Ezra and I went on a wonderful mommy-son date. We went to Disney on Ice!! I felt guilty leaving Makai with a babysitter, but there isn't enough room on my lap for that wiggly bum and I wanted to really enjoy the show with Ezra. It turned out to be a great date for us, so it was perfect. It was the Disney on Ice: Rockin' Ever After show which features Ariel, Rapunzel, Merida (from Brave), and Belle. So glad he doesn't mind the princesses :)

He was so excited and so adorable before, during and after the show. On the drive home he kept me alert by asking me my favorite part of every 5 minutes of the show. For example, "When Ariel was spinning, what was your favorite part?" or "When Brave (that's what he calls her :) shot the arrow, what was your favorite part?"

Then he told me that he can't wait to go on another date with me because he loves me. Melted. I need to do this more often with my boys! The only bummer of the night is that my camera died before any of the princesses came out. A+ for being prepared.

I hate that this picture is blurry, but I had to post it because I adore that face!! We were marching to find our seats. 

I wonder if his cheeks were hurting by the end of the night.

We got there early enough to snuggle lots. 

I know... this would be way cooler if he had actually been looking at me, but this is the best I could get of Mr. Mickey.

(And to top it off... my babysitter wouldn't let me pay her! She makes me feel like I'm doing her a favor by asking her to watch one or both of my boys. She's awesome :)

Halloween Carnival/Trunk or Treat

Busy busy busy. Life has been a little crazy for us. Part of that reason is because me and one of our youth were in charge of the Trunk or Treat for our church. It was really fun. I have discovered that I love to plan parties. It's hard to plan a party for SO many people especially when they don't all like your ideas, but it was still loads of fun.

We had a Halloween Carnival before the Trunk-or-Treat where we had games set up all over the church gym for the kids to win some treats and prizes.

This picture doesn't even do justice to the crowd we had. It was crazy, but fun.

We also had a separate room for kids 6 and under that we called our Junior Spook Room. We had a couple of games (pin the spider on the web, toss the bats in the buckets) and a coloring table, make a ghost craft with lolli's and tissues, and one of the other wards did a touch and feel table.

One of the stations I was most excited for was our Haunted Hallway. It was really just an obstacle course (jump of witch legs, crawl under the spider webs, dodge the ghosts, etc.) Don't know what the reactions were, but I know Ezra at least LOVED it and went through many times.

Our young woman Katharine helping out :) This took us a couple of hours to set up, but it looked pretty cool after all was said and done. 

The games we were in charge of (other than the Hallway and the Junior Spook room) were face painting, Feed the Monster (adorable little game I think I came up with, but chances are is out there somewhere. We had one of our artistic young women draw a monster on a box and cut out a mouth. The kids had to get down and blow a balloon into his mouth. We let the little ones kick it in. It was really cute.) and Pumpkin Pop:

Our young women Brooke and Erica helping out. We filled the balloons with candy and pinned them all over that board. We gave the kids a very dangerous balloon popper pin thingy and let them go nuts :) There was always a long line and this was the first game to run out of prizes/materials. 

I stole those above pictures from my friend Teresa because I was so busy before and even during that I forgot to take pics. I didn't even get a picture of my kids. Ezra decided to be Spider-man because he had gotten his face painted as Spider-man earlier that morning at Story time and I never got a chance to wash it. Makai was a pirate again because that was what I grabbed when I ran out the door earlier that afternoon to go set up. Here's Ezzy's face paint from earlier that day at least:

The Trunk or Treat portion after the carnival was fun too. Since we were so busy decorating and preparing inside we never did get a chance to decorate our trunk which was a real bummer to James (who happened to be home that night!) He loves to decorate for Halloween, so he was really looking forward to it, but I monopolized his time inside. Sorry Tressler! We had a great time. I'm so glad our church does fun things like this for the kids and I was so glad to be able to plan it this year :)

AND... When I went back inside after Trunk or Treating I was planning on staying about an hour to clean up, but found that everything was already cleaned and my decorations were already in piles for me! Thank you to all who helped with that!!!