Trunk-or-Treat

We went to our church Halloween party last night and it was pretty crazy, but a lot of fun.  Scott is out of town for work so we braved it alone.  I learned a few things about how I could've made the experience less stressful for me, but overall it was ok and the kids had a great time.  Here we are before heading over to the party.

And being scary!!

Matthew was MIckey Mouse and Anna was a mermaid (Ariel if you ask her).

True to form, Anna changed her mind at the last minute.  She was going to be Minnie Mouse, which I thought was amazing since her and Matthew independently chose coordinating costumes.  But the day off the party she said she wanted to be something else.  I said she could pick any of the costumes from the dress up box.  She picked a mermaid, which doesn't surprise me.  Before she "decided" on Minnie Mouse she had been telling me she wanted to be Ariel for several months, but I couldn't find a good mermaid costume.  I saw this one at Costco a while ago and bought it on a hunch.  For Matthew I just collected the different pieces and sewed the big buttons on the shorts...which seem to be too far apart in this picture.  :)  I think it works though.  People knew who he was.

The kids posing.  Anna was singing Little Mermaid songs and Matthew was pretending to be scared.  Grant just doesn't know what's going on.  Grant is a tiger, the same tiger costume Matthew wore when he was that age.  It was a little big on Grant, but still worked.

The party was quite a production!!  I was very impressed.  First there was a chili competition and crockpot upon crockpot of chili to eat along with cornbread toppings and hot dogs.  The place was packed!  Our ward is pretty big and everyone brought friends to this party so there were a lot of people.  I should have invited some friends too.  :)  After the dinner the kids did a costume parade.  I didn't even get to see the kids do their costume parade 'cause I was setting up the trunk or treat trunk  (here is our trunk - I think it could have looked better, but I threw it together in 30 seconds with one arm carrying a baby, so I was fine with it).  I helped the kids walk around a little to the other trunks, then Matthew took off to go do it alone and Anna came back with me to hand out candy.  She was a good helper.

Grant sat in the stroller a lot.  Sorry buddy.

After trunk-or-treating we went back inside for carnival games.
Here is Anna mermaid-ing it up.

Here is Matthew doing the bowling game.  The 11 and 12 year old boys were running this and they did a really great job helping all the kids.

Anna and Matthew did the dangling donuts game.  Why I let Anna do it with a chocolate glazed donut, I don't know.  Clearly I was not in my right mind.  The 11 and 12 year old boys ran this one too and were so sweet to the little kids.  We must have the sweetest kids in our ward!

Here's Anna doing another game, lasso something or other.  Everything was so fun!

This one was called ghost ball!

And a blurry picture of Anna doing the bean bag toss.

Playing a fishing game.  Matthew and Anna got harmonicas!  

That's Anna in the lower right corner fishing.

The cake walk was a favorite for my kids.  They loved stepping on the steps - each one was a different Halloween character.  And they played Ghostbusters while the kids walked around, which they liked.  Eventually, they each won a cupcake.

Doing a ring toss.  It was shortly after this that the fire alarm in the church went off, effectively ending the party (people were starting to clean up anyway).  Some fog from the spook alley set off the smoke alarm and the fire department showed up a few minutes later.  It's not a real party if the cops or fire department don't show up, right?  I was glad the fire truck didn't stop behind my car, so I could still leave after the party.  :)

After we got home I was tired.   Halloween can be exhausting.  We all de-costumed and I put all the kids to bed and then sat there wondering how I could have done that better.  Things to think about for next year.

Six Years

Scott and I celebrated our 6th anniversary last weekend (10/22).

Life has changed a lot for us since then.

We have...

...been married 6 years

...spent 5 of them together (in the same place)

...lived in 4 places (Florida, Monterey, Okinawa, and now Colorado Springs)

...had 3 children (Matthew - 4, Anna - 3, Grant - 6 mos)

...had 2 broken bones (both Scott's) and

...1 ambulance ride

Happy Anniversary Scott!!

He really is an awesome husband!

A little place called Aspen

Lloyd: We gotta get out of this town!
Harry: Oh yeah, and go where? Where are we gonna go?
Lloyd: I'll tell you where. Someplace warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I'm talking about a little place called Aspen.

 

Scott and I celebrated our 6th anniversary this weekend with a quick trip to Aspen.

It's a 3 1/2 hour drive from Colorado Springs up into the mountains to Aspen and a really beautiful drive.  I took way too many pictures, just of the drive!  In the upper left is Mt. Elbert, the tallest peak in Colorado.

Here we are at Independence Pass.  It was cold up there!

Coming down into Aspen.  It's stupid to say, but there must be millions of aspen trees there.  Most of them had already lost their leaves, but they were still pretty and plenty of other fall colors to see.  Matthew shows his Oregon roots by hugging a tree.  ;)

First stop in Aspen: The John Denver Sanctuary.

I'm a big John Denver fan so I enjoyed visiting this sanctuary to him and his music.  It was a very peaceful space - a really beautiful sanctuary right along the Roaring Fork River.  There were big rocks with lyrics to some of his songs etched into the rock.  Anna and I posed by Annie's Song.

Still at the sanctuary.  The kids loved climbing around on the rocks and wanted to dip into the river for fallen leaves.

Anna loved collecting leaves, sticks and rocks (so did Matthew).  Our little collectors.

 

 We stayed at The Gant in Aspen and it was so nice.  We even got upgraded to a larger suite just because it was available.  Hooray for the off-season!  I took a few pictures in the condo, but they didn't turn out too well.  :(  I really liked our aspen tree view!

 We went to see the Maroon Bells near Aspen.  I'd never heard of them before this trip but supposedly they are the most photographed mountain peaks in North America.  Do they look familiar?  They were amazingly beautiful.  Don't judge them by my bad pictures.

The kids found a couple of sticks while we were there and decided to drag them around everywhere.  They left a trail in case we got lost.  :)

There was a very grim warning to hikers about hiking/climbing the Bells.  I never intended to hike them, but now I really don't.  We had fun just looking at them. 

Here we are by the White River (I think) near the Bells.  So pretty!

We toured around the town of Aspen a little bit.  It was very sleepy.  Summer is over and it's not ski season yet.  I was fine with that.

Scott and I thought this was the creepiest cemetery ever.  Old Ute Cemetery in Aspen (The city of Aspen used to be called "Ute" when it was founded back in the 1800s).  It's very old (with creepy old headstones) and has a list of the civil war veterans that are buried there.  The cemetery now is completely overgrown with aspen trees.  You can see the white grave markers  sticking up among the trees.  I don't want to go in there at night.

Our last day there we did a little night swimming.  It wasn't too cold (60s) but after getting out of the warm water it felt pretty chilly.  I like Matthew's "I'm so cold" face.

So our trip to Aspen was beautiful and relaxing.  The way vacations should be.  Anna and Matthew both cried when they found out we were going back to Colorado Springs and they couldn't stay in the hotel anymore.  :)  Grant on the other hand seemed much happier once we were back at home.  Aspen is as beautiful as we'd heard and we'd love to go back again sometime and see the silver mines, ski, see the aspen trees in full yellow fall color...but I don't know if we'll get a chance to do any of that.  There are so many other Colorado places we'd like to see.  Thank you Aspen!!  That John Denver really knows what he's talking about!

Scott's Promotion

Scott got promoted back in July, but we weren't allowed to take any pictures at the ceremony because of the security level of his building, so someone from public affairs took pictures for us and we finally got them this week.  :)  Here is Col. Gilson saying some nice things about Scott.  Col. Gilson was the IG - the Inspector General for Space Command (head of the the group Scott works for) but he has since retired.  He conducted the promotion part of the ceremony and was very entertaining.  We thought he was a little Conan O'Brien-esque.

 

Scott's cake.  Let's not forget the important things, here.
 

 Me and the kids watching

 At attention while they read the promotion order

Traditionally the spouse or parents pin on the new rank.  Scott got one of each.  Here we are (me and Dad Guptill) taking off the old captain rank.

 And putting on the new major rank

The kids were very well behaved and very cute

 

Taking the oath
 

 And the new Major Guptill with all of his people.  Grant was pretty well behaved too.  Congrats again, Scott!  Have we told you how proud we are?

First Snow

On Saturday we had our first snow of the season down in Colorado Springs.  We started getting snow a few weeks ago up in the mountains, but Saturday we got some serious snow down in town.  It was probably about 2 or 3 inches.  The kids were super excited about the snow.  

They couldn't wait to go out and play in it.  I had to go dig out all the winter clothes for the first time this year.  Scott got home from a month long work trip the night before the big snow (he surprised us by coming home a few days early!) so it was an extra fun snow day with daddy there!

Scott and Matthew made a little snow man!  The sun came out and the snow started to melt in the afternoon.  That seems to happen a lot in Colorado Springs.  It was kind of fun to have an early snow day.  But I'm a little sad to really let go of the warm weather.  It will probably be 80 degrees next week.  Who knows?

Solid Food

Grant turned six months old on Friday!  He's growing and growing and learning new things everyday.  I decided to start him on solid food when he turned six months old and I was so happy that Scott was able to be there for Grant's first meal.  Scott has been out of town for work for about a month and he surprised us by coming home early on Friday night.  Hooray!

 

Anna was excited and wanted to help feed Grant.

He really liked the rice cereal.  He was ready!

 He kept grabbing the spoon to get that food in his mouth faster!

Good job Grant!  You are such a big kid now!

 

Here is a little video of Grant having his very first taste of solid food.  I think he liked it!  :)

The Pumpkin Patch

Today we went to the pumpkin patch for a little fall fun.  Matthew's preschool class and Anna's preschool class (a once a week cooperative preschool through church) were both having an outing there that day at the same time.  So we went to check it out.  Here are Matthew and Anna at the entrance.  It was a cool day, but sunny and beautiful!

First order of business, we picked out some pumpkins.

The pumpkin patch was a lot of fun  They had slides, a tractor ride, a couple hay bale pyramids to climb, a couple mazes, a petting zoo, some different wood cutouts for photo ops and a corn box (sandbox style).

Here we are playing in the corn.  We let Grant play in the corn box, watching him carefully to make sure he didn't eat any corn.  Grant and two of his little baby buddies sat in the corn together (upper right) Grant, Grant and Hadley.  Yes, there are two Grant's at our church born within a few weeks of each other.  Our Grant was born second, but I didn't even know that the other family had named their new baby Grant.  We still would have named him that if we did know.  :)  So they are the two Grants, and both so cute!  I like how they are all looking down at the corn.  Matthew made a corn angel (lower left).

Matthew and Anna also tried the gourd launching (lower middle).  We used a slingshot to try and launch a gourd and hit a hay bale 50 yards away or so.  We saw lots of people try it before we gave it a shot, but no one even got close.  I helped Anna do hers and we hit the hay bale...TWICE!!  Girls rule!  We also did some bowling (lower right).

The slides were the highlight of the trip!  Anna and Matthew went on them over and over and had a great time.  I went on it a few times with Anna and Grant.  It was lots of fun.  I was climbing up on the hay bales to help Anna one time when I stepped in a little hole between bales and twisted my ankle.  It really hurt and I was afraid to get up at first.  Scott breaking his ankle was flashing through my mind!  Luckily I was able to get up and limp down the stacks of hay.  I decided we should go home after that.  My ankle hurt for the rest of the day, but felt a lot better in the morning.  I was glad it was nothing serious.  :)

We had a great day at the pumpkin patch and the kids really want to go back once Scott is back in town.  I think they want to do those slides some more.  :)