THE STAPLETON FAMILY: October 2009

Halloween with Great Grandma Brown

The boys got to have a trial run with trick or treating at Grandma Brown's assisted living party.

They got to have snacks, hear a Halloween story and trick or treat around the room

Sophie, Seth, Ellie, Machka, G-ma Brown, Brad, Maya

Fun With My Boys

This is a quintessential picture, because it is really hard to get them to both pose and look at the camera at the same time. But, hooray for Brad.

This picture is funny when you look at the one below of Brad standing next to the scary Halloween tree with a creepy face. Seth didn't want to be left out so he asked me to take his picture in front of this tree.

Brad loves macaroni and cheese so much he doesn't want to waste anytime by only using one utensil.

The boys thought they were so funny putting this box on their head, so I got them a hat so they could both be funny.

Ogilvie Great-Grandparents

We went to visit my grandparents. You'd never guess my grandpa is nearly 90 years old.

Dan got a snack Sunday night to eat while we watched TV. I had no idea that he moonlighted as Santa Claus. Who else, besides Santa, drinks herbal tea, eats two giant cookies and chocolate covered pretzels and calls it a little snack?

The boys love Family Home Evening, can you tell? We mainly sing lots of songs, and they climb on top of Dan.

Pumpkins

Our fun with gardening has come to an end. Here are the boys with our fall harvest. We were pretty impressed with ourselves since this was our first attempt at gardening. We learned a lot, especially that we're never planting beets again.

This is Seth with the "baby pumpkin". It's his favorite, I think because it's the only one he's strong enough to pick up. Feel free to be impressed with my flower garden. It has been a labor of love, or obsession, take your pick, this summer. The lower part isn't in the picture because it still needs some love. My neighbors think I'm a bit over zealous, but in my defense, an hour of yard work with the boys helping equates to only about 20 minutes of actual work.

We grew 13 pumpkins this year. We loved it. Everyday the boys wanted to go out and count them. The pumpkin patch took up a lot of space, but I'd love to do it again.

Great Basin National Park

Dan's aunt Susan is a Park Ranger at Great Basin National Park. She is a geologist and gives tours of Lehman's cave. We had a mini family reunion and received an after hours VIP tour.

Before the tour we went on a hike to see the Bristle Cone Pine, believed to be the oldest living things on earth at 3,500 years old. We didn't make it to the grove because Seth cried the whole way up and then we decided to turn around and Brad joined in. The saving grace of that experience is that Seth fell asleep in my arms and I got to pretend he was a little infant again.

Lehman's Cave is the third most decorated cave in the United States and has some of the best examples of "shields" (I paid attention during the tour).

Seth did great and walked the whole way and Brad refused to be put down. It's what we expected- Brad has been freaking out in public places lately.

Uncle Mountie and Aunt Susan in the cave.

Gathering pinenuts with Maacha. Every five to seven years the trees produce more- we got there for a good year. My niece Maya was on a quest and would hardly sit down for meals because she wanted to gather more nuts.