Vampires Begone!

As some of you may know, I started my fantastic no iodine diet. I am proud to say I am one week into it. I HATE IT. Halloween was especially ridiculous. Candy is forbidden. Everything is dry, because sauce is forbidden. I can, however, have all the garlic my heart desires. I garlic everything. I now smell like garlic. It permeates. My sheets are garlicky. Mmmm. But on this Halloween night, no vampires will be sucking this blood. It's my one consolation.

Picktoberfest

My camera is "tot" (that's the German word for dead--impress your friends). This may be the last picts for a little while. Sam's preschool had a field trip to the pumpkin patch. I love the pumpkin patch, but not on this particular day. I hate that I hated it. But it was so hard. Three kids. A hungry baby. Rain. Mud. Cold. Busted camera. A 2-year old who had to go potty at every turn. Kids running around everywhere. Pandemonium. I was exhausted before we even got there (partly due to low levels of thyroid hormone, wrestling to get all four of us ready in time, planning and packing for every incidental like rain, mud, pee and hunger). It was a hard mom day. And then my camera busted RIGHT on the wagon ride and I didn't even get a picture of the actual patch. I am such a whiner. Tell me your hard mom days; so I can feel better. If you don't have one, make one up.

The hay maze. They were having fun hiding around corners and scaring other kids.

Cow soul train.

The corn box. It's like a sandbox, but with corn instead of sand so that makes it a corn box instead of a sandbox. How's that for redundant?

Don't worry Mom, I bundled up Ruby nice and cozy.

Noelle wanted to go down the slide badly. She is so darn sweet and giving she kept letting all the other kids go in front of her (and it was a lot of kids) and she never got a turn. So I sent Sam on up to help her. He stood in the way with his arms out and kept all the other kids back so she could go down. That's my boy!

Big bouncy trampoline pad thing.

Families Can Be Together Forever

gUh!

Evxer since I lozt my thyroid, I've also lost my ability to spell and construct compete senternce that actually make sense. It's really frustrating, because I can'te evne remember what I want to say or how to speall it. It's diriving me insame!

(I did not coorect myself so you could see how babd I'm getting. Oh thyroid, I miss you).

Irish Chocolate Ice Cream

I made homemade ice cream last night (it's a piece cake with my Cuisinart,) experimenting with Irish cream and chocolate. Basically, it's an ice cream masterpiece creating harmony and love among our children.

And it tastes pretty incredible too.

Come Listen to a Prophet's Voice

We set up a "tent" for the kids to watch General Conference today (ala King Benjamin and the Nephites). Equipped with conference bingo, coloring pages and crayons, legos, cars and various other toys, we got a pretty decent listen to conference today.

The Master Plumber

Yesterday I was upstairs when I hear Sam screaming for help. I ran downstairs to discover him in the bathroom, plunger in hand, toilet overflowing and water covering the floor (poopy toilet water, to be exact). Man, that kid uses so much toilet paper. After an appropriate scream of exasperation and gross I have poop water on my feet, I turned off the valve and sent Sam upstairs to finish wiping while I plunged and plunged. Once the situation was in hand, I hear Sam upstairs sobbing and praying out loud, "Please Jesus! Please Jesus!" He knew who would help him unclog the toilet. By the way, the above picture has nothing to do with my blog post (like I was going to stop plunging to take a picture)--this was Sam this morning helping me unload the dishwasher.