Halloween

Halloween finally came! The kids have been counting down for quite some time. Brayden and Brooklyn had a fun Halloween party at school and got lots of candy from all their classmates. After naps we quickly got ready for the night. I found Brynlee snitching while I was getting the other kids ready:

 We went trick-or-treating to a couple of our neighbors, then headed off to the Ericson's. There's nothing better than trick-or-treating at grandpa's house! They got handfuls of candy:

 Even Brynlee started figuring it out:

 Our Peter Pan and 2 Tinkerbells:

 All the Ericson grandkids - Brynlee, Mckinsley, Brayden, Brooklyn:

 We took the kids to most of the houses on their street. The kids got SO much candy...Josh is pretty excited :)

 The rest of the evening we enjoyed hanging out. Brooklyn spent a lot of time with grandma drawing:

Trunk-or-Treat

Our ward doesn't do a trunk-or-treat, so when Nick and Kesha invited us back to our old ward we didn't hesitate to say yes. It was fun to dress the kids up again, although Brayden needed some convincing to be Peter Pan again. He wanted to have a different costume every time we did something. It was pretty nice weather, so we got away with starting the evening without jackets:

 They had a chili cook off as well with about 20 pots of chili. It was a very yummy dinner. I made the mistake of letting Brooklyn where her Tinkerbell shoes. Her feet were freezing, which made her cold most of the night. Here she is wearing my jacket over her jacket, which meant I had only a short sleeve shirt on:

 Someone brought this little car, which is Brynlees favorite thing to play with. I love her expression, checking over her shoulder to see if anyone is looking...She knows it wasn't hers:

Thanks Nick and Kesha! Of course I didn't get a picture of all the kids, but we had a great time!

Raking Leaves

The city planted trees along the entire street. The are gorgeous and we love them. Unfortunately, our house was one of the few that doesn't have a tree since we are on the corner of the circle. So all summer the kids run to the neighbor's trees to play in the shade. All summer I wished we had a tree in our front yard...until now. These trees drop SO many leaves that the ground gets covered. We're lucky bc we only have to rake up the leaves that blow into the yard. Of course now the kids are running into the neighbor's yards to play in their leaves. We saw Annette raking up her leaves so we grabbed our rake and headed over to help.

Discovery Gateway

Brayden's preschool class had a field trip to the Children's Museum. I was a little worried how Brynlee would do since it was right during her nap, but she did great and loved it! We were able to invite friends, so we invited Boston and Easton to come with us. They came a little bit later after Boston got out of his preschool class.  Eventhough we've been here a ton of times, I still took lots of pictures. Oh well! Here goes! 

 This is the first time the kids played in the little house. Brooklyn loved being in the little kitchen and cooking.

 We get a picture on the swan every time we go. It's fun to see how quickly they are growing up!

 With Boston and Easton. It's fun because as soon as Brayden turns 5, these kids will be 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 yrs old. In the picture, however, it looks like Brooklyn would be the 4 yr old and Boston would be the 3 yr old. But nope! She's just tall and he's just small! These kids love playing with each other! Thanks Kesha for bringing them down to play with us!

ABC Book - H

Hat:

 Hippo:

Laundry

Every Monday we do all the laundry. Since you can see the entryway from the landing upstairs, the kids love to throw down all the clothes then go down and jump in them. Personally, I think it's gross to roll around in dirty clothes, but they love it!

 On a side note, this is Brynlee's favorite spot to hang out. I usually have to put the stool on the counter, but whenever I forget she will be up there without me even knowing. Hopefully this is foreshadowing a love of doing the dishes in the near future :)

Brewer Family Minute to Win it Halloween Party

My sister Rachelle and I had the idea to do a Minute to Win it Halloween Party. We spent weeks planning and getting it ready it was SO much fun. I think everyone was a little skeptical, thinking they would play the games just to "humor" us. But they were all surprised with how much fun it was. The best part was that Ryon and Jana came down from Idaho that night bc they were taking their family to Mexico and leaving from the SLC airport early the next morning. We started the night off in the basement with dinner...chili served from a pumpkin along with all the creepy appetizers everyone brought. We had a fun backdrop set up to take pictures.

Then we went upstairs where all the games were. We had 4 rooms, each with 3 games. Every time we rotated rooms we were with different people so it was fun to have a chance to see everyone try these fun games. Here are a few that we did. Nate is trying to bounce a ping pong ball onto a piece of bread covered in peanut butter. In this room you also had to try and stack 3 golf balls on top of each other...not so easy.

 In the kitchen one of the games was Drop, Sink, Clink. You had 10 pennies you dropped into the water, trying to get them into different dishes with different point values. I love Josh's face in this picture...he didn't look too happy.

 Here Ali is trying to blow bubbles across the room before they pop.

 Josh and Nate are "bowling" using golf balls they have to drop through empty wrapping paper rolls. We had 3 markers set up that they had to try and knock down.

 Rachelle made these yummy witch pudding cups.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable evening. Since there are so many kids, the adults rarely get to play games with each other. So this was perfect since the kids were pretty entertained with everything going on. Thanks everyone for coming!

The Dryer

The second that I go to switch the clothes in the laundry room, Brynlee makes a run for it. She LOVES to climb in...she usually doesn't even wait until I get all the clothes out. The first time I let her climb in she stayed in and played for about 25 minutes. Now she'll hang out for a few minutes then climbs out and is on her way.

ABC Book - G

Golf:

Happy Birthday Brynlee!!!

We had a very low key, enjoyable day to celebrate Brynlee's birthday. The kids had school in the morning, so I got to hang and out and snuggle this girl:

 My mom stopped by after work to give Brynlee a present. Of course Brayden and Brooklyn seemed to enjoy it more than her:

 For the evening we headed over to the Ericson's to eat dinner and relax. They made straganoff for us and baked a pizza for the kids...Brynlee's favorite!

 Since the other 2 kids each have a couch, I had to get Brynlee her own. Now they can hopefully stop fighting over them.

 When I googled "toys for 1 yr old" this zebra toy came up as one of the top toys on a couple different websites. When I stopped at Kid 2 Kid, they happened to have one so I grabbed it. Brynlee is still a little short reach the ground with both feet, but she has loved it anyway!

Brayden and Brooklyn are such good helpers!

 Our little family:

 The birthday girl:

I'm not a cake maker, especially bc Josh's family doesn't eat cake. When I saw this little puppy cake at Walmart I thought it was adorable and perfect!

  Brynlee loved the sugar, but wasn't a fan of all the frosting on her fingers. She made a mess, however, so it was still fun.

 The birthday cake we got everyone else was chocolate, so we of course had to get Brayden his own little cupcake. So high maintenance!

 No better way to clean a messy 1 yr old than in the sink!!!

 Happy Birthday Brynlee! We love you!