Dress it up

Once again, Crowdtap has seen fit to allow me into one of their sample shares. While I've received jeans and tops and accessories, my favorite is always their dresses. Their dresses are always fit so beautifully on me and are so comfortable all at the same time. And while I think they are a bit pricey (or maybe I'm just cheap) they do have some great sales!

 

The first one I tried on was a stripes long sleeve dress with a belt. It wasn't my favorite. I'm not a huge fan of tight sleeves. However, I liked the belt. Who knew? I've avoided belts on dresses and tunics forever!

 

 

This is actually the one I ended up getting. I loved the color and the fit. It is so comfortable on, usually I end up changing as soon as I get home from work but with this dress on I wear it until bedtime! It's my absolute new favorite dress to wear!

 

Tai picked this dress. It looks so cute with black leggings or black boots. She tried on so many dresses I know it was a hard choice for her! Aubrey had to be in the picture, too. Too bad little girl's dresses aren't included in the sample share, Aubrey found several she wanted!

 

I had to try on one last dress, just to be sure I was making the right choice. I was! This dress was beautiful on the hanger...not so much on me!

 

This is the dress I got (http://oldnavy.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=86263&vid=1&pid=330134022)  but in a more wine/purple color, not this bright purple...although I do like that one too!

 

Thank you again Old Navy and Crowdtap for an amazing sample share!

The Writing on the Wall

After living in New Mexico for a year, in which the boys have attended Petroglyph Elementary, and passing the Petroglyph National Park signs daily on my commute to work, we decided it was high time we actually visited these "petroglyphs". It's like living in San Fransico and not seeing the Golden Gate Bridge...or New York City and not seeing the Statue of Liberty or Seattle and not seeing the Space Needle....

 

Ok, so not that dramatic, but they were still cool. And in Albuquerque we sometimes find ourselves a bit desperate for entertainment.

 

We went to the information cabin to find out which trail we should take. While we were looking forward to something big and exciting, Aubrey complains if she has to walk from the car to the house so we knew we couldn't do anything strenuous.

 

Here we are the beginning of the trail.

 

While we didn't take pictures of everything we saw, we did take quite a few. This first one is a lizard playing ping pong. Who knew they had ping pong back then?! :)

 



 

What I can only guess is a map?

 

Jeremiah got a kick out of this one. The world's first drawn sad face.

 

See. You can still see the trail head and Aubrey is already asking for something to drink.

The view from the beginning of the hike. It was a beautiful day.

 

The boys LOVED the hike. They were always in front and loved to climb on the rocks. They gave us a heart attack a few times because the rocks they chose to climb on happened to be part of a small cliff...just big enough to break their heads open.

 

At this point I was literally holding her hand to keep her moving. But she was a good sport and trucked along...until we started our descent, at that point Jeremiah and I took turns holding her. What a princess.

 

Aubrey and I hung out while the boys went up a little further with Jeremiah. I think they could have spent most of the day there playing around and climbing on things. I don't know if they even stopped to look at any of the actual petroglyphs, although I hear that our hike was one of the smaller hikes. We need to give Aubrey a 5-hour energy drink next time and try a bigger hike :) In her defense, though, it was hot, but it wasn't more than a 1/4-mile up and 1/4-mile down. But she's cute so we don't complain.

A Transylvania Halloween Party!

Thanks (yet again!) to Crowdtap, I was able to throw a party for my kids and their friends.

 

But not just any party. A Hotel Transylvania Halloween party!

 

My kids have seen the preview dozens of times and can't wait for it to be available at the Dollar Movies (because let's be honest, we're too poor to go to the regular theater these days!). The second best thing I could do for them was to throw them a party, right?

 

I'm really not always that creative at party-planning. And that is why I am so thankful for my Pinterest account. I found such cute ideas, most of which required time and money, both of which are in limited supply, but it did get my creative juice flowing :)

 

Want some monster juice? Witch's brew? Goblin blood? The kids came up with several names for these drinks. I love how easy they were. Green koolaid poured into clear plastic cups with perma-scowls on them!

 

 

Love the cupcake holder? Dollar store! The pumpkins were set out so the kids could color on them.

 

See all those cobwebs in the background? When was the last time I dusted?! :)

Who doesn't love worms in dirt, especially when they taste exactly like pudding, Oreos, and gummy worms?!

 

I just can't get over the dollar store cupcake holder. Unbelievably cute. The cupcakes weren't that bad either :)

Amaia was a little creeped out by all our Halloween banter. So what if I pretended I was a zombie and tried to eat her arm?!

 



The kids watched an extended sneak peek of the movie and then a Shrek Halloween cartoon, just to keep the scariness alive.

 



 

While the kids watched the show and played the Hotel Transylvania games online, we prepared for the following:

 

Want to feel brains?! I mean...ramen noodles?!?!

 

This was my favorite...as long as the kids didn't smell it. Chunky salsa = vomit.

 

Yeah...I still look at chunky salsa with a bit of hesitation.

 

Peeled grapes as eyeballs. None of the kids guessed this one.

 

The most convincing? A peeled tomato apparently feels very much like a heart. Our EMT friend said so himself :)

 

Check out these looks of disgust...

 

Our next activity was cupcake decorating. We had different color frostings, sprinkles, and M&Ms to decorate with.

 

 

Once the kids were done decorating, we added monster "eyes" - Dum Dum suckers with a peach ring wrapped around it.

 

And then, because we hadn't done enough, we colored pumpkins. I decided not to carve or paint because of the mess factor and the age of most of the kids (5 or under) but washable markers were awesome! If they messed up or changed their mind a baby wipe quickly cleaned off the pumpkin and the kids could start over. Hayden, Roman, and Aubrey continued to work on their pumpkins for several hours the next day!

 

Each kid was sent home with their colored pumpkin and a packet of Hotel Transylvania coloring pages!

How many Hjelms does it take to hold a reunion??

You know those really long blog posts that sort of overwhelm you so you put them off far. too. long? Yup, this is one of those. Our reunion was towards the end of June and it's now beginning of October. We're in a whole different season now. Geez.

 

So the Hjelm reunion was from June 21-24, 2012. We weren't sure we were going to be able to go, flying five people out is so pricey! Luckily I have amazing parents who helped us out.

 

We'd already been in Washington for a few days, if you remember a few posts ago Hayden was baptized on June 21. We literally drove up to Anacortes from the church.

 

After settling into our own cabins, and the boys taking far too long to determine which bunk bed they would sleep in (do the math...there are 5 sets of bunk beds and only 5 of us...there's too many to choose from!)...we headed to the main cabin for game.

 

 Although, on a side note, I suppose having extra beds helped with the fact the boys invited their cousins to spend the night every night we were there :)

 

The kids were introduced to Twister, something I will only let them play until they hit puberty, and then it just becomes a little "friendly"...or is it just me?

 

 

 

Everyone pushed the girls and I to play, too. Check out photo #2, can you guess who won? (Hint, it wasn't me...I'm pretty sure I was the first one out!).

 

Roman, who isn't super competitive (sometimes) preferred to call the moves instead of play. He's also a bit clumsy so Twister may not be the game for him.

 

Love this picture...Bryan is totally asleep and my sweet nephew Bryce made himself comfortable.

While the rest of us were being social....ok, just kidding. Jeremiah and Adam played a lot of ping pong. It's Jeremiah's "thing", he loves the game. He also learned a game called Settlers of Catan that I rolled my eyes out, it looked so boring...and now we're the proud owners of the game and we play it often. A lot funner than it looks, although Jeremiah beats me every time.

 



Baby Jacob...last time I saw him he was only 2 months old. He's so big (and cute!) now!

 



 

My Aunt Denise is super creative and she's so good with kids. She brought yarn for the kids to make dreamcatchers with. Aubrey just loved to cut the yarn. She literally sat there for two hours and just cut up yarn. I'm pretty sure this was her first time with scissors so she had some catching up to do. The boys, though, made some dreamcatchers and were so excited to put it by their pillow that night.

 

Rix made a big dreamcatcher. I don't think my boys' were that big, and to be honest I don't even know if Rix finished his. :)

 

These were a big hit with the kids. They were also the source of a lot of fighting because there were only two and so many kids wanted to jump on them. Maybe a great Christmas present?

The view from the main cabin...the fence is there because it's pretty marshy out past the fence. It's dangerous. So naturally we found Cole out there one day :)

 

Ana Lee was really good with the kids. She had the patience to sit down and play a Book of Mormon game with Hayden and Rix...aka oil and water.

 

Mom/Nana making popcorn for the kids for movie night.

 

All the kids got to get their pajamas on and bring a pillow and blanket for movie night. They were all so cute huddled up together and eating their popcorn.

 

Uncle Ron, Aunt Sue, and Jeremiah playing Settlers of Catan. It was Hawaiian night :)

 

We finally agreed to allow a sleepover with Aubrey and Madelynn. I thought for sure they would keep each other up or Madelynn would cry for her mom, but they insisted on sleeping in the same bed and did so well. Aubrey even used Madelynn (who luckly sleeps like a rock) as a pillow.

Family Pictures: We first took turns taking pictures of our kids. I got SO frustrated with them, in fact Jeremiah took a picture of me storming off (and no, it won't be on the blog). I couldn't get all three to look and me and smile at the same time. I must have taken 30 pictures before giving up. The last of the three is one Carissa took. They must love her more :)

 



 

 

Mom and Dad (Nana and Papa) with all the grandkids.

 

 

The whole family. A good looking bunch!

 

After pictures we changed clothes and went to the beach. It was more rocky than sandy but the kids loved playing in the sand/rocks and throwing rocks into the water.

 

 

This is a picture that will be in one of those video slideshows at Hayden's wedding. He didn't want to walk to the bathrooms so he went in the driftwood. Classy.

 

This is a sort-of-after shot, he was buried up to his neck but he sat up. Jack is such a silly boy.

 

Baby Jake. Check out the red hair! Love it!

 

My niece Anslee. This was my first time seeing her and I instantly fell in love with her. She is chunky just like Aubrey was and she totally made me want to have another baby (which is why Jeremiah gave me a time limit on holding her...not that I followed it).

 

So Bryan told the kids the next kid to bug him would be thrown in the water, so of course Roman took that as a challenge and...well, this is what happened...

 

I wish I had a zoom lens, Roman's face was of pure.freaking. terror. I felt so sorry for him, and I really didn't want him to get wet, but he sort of asked for it.

 

Luckily Bryan just freaked him out a little (well, a lot) and then put him back down. Poor kid learned his lesson. Don't bug Bryan :)

 

 

Here's some of the young cousins playing games before cupcake decorating. Left to right: Bryce, Cole, Roman, Olivia, Jack, Charlie.

 

Left to right - Evangeline, Rix, Hayden, Sophie

 

And Aubrey, who RUINED her pajama pants after running through the forest with her long pants on.

 

It was Evangeline's birthday so all the kids got to decorate their own cupcakes.

 

We had such a great time at the reunion. I'm so so happy we had the chance to go and see our cousins again. I realize I didn't take any photos of some of our older cousins, the ones that we grew up with. I love my family, it is so great that we can get together after not seeing each other for years and it feels like it was just yesteryday. We had fun washing dishes together (and getting soaked in the process), hiking (even if the hike was far longer and steeper than we thought!), and playing games. I loved getting to know some of my cousin's sweet kids and it was great to see my kids get to know some of their cousins. My parents, Uncle Ron, and Aunt Jodi did a great job planning the reunion, it was laid back (I read a whole book!) but so much fun and I can't wait for the next reunion!