Happy Halloween!

Halloween has been going on all week in our house with a pre- school costume parade, trunk or treat at church last night, and trick or treating tonight.... definite maximum Halloween coverage this year!


This is Lily last night before going to the trunk or treat. If you can't tell what she is she is supposed to be "Jitterbug Judy."


Don't you just love that poodle skirt!


Katy is getting ready for the evening's festivities.


Hooray for Halloween!


Katy is a fairy, Noah is a ghoul of some sort, and Lily decided to go with the princess costume from last year minus the pretty hat that goes with it.


This is Noah and his friend Lucas who is an expired milk carton. I thought that was way cute! Check out the mold spores at the bottom of the carton.


I went went around our neighborhood with all three of them and hit about 6 houses and they got plenty of loot. Then we went back to the house because it started to rain pretty hard and so we could visit with Nana. She had been out of town for about 10 days and the girl's couldn't wait to see her. Later Travis took Noah out with his friend Anthony to hit the neighborhood next to ours..... oh, so much candy! Lily is not a night owl and prefers to go to bed early... she was asleep by 7:45, so when Noah returned he and Katy sorted through all of the goods. Happy Halloween!

Bright Star

Noah was selected by his teacher as the bright star of the month! Mrs. Ehrlich sent home a letter saying.... A Bright Star is chosen in every homeroom each month as a way to recognize students for outstanding behavior and peer relationships. Your child brightens the path of others by demonstrating good citizenship at school.


These are all of the bright stars for the month.


Noah showing his "Time to Shine" award.


I just want to hug him and squeeze him!


We are so proud of our boy!

A few of the cutie pies....

Meet Our New Bear!

This afternoon the cub scouts met at Blankets Creek Park for a Pack Meeting. Noah earned several awards and has completed the Wolf trail and is now on the Bear trail. We are so proud of our little man!


Love that bear paw!


It won't be long before Noah is taller than me- yikes! I love you Noah!


Noah giving his Dad his wolf pin. It was so sweet!

The handsome Mortimer men.

Articles of Faith of Mormon Culture

I thought this was really cute and so true. Well, all of it except for the Glenn Beck part which made we want to gag. I am sure I am one of a very few latter day-saints that is not a fan of his.

1. We believe in SUVs and minivans, as the form of transportation, and in knee length
shorts, which are always nice, and in multilevel marking.

2. We believe that church ball players should be punished for their own fouls, and not for unsportsmanlike aggression.

3. We believe that through bread crumbs, cheese, creamy soups, and rice, all casseroles can be saved through obedience to ward cookbooks and creativity in the mixing bowl.

4. We believe that the first layers and ingredients of the Dip are: first, beans; second, cheese; third, chopped tomatoes; fourth, the gift of sour cream; fifth, olives; sixth, salsa; seventh, guacamole, that is, if you have it.

5. We believe that a Mormon should have a distinguished or a cute name, that it is appropriate
to name a child after a church leader or a historical figure including an ancestor, that alternative spellings and French prefixes only add to a name, and that when referring to the names of General Authorities, middle initials should be a part thereof.

6. We believe in the same wall decor that exists in many Mormon homes, namely, framed family proclamations, vinyl lettering, inspirational word signs, family photos, pictures of temples and Jesus, and so forth.

7. We believe in the gift of the re-gift, church books, crafts, family photos, baked goods,
emergency supply kits, and so forth.

8. We believe in sparkling grape juice so long as it is nonalcoholic; we also believe in bringing root beer and sprite to ward parties.

9. We believe in all that we have scrapbooked, all that we will now scrapbook, and we believe that we will yet scrapbook many great and important things pertaining to our family, friends, pets, and vacations.

10. We believe in the literal mixing of ketchup and mayo and in the generous application
of ranch dressing; that CBAs (church-based acronyms) will be used to describe YM/YW, PEC, the Y, NCMO, and CTR; that Mitt Romney will get Mormons to vote for him any time he runs; and, that the Mormons will enjoy reading Twilight and The Work and the Glory.

11. We claim the privilege of trying to identify common acquaintances with any visitor at church, and allow all other people at church the same privilege, and let them name drop the names of Famous and general authorities how, where, or what they may.

12. We believe in being subject to scoutmasters, pampered chef hostesses, and the writers of
the U.S. News and World Report Rankings for professional schools, and in obeying, honoring, and sustaining Glenn Beck.

13. We believe in being above average, good at crafts, optimistic, and being fifteen minutes late everywhere we go. Indeed, we may say that we follow BYU football. We believe rumors about famous people joining the church, we hope to meet the three Nephites, we have endured many pyramid schemes, and hope to be able to endure all pyramid schemes. If there is anything cheap, free, sold in bulk, or given away when somebody is moving, we seek after
these things.

Go Noah... Go Noah... Go Noah!!

Today Noah brought home his first 3rd grade report card with actual grades, not just S's and N's. Drum roll please..... and,he made honor roll!!! Yay, Noah!!!! We are going to give him $3 for every A, $2 for every B, and $1 for every C.... money is a huge motivator for him. He was so excited that he earned $21. We 're so proud of you Noah!

Atlanta

Last weekend Travis took us on a little tour of downtown and showed us some of the things he is learning about in school. It involves traffic and transportation stuff and is really pretty interesting. I enjoyed seeing things I hadn't seen in years and it brought back so many memories from when I lived here about 15 years ago. I took these pictures from the car....




GA Tech Campus...









CNN Center



Five points






Near Lenox mall

Happy Birthday to Me

Another year older... wow, the time really flies!


The kids got me an ice cream cake is from Bruster's.


Me and my baby. She is so cute and talking up a storm now. I think "mine" and "no" are her favorite words.


Mom and her 41 year old baby.... Noah too.


My Lily bug


M & T...

Meet Pepper!

Last weekend we got a dog! She is an older puppy... a dachshund and fox terrier mix. She was at Petsmart as one of the adoptable dogs the Humane Society brings up there on the weekends. It was a cool, rainy day and I just hopped out of the car to take a look so the kids didn't have to get out in the rain. Once I found her and held her I didn't want to put her down again.... you know how that goes! So, between me and Travis we let the kids see her in shifts and they fell in love with her immediately. It just felt right and we lucked out because she is a wonderful dog. She is very gentle with the kids and loves to be around all of us..... either being held or sitting next to us. She is very playful and wants to chew up anything that is left on the floor... stuffed animals, anything plastic, and crayons. Crayons seem to be her favorite. It's kind of nice because the kids are picking up after themselves more because if they don't then Pepper will probably get it!


Noah is so happy to have a dog!


Pepper will never want for love again because the kids fight over who can hold her.


Here she is chasing a little red light on the floor... she goes crazy trying to get it.


Lily is trying to be gentle... we are always telling the kids to give gentle hugs.


So sweet!


Now that we have a dog Katy says dog all the time or "Peppuh"


We love this dog!

"Wetlanta"

The Atlanta area had flooding this week, the likes of which haven't been experienced in 15 years. It was pretty crazy yesterday trying to get around because lots of streets were closed due to flooding.... Here are a few of the things we saw....

White Water Rafting.....

Another borrowed post from Shannon's blog.....

I'll soon be able to sit down and post all about the wonderful weekend I just got back from. But in short, myself and 7 of my friends from GA got together in a super cute cabin in Blue Ridge, GA for a weekend. One of the activities we did was go white water rafting down the Ocoee river.

7 out of 8 of our group waiting for our turn down the river! Meredith, Sarah, Mary Jo, Siciley, Rebecca, Brenda and myself-- Amber was taking the picture.

Fresh faced and ready to go!!!

Amber was practicing.. hard!

This guy that you can't see very good was the most beautiful rafting instructor our there!!! Too bad he was with a different company!

Before risking our lives!

and here we go!

Amber and Merediths raft

So our guide, Greg, had us play a little game of "trust".. where we all had to stand on the side of the raft and hold hands and whoever touches grey in the middle gets pushed into the water. He then makes us let go of hands and just balance. Needless to say, we were all thrown into the water. Thank you Greg!

This poor group got stuck on the rocks and their guide made them all get out to get in unstuck..

***These were all pictures taken by the company as we were coming by. The first two shots are Ambers and Merediths raft with Amber in the front and Meredith in the orange.

***This was our raft of Siciley, Mary Jo, myself, Brenda, Sarah and Rebecca***

Siciley was fortunate (or unfortunate) to "ride the bull"

Yup- those are her feet in the air there!

The funny thing about these pictures is good ol Mary Jo in the back smiling for the camera each time!

Before we finished our run, Greg took us down these rapids that were pretty intense. I guess it was called "Hero"... well needless to say, because we followed his directions, our whole raft tipped and we all fell out!!! Poor Sarah- she was stuck under the raft and for some off reason, she thought she was supposed to stay there. So she did.. and she waited for all of us to come underneath the raft too!!! Greg rescued her but boy did we have a good laugh! This was right after he said no matter what, do not stay under the raft should it tip.

We survived! And we're STILL smiling!! It was awesome!!

Blue Ridge, GA Weekend

I haven't had time to blog about my girl's weekend to Blue Ridge a couple of weeks ago and my friend Shannon was nice enough to let me borrow the post she did on her blog.... http://harrisfamily2001.blogspot.com/

Thanks, Shannon!!
*************************************************************************************
A much needed NO KIDS weekend!

6weeks or so ago, we decided it was time to start planning a girls weekend. Sarah P booked the cabin and 8 of us committed. Then we waited and waited and waited and waited. This was especially exciting for me since these were my friends that live in Woodstock so I was super excited to see them again.

Friday came and I dropped the kids off and headed out to GA. What was supposed to be a 3.5hr drive for me turned out 4.5hrs since of course I got lost. But I did make it to beautiful Blue Ridge! Our cabin was little but super cute!!!

The cabin had a hot tub that was supppppposed to fit 6 people... so we tried it out.

We got 5....
How bout 6...

only 7??? Nope, for a few moments, we had all 8 of us in this puppy!!
Where'd the water go?!?!?

We played some fun cardgames!!

Here's the group of us right before rafting
And after.. nothing like a lunch at Sonic!!

Saturday night we decided to check out the town of McCaysville, GA.... Cute street name huh?
This was one lucky Indian!

I crossed the line!!

This was the Mexican restaurant where we learned that enchilada/taco seasoned water can be substituted for mild salsa.... huh. Thanks again Amber for dinner!!

Only in small southern towns can you find this!
Something we all should follow!

Little sleep and good friends make for one tired group!
But that didn't stop us for a round of Phase 10!

And then it was time to go home. It was a super fun weekend and I'm so glad we were all able to make it!! Hopefully we can do this more often! And I only got lost once going home! I ended up driving through some national forest I don't remember seeing before but it sure was a pretty drive even though it added about 20 extra miles!

Thank you ladies!!!