Mom's Halloween Party

Alex picked the Justice League for our costumes, which I was excited about because this was the first year he decided to participate in Halloween. Scout loves the Justice League so she was very excited to be Wonder Woman.

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Cru was Clark Kent mid-change to Superman.

Patio

Finally got the patio done. My dad gave us these stones over a year ago! We are slow but finally got it finished. The kids are so excited to have somewhere to ride their toys.
Big Thanks to Tracy for helping me remove sod, Nick for helping Alex and I dig down 6 inches, Huge thanks to Dero for helping us get the gravel and sand and for putting up the expense of that, And thanks to Rudy for the stones. We appreciate everyone who has helped us in this endeavour.

Started with gravel. We could have used a bit more but we made it work.

Added sand. 

Finally stones. It is beautiful. 

Girl's Trip 2014

We are trying to make a fun tradition of the Avalos girls leaving kids and family to get some quality R&R. That's what we did but we still needed more.

Tracy and Kristen at the Brigham Young Winter Home.

Stopped for a quick initiatory at the St. George Temple. I needed that.

This store was across from our hotel. We liked their selection.

This year we saw Joseph! Loved it!

The Beautiful women I got to spend the weekend with! I love them!!!!

Moab

Newspaper Rock Day 2

Woke up to this in camp.

Newspaper Rock on our way to Canyonlands, Day Two.

We has so much fun on our October Moab trip! We went from Thursday-Sunday. We left kind of late on Thursday so all we were able to do was set up camp and do half of Fins and Things. Friday we hiked in Zions and the kids had a blast! We made the mistake of running the other half of Fins and Things that night where Alex totally broke his ring and pinion which meant to jeep ride on Saturday. Saturday we all squeezed in our friend, more like Alex's brother from another mother, Mike's Tacoma and went to the needles district of Canyonlands. I have never been there and I have to say it was totally worth the long drive! I loved it! We ran a trail called Elephant Hill, I scare pretty easily anymore but Mike was a great drive and it was a pretty easy trail so we had so much fun! We try and explore a different part of Moab every time we go and we still have so much to see!

Moab is a four hour long car ride. Here are my little monsters being so good!

We packed books, coloring books, toys. They really did well. 

Camp night 1 eating dinner.

Mike trying to get little miss to eat her nuggets.

Arches Nation Park, Alex made it pretty far up the Balance Rock.

We took the kids on the Landscape Arch trial. I can't remember now but I think it was between 3-4 miles round trip. This is one of our rest stops. I love little miss' pose.

Little man had to stop and high five everyone along the trail. The tourists were loving it. The people he skipped over were sad and kept trying to go back and get in line.

Me and the monsters at the start of the Balance Rock Trail.

Landscape Arch

Little Miss and I trying to get the Double O arch in the background, it didn't work.

Couldn't get Little Miss to stop playing in the sand part of the trail.

The kids taking a rest stop on the balance arch trail. Isn't this back country gorgeous!

We stopped to eat lunch at Devil's Garden. Cru climbed on this rock and was pulling karate moves. It was hilarious

Taking a break on the Landscape Arch trail.

Heart Attack

Dad had a heart attack in October. Eeek it was super scary for the whole family but you can count on my dad to start cracking jokes the minute he comes out of surgery.

This a good reminder to thank my Daddy for all he does. I have a good and generous dad who always works hard to provide for his family. He lives up to his temple covenants and I appreciate all he does for me!

New Family Pics

New FHE

I love my monsters but, I call them "The Monsters" for a reason, they are a handful. Recently, our stake challenged us to set goals to make ourselves and our families stronger. Alex and I set the goal to hold consistent Family Home Evenings. We had been doing really good for about a month but were struggling because our kids were running wild the whole time. I was frustrated because I wasn't getting anything out of them, no one really was. Then, I came to the conclusion that to hold successful family home evenings I needed to get on the same page as my kids. The super key to Family Home evening with toddlers, just like everything else with toddlers, is preparation. It drove me to think of several FHE ideas that my kids would enjoy. Here is week one:

I gave everyone in the Family a coloring page related to the lesson to color while I read the scripture and we very briefly talked about how to wear the armor of God as protection. Afterwords, I gave the monsters each a helmet, shield, breast plate and sword I had purchased from our local DollarTree. It was a HUGE success. They sat still through the whole lesson, we all took something from it, and we had fun together as a family. Mission Accomplished!!!