HaLLoWeEn fEsTiViTiEs

Halloween seemed to sneak up on me this year!  I love Halloween because it is the kickoff to the holiday season.  I LOVE this time of year.  It finally starts to cool off here in Phoenix.  We can't carve pumpkins TOO early though, or they will mold in a matter of days, because the whether is still fairly warm (possibly 90's during the day - cooler at night).  We carved our pumpkins a couple days before the big night...

Bryan was "too old" to dress up this year.  Morgan was not ready to give up the candy, so she went ahead and dressed up as an angel.  Colton and Kyle were both ninjas.  I wore a witch hat (about as dressed up as I get for Halloween ;)

 Morgan with her friends before trick-or-treating!  She has some really awesome friends!

It was a fun night for all!

trip to SALT LAKE CITY with Mark!

Mark had a work conference in Salt Lake City this month.  He left on Tuesday night.  I met up with him on Wednesday night, and my mom was kind enough to stay with my kids while we went off to work PLAY for the rest of the week.  Yay!!  I spent the previous week looking up the best places to eat in the area, and fun things to do.  Usually when I look at activities for destinations we are going to, I look for kid-friendly things.  It's not very often that I get to just think of things for only Mark and I.  It was fun!

I got in kind of late Wednesday night.  Thursday morning we ate breakfast at the Grand American Hotel (where we were staying - POSH hotel!).  Then we went to the Salt Lake Temple to do a session.  Sessions there are so fun because they are live!  That was the first time I had done a session there.  It is a BEAUTIFUL temple!  For lunch we went to the original Red Iguana.  Their claim to fame was the many moles they have on the menu.  We tried a sampler plate and picked some yummy dishes out.  In the afternoon we went to the FastKart Indoor Speedway to race go-carts.  We had the track to ourselves and did about 20 laps.  That was SO fun!  For dinner we went to a VERY ROMANTIC little place called Fresco Italian Cafe (I had made reservations for all the restaurants a week before coming).  After dinner we went to Fear Factory, a VERY scary haunted house.  We packed a TON of activities into this trip.

Friday morning we ate breakfast at Bruges Waffles, a little hole in the wall place with THE MOST AMAZING WAFFLES.  I have never had such yummy waffles!  From there we went and did some shopping at Thanksgiving Point, and then headed back to Salt Lake for lunch at Pago (really, really yummy!).  Then we drove to Park City where we rented bikes and went for a ride on some trails...

After our ride we went to the St. Regis Hotel to eat at the J & G Grill (a 5 star restaurant belonging to Jean-Georges', a famous chef).  It was located above the hotel at the base of Deer Valley Ski Resort.  The setting was magnificent.  We took a tram to the restaurant and were seated in a beautiful dining room with gorgeous views of the surrounding mountains.  We ordered Black Truffle Pizza with Fontina Cheese as an appetizer, then I had Roasted Cod with Malaysian Chili Sauce and Thai Basil.  For dessert we shared the most amazing Salted Caramel Ice Cream Sundae with Peanuts and Candied Popcorn.  Yum!  After the restaurant we drove back to Salt Lake and saw "Taken 2" at a movie theater.

Saturday we met up with Mark's parents, his brother Brad, and his sister Jen and her husband Jace.  Everyone went up the canyon to Ruth's Diner (featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives).  I had some amazing french toast and their famous biscuits.  After that Mark had to go teach a class at his conference for a short time.  His parents and I went and hung out at the local farmer's market.  Then we picked Mark up and went to meet up with Brad and his friend at Mark's parents new house (it was about 1 month away from being finished and ready for moving in).  We ate lunch at Zupa's (yum!).  Then we did a little shopping until dinner, when we went to the Market Street Grill for some yummy seafood.  

Sunday morning we had just enough time for a quick breakfast at The Original Pancake House - again, so good!  Can you tell that food was a major part of our trip?  We said goodbye to Mark's parents and Brad and headed to the airport.  Very fun trip!!

In studying up on places to eat, here was our list.  Some we tried, and others we will have to try next time since there wasn't enough time to do them all (darn!):

• Joseph Smith Memorial Building - "The Roof"
• The Lion House Pantry
• Takashi (sushi)
• Red Iguana (mexican)
• Market Street Grill (seafood)
• Forage (new american) - only serve dinner
• Chanon Thai Cafe (lunch/dinner)
• Fresco Italian Cafe (romanic - reservations required)
• Pago (farm-fresh artisan - brunch/lunch/dinner)
• Bruges Waffles
• The Blue Iguana (Park City) - mexican
• Pat's BBQ (ribs and burnt ends are faves) - was on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives
• J&G Grill (Park City) - five star
• Zupa's (cheap) - unique soups, salads, sandwiches
• Settebello (pizza) - owners from Napoli & order ingredients from there
• Ruth's Diner (great breakfast) - on Diner's, Drive-Ins, and Dives
• Sawadee's (Thai)
• Bombay House (Indian)

Fast Sunday's

I HAD to snap these pictures of what our house is like when fasting ends on Fast Sunday (the first Sunday of every month).  Mark and I decided that 3pm is when we have dinner on Fast Sunday.  Fasting is supposed to begin after dinner on Saturday night and last until dinner on Sunday night.  When 3pm hits it is a free for all in the kitchen.  I try to have a regular dinner ready to go, but if I don't have it ready RIGHT THEN, just move out of the way because you might get run over in the stampede for the kitchen.

MORGAN is THIRTEEN!

Morgan hit a major milestone this year as she STARTED JUNIOR HIGH!  I always laugh when I take my kids to and from Junior High because the girls are all SO MUCH taller than the boys at that age!  They tower over them!  It just makes me chuckle.

Anyway, Morgan has grown more talented and more beautiful every year.  She is an AMAZING writer.  Like, BEYOND amazing.  I love to read anything she writes.  It's so descriptive - like I'm reading a professional author's novel!  She has become very talented at doing her hair.  I had a mom tell me that she always looks forward to seeing how Morgan does her hair each week when she comes to church.  Morgan is very creative.  She loves to create beautiful and crafty things.  She likes to design.  She will cut apart a shirt and reinvent it into a completely different piece of clothing.

Anyway, today we were able to celebrate her birthday! Grandma and grandpa Bybee came, along with Josh, Sarah, and Jace.

She received a new Nintendo DS game from Colton...

Some lip gloss, earrings, and a necklace from Kyle...

A beautiful heat resistant case for her flat iron, handmade by grandma from grandma and grandpa Bybee...

A selection of sparkly nail polishes from Mark and I...

Mark and I also gave her a series of books she had asked for called, "Pretty Little Liars",

...and another series she was VERY excited about!

I also found her this SO CUTE dress!  She was very excited.

We LOVE our little girl!  Even though she is now the same height as me, she will ALWAYS be our little girl.  She is an adorable sweetheart who amazes me with her strength and her conviction.  I am so excited to see where she decides to go with her life.

My sister Brittany surprised us by stopping by for a few hours the same night we were celebrating Morgan's birthday.  Her birthday was a few days later, so my mom (knowing Brittany was coming) surprised her with a birthday cake!  Brittany has a new job on a cruise ship, so we won't get to see much of her since they usually work for several months at a time without even a day off.  She wanted to see us before leaving, so she drove from California to leave her car with my mom and dad, spend a few hours with us, then hop on a plane to get ready for her cruise!

The next night Morgan invited some friends over for a birthday party.  They had  pizza and then opened presents.

Then they played a game of 007.  This game involved us driving them (slowly) in the back of Mark's truck, over to the other side of our subdivision.  We dropped them off and the adults (me and my parents in Mark's truck, and Mark on his bike) drove back to my house and then slowly started driving back through the neighborhood toward where we had dropped them off.  The idea was for us to spot them before they could get back to our house.  If we spotted them, they had to come jump in the truck while we searched for the rest of the crew.  Bryan, Colton, and Kyle were playing too.  The kids split up into teams so no one was by themselves.  We had a BLAST!  We played three times before it was 10pm and time for kids to go home.  It was a fun party!

Saturday Nights with the CARROLL'S

We have some of the greatest friends.  We've known Josh and Sarah since the day we moved into the same apartments as them in Houston, Texas.  They were in our new ward and we became fast friends.  We've known them now for 12 years!  In Houston we would get together almost every weekend to hangout and play Cranium, or watch movies, or play the Wii.  They've babysat our kids when we've left town, and supported us and our children through a lot of milestones.  WE LOVE THEM!

When we moved to Arizona we REALLY missed them.  Lucky for us, they moved only a couple miles from us a couple years ago.  Now we're back to our regular Saturday night get togethers and LOVING IT!

Their son, Jace just fits right in with Colton and Kyle.  They love to play with him - especially Kyle.  It gives him the chance to be in the "big brother" role.  That's new for him since he is my youngest.

Here they are kicking back on our beanbag watching a movie together.  I love how Jace feels totally comfortable laying his feet across Colton, and Colton loves it!

Wolves visit the new Gilbert Temple!

Kyle is LOVING cub scouts!  For their activity today they visited the new Gilbert, Arizona temple, which is under construction.  We are SO EXCITED to have a Temple right across from our neighborhood!  We can't wait for it to be finished!  We found out it was going to be built just a few months before we moved here.  When we heard it was going to be 1/4 mile from our new house we just thought that it was perfect.  For us, the temple is a symbol of our ability to be together as a family FOREVER, not just "until death do us part".  Being married in the temple, by someone who holds the priesthood, "seals us" to our family so that if we keep our Heavenly Father's commandments, we can be with our family forever.

A temporary Visitor's Center was set up in a trailer adjacent to the construction site.  Our little Wolf den got to go inside and talk with someone about the temple.  They got to look at plans of the temple.  The highlight was when they each got to pick out a stone from a piece of granite that was supposed to be used on the temple, but had broken into a lot of pieces.  They let people who come by take a piece of the temple home with them!  The stone used for the temple has a lot of sparkly pieces in it that shine when you rotate the stone in the sun.  What a fun souvenir!

my husband is the BEST!

Mark surprised me this year with two dozen roses mixed with lilies for our anniversary.  We've been married for seventeen years!  I love him so much and he still knows how to make me smile and laugh.  I'm a lucky girl.

COLTON turns ELEVEN!

Colton is eleven years old today!  He got to open a couple of presents in the evening.  We were going to have his party on Saturday, so we let him open a few presents on his actual birthday to be able to do something fun on his actual day.  We played "hot and cold" while he searched for them.  He got a few books...

...and a body pillow he has been asking for.

On Saturday we had a family party at dinner time, and Colton got to invite two of his best friends.  Kyle had picked out several fun gifts for Colton from the dollar store...

Kyle really spoiled Colton with all kinds of fun surprises!  He sure LOVES his brother.

Grandma and grandpa Bybee and Aunt Heidi gave him a new CTR ring...

Morgan gave him a new Owl City CD...

...and his big gift was a Nintendo DS from Mark and I.  He was SO excited about that one!

We also gave him a white shirt and tie for Church (still cool, but not quite as exciting)...

...some more books...

...and a new boom box for his room.  He loves listening to music and John Bytheway talks as he goes to sleep at night.

His choice of cake this year was a Heath Bar cake with Pirouette cookies around the outside edges.  Getting a lot of candles on there Colton!

I LOVE MY COLTON!!