We had the wonderful opportunity this morning to carve our first round of Jack-O-Lanterns. William needed a little bit of help in the design and carving of his, but Natalie was able to complete hers this year, entirely by herself. Yes, that even included taking out the guts. William, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with the inards of his pumpkin, and decided instead to cry at the sight.




After the completion of William's he is showing off how "cary" his pumpkin looks, with his own scary face; pretty fierce indeed. Natalie worked very meticulously on the carving of hers, but I believe this is the first year that she's done it all on her own, and she did very well. Perhaps I should be a little bit intimidated with how well she wielded that carving saw!

As always, it was loads of fun, and sticky goo. After Natalie's class trip tomorrow to the pumpkin patch, I am certain that we will have another round of carving yet to go.

What have we been doing since the last time I posted five long months ago? So much I'm hoping to write some quick blurbs to show you all whats been going down here!

First of all, we try to make as much family time as we can in the evenings, since daytime is totally taken by work, school and playschool. This first picture totally captured the mood of one of our family fun nights.

One of our favorite treats is going to the mall to have ice cream and pretzels (hence the Victoria Secret model in the background of William eating his ice cream.)

Both Natalie and William are into crafting, which entails markers, glue, scissors, and whatever they can find to use those materials on. (usually just paper, but when paper isn't around I usually find William like this.)

The first of February I was so feeling excited when I was at the store and picked up Natalie's favorite cast at the moment, High School Musical II Valentines for her to handout at school. WELL after much effort on my part to get her to write out the cards she insisted on making 25 of her own valentine cards. Every waking moment for the next two days I would find her cutting out her own hearts, and writing messages to her friends on them. They were "her" valentines.

William has had croup a few times this winter already, and finally the doctor just gave us a nebulizer of our own and said here keep this at home and when need it you have it. William has scared us a couple of times, visiting the ER once with his oxygen levels down in the low eighties. Here is a sweet picture of our boy having at treatment! (Oh the memories that brought back were tough) Though I'm happy to report he is doing very well right now, and is HEALTHY!

Natalie is the BIG 6!! Happy Birthday Natalie!! Of course her birthday had to be High School Musical II related, so everything was HSM from the cake, decorations, games, and even the presents!

I have been busy keeping up with Playschool, (going on my seventh month), volunteering in Natalies Kindergarten class once a week, and redocorating my craft room! (Still have to take pictures of the room)

Cameron stays busy at work, playing with the kidlets, and picking back up at one of his fabulous talents....drawing. Thats right! Cameron has drawn the new Frist Presidency of the church. It sure was fun watching him enjoy something he truely loves!

Busy times for our family, but we are keeping it all together!!

I am hoping to just post an update about each of us, I'll start with ME! I have opened and am running Kerry's Playschool a preschool and full time daycare center out of my home. I recently got certified to have 15 children in our home. I am so very excited to be doing this, I'm having a blast!
My days just fly by as we start off (7:00 AM) with preschool which means constant learning activities, stories, and outings until 11:00 AM, A quick runaround and outside playtime until noon, then its lunch, naps and time for moms and dads to come!
Running my own playschool is fabulous! I feel as though I'm on top of the world with these sweet children all around me.
By the time Dinner is done, we've played with our kids having some good family fun time, its bath time, and bedtime! I'm totally zonked by 8:00 although I still manage to stay up to watch my favorite reality shows on TV. And since 5:30 in the morning rolls around really fast, I am always in bed by 10 or shortly after! So sad, my staying up late nights are so gone!
Church is keeping me busy as well, I'm planning our next Super Saturday which is in a couple of weeks! We are making about 6 different crafts, starting with two sets of stacker's made with vinyl, an advent calendar made with vinyl, a cute recipe box, some rag garland, a CD scrapbook, and I think there are more but I just can't think of what they are! I will post pictures as soon as I'm done with all of my crafts!
Well that about sums up what I've been doing recently and for the last couple of months.

Cameron is doing well, working hard, being a great dad and bringing us all great joy everyday! I would never have gotten daycare up and running without Cameron, he worked so hard to get everything ready, and it was a lot of work! Two dump truck loads of gravel for our back yard, (all that had to be wheelbarrowed in) is wheelbarrowed a work? anchoring the swing set, moving all the outside toys, he did all the labor intensive work, what a man I tell you...what a man!

Natalie is so much fun to be around right now! A "big girl" going to Kindergarten now, she comes home with something new to tell us everyday! Yesterday she came home and told us she "kissed a boy" oh my goodness I thought I was going to throw up! HELLO SHE IS FIVE!!! I tried hard not to flip out, and told her boys are disgusting and we don't kiss boys until we are much older! AHHH!!! Where are the teachers! What makes me really crazy is last week she hugged a classmate on the way out the door and the teacher told them "hey we don't hug" What the heck? they can't hug but they can kiss? ahhhhh!!!!
Natalie also tells us what she wants to wear, and when like on P.E. Days she "can't" wear anything but sweats to school. And on art days she can't wear "nice" clothes. I tell ya since when did Kindergarten get so crazy? She is writing now, on her own, beginning to read, its just amazing what she comes home knowing.
One of my favorite little stories about Natalie right now is, that when she comes home from school and I'll ask "how was school today?" she just says what else but the usual "boring, didn't do anything." that answer makes me nutty! But then if I give the preschool kids something to color, or do and walk away for a minute I will hear Natty telling all the kids what to do, how to connect the dots, and how to write and that only babies scribble...She totally mimics her teacher and how sweet it is to listen to her. She even claps her hands to get their attention and all I can do is laugh in the kitchen while I listen in. Natty is a cute teacher!
William is doing fabulous learning to share his mommy and his toys! He really enjoys having other kids around to play with. And when he's had enough he literally tells them go away! He's learning to have quite the little attitude. William misses Natty while she is at school, the first few days he just cried for her to come home, and now he gets so busy that he forgets she's gone and is thrilled when he wakes up from nap time and she is home!
Well I think that's about it, We are so excited for next month to go visit our family in Ohio, natty can't wait to see all the cousins, and a real dinosaur museum!

Lets do some quick recaps of our summer starting with Natalie.

Our summer has been fabulous! Starting off with Natalie graduating from Preschool! The sweet little girl did so well singing her songs with the class, until they got to the song about going to Kindergarten, and she got the little Moore quiver in her lower lip and had a sad moment. Though she cheered right up when it was time for cookies and punch!

We have had a blast this summer going to the zoo where the kids didn't want to sit in our stroller but had to have the zoo wagon. Who would have thought that a little zoo Jeep could be so much fun?

We also have gone bowling with Nanny and Grandpa I love this picture of Natty and Nanny shooing the ball over.

We have hung out with our good friends going to the park, the playplace in Ft. Collins, etc. the picture here is of Natty, Lizzy(Richey) and William walking back to the car after a lunch date at Olive Garden in Ft. Collins.

Natalie is being such a wonderful big sister this summer, helping William do everything, (including good and bad) She is so very protective of him and he absolutly loves it! The can keep each other busy for hours!

Natalie just started Soccer pracitce this week, she was so excited to go and play we were all prepared, having got her a soccer ball, and shin guards (so cute in little sizes) even some cute soccer shorts. We get the to park, she sees all the kids and the field, and hides behind the garbage can scared to come out. Sweet girl Natty finally was coaxed out by Heidi (Lizzy's mom) and joined the team, after a few minutes of shyness all was well! She loved it and what a good kicker she is! Check out our star player! (hope i can figure out how to turn that picture)

Well its time for the little ones to wake up, Iwill be on to post more later!

Wow its seriously been a long time since I've blogged, Ooops! What have I been doing instead of blogging? Well I'm just about caught up with the kids' scrapbooks, yep only have one year left of Natalie before I'm totally caught up to date!!! A huge accomplishment for me! And the passion for scrapping is just building! Along with Scrapbooking, I've also been making tons of other stuff, altered coasters, stackers, board books, you name it and I've tried it. Its been a fun few months!
Also I've been getting the ball rolling on starting a daycare. I'm starting my own daycare/preschool! A ton of work to get started, but something I'm so excited to get started! I am hoping to open in August, in time for school to start! I will have two ladies to help me one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We CAN have 15 kids, but I'm thinking we'll stay at 10. I'll keep you all posted on that progress!
Natalie had Kindergarten round-up this week! oh my goodness I'm not sure who was more upset, me or her, thank goodness Cameron decided to surprise both Natty and I and showed up at the school for some moral support! Natty had been nervous all day, and when they called her name to go back and do the testing she burst into tears! Luckily her sweet new teacher has a way with the kiddos and was able to calm her down and get her back to the testing center! WOW! that was hard. I never thought I'd be one of those moms who cries when her kiddo goes to school, but oh yea, it was a rough day for me. That's my baby going to a big school, with big kids and a big classroom! Natalie did fabulous on her testing, 66 out of 72, and the one thing she "couldn't" do is draw a picture of a person. But check out what the teacher came back and told us. "Natalie drew a head and face, got to the shirt and was drawing something on the shirt, she didn't get to the legs, arms and the rest of the body." So the poor girl has and eye for detail and draws stuff on her peoples shirts! (gets that from daddy for sure) Natty just didn't get to finish her person! Made me laugh. I was proud of her for doing so well, as only in the last two months has she been able to write her name in a row, not all over the page, and she blew them away with writing her first and last name! OK...Ok... Mommy brag time is over! I just cant' believe I have a big girl now! Children grow up so fast these days!
William is growing up so fast, starting to talk, and is just so sweet! We have had to start some kind of timeout, but anytime we tell him no no... He looks down and out of the corner of his eye looks at us with the most pitiful cute face! Oh its hard to discipline when he does that!
Cameron is doing well, staying super busy at work, and church!
Cameron and I are soon celebrating our 6th wedding anniversary, we are heading to Utah this weekend to a first ever Icelandic mission reunion. and then we are going to hang out in Salt Lake City to have some much needed Rest and Relaxation! YEAH! My mom is keeping the kiddos for the weekend, so there will be no worries here! Hopefully we'll have some great pictures to share when we get back!
OH wait wait wait... gotta tell you about the psycho circus we went to. Our family was totally excited over a circus that comes to town every year, (though they are not that great the kids love to see the animals and talked about the elephants and tigers and monkey they were going to see that night, all day) We went to the circus even invited another family to go with us. First bad sign, it cost $20.00 to get in lucky we had buy one get one tickets and the kids were free. So we get in there, nothing... no animals, just a ton of half dressed ladies dancing around on ropes, jumping around. So I thought ok, maybe the animals were at the end or something. NOPE still no animals.. I got out the ticket to make sure I had read right, and yes there were supposed to be elephants, monkeys, a two headed pig, horses, and other animals! The show ended and NO animals NONE! I wasn't too happy, we just paid $40.00 between the two families to get in and let our kids see these pesky animals and they had nothing. Cameron and I went to find the "manager" or whoever was in charge, what do you know the crazy little Mexican lady we talked to in her broken English, said she didn't know who was in charge, and that she didn't know where the guy was. Cameron and I were thinking.. "sure I'd disappear too if I had a circus like that. " Still not giving up, we kept asking who was in charge, still amazing enough nobody knew who was in charge. Cameron took us home, and went back to find the guy who was in charge, and said we want our money back. to make this a bit shorter Cameron found they guy, and had to go back in the morning call the office number in Vegas, and see what they said. Cameron asked why the tickets said they had animals and there were no animals in the show.. the guy said "you wanna see monkey's? I'll show you my monkey's outback" Cameron just replies "I don't wanna see your monkey's dude" Turned out some animal activists in Colorado turned in the circus for not having any permits for the animals, and for that reason they couldn't bring the animals inside. (imagine a circus without a permit) YIKES!! Crazy, the guy still was not telling the audience that there were no animals, so Cameron told him if he didn't tell people there were no animals, that he was going to call the news and tell people himself. The man just told Cameron "don't threaten me" though Cameron really did call the news. The next afternoon Cameron was supposed to mean "Phil" to get his money back, he went and what do you know no "Phil" he called the 800 number back and finally found "Phil" and he handed him our $40.00 yeah! We got our money back, but man what a psycho circus that was!
WE had some good laughs about the "monkey" comment!
Thats all I have for now!

Woodpecker, Flooded basement, birthdays... we've had it all! Well its been an interesting non stop couple of months here at the big blue house! Starts off with the wonderful woodpecker story: I was minding my very own business at the dining room table, scrapping my last few minutes of quiet time away, while Cameron and Natalie were on their way home from getting pizza. I hear them come in from the garage, and I hear a little "screech" from Cameron thinking he probably had Natty in his hands and the pizza I got up to go to the door to help, and the door flies open and in flies a GIANT WOODPECKER! I'm not joking, this thing was huge and doing circles in our dining room. I being the calm woman I am around birds, started screaming bad things and covered my head and put my face up against the window in the dining room hoping the thing wouldn't touch me. (For those who don't know I am TERRIFIED of birds) So I'm screaming, William starts screaming and hits the floor, I still stay where I am and Natty is in the bathroom very calm with the door shut, telling me to come in there with William. (and who's the mom here) I finally make it to the bathroom with William, and we close the door, the bird flew upstairs, Cameron grabbed a towel and headed up to try and get it. All the while we in the bathroom, Natty is telling me and William, "its ok guys its just a birdie, he won't hurt" she was so not scared, and was very calm, unlike me and William.
I opened the door to peak out of the bathroom, and see Cameron holding the bird in his hands wrapped in a towel, NASTY! He asks me "what do I do with him?" well you could only imagine what I said to do with him, but we didn't want to let him go outside, because he's already pecked a huge hole in our house. So I tried to call animal control and since it was after hours, it says to call 911. Yeah right, like I was going to call 911 because I didn't know what to do with a woodpecker. Cameron held it for about 15 minutes, while I tried to figure out what to do with it, calling pest control, and so on. The thing was making me cringe, I could hear and see its beak moving, ah! Finally we decided to put it in a box till the morning (thinking ah its a woodpecker its gonna peck its way out) but still not knowing what to do with it so that's what I did, I found a box, and Cameron took it outside, he came in saying the Woodpecker flew away. I was thinking yea right... He tells me quietly that the thing stopped breathing because it was so scared. Ha I was so happy to hear that! BYE BYE Birdie!
All was good, we ate our pizza and shared the excitement again at the dinner table as the kids were super excited about a woodpecker.
By the way, Cameron had caught it up in Natty's room! At one point he said it clung on to the wall, and all he could think was it attaching itself to his head~ AHH so gross!!
Thinking that everything was great, the next morning I heard the woodpecker back on the house! I think we have an entire family and now have guilt because we probably killed one of its family members! Nah never mind no guilt here, Die birdie Die! But seriously we really do have another pecker on the house.
One more funny note, the missionaries do their laundry at our house once a week, and the towel Cameron grabbed happened to be the Elders towel. They called just a bit after all this happened and asked if they could come by and pick up their towel, I was busting up thinking umm... well I'll get you a new towel. But they came by and wanted to take the box that the woodpecker was in to another set of elders as a joke, heck I didn't care, as long as that bird wasn't coming in my house. We later heard that the elders wanted to take the beak off of the pecker and make a door knocker out of it for tracting... how nice!
We woke up early in the morning the next day to the lovely sound of a jack hammer and the beeping of construction equipment backing up. Thinking they were just working on the road or flushing the sew lines, which is known to happen at night on this road, since its busy, we went back to sleep. All to wake up again in the morning to the same noise, we look out the window and see that a water main had broken right outside our house. I go downstairs look outside ice is covering our street, our grass, our driveway, everywhere.. I knew it hadn't snowed yet, (though it was starting) so I look out the front window to see a nice fault line going through our grass. Then we see the wall across the street from us and its caved in, then I think of the basement, we go down, and there is water everywhere! Playroom, craft room, storage room it all has water in it, and it reeks! I tried to go out and get one of the workers to talk to me, slipping and sliding on the ice, since all the water froze, I finally get one to talk to me they tell me the water didn't go up that high, and that they will have this fixed in no time. I tell them that no my lawn was not like this when we went to bed, and my basement is flooded. Within the next hour we had a house full of city workers taking pictures and the carpet cleaners were out here cleaning and spraying, putting fans down under the carpet, this all was a total mess! (when the first carpet guy came out to check it all out to see if they could do the job, the first thing he tells Cameron is, " well we'll have to clean up this clutter before we can clean." he was a bit dopey! Needless to say we had the missionaries come over and in no time the basement was cleared out and ready for this guy, but I was totally horrified that someone had to see my house a mess!)
We did get it all cleaned up and the basement is fine and dandy. Outside however is a total mess. The water/mud came up so far that night that there is a water line on the fence, and our backyard is just covered in mud. Since its been very spring like outside, I've been out there shoveling and sweeping dirt. (not wanting to get it wet again to turn it all back into mud) The front yard also a total mess, gotta get that raked so the grass will still grow. Hopefully the city will be giving us some $$$ to take care of some other stuff.
Glad this is going to be over soon! Gotta finish cleaning up outside!

Its been a great weekend for our little family, even though sweet Natty has a cold and I think the rest of us are brewing one. BUT the great part of the weekend for me, I got to go to an all day crop (scrapbooking) yesterday. It started at 10:00AM and ended at 10:00PM! I got 16 pages done in less then ten hours! (I was a little late as I worked out in the morning!) I do two page spreads so I got 8 2 page spreads done, complete with journaling. I am so excited! There is hope to get current in scrapbooking!
Cameron was able to have a quiet day home with William, he was doing some computer goo that I would have no idea how to explain. But nonetheless they had a great day.
Natalie went to Nanny's house, and hung out with Nana all day, so she had a blast as ya can't beat a day with Nana!
I am home today with the kiddos as we didn't want to take Natty to church with a cold, today will be a true day of rest for us too. (Cameron went and taught his lesson to the men today, and will be doing his Home Teaching later this afternoon) So as soon as the kids go down for their afternoon nap, I may unpack my scrappin stuff and get back to work!