The Catch-Up: Halloween, Love, Jedi Knights, etc.

For Jed's birthday, we picked up some sweet Culture Passes and spent the day at the Arizona Science Center! It rocked! The most memorable part was playing the mind game you see on the right. There's a ball inbetween the two competitors and each person puts a brain wave sensor thing on their head. Calm brainwaves cause the ball to roll towards you, and whoever gets the ball all the way over to their side wins. I thought I had this in the bag, but Jed put his mind to work and me to shame! Another family was milling about in this area and we decided to pit our kids against each other. Tagg had that ball rolling to him in no time :) ...I thought you got to keep the genes you shared with your kids, but apparently you actually do "pass them on!" ;)
This momentum ride was REALLY really fast! Tagg had a blast holding on for dear life as Jed spun him good :) Can you spot the two pictures of Taggert losing his balance?

After our day at the museum, we went out to eat! Of course the company was the best, but I must mention that their Cheerios were superb (especially when eaten with a knife and fork), and the evening was topped off with a fun, musical birthday call from Grandma and Grandpa!

My birthday present to Jed was planned-out dates for the rest of our time in AZ. This is one of the invitations I made for him. Our favorite of our outings was going to Westgate to people watch. We made a list of things to look for and got points for finding stuff like a couple holding hands, someone wearing a hat, someone with a wallet chain, or someone dealing illegal substances... (we actually added that last one after Jed saw it happen. Although we didn't have the forsight to include it initially, we figured he deserved some extra points for witnessing such a spectacle ;) As a side note, that was the first night I suspected I was pregnant; I got so tired I couldn't stand up anymore and we had to finish our people watching from a bench. Sweet Jed is always so accommodating! :)

Jenna and Cody drove all the way over from Yuma to take us out to the Cheesecake Factory for Jed's birthday dinner! It was great to spend time with them!

Yes, we did celebrate Halloween! Thought we could use a little of the undead around this time of year, so here we go! Tagg donned a Spiderman costume and went parading around Rovey Farms with his friends Derek and Morgan (the dinosaurs above)! I loved it that he was cool with wearing the mask (it really topped off those huge guns!) but couldn't blame him for removing it when he realized that there was no mouth hole for his beloved Twix! (See pictures in top-left corner) Grandma Kim and Packi sent Tagg a bunch of Halloween stickers, which soon ended up in their rightful places on our faces!

Jedediah made his own costume this year--he spent about an hour creating all these wounds from makeup and tissue. It looked real enough to earn him some serious stares and gasps when he had to abandon his post at the creepily decorated front porch to pick up his mom from the airport. I'm surprised nobody called an ambulance!

This is the sweet good-bye playground date Taggert had with Derek. We met him and his mom, sister, and dog at the neighborhood playground one day and exchanged numbers so we could meet up there more often! Derek is just a couple days younger than Tagg and it was fun to see them play together! We miss you guys!

Light sabers, always a hit around our place, took on a new form of excitement for me when I realized what a slower shutter speed could do for the photography experience! I love how you can see their cute faces in the big one :)

The fate of the empire lies in the hands of a ruthless, telescoping-light-saber-wielding Jedi. The force is strong in this one...