Happy Halloween

Halloween has come and gone and we had a great time once again in the Rigby household.

Tyson was a knight in shining armor and Kelsie was a dragon so cute that no knight would even think of slaying her!

Kelsie staked herself out with her friend on the minature golf game at the ward activity and pigged out on candy. Luckily, Mackinsie didn't mind the fact that Kelsie was eating all the candy from her pumpkin!

Kelsie LOVES my friend, Becky. Dallan keeps asking if it makes me feel bad that she likes Becky more than me. I think it is great. I know my baby still loves me, but she loves to play with Becky. As Becky points out, she even says "Becky." OK...so it sounds more like Kee-Kee, but we know what she means. It was kind of funny today at church. Becky was home sick so when Kelsie went to sit with her (a weekly occurance), she was so sad not to see her there. In fact, she didn't believe her eyes and had to go back several times to make sure Becky still wasn't there.

Jack O Rigby

I know you have all done it already and it looked a lot like this, but nonetheless, here is our pumpkin carving 2008 experience!

Dal and Ty bought the pumpkin (yes...at Food Maxx...we ran out of time!), Ty drew the face all by himeself, Daddy did the carving and Mommy (with minimal help from the kids) cleaned out the gunk!

Yes on 8!

A New Princess

My friends, Eimile and Shannon, threatened to give Kelsie dress up clothes for her birthday. They both have three girls each and the princess-ness of their houses always make me laugh. Well, they followed through on their threats and this was the result. All the other little girls were very helpful in showing us how it all worked and were so proud of the finished work!

Birthday Wishes

So...I forgot to put the clips of the kids blowing out their candles. I'm so embarassed! Here are the stars of the night...Tyson...

...and Kelsie

I have to explain Kelsie's cake as well. It is not quite as obvious as Tyson's but goes along with the theme, nonetheless. I was trying to come up with something a little more girly that fit with the star wars theme. My friend, Eimile, thought cinnamon rolls could pass as Princess Leiha's buns. I ran with the idea (it was the only one I had) but went with an ice cream cake roll instead of the rolls. A little bit of a stretch, I know, but she doesn't care...she's only 2 (almost)!

In a Galaxy Not So Far Away...

Yes...it is that time of year again! We had a galactic birthday party for both Tyson and Kelsie last night. "A Star Wars Party for Kelsie?" you may ask, but it is true. She loved every minute of it. I figure I wouldn't be able to get away with it next year, so we might as well let Tyson have the party he really wants!

I got the idea for these TIE fighter ships online and thought, "Oh, those are cute and look way easy. I can do that!" Ha! The wings, which are currently in the trash can, took me about 6 hours to make. Yeah...I know...everybody has a better way I could have done it. I don't want to hear them! Oh well, the turned out cute (thanks to Becky for saving the day and helping me with the frosting last minute) and the kids, especially Ty, loved them!

We had masks for all the kids to color and take home. Kelsie chose (with the help of her big brother) R2D2. She was very cute. Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of our little Master Yoda because he wouldn't sit still long enough to snap one.

Kelsie was eating up her cake and ice cream. She even had seconds, which if you have spent any amount of time around her, you know is something worth writing about. Notice the red and black in the background. She was talked into moving over to the dark side by some very pursuasive recruiters (thanks Lewis boys!) and a promise of a free T-shirt and lightning powers!

She was, however, the only one of the party guests, to choose the dark side. The rest of them crammed around the blue and green side (I don't know...is it called the light side, the good side, just the force?) Way to choose the right!

A Little Aloha

Okay...so we've been back for a week now, but it seems like forever...I'm losing my tan already! I don't have very many pictures, so this is a mini blog with many more pictures and stories to come. We were lazy and let everyone else take the pictures, but not we have to wait until they send them to us...Not happening very fast, Jen! Anyway...we had a great time but we are happy to be back home with the kids and all the craziness that comes with it.

Heidi had a few extra leis after the luau, and I didn't want them to go to waste. After this picture, they decorated our house for the rest of th week!

This is just a picture to show the location of our house that we rented. It was a great location. Do you see that sand right off our deck? Where the plants are, is where you go down a couple of feet to the beautiful sandy beach below!

Dal and I stayed in Wikiki one extra night after everybody else flew out. We stayed just a couple of blocks from the beach. This picture was taken from our balcony, but it doesn't do it justice. We could actually see the surfers from our room. We didn't stay there too long (North Shore is WAY BETTER), but it was fun to walk around all the touristy stuff!

Like I said, there will be more to come, but I wanted to get a little something down before it was totally outdated. Check back for more soon!

Strong Kelsie

Kelsie is really into doing push ups lately. She likes to show us her muscles too, but we didn't get that on camera this time. For your entertainment...our strong Kelsie...(don't mind the hair...it is the end of the day and the cute curls never last past nap time)

So Pretty!

For those of you who have spent any amount of time with Kelsie, you know she loves to have "pretties" put in her hair but that there is something inside of her, stronger than human comprehension, driving her to pull them out as soon as they are in.

She will hand them to me so I can put them in her hair and then immediately pull them out. She then gets the saddest look on her face and she hands them back to me to get them put in again.

I've been using tough love therapy to solve this problem...I just don't put them in...EVER! It makes her sad, but it makes me more sad when she rips a handful of hair out with each pretty she yanks out.

With that very long introduction...


Last night, Kelsie found a bag full of her pretties and brought them to me. She would take them out of the bag, one at a time, and say "Here-go-Mommy!" How could I resist that? I would put one in and she would immediately hand me another. Eventually, we had the whole bag in her hair. She even left them in for a few minutes while she showed her Daddy and looked at herself in the mirror.

Her will power gave out, though, and she eventually started ripping them all out. Luckily, I calmed her down enough to allow me to take them out in a safer manner.

I think we are making progress, though, because this morning I put some clippies in her hair and then distracted her with some Pringles. She forgot they were in her hair and left them in the entire time we were at the park today. Wahoo! Hopefully this is a sign of what is to come.

A Farewell to Disneyland

We said goodbye to Disneyland this week with our last visit on our annual passes...they expired yesterday! The best part of it was that Dallan came with us for the first time. He took Wednesday off from work so we could go one more time.

We drove down to Anaheim Tuesday night after work and got a hotel room for the night. For most of you, that may seem like no big deal, but for the Rigby family it was huge. I don't think we have ever done it as a family. We got on Hotwire.com (which I now love) and got a great room for only $56. We didn't get there until 9:00, but we had promised Tyson some swimming, so swim we did. I don't think we got anybody to bed until around 11:00. Tyson got his very own bed...which confused him because he thought the boys should share a bed and the girls should share a bed!


The next morning, we loaded up the stroller (to the tip over point when the kids got out) and walked to the park (it took about 15 minutes). It was a hot day, but other than that a perfect day for Disney.

Kelsie mapped out our day. Most of the time she used the map as a hat, but every once in a while she made it look like she knew what she was doing. I think the only reason she wanted one was to bug Ty...she liked to take whichever one he was holding.

The favorite ride was the new Toy Story ride over at California Adventure. It was the longest line (not bad at 20 minutes) but we had to go on it three times because Ty loved it. I came to the conclusion that I am a horrible shot. I just pulled the string as fast as I could and hoped to hit something because when I tried to aim at anything, I was way off.

Tyson made huge strides this trip. He got all his courage together to try the Star Wars ride and absolutely loved it. He couldn't stop talking about it. As soon as he and Dal got off, he wanted me to take him again. It was the funniest thing ever, whenever we went "light speed" he would put his hands up in the air, like on a roller coaster, and yell, "Wheee!" He would talk through the entire ride, telling me what was going to happen and pointing everything out to make sure I didn't miss a thing.

He also FINALLY got up the guts to go on Buzz Lightyear (after we gave him ear plugs and insisted it was just like the Toy Story ride). He of course loved it and we went on that 3 or 4 times (no lines).

The afternoon got a little hot so we took a breather in Mickey and Minnie's houses. Dal really liked Minnie's bed.

Kelsie has learned the art of the cheesey smile. I didn't post them all, but there were a bunch of picture of her with this same smile. She loves to smile for the camera.

She learned a lot from her brother. At the end of every ride, she would throw her hands up in the air, yelling "Wheee!". This was especially humurous as we finished a ride like Winnie the Pooh. She definitely got more out of the trip this time than all the others.

Kelsie and I tried to relax on Minnie's couch, but as comfy as it looks, it was hard as a rock. Come on Minnie...splurge a little!

As always, we have to take a swing at pulling the sword out of the stone. Ty wanted to make sure there were no wizards around before he tried. He was pretty upset when it didn't work, but I explained that a wizard was necessary to help get it out...he didn't want to get it out anymore!

At the end of the day, we had all had a great time. Having the double stroller was a life saver because Ty saved his energy and the walk back to the hotel was no big deal. We loved having Dal with us. Too bad we won't be going back for a few years now. I think we have had our Disnyeland fix this year, but we will miss it.

Tyson-isms

Yesterday, we were driving somewhere and out of the blue we had the following conversation:


Ty: "Mom, this car is a Toyota...just like our other car."
Mom: "Yep...it sure is."
Ty: "That is just like on Star Wars. Do you remember Yoda, Mom?" (Toy-YODA)
Mom: (trying not to laugh) "Yeah...Yoda is my favorite."
Ty: "But these kinds of cars are just for kids...'cause kids like toys." (TOY-ota)
Mom: "Whatever you say, Ty."


What are you supposed to say to that. I love it when kids come up with stuff like this.

Support Proposition 8!

For all of you fellow Californians, if you haven't heard about Proposition8 yet, check out the website (linked on the top right of my blog) and vote yes on Proposition8 in November. We already voted for this once before, we just need to get it into the State Constitution now. Please do everything you can to support this cause...I don't want my kids being taught in school that marriage is just a contract between part A and party B.

YES on Proposition 8 does three simple things:
1.) It restores the definition of marriage to what the vast majority of California voters already approved and human history has understood marriage to be.
2.) It overturns the outrageous decision of four activist Supreme Court judges who ignored the will of the people.
3.) It protects our children from being taught in public schools that "same-sex marriage" is the same as traditional marriage

Not a Whole Lot Else

Anyway, we did a lot more stuff on our trip but I think I have posted enough of it to satisfy your curiosity. Since we got back, not a whole lot has happened. Life is back to normal and we are kind of enjoying it that way.

We have played more than anyone should be allowed (beach, pools, parks, friends, etc.) but that is what summer is all about, right?

Josh, Tressa and Sammy came to visit us last weekend and we had a great time. We are now addicted to the Wii and they are in love with our weather. We ate too much as usual and all got a little color on the beach. What more can you ask for?

We have been staying up until 1 in the morning to watch the Olympics and Dal is barely able to stay awake at work. He says it happens once every four years though, so we have to watch every second of it!

Life in the Rigby family is good...as usual. We are healthy happy and loving life. Hopefully you all are doing just as well! I will try not to stay away from posting so long this next time.

Lots of Other Stuff We Did

These are just some of the other things we did that are not going to get their own posts...

We spent some quality time at the cannery, dry packing food for our storage. The hair nets really do make you feel pretty!



We spent a lot of time helping Heidi pick a wedding dress. You know I can't be around dresses for that long and not try some on...so when Heidi narrowed it down to three dresses, Jen and I decided to help her out. This way she was able to see all three at the same time. What good sisters we are! (* Side Note: Why did they not have such cute dresses when I got married...it wasn't that long ago...I kind of want to do it all again)

Tyson had a great time with all of his cousins. They partied all day long, every day. One of them wanted an ice cream cone (no ice cream...just the cone) so of course, all of them had to have one!

We all had a great time and I loved that Tyson and Kelsie got to spend time with my family...as overwhelming as the experience can be!

Time for a "Do"

While we were in Idaho Falls, my dad did not think that Kelsie's hair was appropriately styled. He took this picture first thing when she woke up one of the mornings. Come on Dad...bed head...give her a break.



Her hair really was out of control...even without bed head. So we headed off to see Tammy ( the same lady who has cut my hair since I was little) and get Kelsie's hair cut for the first time!

Sucking the thumb kept her somewhat distracted, along with the half dozen combs Tammy gave her to hold. Tammy kept spraying her with lavender oil (to calm her down) and we made it through about 75% of the process before she starting fighting it. Luckily, Tammy has mad skills, so were able to finish with a very cute cut.

This is a horrible picture of me, but it is the only "after" picture we got...so please just look at Kelsie. I was shocked at first at how much Tammy cut off, but it turned out REALLY cute. She has a little bob and looks so much older. Finally, you can see her cute face and not be distracted by her crazy hair!