Happy Halloween!

Since Ethan was pretty sick for his birthday my parents postponed their trip to see us until Halloween weekend! Yeah!! It was so fun to be with them!!

We took a trip to Costco-Ethan got stuck in between the big kids and they had fun. But it didn't last too long. I snapped a pic and thought it was blog worthy :)

This year Ethan was a puppy dog. I had a HARD time getting a picture of him in his costume...but quickly snapped this pic from underneath him. Pretty fun, eh?



And Alia was a kitty cat. She LOVED getting the nose and whiskers.

And Mr. Elijah was an astronaut!!! Too cute!

Ethan turns 1!!

Today Ethan Oscar Backlund turned ONE! I can't believe it's been a year already...and that I no longer have a baby. No more babies for us...sort of sad...but we had as much fun as we could-as little Ethan was sick with H1N1.

Here's the end of the party...Ethan eating his cake. He first just played with it, and then when he got a piece in his mouth he just kept shoving it in there! It was pretty funny.

Here's the sad face we saw for most of his b-day. He was feeling pretty bad. I made that shirt special for his 1st birthday. I thought it turned out pretty good. I know it's super easy to do, but I had never sewn anything onto a shirt before.

He saved some energy to open gifts. Alia and Elijah did pretty well just watching. :) But they were ALL OVER his toys when he was done :)

A smiley sickie face. :)

Mommy and the birthday bay!

Jani Photography

Check out this website...Jan is a new friend of mine from Alia's kindergarten class...her pics are amazing!!

Jani Photography

Inflatables!

The kids got these huge inflatables at the carnival last night...they are bigger than the kids are! We brought home a microphone, a pirate sword, a pillow, and a guitar. Silly toys.

Reedley Pumpkin Patch

We had a great family day today! We woke up and had a yummy breakfast together. Then we stopped by some friends house-they were having a yard sale. After that we went to the Rice's house and watched them cut wood for a few minutes. Then we were on our way to the pumpkin patch! Kristi and Jenna joined us...and we had a great time.

We ate a picnic lunch there, played in the tree houses, rode the train (which stopped a million times!), had snow cones, and picked pumpkins!!

Enjoy these pictures...I really enjoy them!

Hurley Carnival!!

We had a blast at the Hurley school carnival! There were lots of fun games..like the toilet paper toss game! Can't beat that! We helped out in one of the kinder booths-the nacho booth. The kinder classes also had a pick a pop booth and a pumpkin walk. And I also won a raffle prize!! Two full day ski tickets...too bad I don't ski :)

Here's Elijah tossing his toilet paper rolls...

...and Alia! (oh! and that's a halloween skirt I made!)



This is Alia's friend, Bailey. They became fast friends in kindergarten...and that's Natalie-one of Bailey's sisters...and Elijah, too.

Disney Pics

Ethan and I in line for Toy Story Mania...he was a bit sleepy.

Our friends, the Reeds, came with us!



It's a small world after all...

Yeah! Halloween at Disneyland!

Ethan LOVES his new Woody!

Fall

A friend of our brought in the fall season with a little gathering. We ate yummy food, had good conversation and out kids had a blast! The kids played some old fashion carnival games. Here's Alia playing the donut contest-trying to eat a donut hanging on a string, without using your hands. It was hillarious to watch!

(elijah and ethan spent the morning with daddy...helping Habitat for Humanity clean up some of their dirt lots)

They also got to make caramel apples.

Kindergarten

Alia LOVES kindergarten! Aside from being a bit of a chatty cathy (who would have known?) she's doing really well! Her reading and writing is progressing great!

Alia has had homework for 2 weeks now. All she talks about is wanting to do her homework!! Here she is writing her letters and numbers.

This was how Alia wrote her letters right after school started.



And this is her alphabet this past week. Even though she's been able to write her letters for a long time now, I was amazed to see how much better the letters are-after a month of kindergarten! She's still struggling with a few numbers-but she's doing great!

Today!

This morning we decided to take a drive to Three Rivers and spend the morning. We've never been up there so we didn't know what ot expect.

We went to a retreat/conference center and walked around a bit. We walked around a portion of the grounds that had the stations of the cross. So the kids asked some questions and got we explained it as best we could to a 5 and 3 year old. :) at one point we turned a corner and Jason said, "OH my gosh...you've got to be kidding". I was a few feet behind him and was expecting to see a big hole in the sidewalk or something. We I turned the corner a huge buck was walking across the walkway-about 20 feet from us. The kids loved to see it...and then it ran away. I snapped a picture as it ran into the grass.

Then we started to take some family pictures.

Boy, it's hard to get all 5 of us looking at the camera!

And one of just mommy and daddy. :)

Of course a trip to Three Rivers isn't complete until you stop at the candy shop. We ate lunch at We Three restaurant and then stopped to get ice cream. YUMMY!

We promised the kids we'd play in the river...so we had to make a stop. It was pretty hot so we didn't last long. But it was long enough. I think this place was called Slick Rock. We came home with a bag of rocks-grammpa jim, you'd be proud!

Pictures!

So, I've been pretty behind lately due to some technological issues we've had.

Here are some pics from the last few months...with minimal diologue. :)

Kid after my own heart...double fisting the McDonald's french fries! :)

Ethan at SUPER MEX!!!

Back to School!

In celebration of Alia going to Kindergarten on Thursday and Elijah going to Preschool on in a week I made these super cute chalkboard cupcakes!! I found the instructions at FamilyFun.com . I ended up using candy melts (I LOVE THEM!!!) instead of going out and buying the cookies for the chalkboard and candy for the piece of chalk. So, I had everything on hand, which was great! The kids had a lot of fun helping me and watching the creation come together.

Here's to a new school year!!!