Happy Halloween!

Halloween is finally here. I love this holiday, especially with kids. This year, Josh dressed up as Roronoa Zoro. Not a whole lot of people out there know who he is, so I will enlighten you. He is a pirate off of the Japanese Anime "One Piece." It's actually a pretty cool cartoon (the English version isn't as good as the Japanese version, though). Anyway, this character has 3 very special swords and is fighting his way to become the World's Greatest Sword Fighter. Here's a picture to compare Josh to the picture from the cartoon. Ammon and I were up until 2 am finishing the swords and sheaths, and they look awesome!


Alauna is in love with everything Tinkerbell. So, of course she wanted to be Tinkerbell for Halloween. Her wings glow in the dark and light up, and her shoes light up when she walks in them. Here is a picture, even though I know most of you know what Tinkerbell looks like.


We have a lot planned for this Halloween week and weekend. We went to Story Time at the library this morning and they got to dress up. Then tomorrow, we are going Trick-or-Treating down old Magna Main Street. Then Saturday, we have Boo at the Zoo, Trunk-or-Treat at Habitat for Humanity, and then our church's Halloween Party. Then a dinner with some family on Sunday. Then on Monday (actual Halloween), we will be going to my mom's school to show off. And that night we will be joining Ammon's sister, Sue, and her girls to go Trick-or-Treating around their neighborhood. The kids will be so tired of going Trick-or-Treating by the end. Hopefully they will get a lot of candy that they will share with their mom and dad. ;)

What is Koda doing?

Ok, so my neighbors were telling me that my dog has been trying to commit suicide lately. They said they think he is just so depressed and bored out of his mind. And I don't blame him. Once school started, we haven't been going on our runs like we used to. And it is so hot outside, that I am usually not out there unless it is dark.

So, I asked my neighbors what he was doing that they thought he was trying to kill himself. They said he just lays down in the middle of the road in hopes that a car will run him over. I didn't believe them, until I saw this one day. So I took a picture.



And now to explain. I had Petsmart cut his hair really short because I am usually the one who cuts it and I needed them to fix all the mistakes I had made. Plus, I really didn't want to have to give him a hair cut for a long time. So, he gets REALLY cold inside our house. It is usually in the 70's in our house, but he still freezes. So this is him, laying on the road because it is black and it is very hot from the sun. Therefore, he is not trying to kill himself.

Secondly, yes, he is wearing his "Cone of Shame." That's because he likes to play with the neighbor dog who is at least 3 times his size until the dog gets so annoyed, she bites him. She always bites him on the neck, and I have had to give first aid to over 4 of these really bad bites. And of course, I have to put his medical collar on or else he will just scratch it until he bleeds to death.

However, if you combine his cone of shame and horribly short hair cut (he looked like a naked mole rat), it does appear that he is trying to kill himself. "Get me out of my misery" is what he could be thinking. But he is a healthy and happy dog. So don't worry.

Our Summer

We splurged and purchased another year pass to the Hogle Zoo. We live about 20 minutes away from it and I figured it would be a great addition to our Field Trip Fridays I have planned for Josh's Home School.


I usually take a picture of Josh standing by our front door on his first day of school (my mom did that with us kids by our front door of our house). But since he is doing Home School this year (maybe some more after) I decided to take a picture of him in front of his nifty new desk (we are still waiting for a computer for him).


This project has taken a while but is sure fun to do. Ammon is great with his hands and wood, so we decided to build a shed instead of move. It's a pretty big one (10x12) and takes up a bit of our yard. It has been hard work and we are thinking it may have been worth the extra $800 it would have cost to have Lowe's build it for us. There has been literally blood, sweat, and tears put in to this shed. I would show you a picture of my thumb, but this is a G-rated blog.


I fried the mother board of our computer that Ammon built, so we had to buy a new one. It isn't as good as the one Ammon built, but it will do. We kept the boxes and Alauna and Josh made Space Ships (or Pirate Ships - depending on the time of day you ask them). They have played in them quite a bit. Aren't boxes wonderful?



Josh celebrated his 6th birthday. We had a party the Saturday before. It was a pirate party, and we invited alot of his little friends and family. They had a blast! Then on his birthday, I made him a cake and he got to pick what he wanted to eat for dinner. He chose Chocolate Chip Pancakes, Bacon, Hot Chocolate with BIG marshmallows, and olives. Unfortunately he had the stomach flu that day so he didn't quite enjoy it as much as he would have. Poor kid.


Another picture from the zoo, but I don't have the patience to put it in the right order. Love the Zoo!

I just can't get over how cute my corn is. I planted them quite late, but I just wanted to see how green my thumb was. I have 4 cute little corn cobs growing on my very short corn plants. We will do much better next year once the shed is done and we have more than one garden box built. And I will start much earlier now that I know kind of what I am doing.

And these are my tomato plants. I think they are doing quite well for this being my first time. I haven't seen any tomato buds, but again, I planted them quite late.

And that's what we have been up to this summer! Hope you enjoyed reading and looking!

Half-Marathon #3!

Thought I would post this since I posted about the other 2. This Half-Marathon took place down Provo Canyon and ended in Provo by the Tabernacle. It is my favorite out of all of them. It was so beautiful running down the canyon, looking at the waterfalls, listening to the foot-fall of the runners in such quiet and pristine beauty. Don't worry. After about mile 7 I stopped paying attention to all that and paid attention to the pain in my feet. I was privileged to run with Ammon's sister, Sue. She was a great running partner. She had a watch that told us how fast we were running each mile. Without her, I would have gotten a lot longer time. In the end, we finished together at 2 hours and 6 minutes. Our goal was 2 hours or less, but we did our best and I am happy with the time. We had a lot of fun, laughing, making fun of each other, and sweating together. Will enjoy those memories forever.

What the Marshall's Have Been Up To

We have been working on some fun things for our back yard. We are making 4 garden boxes to plant Corn, Tomatoes, Peas, Carrots, Potatoes, and some Raspberry bushes. Soon I will add some pictures of the shed we are building as well. It's been fun working with Ammon and the kids outside.



This is a picture of Josh and his cousin Caiden at a park where we met with my dad and my brother Jayson and his family to celebrate Father's Day. They had so much fun together and got very dirty. Boys will be boys.












This is a shot of Alauna going down the "May-may slide". She called it that because it is pink and everything pink is considered May-may's.

This shot is of us enjoying the nice weather and swing at the park. I would have loved to have Josh in the picture, but he was too busy having fun with his cousin.

New Pic!

Happy 2nd Birthday Alauna!

Kids are FUN!

So, Josh got a Nerf gun for Christmas (he calls it his "six-shooter" because he can shoot six bullets). Anyway, he loves shooting everything, and asks me all the time to take pictures of him posing with it. So here are a couple of my favorites. (Just in case you didn't guess, he is "dead" in one of them)

WOW!

So, I usually use my blog as the place I go to link up with other people's blogs. I was astounded to see that I still had Halloween pictures up, and the background was Fall-ish. What is wrong with me? It's not that I don't have cute pictures I would like to share. I'm thinking I am just so put back by looking at all your blogs that I don't even try because of my lack of creativity. So.....my apologies for anyone just dieing to see our going-on's as the Marshall family. It will come soon.....maybe.