Pumpkin Carving & Halloween Party

We had such a great time at Joni's Halloween party for FHE on Monday night. There was lots of good food, lots of GREAT COMPANY, and some fantastic pumpkin carving!

I love to look at pictures on other blogs and I love to take pictures. This usually leads me to include pictures with most of my posts too (sometimes too many). Here are just a few of the fun pictures I ended up with from that night.

Some Gardner & Roberts kiddos


Courtani and her cute friend Tobyn


Gardners working really hard to carve
a GREAT looking pumpkin


Courtani & Tobyn AGAIN!

Kami Kerby and her kute boys

Whenever Courtani & Tobyn are around, they are ALWAYS together! It is so cute! I catch them playing peek-a-boo during church and sharing a chair almost every Sunday in Primary. Their poor Primary teacher sits in one of those tiny little primary chairs so that Tobyn & Courtani can share the one big chair! It really is cute to watch them play together!


Courtani couldn't wait to dig into the pumpkin guts!


Trevor was also anxious to get his hands into the slime

By the time everybody was done with their pumpkins I still only had an eye and a nose done. I was determined not to go home and throw out my pumpkin (despite my strong urge to do exactly that) but to actually finish it. It took me an hour once I got home, but by gosh, I FINISHED IT!! I have to say I was pretty impressed that it actually looked like a witch when I was done!!

Thanks for a great party Joni. We had such a good time! You really know how to throw a

fun party!

HALL GIRLS LUNCHEON

Emily & Christi

(Emily is beautiful even when her eyes are half closed!!)

Katie & Melissa

I absolutely love listening to my grandma cracking
up as she tries to tell a funny story!!

Heidi, Tiffany, Katie & Emily

We had our annual Hall Girls Luncheon on October 25th. This party is very similar to the Tate Girls Luncheon we had a few weeks ago. We have so much fun with my mom's side of the family with this tradition that a few years ago my mom decided to host the same kind of party for the girls on my dad's side of the family.

We had so much fun! It of course started off with lots of yummy food followed by funny stories from each person. This is my favorite part of the party. This year telling funny stories took up a bulk of the party time. Nothing beats a funny story being told by somebody who can hardly tell it because they can't stop laughing. By the end of it, we are all laughing to the point of not being able to breath and we usually haven't even reached the funny party yet! Grandma has got some great stories! I dare not post them for fear of either her disowning me or even worse......retaliation! For the sake of me remembering in the future I will just say this....always check to make sure the can doesn't have a hole in it before you use it and turn the lights on when you get out of bed to use the bathroom! Following the funny stories we amused ourselves with the gift game. This year, as always, there were some fun gifts. Tiffany decided that the gift she brought was just too cute to give up so she started off by picking her own. Unfortunately for her, she was right, her nice fall dishes were way cute and ended up going through the three owners really fast and were gone. Becky always brings a GREAT gag gift. One year I remember her bringing some large black "granny panties". This year....STRETCHY PANTS straight out of the 80's. I'm not sure who ended up with them but I'm sure there is a good chance we'll see them again next year. It was pretty funny to watch Grandma and Shelbi fight over the lava lamp. Who knew my 85 year old grandma could physically over take Shelbi to get the lava lamp from her. She is one tough cookie!!

The party was great! We all look forward to it every year! I love being able to spend time with my cousins. It's fun when we have some time together with no kids around so we can just focus on each other and act like kids again ourselves.

I love you guys!!

Happy Birthday Brittani

New purse

Charm bracelet kit from Gma & Gpa Hall

Leading "Happy Birthday"

Camp Rock CD
It's all about Camp Rock this year

Easy Bake Oven from Gma & Gpa Roberts

This post is LONG overdue!

Our Brittani turned nine on October 18th. Since her birthday was on a Saturday Dan surprised her at school on Friday. He called her out of class and took her out to lunch. This is something he likes to do with each of the kids for their birthday. He will either show up with take-out and then eat in the cafeteria with them or just take them out to lunch. They look forward to this just as much, if not more than the festivities for the rest of the day. After lunch they went and bought cupcakes for her to share with her class.

Another tradition we have is that they get to pick anything they want for dinner. Brittani wanted Chicken and rice Saturday night so Chicken and rice it was. Following dinner was her choice of birthday cake which this year was lemon cake with chocolate frosting. During dinner the boys decided we should each say what we love most about Brittani.

Braden -"she is really nice and pretty".

Trevor -"she is a great friend and helps me with my homework and cleaning my room".

Courtani -"she plays with me and is a lot of fun".

Mason can't talk but I'm sure he would have said something about the fact that Brittani is like his second mother! Always watching out for him and taking care of him.

Dad -"She is one of my special little girls that I love very much and that I am SO proud of."

Mom -"She is a good friend of mine and I am so proud of how she is always thinking of others before herself."

We are very happy to have Brittani in our family. She is such a sweet girl by nature. She is always concerned about how other people are doing and trying to do anything she can to make them feel better. I got a call one day from a mother of one of Brittani's classmates. She wanted to let me know that she was so thankful for Brittani. Her daughter had been being teased on the playground because of something with her appearance. Brittani stood up for her and told all of the kids, "it doesn't matter what people look like, it matters how they treat people!" I have heard her say this a number of times. She truly lives her life like this and looks for this in others as well. She has such a fun sense of humor that keeps us all laughing. She can dish out a good prank but can take it with just as much fun when it's dished back. She is just such a fun girl!

Brittani, you are such a very special part of our family. You are such an important part of our family! We love you baby doll!

Braden's surgery

Watching Star Wars on Mom's IPod before surgery

in the recovery room


Braden's new bed for the first week


Like any other boy, he sure is proud of his battle scars!

Well, it's been more than two weeks since Braden had his knee surgery. Everything went good. We had to be at Phoenix Childrens Hospital by 5:30am. that morning and his surgery was at 7:30am. He was pretty scared, as was expected, but held it together and did fantastic before the surgery. When it came time for them to take him back to the O.R. the anesthesiologist asked me if I wanted to suit up and come back and stay with him until he fell asleep. OF COURSE! I have asked if I could do that all three times Courtani had surgery and they would never let me do it. I was surprised when they asked me with Braden. Thankfully he fell asleep quickly and calmly.

The doctor told us that the surgery would take an hour and a half but they reserved two hours just in case they ran into problems. Imagine my panic when he was still in surgery and I hadn't heard anything at 2 hours and 45 minutes! The nurse finally called the waiting room and let me know that everything was okay and after 3 hours and 15 minutes they were done. They ended up having to re-break the area on his leg that he broke last December and then putting a screw in to hold down the bone and to tighten up his ACL. The surgery went well but he had a really hard time in recovery. Normal stuff like throwing up and just being in a lot of pain. After another hour and a half in the recovery room we were on our way home.

The first three days at home were pretty rough. He was in so much pain and he couldn't sleep for more than an hour at a time and then he ended up having an allergic reaction to his pain meds. The poor kid, it broke my heart. I very much underestimated what to expect following his surgery!!

After missing a week and a half of school, he is doing really well now. He has a big brace on his leg from his thigh to his ankle so he will be on crutches for a few weeks. He is supposed to lay down with his leg in a CPM machine for 8 - 10 hours a day. However, because of school there just isn't that many hours in the day so we do the best we can. He is a trooper and has maintained such a great attitude about the whole thing. His school teacher and classmates sent home a really sweet card that they all wrote messages in and a stuffed animal. Once he was back in school he asked his teacher if he could say something to the class. She thought he wanted to stand and give gruesome details and tell about the surgery so she had him wait a few days. When there was finally time for him to stand and say something to the class, she said that all he wanted to do is tell the class thank you and that he really liked all the messages they wrote. I don't know what all he said but I guess it really touched his teacher and I was proud of him.

Thank you to those of you who helped me pick up the pieces when I was falling apart during that week. I appreciate you lending me your shoulder to cry on when I was so stressed and had such a major lack of sleep! I am grateful for good friends!!