The making of amazing cosutmes

For years, I have wanted to be Mike from Monsters, Inc. for Halloween.

This year we decided to go for it. And so began the epic Halloween costumes of 2012

It started by saran wrapping all sorts of objects that I could find in my house to make the perfect shape

 Next, was 8 layers of paper mache (30 hours of paper mache)

 When it was all done, I had to pull everything out of the large paper mache egg. This is what was inside of it. Many pillows, some blankets, a kitchen mixing bowl, an exercise ball, a bouncing ball and more

 Now the egg was empty and the rest of the costume could be made.

Lots of green fleece, felt and duct tape were added to get the final product. Meet Mike

Trisha's costume was equally AMAZING! The coolest monsters in town

A family of monsters

As usual, we were able to wear our costumes to the fun Halloweeen party that my sister throws every year and we had a blast!

Pumpkin Patch

In October, we came to SLC one weekend and were able to go to a pumpkin patch/corn maze with Tyler and Shannon and their kids.

Sam loved running around looking for the perfect pumpkin (even though we didn't get one).

Sam and Logan

Sam loved walking/running in the corn maze trying to keep up with Logan.

We all had a really good time!

New York, New York

Our flight took off from Belgium and I can't remember much of it except that we were surrounded by people that were more than understanding of our two children. About the time we were supposed to arrive at JFK, passengers on the plane began to become worried that we were not yet landed and they were going to miss their connections. We thought we were okay because we had something like a 4 hour layover. Then the pilot came on and said that due to very severe storms in the area, they had decided to go land the plane in Boston and refuel and then try to land at JFK again when the weather had passed. About an hour later, we landed in Boston. At this point, we knew we would miss our flight. We were not the only flights to detour to Boston, there was a whole line of us waiting for fuel. We waited for a few hours. It was long and terrible to sit in the plane for so long after an already long flight. This is why I remember that the people around us were so nice. They fell in love with Sam. He had them all rolling around laughing. Under the circumstances, we were grateful for how well the kids did.

Me sitting in the car seat so that Sam could get a break from it and Kate could sit by herself in a chair

At some point, I was holding Kate in the back of the plane and the stewardess asked me to take a picture with her that she could send to her yoga class members, since she was missing the class. Notice that Kate is doing the stretch as well. She is so cute!

Finally we were back in the air and landed in JFK, I think 6 hours later than expected. We stood in massive lines waiting for customs and then we were corralled into some tiny room with the hundreds of other people that needed to reschedule flights. We were very fortunate that upon entering said room, a lady came right up to help us because we had two kids. Yet another reason to travel with kids. The lady took our papers to a computer and came back to us 30 minutes later. She said they had rebooked us for early the following morning to return to SLC in the morning hours. She gave us meal vouchers, taxi vouchers and hotel vouchers. And the fun began.

I will summarize the events that followed:

1- Called a taxi company, owned by some sketchy people. Said they would send a taxi to get us. Never came. Called again, said they would send someone. Finally a guy arrived but would not accept our voucher as payment and refused to transport us.

Sam as we were leaving the airport to get a taxi. We all felt like this

2- Met a lady that was going to the same place we were. After watching 3-4 taxis take other people and not us, we decided to band together and use our vouchers and the lady's $20.00 to convince a driver to take us to the hotel.

3- Checked into a hotel, somewhere in the state of New York. Got settled in and started getting ready for bed while trying to keep everything in order so we could leave really early the next morning for the airport.

4- Started going through our paperwork to verify times when I realized that our tickets said Sunday, NOT Saturday. Oh great!! I called Delta immediately and they said it would be a 4 hour wait, so I signed up to have them call me back. Went to bed. Woke up at 2:00am and saw a missed call from Delta, must have been so tired that I didn't wake up. Immediately went into the bathroom to call them back. Spent 2 hours on the phone with them, pleading with them to get me on a plane the next day so that we could be home for my cousin's wedding the next evening. After 5 different people and lots of hold time, I was told they could do nothing for me. Because of the weather, everything was booked.

5- Went back to bed really sad and ticked off. Tried to call Delta again the next day to get something and realized it was not going to happen, we had to stay another night in this hotel. And we had to pay for that night.

6- Holed up in the hotel for the entire day. Didn't even leave our room. We ordered pizza for one meal and Chinese for another. We watched a lot of TV and movies.

Sam watching Scooby-Doo

Sam finding things to play with in the hotel room, dads belt and the stroller

7- After an exhausting day of doing nothing but wishing we were home in Utah, we went back to bed.

8- We got on a flight early Sunday morning out of JFK

9- We could see SLC out of our windows when Trisha turned to me and said, "Finally we are home." I replied, "don't say that until we are on the ground." A few minutes later we were about 6 feet from landing on the ground when the plane started to go back up into the air. The pilot came on the intercom a few minutes later and said that something was wrong with the landing and we would have to circle and try again. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!

10- We finally landed in SLC!!

We have never been so happy to be home! The last 3 days of our trip that turned into 5 days was long and adventuresome. We were exhausted.

We were also very grateful for our trip and the many things we were able to do and see.

Our European vacation was memorable and amazing!

Until next time, Europe! We will miss you and talk about you often!

Brussels, Belgium

On my mission, I spent quite a bit of time in Brussels, since it was our mission headquarters. However most of the time that I spent there was at meetings in one of the two churches or the mission office. I don't really remember much from Brussels, besides the big stuff. During 1 transfer, I lived at the misison home on the outskirts of Belgium. I was part of a traveling singing group. We practiced for 2 weeks and then we traveled around the entire mission doing firesides at each church location for the next 6 weeks. Those are some pretty fun memories but very little of them actually happened in Brussels. Still, I love the city and it represents my entire mission: the Belgium, Brussels mission.

Our time in Brussels was short but good. After getting a few hours of sleep, we decided to venture out on a train and go the city center. Sam loved his first train ride. He thought he was so big! He loved looking out the window and he kept saying, "Hold tight." He should have taken his own advise because at one of the stops along the way, he was caught off guard and took a big tumble off the seat. He held on tighter after that.

Sam riding the train and helping hold Kate's carseat.

Grand Place- Brussels

Another shot of Grand Place

Eating at my favorite eatery just off of Grand Place. It's a greek place. We had some really good gyros and soda, plus some relaxing under the umbrella. It was as delicious as I remember.

After lunch, we started to walk up the street to find Mannekin Pis and we stumbled upon a very loud and vibrant parade of people in military attire. We followed out of curiousity. Lucky for us, they led us right to the Mannekin himself. Sam loved the music and the parade.

I can't remember the reason for the celebration but it was so much fun to be there for it. It made our day very interesting.

Mannekin Pis. He is dressed up in costume several times a year for different occasions.

This was the dueling double. Can't remember why he was there either, but he was hilarious. He is mobile and has one person behind him that pushed him around and controlled him. The best part was that his bladder was controlled by this same person. He would turn in the crowd and then just start pissing on unsuspecting strangers. I thought it was hilarious. Trisha avoided him at all cost. I was laughing my head off when all of a sudden, I was getting pissed on. Haha

Here are the two pissers

We had to stop in our travles at a street store so that Trisha could try a Belgian Waffle. She loved it and so did Sam!

After the fun festivities, we walked the streets a little more. We visited Jannekin Pis (the female version of Mannekin who is much less known on a very small side street), stopped at the grocery store for some last minute treats and souvenirs and then headed back to the train and back to our hotel.

I had planned to see a several more things while we were in Brussels, but after the travel day we had getting there, we wanted to keep it relatively simple. So we missed out on some cool sites, like the atonium and my mission home and office and some awesome parks. But, it was still great to be back in Brussels and see downtown, which is where I spent the most time there.

We retired early because we knew it was going to be another long day of traveling in the morning. It was easy. Our hotel was right down the street from the airport. It was easy to pack up all of our stuff, drop off the rental car and go back to the airport where it all began.

Our trip back home started with us arriving very early at the registration gate only to find out that Kate was not put on our return tickets and nobody at registration knew how to do that. We spent an hour at check-in with someone trying to figure it out and then we were sent to the customer service desk and waited there for 45 minutes while a representative called in to Atlanta (Delta headquarters) to get it straightened out. Toward the end, we really were afraid we were going to miss our flight, but they figured it out just in time. We made it on to our flight. We both made a sigh of relief when we were sitting in our seats, buckled in on the plane!!