Our Haunted Dinner!

Last year, we started a tradition in our family of having a haunted halloween candlelight dinner. This year we had a lot of fun! This was our menu:





Headless Ceasar Salad (wasn't Julius Ceasar Beheaded?)

Pumpkin Brain Stew: Baked inside the Pumpkin!

Goblin Toes: Parmesan Rolls

Bloodshot eyeballs: Red Grapes

Fresh Vampire Blood: Red Kool Aid


Dessert consisted of Chocolate brownie Coffin Cake with Bone Meal Cream.

This year we lit candles in skulls to set the mood while we were eating. And what haunted dinner would be complete without the "Scary sounds of Halloween" CD playing? It was a lot of fun. So, we hope you'll come next year to :


The Holmgren Haunted Mansion
Where we love your guts so much, we'll eat them for dinner!

A Halloween Ghost Story

I always love hearing Halloween Ghost stories. And they are especially chilling when they are true. This happened here in little Cedar City on the street I live on! Prepare to be spooked.
A friend of mine works at 911 dispatch here and was telling me this story. Yesterday at about five pm, a man here in town who lives a ways up the road from me called 911 because his dog had brought home a shoe...with a FOOT in it. Now, apparently, dispatch gets this type of call relatively often where people call saying they have found a bone or some type of remains of a body and it always turns out to be of animal origin. However, after seeing the shoe and the remnants inside the shoe, the crime lab confirmed this to be a human foot. Which means that unless someone out there is missing a foot,(Which, apparently there are no reports of anyone missing one around here.) there is a body somewhere. It makes this story even more frightening that the foot was very decomposed meaning that it had been out in the elements for a WHILE.
So, the local search and rescue was called out to use cadaver dogs to locate the body, which they were able to find last night without much difficulty. (I think they are hiring, would anyone like a shot at THAT job?) They were able to identify the body, and the person had been missing for over a year. However the person is not from this area and it is unclear whether any "foul play" occurred.
So basically that's all I know. Ghost stories are best when they have an unresolved disturbing ending right? Can I mention again that this happened on my street? Yikes!

Hmmmm...what to be for Halloween?

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What is it about Halloween that makes me feel like we have to "out do" last years costumes? Last year we procrastinated putting together our costumes so at the last minute we were running to the store buying bells for my tinker bell costume,(I wanted to jingle everywhere I went.) and getting white duct tape and tighty whities for Davids super hero costume.(Can you see that he is Syndrome?) Fortunately, my mom already had Mckinleys little witch costume, which was mine when I was younger.
I think almost every year, I have been either a witch or a gypsy because I have always had the stuff. Although, I vaguely remember being a ballerina,(brrrr!) and a Bride(8 years old is not too young to get married on October 31st.)
But this year, look how good I am being! I am actually putting some thought into Halloween before the day of, I even have my Halloween decor up already. This Halloween is going to be GOOD. The costumes are going to be frightfully terrifying, the sloppy joes are going to be...sloppy, heck, we might even spike the rootbeer.(but probably not.) So this is your warning, 22 days or so in advance. Beware, and prepare to be spooked. I'd turn back if I were you....

Mckinleys Baby Pumpkin

This summer, our vegetable garden was a FLOP. There is no nice way of putting it, it just didn't work out for us this year. I planted everything too early and then things froze...like at the beginning of June when we are supposed to be over the freezing temperatures. So then when I should have planted again, I was out of town for two weeks. Not to mention, Scooby dug everything up when we weren't watching. So those are my excuses for why we only grew dirt this year.
My parents, however, are expert gardeners and their garden was just as successful as it always is. So, they grew tons of pumpkins this year. One of the pumpkins was this really cute little one that we kept showing to Mckinley all summer. She kept wanting to pick it so we explained to her that we couldn't pick it yet because it was sleeping under it's leaf and it was still a baby so it had to sleep longer. (does anyone else spin this type of yarn for their kids?)
Anyway, the day finally came when the baby pumpkin was ready to be picked. So we picked it and took it home. For the last few days, Mckinley has been "taking care" of her baby pumpkin. It has it's own blanket.(a dish towel.) and she takes it on walks in the stroller, she wont go anywhere in the car without it and she lugs it all over the house in it's blanket. She also seems convinced that it enjoys watching her movies as much as she does. Never before has a baby pumpkin been so loved. I will try to remember to post a picture of Mckinley with it tomorrow. This was supposed to be the pumpkin that Mckinley was going to carve for Halloween but I think that could be a little traumatic for her, so we will have to find another one.

Discovering Scissors

Once upon a time there was a very cute sweet little girl, who wanted to cut up some papers with some little purple scissors. So her mommy, thinking this would be a good time to let her imagination soar, let her play with them. These scissors were blunt edged and really were not very sharp, but were perfectly adequate for her paper cutting expeditions.
However, while mommy was practicing her violin, she noticed that the house was as quiet as a mouse, so she went to see what the cute, sweet little girl was doing. Much to mommy's surprize, the little girl had found some different sharper scissors in a drawer and had swiftly cut off the whole left side of her beautiful red hair.
The little girl didn't understand why mommy was freaking out so much, because the little girls hair is probably more in style right now than mommy's. It turns out the little girl just wanted to have an Emo hairstyle. Is there really anything so terribly wrong about that?

Summer memories that are still keeping us warm

Yeah, we're sad about it, but not too sad. David and I LOVE winter! But we figure that we better at least blog about what we will miss about this summer.
Several times a week, we have gone on walks. We are always the only ones out at ten thirty at night but that's when we like to unwind and our walk is the perfect medium for us to talk quietly about our day, or weekend plans or just whatever.
I'm also going to miss Orion. But it wont be the first time I've missed it.
How about I tell the story love! I'll let you in on this inside joke of ours. Orion is my favorite constellation, maybe it's because it's a winter constellation. Anyway, while Abby and I were dating I would always say, "There he is" because I always like to point him out. So the first time I show it to her it was a bit of a challenge, but she finally said "Oh okay, I can see it now". Total and complete bull....!! I have no idea why she pretended that she could see it. Well after we were married for a year or so, she finally let the cat out of the bag and fessed up! I couldn't believe it! We had a good laugh, and now she knows where it is when I point it out....or do you?

Abby says: To be honest, it is a WINTER constellation, so while we were dating, David was nicely bundled up and toasty in his hoodies and beanies and I was still trying to secure a husband so I was wearing a mini....(ok, not really) but it was cold outside when David was trying to show me Orion. And I'm thinking, "oh my gosh, how long is this going to take? " I just saw an iceberg run south because it was too cold. So I just lied and said "oh, there it is." and then after that he just expected me to remember exactly where it was. (K, the big dipper is a little tough for me still.)
So in response to your last question love....Did you marry a textbook, or a really hot babe that is always going to have to have things explained a few times?

Dave says: Well the later, but it's the most obvious constellation in the Winter sky, he's right THERE!

Abby says: David is the brightest star in her sky.

Anyway, we are al...Dave says: That's not a fair response, can't we at least fight fair?
Abby: This is the reason this is my blog.

Dave: Touch`e

We are also going to miss our trips up the mountain and wandering around our property looking for deer and listening to birds and sheep.
This was our bubble tea summer. I think just about every Friday night we drove to St. George to get our favorite treat. (We looked forward to it all week long.)
David was in Hawaii almost the entire summer last year, and this year it was so perfect to have him home.
Dave: She just liked it because she didn't have to mow the lawn!
Abby: what lawn, you killed it?
Dave: LIES AND DECEIT!
Abby: my blog, I win.
Dave: Cheaters never prosper. You ever heard of that one, huh?
Abby: That's getting deleted next time I log in.
Mckinley had so much fun swimming this year, and many days during the summer involved negotiations with her about wearing her "swimming pote." (her floaty suit...yeah, the old school ones. She thinks it's lovely.) She also got to go on the water slide with her daddy this year, and she thought that was so fun.
Dave: She totally wore me out, we probably went twenty or more times down the slide and you had to hike up like six flights of stairs. Okay maybe three or four, but it took a while.

Our camping trip was fun too, soo much better than the first time we went with Mckinley. We also had a fun time hanging out with our friends.

I went to critical care training and got to experience a little bit of Missouri, (and Kansas City BBQ, and the Royals.) And I also got my first taste of firefighting, standing on top of a 70 foot ladder over a burning building.
Dave: My car over heated three times coming back from Vegas. You want some excitement, try that one on for size! 120 degrees, no water or gas station in sight, in the middle of a desert. Then in the middle of a gorge ( which is actually quite an awesome canyon if you ever take a trip down 1-15 from St. G to Mesquite.) with no cellular services. I did make the best of it and read a lot of Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude, so that helped. Good times! Man is it just me or am I just writing negative stuff? I guess I need to read more books! I honestly did have a good time though, Seriously!
We will miss the family bar-b-cues and get togethers where the women in the family talk smack about the men behind their backs. Dave: WHAT!
We already miss little visits from friends and anyone just passing through. You are always welcome for a quick lunch or treat.(it might be a drink of water if we don't know you're coming.) We love all of you. Hope your summers were as perfect as ours.

Our little girl

Today I was feeling like I needed to "timeline" Mckinley. Sometimes, it feels like she changes so much everyday, and I just want to hold on to little things that she says or does and always remember them. There are so many of these little things that I've already forgotten because I haven't been very diligent in writing them down. So starting today, I will do better.
Everywhere we go, Mckinley takes her shoes off. We notice this especially when she goes to nursery. I always go back to check on her a few minutes after we take her, and it's always the first thing she does.
The past couple of weeks, she loves watching Cinderella. She has also started to sing some of the songs especially the "A dream is a wish...." song. She sings it in the bathtub, and when she is done singing all that she knows she says "oh that clock," like Cinderella says in the movie.
She loves Dragontales and Word world.
She adores Scooby and he is her best playmate during the day. She involves him in everything that she does, (Including dressing him up like a princess.) and she also frequently gets him in trouble.(A while ago she told him to come inside and watch a movie with her, which he did although he knows he isn't allowed in the house.)
The school bus stops in front of our house to pick up the neighbor kids every school day, and Mckinley is always up waiting at the window to see "the friends and the school bus."
Her current favorite food is sour cream...just plain. Disgusting huh? She says it's ice cream. David and I seriously convulse when she eats big bites of it, but she really loves it.
She loves going to "Donalds" with Grandpa.
Whenever she sees a water fountain, she asks for a penny to make a wish. She always closes her eyes and throws the penny in the water.
Whenever we go anywhere in the car, she has to haul several toys with her. She can't bear to leave her babies behind.

We love you so much Mckinley! You are our Angel!