Halloween

 Our Halloween celebration starts with the pumpkin carving a couple weeks ago! Thankfully Ben and Hannah haven't complained that we do this. They seem like they still enjoy it. I think Hannah loves getting all the seeds to bake!

Photos a bit blurry, but you can see that he was happy wearing some gloves!

Ashton tried to do more this year, but he had issues with the gooey slimy feeling.

Ben was pretty proud of his!

The finished product!

On Halloween evening we went to the Price's home.  We all had a great time! Hannah and Abby went one direction. Ben and Griffen went another direction, and Ashton wound up crying because he wanted his brother and sister.  We got his mind off of it and started trick-or-treating at houses.  He seemed to like going up to the houses and getting the candy. He did great with saying "Trick-or-treat" and "Thank You", but in between walking to each house he kept wanting to go back to Jenny's.  It must have been a combination of Ben and Hannah not being with us, lack of a nap that afternoon, and having to go potty. This potty training thing sure does limit your time out and about!  Ashton did great and had a fun evening!

Ben is the in the Jason Mask

Thanks to our friend MeiLi Chen, he had a very warm hat and mittens!

Hannah and Abby Price

Loved dumping it out.  He kept asking why he is only able to eat one tonight. 

Hannah took a photo of her candy!  Teenagers and they are still excited about trick-or-treating because of the Candy! 

It was a great evening!

WAY TO GO BEN!

This is out of the Everett Herald for this last week!

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20111018/SPORTS01/710189947/1004/SPORTS#Athletes-of-the-Week----Oct.-10-15

Athletes of the Week -- Oct. 10-15

The best performances in prep sports from last week

Ben Mietzner

Jackson | Boys tennis

The Timberwolves freshman beat Kamiak's Conor Garside 6-1, 6-1 and Cascade's Eddie Bayya 6-0, 6-2 as Jackson swept the week to finish the season 16-0 for the third straight season. 

Ben finished his tennis season with a 16-0 win in mostly number 2 and 3 singles.  His coach did have him play in some doubles this last month and he did great! This week the highschools had their league championships at his school, Jackson High, to see who would make it to districts. Ben played doubles with a senior David Hong.  They made it through the league championships and made it to districts! Six of their teammates made it as well! Ben and David are seeded 4th and next week they will be play at Districts at Stanwood Highschool to see who will make it to State!  

Exciting stuff for our little freshman! ;)


Go Jackson!

Mark Is Amazing!

Mark, with 4 other amazing women, organized a fantastic Breast Cancer Tennis Mixer to raise money for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and their MammoVan.  He took so much time and effort to go out to many of the local businesses and ask them to donate anything they can.  That can be a challenging thing to do, and he accomplished so much! At the tennis mixer people could purchase raffle tickets to place in a bag that would be randomly chosen for the winner. 

 Mark was excited to announce they raised $2,452!  

 

And the winner is......

Lightning McQueen came to the mall!

Ashton had just woken up from a nap, so he was still in a daze.  He didn't want to stand by himself for the pictures.  The line was long to just get your photo taken, but they were free photos and pretty cool cars! He seemed excited to see the cars in real life size, but they kept telling him to smile at the camera.  I think he would have rather just stared at the cars!

Pumpkin Patch

We woke up to a beautiful October day in Washington, and told the kids we were headed to the Pumpkin patch!

Hannah was the lucky one to get to ride the Cow Train with Ashton.  They sure enjoyed it. The driver went fast at times, and they received a little tour of the farm that we didn't see. 

We did have loads of fun at the pumpkin farm! 

There were two mazes to choose from.  The 10 acre maze that takes approximately 1 hour to complete, or the kiddie maze that is about 15-20 minutes to complete.  I think Ben and Hannah would have loved the larger maze, but it was close to lunch time and considering we had Ashton who is just recently potty trained, we stuck with the quicker one.  We didn't want any accidents on our fun day out, plus we still needed to go find our pumpkins!

We had one rule for pumpkin picking.  If you can carry it then we can get it!  

Ashton found the perfect pumpkin. 

Tons to choose from!

Hannah was very proud of her choice!

Ashton helped me find the perfect pumpkin too!

I think Ben was thinking he was too old for photos with his pumpkin - but I told him he'll never be too old with me!

Mark's is the biggest one in the wheelbarrow.  Ashton sure loves to help daddy!

I love the fact that this Pumpkin Patch has this growth chart.  Last year Ashton was just under 3 feet. 

This was last year.  Fun to see the difference!

What a perfect tire swing!

After I took this photo of Ashton, he wanted a turn taking photos of everyone else. He did a darn good job of taking our photos! All of the photos following are taken by Ashton:

Homecoming

Ben's off to his first Homecoming Dance tonight.  He was one of three kids to be nominated for the Freshman Homecoming Court. He didn't win, but how exciting for him! One of his good friends Payton had won the title.  They are all heading together to enjoy a fun evening with friends!

It made us remember the last time he had a tux on - at our wedding.  He looks so good!

Our kids!

BEN TURNED 15 ON SEPTEMBER 8

Can you believe our oldest boy is 15 already. Time sure does go too fast.

Our family celebration!

 What a good lookin' kid! 

The famous 5 layer Chocolate Chip Cookie cake! The kids always seem to request this one. Delicious! 

The Cousins hanging out. Even the little ones want to play XBox!

All the kids started school last week! What a change for Ben!  He has to leave the house at 6:50am to get to school. I think the first few days were tough, but he is getting used to it. He really likes his classes and is keeping busy with the Varsity Tennis team!  He is 4-0 and his Tennis team is also 4-0! Great start to the season!

Hannah was sad that she didn't get any friends in her classes at first, but now with her vibrant personality she is making friends left and right! She seems to like her schedule and she is keeping busy with Tennis twice a week and soccer three times a week.  She tells us she LOVES soccer and wishes she could play 24/7!

Kids first day of School! Ben leaves too early to get a photo - But Hannah looks great!

Ashton was very excited to go back to school!  He started a week after Ben and Hannah. He has only gone one day so far, but he was having so much fun.

His Best friend wasn't there that day and he put his coat tag right by his coat tag and said "Cooper is my best friend". It was so adorable. He can not wait to go to school together with Cooper on Monday!

Lookin' so big!

He thought something in the story was really funny!

That next day we pretended to have our own little classroom and he tried to trace his letters. He did really well. Sometimes he would start at the wrong end of a letter, or do silly different things - but for his first time, he was great!