Why so many projects?

For those of you with kids in school...does it ever seem like every child's school projects are all due in the same week or day? We have just finished with the last of the elementary school projects tonight. Emily, Nate and Luke have five projects (between them) due today and tomorrow. The kids worked really hard on all of them but it seems like mom and dad end up doing a lot of last minute trips to the store for art supplies or sitting at the computer with a child to help with writing or graphics. Tonight's project was the worse but it truthfully was Denise's fault that it ended up being such a long night. More info tomorrow when we update the blog - I'm going to bed!

When life gives you lemons...

Denise and the kids made lemonade tonight - exciting, huh? Perhaps not to everyone reading this but the kids were excited. They have been waiting to pick lemons off our tree since the moment the tree was planted. Everyone took turns squeezing the lemons and we ended up with yummy lemonade. Here is the recipe for anyone interested...

1 cup water
1 cup sugar
mix together in a pot and bring to a boil allowing the sugar to dissolve completely.
add
1 cup lemon juice
4 cups cold water and stir

Moving on into November

It seems as if the holidays are quickly approaching. Derek, the girls and Nathan have all started rehearsals for our church Christmas concert - Sing Noel. They also spent this last weekend trying out for a church musical that will happen in the spring. They had to go into a private audition to sing and then do a group dance. Emily was so scared about singing - her nerves really got the best of her. After some reassuring conversations with both Mom and Dad Emily dried her tears, braved the audition and went for it. We are proud of her for working through her fears. The kids and Derek are now waiting to know what their parts are.

Denise and Luke figure that there needs to be someone in the audience for all these performances so they will be the cheering section. Besides the thought of adding weekly rehearsals to an already full schedule overwhelms Denise - she's happy to be a cheerleader again, especially with Luke to help her.

Work and church holiday parties have already started to fill our calendar for the next few months - yikes! Christmas morning will be here before we know it. Maybe we'll actually get a Christmas card out this year but we're making no promises.

Freaky Family Home Evening

Ok, the day wasn't totally void of Halloween festivities. We enjoyed a normal, quiet day today but then decided we really did need a Halloween fix so we were off to a neighborhood haunted house that Denise had seen in the paper. Derek had a work meeting so Denise gathered up the kids for family night and called a few friends to meet up at the haunted house.

The haunted house was amazing! I am sure the people that put it on spend a ton of time and money. They offer it to the community for free and have done it for 12 years. The kids decided to send a thank you note to the family with a donation to thank them for all their hard work.

Denise took a few of the kids through for the non scary version first. The family offers this option so young kids and scaredy cats can enjoy the house without having to run out crying like a baby :) It was fun to go through this way because you got to appreciate the detail work. The "monsters" would have their masks off and say things to the kids like "I like your sweatshirt" or "Nice shoes" It was pretty funny.

After that the rest of the group did the scary version. Denise laughed most of the way through it because she was with Megan and her friends and they were screaming so much she couldn't contain herself. Nate went through with some of our friends in another group because he wanted to be with the boys. He said he wasn't scared but screamed some of the time to let the monsters think they had scared him. What a nice boy - always thinking of others.

Denise loved the fact that the haunted house was not gory. They had a well thought out story line and had created a creepy, not bloody atmosphere. It was a fun activity for the whole family and we all appreciate the work that this neighborhood put forth to make it a fun evening for us and others.

Finally a day with nothing to do

We are so happy to have a day with nothing more than school, work and housecleaning - we feel like we are on vacation.

The rest of the pictures

Megan working on the creepy carnival curtains

installing the curtains in the back of the car Derek staring as Zultan

Night of the Creepy Carnival

Tonight was Trunk or Treat at church. Everyone decorates their cars and the kids run around getting way more candy then they need. We decided to go with a creepy carnival theme for our car. Derek and Denise worked on the sign.

Megan and Emily took care of the carnival curtain. Emily cut all the fabric strips and Megan sewed a casing in each strip so that they could put the fabric on a tension rod. They did a really great job on the their project.

We took our popcorn cart as part of our carnival theme but we were unable to pop popcorn because everytime we plugged it in it would pull too many amps since we had lots of other stuff plugged in to our car. Oh well, it still looked good and we had popped some popcorn before we went to the activity so there was some for folks to eat.

The highlight of the night was Zoltan. We had a fortune teller in a box guy that you could set to say it's own stuff or use a mic to talk for it. Derek hid behind the curtain that the girls put together and talked with every trunk or treater that came by - it was hilarious. He would give people their fortunes and say things about their costumes, etc. We had many kids (and adults) hang out by our car to listen to what the great Zoltan had to say.

We had a very fun night together as a family but this weekend is starting to make Denise tired. Tomorrow we have Denise's family & the missionaries coming for dinner. Hopefully Sunday night, when all the shindigs are over, will bring a great nights sleep for all of us!

We are once again having some problems downloading all the photos. We'll have to tackle it tomorrow. It's 11:30pm and church starts early, especially for Derek. At least we have Daylight Saving Time.

Picture wouldn't post

I couldn't post this picture of Megan and her friends from the party in the last blog update. Something wasn't working with blogger but it seems to be fixed. Here is Megan and her party guests

Enjoying the movie

Secrets...

Party Time!

The kids social calendar was full last night...

Luke had a birthday party to go to for one of his "bestest friends" Gracie.

Emily and Nate went to a party together with all the kids from their primary classes. They wore pj's, watched a movie, jumped on a trampoline, and more. Nate must have had a long week at school because when Derek went to pick them up from the party Nathan was snoozed out.

Megan planned a last minute party so she would have something to do and invited the girls from her Young Women's class at church over to watch Monster House and have dinner. Denise and Megan went into party mode and got the backyard set up for the evening.

We borrowed our friends projector and set up the "theater" outside. Everyone agreed that it was a great set up so now we are making plans to show movies in the backyard on Friday nights next summer.


We ordered a ton of pizzas and invited the parents of Megan's friends to stay for dinner. Some of the families brought salads to share. My friend Max and her kids made adorable mummy cupcakes that they brought over to the party. We also had movie candy and a ton of popcorn from our new popcorn cart that Denise just got for entertaining. She loves it!

After dinner a few of the parents left and the rest moved into the family room, to watch a freaky Mel Gibson movie on tv - Signs, so the girls could have their party adult free. They had a blast huddled up on the sofa covered with warm blankets to watch the movie. At one point during a scary part of the movie Derek climbed out Emilys window onto the patio cover. He was right above the girls and he quietly snuck out to the edge where he threw his head down over the edge and yelled at the girls. He was right in front of the movie screen so they all saw him and they all screamed. Of course the demented parents who were watching it all from the family room window got a good laugh and so did the girls.

After the movie the girls hung out, talked and laughed. As parents we are glad that all our kids have such good friends that they can do fun wholesome things with. Last night was fun for all of them and for Derek and Denise too.

Dancing Queen

Megan got to go to her first youth dance. Every year the church Halloween dance is for 12 years old and up. She had a really great time.

She started the night by heading over to the Mac counter at Nordstrom with 3 friends so they could get their make-up done for the dance. Megan and Kenzie were scary dolls, Abbie was a fairy, and Ricey was a very cool clown. The make-up was perfect and the girls were ready to head over to the dance.

before make-up

after make-up

The dance had a pretty good crowd and Megan had a ton of fun. The boys from church were great about asking the girls to dance and so Megan got to slow dance quite a bit. Fast dances seemed to have changed since Denise and Derek used to go to dance. Boys and girls don't dance together for fast songs - big groups of kids go out on the floor and dance together. Everytime we saw Megan she seemed to be dancing up a storm - I'm sure she loved that her parents were there for part of the time.

As a side note...Megan and Kenzie won the prize for scariest costume. At least now Denise can say she is an award winning costume designer.

Pumpkin Patch

It's our family tradition to go to the pumpkin patch every year for a family night in October. We saw a few families from church there and so the kids partnered up with the Harper kids and took off to ride overpriced rides and play overpriced games - they had a blast!

I had to include this picture of Nate and Izzy. For as long as we have been going to the pumpkin patch we have taken a picture of these two together. Below are their pictures from the last 2 years. Before 2004 we didn't have a digital camera and there is no need to spend time digging out the old pictures.

Nate and Izzy 2005

Nate and Izzy 2004

Should these two ever decide to marry they will have the best wedding video ever. How many couples have photos together from the time they were very young on up. One can only imagine Izzy's mom and Denise dragging these poor kids to the pumpkin patch when they are 18 years old so that the traditional photo can be taken.

We love LA traffic!

We went with a few families from church out to LA's El Capitan theatre to see Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D. The movie was great but traffic there and back was scary. In spite of the traffic we had a great time.

I'd like to add that we all looked fantastic sporting the ultra cool 3-D glasses. A few of the kids continued wearing them the rest of the night even when we were out to dinner. Perhaps we'll start a new fashion trend.After the movie we spent a bit of time walking around. We saw a lot of great street performers but the "Golden Robot" was our favorite, Elmo came in at a close second.

It's always fun to head out to LA but we really could do without all the traffic. The kids don't seem to mind though so I am sure we will continue to head out that way when we see something fun to do. We love that we live so close to a town that offers so much.

We're grandparents!

We're grandparents...luckily, it was just for a day.

Megan had to bring home a "think about it baby" for one of her school classes. "Emma Delene" joined our family on Wednesday and most of us were glad to see her leave on Thursday. Aren't we a loving bunch? Megan did great with her. Emma cried a lot and Megan tended to her needs with a little help from Grandma from time to time. Grandma fled the scene for the middle of the night crying and Megan handled it all very well.

Luke woke up during one of the nighttime crying sessions. He ran into Megan's room crying saying he heard a witch and was scared. I'm with Luke - all that crying scared me too.

The rest of the kids are all anxious to be in middle school now so that they can bring home a baby. We have a couple years before Emily takes the class so we think we have plenty of time to try and talk her into writing the essay (which is the alternative to bringing home baby) Keep your fingers crossed!

Friday the 13th

Denise decided on the Thursday the 12th that she wanted to mark the fact that there was a Friday the 13th in October so she planned a small get together for the 13th. We invited a few friends over and split into 2 groups boys vs. girls and then headed out on a photo scavenger hunt. The girls won, although the boys disagree (sore losers - he he) After the hunt we ended up back out our house to check out the team's pictures that were downloaded to a laptop and projected onto a big screen. A friend has all the pictures on his computer so we only have the girl's pictures that were taken with our camera. Sorry, that we can't share any of the boy's photos but we can share some of the girl's crazy photos.

Each team had an identical list of words or phrases like - blue, new beginning, sound of music, spirited, cheese, etc. It was up to each team to interpret the word or phrase and then take a picture. When we got back a word or phrase was chosen randomly as was judging criteria. For instance "dog" would be pulled from one bowl and "humor" from another. We would show both team's pictures for dog and then judge which one showed the most humor.

Here are some of the girl's pictures...

"got milk?"



"How'd you get back there?"

and one of the winning photos -"play ball"

Scary Potter

A few weeks ago at Mutual the kids carved pumpkins. Megan and her teammate carved Harry Potter - he is now Scary Potter, don't you agree?

Countdown to Halloween

Well, it's October and Denise is beside herself with happiness. She is busy planning and sewing costumes and trying to decorate the house. The house is coming along slowly - there seems to be too many other things needing her attention but you can bet that by Halloween night the house will be ready for trick or treaters.

Our annual Halloween party that went to every other year, because we skipped last year, is not happening again this year. The thought of all the time, work, and money involved was sending Denise a bit over the edge. She feels bad because she does love having the party but is somewhat relieved that she is not currently in the midst of party preparation. We're hoping next year we will be ready to throw another big shindig.

Here are some pictures from the last big Halloween party - a moment of silence please...

look who's 5

Happy Birthday to Luke.

September 14th Luke turned 5 and we celebrated together at home. Our family tradition for birthdays is that the kids get to pick what they want to have for dinner. We feasted on homemade mac and cheese per Luke's request.

After dinner Luke opened his gifts - a new scooter, helmet and bouncy ball. We spent the rest of the evening in the backyard playing with his birthday gifts. We had a nice evening although he still keeps asking Denise when his birthday party is. Maybe we need to take some kids to dinner at Chuck E. Cheese and call it a party.

School has started and we are behind

Between early mornings getting ready for school and afternoons and evening spent doing homework we have gotten a bit behind with our blog. We thought we'd catch up with the first day of school pictures.

The kids showing off what grade they are in this year. Luke was still sleeping when this picture was taken but we aren't sure how we would have had him make a K for kindergarten so we're ok with it.

The kids all got brand new teachers to the school and they each love who they got. We are sure that it will be a great school year.

Legoland

A few days before school started we spent a day at Legoland (minus Luke - long story so we will not get into it) The crowds were fairly small so we enjoyed a fun day at the park. Denise has decided though that she is definately a Disney girl - nothing compares to the details at Disneyland.

Finally!

Nathan finally has started to loose some teeth. This picture was taken just a few days after he lost his front tooth. It seems like the adult tooth was pushing for some space since it is so far out already.

What a great smile!