Christmas Party Before Thanksgiving...??

So we had a nice Christmas party before Thanksgiving. I guess I should explain why there is a Christmas party before Thanksgiving. My family always has a Christmas party that one of us is in charge of. This year it was Holly. She will not be here for the holidays, but it was her year to be in charge. She was up for Thanksgiving week and wanted to have her Christmas party. So we all meet at my house. Her theme for the party was to do some old-fashioned things we did when we were kids so that our kids could do it. It was fun. Dad and Jayson are relaxing while everyone tells a Christmas memory. I again heard some of my favorite stories about Christmas. However I'm still waiting for Austin's Christmas memory.

Peyton is working on something that we all did in Mrs. Murdock's class. You take crepe paper and wrap it around your pencil, then did it in glue and make your picture. We ended up making candy canes for a our picture.

This is where Holly is giving everyone a candy plate and getting a little emotional because she won't be here to watch us make the candy. (because we all know she didn't help! :-)

We also did the traditional left/right present exchange. Jay did the honors be reading and I think Dad just kept what he wanted and passed all the rest on.

This is the silence of the lambs snowflake that Peyton made. I thought he did pretty good for his first snowflake.

Pam, Ryan and Dad all made quite a nice long paper chain that ended up in Kyla's room. It turned out very cute.

Carson seranaded us with some Christmas carols...that his dad did not really appreciate. But it was pretty cute!

Holly and Granny are getting Adam going with the crepe paper candy canes.

Working hard with that glue stick!

Angie was put over the scissor patrol because we had a lot of under-age scissor users and Carson kept trying to steal them.

The chain gang!

Peyton's final candy cane picture...It turned out just like I remembered them when we were kids. Thanks for bringing back the memories Holly and Mom! The food was good too! We loved the cheeseball...looking forward to more!

Happy Halloween Weekend

So our Halloween started our really busy. I volunteered to be one of the room moms and was lucky enough to plan and attend Peyton's Halloween party at school. We had a lot of fun. We did pictures in our costumes and a whole class picture. Then each kid lined up for a picture by themselves. We printed out the picture for them to take home. This was the year of the vampire for Peyton. A whole bunch of boys decided they wanted to be a vampire. But Peyton just wanted to be one. Not sure where he got the idea from.

We did a lot of fun activities at his party. We had a fun treasure hunt that led us all over the school. Then did a monster mash musical game. We did a Halloween cup toss. Attempted to decorated a paper plate pumpkin, and also decorated cupcakes. I don't know how kindergarten teachers do it...It required a lot of energy. All in all pretty good for my first party! I even told them a few fun Halloween lies...like the witch's finger breadsticks that I cut off of a witch and the mean pirate who hid their treasure. They believed everything I said...right??? ha!

Peyton liked the decorating the pumpkin cupcake. Then he wanted to wander around and see what everyone else was doing. As you can see we have a lot of busy little kindergarteners.

Our afternoon got even busier because I volunteered to help decorate for the Hamer carnival. We went home, cleaned up a cute little vampire, and then headed back to the school. The carnival was great and it looked very nice too!

The first thing that Peyton wanted to was the bungee run. This is for a little bit bigger kids, but Peyton loved it. You basically run and then it jerks you back...doesn't sound really fun.

Peyton did the pop toss and the dime toss. Andy and I got into the dime toss because were trying to win the book "The Mouse and the Motorcycle". After I tried and tried and won other things, Andy finally after a few tries, actually won the book. I then tried a Koosh toss because I could win these bugs that would crawl up and down the wall which they didn't after I won them...but we had fun anyway. We had two other places we had to be that night so we hurried through as much as we could

Peyton got a carmel apple and bit off all of the caramel. Then he did the sucker pull and won a prize.

We decided to forgo the vampire costume for the night because we had a wedding to attend and also went to the Halloween concert at BYU-Idaho. The theme for the concert was a Super-hero theme and Peyton loved it. We had a good time. Then we went home.

The busy Friday was over and Halloween came. We spent the morning getting our chores done and taking funny pictures of us in scary teeth. And yes we also look a little scary but we were having fun.

Then we got our little vampire ready again to go trick or treating. He was very excited to go especially after a few trick or treaters came to our door. He was very cute and wanted to put all of the candy in their baskets. Andy then took him out to get his loot. I stayed home and handed out candy and read a book...how nice!

Andy said Peyton was very brave and went by himself up to all of the houses. He only got scared out one house that decorates with a lot of spooky things. But he still liked it and had a good time.
As you can see he looked pretty spooky! He didn't like wearing the makeup but I thought he was a pretty cute little vampire.

This will show the fruits of his labors Halloween night. He got a pretty good haul.

And he ate candy until he was sick...ha! Actually he is pretty good and only has a few at a time. He was so excited though and it was very cute. What a fun weekend we had.

Today (Sunday) we just kind of had a nice day at home. I made Pumpkin Cinnamon rolls and we stayed in our PJs all day. It was a nice weekend! Busy, but fun and nice!

Bigger and Better Than Ever...

So this year we grew our own pumpkins and didn't hav to buy any. I must say I was very proud to have grown these big babies...however you kind of forget that maybe they might be hard to carve. Let's just say that these bad boys were a little difficult to work with, but we had a lot of fun and really enjoyed what we came up with. Peyton of course is still a little too young to be doing is own carving. He started out wanting the biggest pumpkin, until of course he had to actually pull out the guts. You can see that he ended up switching to another pumpkin that was a little more his size and that he helped picked the design for. Of course Andy carved it. I told me how funny it was that he picked the design and then he says he is bored and leaves while Andy carves the pumpkin. But he ended up thinking it was very cool. He then had to immediately find a way to light the pumpkin.

I was also able to finish my first one about the same time Andy got down carving Peyton's pumpkin. I went with my witch theme again and since it was such a big pumpkin, I decided that I would add some words at the top. I ended up turning it enough that it actually looks like the witch's hat. It is pretty cool if I don't say so myself...

This is what my witch looked like lit up!

This is Peyton's spooky pumpkin!

We did our traditional eating the guts picture. Peyton always thinks this is so funny!

One of the pumpkins was so big, Peyts could fit his head into the opening in the top. This is the pumpkin he originally picked out but thought it was too hard to get the guts out, so he switched to the smaller one!

This is our traditional family of pumpkin heads pictures! We do this every year. After we finish carving, we put them put like they are our heads. Andy's pumpkin and mine are so big, we had a hard time hefting them up. I believe that is why my gullet is sticking out! ha!

Peyts was trying to look like a mummy!

I like my witch's head! It goes with the sign on my door at school that read, "Who needs Halloween, I'm a witch all year!" ha!

Andy's is the heaviest...he needs a little bit more on that bad boy!

This is what his looks like lit up! It is pretty cool and spooky. How would you like that thing looking in your window?

These are all three pumpkins lit up. Keep in mind we still have two more to finish...

This is my second one and it was so big that I carved three designs on it. I thought it turned out pretty cool, but I definitely got sick of carving pumpkins. Peyton took our one that looked like a butt crack pumpkin and painted it. He seemed to have the most fun with this. I forgot to get a picture but I will...it was a funny pumpkin. It grew into the fence and it made it have a design. These pumpkins were so heavy and so thick we had to scrap the insides for quite a while!

This is what my final pumpkin looked like lit up. We had them all out on our porch and lit up and then we realized it was freezing cold, so we had to haul these bad boys all back to the garage...it was not cool! But it was a fun night of carving!

We (or rather they) are the Champions...

Just can't do it like Queen can...huh! Well yesterday we had the chance to go and watch Austin play for the 8th grade grid kid championship. They played against Sandcreek and it was a very good and close game. Austin had some great tackles and also some great punts...This is our cheering crew right here. Let's just say that some of the crowd gets crazy for grid kid!
Austin's team ending up winning a very close game. I believe the score was 12-13. I was actually pretty impressed. They had some great plays and their little quarterback was pretty good. Sandcreek had one kid that did pretty much everything, but once they shut him down they did great! We enjoyed watching it. As you can see it was a beautiful day. Probably one of the best we have seen in a long time. It was even hot. We went from freak snowstorm to really hot. We loved it. It did mess up some of my pictures though! There is a little bit of a glare!

I didn't do a very good job of going down on the sidelines and taking pictures this year. I had to study my lesson between plays. So I don't have any good action shots. Granny wanted me to post this for everyone so I hope you enjoy!


As you can see in this shot and the next one, they are holding their hand in the form of a "C". I'm assuming that means champions. According to Angie, they haven't since sometime last season. There is another Rocky Mountain team that is also pretty good, so it should be a fun time watching them next year when they get into high school! I may actually go to a few of those games!

This last video is a reproduction of their chant they do before and after the game! It must imitidate the others because they really do get into it. You can see that Austin doesn't have much rhythm...you'll have to work on that Aus! Great job!

The Cycle Repeats Itself...

So ever since Peyton was little we thought he would love to clog. He loves dancing and he has great rhythm. Well Patty Gasser who is still teaching thank heavens decided she would do a little class. It has been kind of fun watching him learn his dance that I think those of us who took from Patty also did. There is another little boy in his class and also three little girls. They are all pretty cute...
Peyton stands by Tyson while warming up. He is doing pretty good during warm-ups...then....

...he gets in front of the mirror and all control and listening vanishes. He begins to pull faces, sit down, run up to the mirror...etc...After a lesson a while ago, we had a come to Jesus talk. I basically threatened him with everything he holds dear if he doesn't listen and do his best. That helped him improve a little...but I think he gets a little tired of marching to the beat of the same drummer and has to go out on his own. But he will be dancing for a Christmas recital I believe! Should be fun! It has brought back a lot memories of when I did this as a kid!

Them are Some Punkins'

So as I write this post(October 5, 2009), I have looked out all day at about three to four inches of snow and sadly wish that fall was just starting...I've loved watching my garden grow all summer. We have been very lucky with all that we were able to harvest. I'm always a little sad as I watch it age and continue to die as the weather gets colder. A while back my dad told us that it was going to freeze and that we needed to gather in our pumpkins. We went out to do that and were kind of sad because they grew so big. Before we gathered these in, we got some great pictures to actually show how big they got. I also had some awesome sunflowers that are all now weighed down with snow. I miss fall already...and my peaches are almost out! Saddest part of the year for me!
We had a really long row this year of over 60 sunflowers. They all got at least 10 feet or taller. They were a pretty and impressive sight!

Does anyone have any good ways to get to the seeds? They are millions of them. Last year I tried, but I don't think I did so well! Any suggestions?

Loved these shots of the sunflowers and the sunset!

Here are some of our pumpkins that really grew this year. My mom told me they are called Turk's turban and they are really good to eat, however, I just wanted to grow them for decoration. We sure had a lot of these...however, our monster pumpkins are what I am the most proud of!

This plant that grew our monster pumpkins went nuts. These two pumpkins actually grew on the other side of the fence because the plant actually through the fence and then the pumpkins sprouted. It was funny because the vine of the pumpkin made it grow through into the fence and so it is deformed to look like a bum crack..we of course refer to it as the bum crack pumpkin! Ha!

Here are the bad boys....We had a hard time lifting them into our wagon to haul out of our garden and we are not sure how we are going to carve them, but we love our huge pumpkins! I believe this is the biggest thing I've ever grown!

These two grew side-by-side. I took Jake's advice and tried to put something up to it to give it perspective. I realize that my foot is not the best thing to put up...however, it was all I had at my disposal. It will show you, though, how it dwarfs my foot. I have big feet and they look small compared to these babies!

We had four total big pumpkins and some more small ones. We are excited for Halloween. So much so, that Peyton has already tried to chop into two of them...hope they make it. We duct-taped the holes he made...we'll see!