Merry Christmas

We wish you a wonderful Christmas and a terrific New Year!
-Mike, Lena, Jon, Rebecca, Ethan, Kirsten, Alyssa and Keith-

Pumpkins and Indians

Indian Days
Mike went with Rebecca to Indian days on a GATES field trip. Rebecca was so excited about this field trip. They had to leave extra early in the morning, before Seminary was over. Jon took care of Keith when Mike left.

The Indian demonstrations were fun to see, dancing, games, archery, food, etc., but they had to wait a long time between activities. They could shop for Indian crafts too. Rebecca liked the Indian fry bread, but she didn't think Indians used powdered sugar back in the day. She also bought a hair clip with pink feathers and purple beads, and a bracelet.

Climbing the Indian mound.

What a great way to spend a day with Daddy!

For Family Home Evening on Monday besides having a candy corn taste test, we carved pumpkins. Sister Brown gave us two big pumpkins to carve. Thank you!

Jon wanted a dragon's eye and Ethan wanted a face, so they carved both.

The girls carved a cat face.

Here's our little pumpkin who has joined our patch.
Thanks Christina for the darling hat!

Ethan grew all these cute little pie pumpkins.

Our own little patch of pumpkins.

Taste Test

One of our family's favorite shows is Good Eats on the food network. On a recent episode, Alton Brown showed how to make your own candy corn. We decided to try the recipe and have a taste test to see what everyone liked the best.

On 3 Dark and Pleasant Nights

a penguin

a pink princess or two

two Guatemalan kids

a dragon (see the wings!)

and an ant attacking a picnic

Neighborhood trick-or-treat, ward trunk-or-treat and chili cook-off, and city trick-or-treat comprised Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings. The weather was great. Cool enough to remind us that fall is here, and sweaters are needed. Our ant won 2nd place at work, and 1st place at the ward. The ward contest would be more impressive if he actually had some competition, but there was none for the adult male category. Our candy haul was the best ever. We are set between now and Easter. Little do the kids know that I siphoned off most of their candy for all the holidays between now and then. Wa-ha-ha-ha (imagine maniacal laughter). Don't worry, their buckets were returned 2/3rds full. I then asked for contributions to seminary, and they shared willingly. Thanks kids!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

Cookies and Ice Cream!

With Halloween coming up, the kids are really excited. We haven't completely decided what we're all going to do for costumes, but we'll have to get that worked out this week. The kids keep trying to jump out and scare each other. One of their uncles works at a corn maze right now, that does a spooky version at night and they were told that he was able to scare someone who no one had been able to scare. The kids asked how he did it, and Mike told them that he jumped out and yelled "Cookies and Ice Cream!" Mike was being silly, of course, but then when they went out to pick some vegetables from the garden at night, he sneaked around and jumped out of the garden in front of Jon and Ethan yelling "Cookies and Ice Cream!" They jumped back about 10 feet and then started laughing. Ever since then our kids have been jumping out of all sorts of places yelling "Cookies and Ice Cream!" So if you want to really scare someone this Halloween, you know just what to do. There can't be anything more frightening than Cookies and Ice Cream!

Mike took portraits of the kids recently. He has always been frustrated with how the school portraits turn out and with our digital SLR, he enjoys taking pictures. Posed portraits are more challenging than natural/candid portraits since the kids don't always want to sit or pose like we want, but the digital SLR is fast at taking pictures. Mike has a light set and has made a few backdrops. You can see instructions for making your own backdrops if you are interested. If you don't have lights or flashes, you can also get good lighting by setting up outside to take portraits. Some of the portraits are shown below.

Kirsten wanted to do some silly pictures.

Unfortunately, we haven't been taking many pictures of the things that we're doing, but here are a couple more of Keith. New baby's are always so cute!

Ethan and the other kids like holding their baby brother, but they usually can't hold him for very long before they get tired.