Jack-O-Lantern Delight

Okay, I'm a little behind, but here are some more blurbs on some of our Halloween festivities.  About a week before Halloween we helped the kids carve their pumpkins for FHE.  They had a great time and I must say were very creative.  Alys and Ethan actually did most of the work themselves.  They were all so excited to put them outside and light them up.  We tried to remember to light them each night until Halloween and that was fun too.

Halloween Tradition

When we lived in Texas, we would always try to get together with family for a little Halloween party.  My sister-in-law, Amy, was always great at planning fun  things for us to do and made sure their were fun prizes for the different games.  Everyone usually brought some great food, we played games, bobbed for apples and most of us dressed up, or at least tried.  Anyway, it was always fun.  So, this year, Woody and I decide we'd try to keep  that tradition going, even though we're now near my family.  The week before Halloween was our big shin dig.  We held it in my brother's garage, threw down some straw, decorated it and had some fun.  The kids had fun dressing up and they were cute!  Some of the adults dressed up, so we'll have to work on that for next year, hint, hint!  Every family had a game to play and all in all I believe it was a SPOOKTACULAR evening!  Here are some photos from the event.

Here we have my sister, Tammy, as Raggedy Ann, eating some of Mom's great chili.

As for these boys...I'm not sure who had the bigger muscles, but we'll just say with The Incredible Hulk and Idaho's best policeman, we had our super heros covered.  Even Whitney was checkin' out the boys. :)

Here we have "Lady Vikequeen" and as for Thad, well, I'm not sure, but he was a big lady in a Tutu and he even showed us some moves!

Here's Count Woody Dracula with our cute little ladybug checking out the "treats".  I think the table was full of ghosts and gremlins, ghoul punch, and lots of other good stuff.

Crew was a cute little giraffe and I know you can't tell here, but I do think he really had a good time.

Oh, little miss Azlyn.  She was the cutest, Hollywood duck I've ever seen...

Here's Woody and Josh, trying to keep the kids entertained while building pumpkins from Lowe's.

See what I mean...hello Miss Hollywood Duck...here Grandpa, you wear the hat I've got a camera to pose for!

Here's a great game that Trina had; hilarious too!  We had a kids round and adult round.  They're trying to eat a donut off a string, while it's moving.  

Finding the best Halloween costume of the season...$59.  Watching The Hulk, a policeman, a cowboy and a cute girl eat a donut off a string...PRICELESS!

Vanessa, the maid, was throwing darts at some balloons that had candy in them.

This was a fun game from Tammy and Mike.  We made a large spider web by throwing a ball of yarn back and forth.  It was pretty cool.

Another great game from Curt and Raelynn.  They're trying to drop candy corn from the bottom of their nose into a bottle.  We had a few winners, but not an easy task!

Here's Benjamin trying to sneak some leftover candy corn that missed the bottle.  He was supposed to be our fireman but had no desire to wear his costume.  He had fun though!

Grandma and Grandpa were in charge of pin the nose on the pumpkin.  Another game the kids enjoyed.

This is the tangled web that you can get yourself into if you don't participate...just kidding.  The little ones thought it was so funny to wrap Taylor up after making our spider web.

This was our game...bobbing for apples.  We didn't get as many takers as we wanted, but it was still fun.  This is Taylor going deep.

It's Josh...he scored and barely got wet.

This is Jordan.  She did great...it took us a little bit to convince her to do it, but she got it!

Okay, I don't know if the apple was bad or he just didn't get wet enough.

Even our super heros gave it a whirl.  It was a bit of a challenge though as they have both lost their front teeth.

Way to go Mike...dive for that apple!

Go for it Raggedy Ann!  Oops..we're running into a little trouble....

she had to lose the hair!  We could not get the hair wet!

Fish out of water!

Benjamin is definitely our little fish!  I don't know what happened in the womb but if there's water around he'll find it!  We wanted to get him into swim lessons, but didn't make it during the summer months.  Fortunately, my health club offered them indoors so we signed him up for a Mom and child class.  He absolutely loved it!  If I wasn't careful, he would try to jump in before I did, which was kind of scary.  It was fun to see how much he enjoyed it and great for me as well.  With Alys at this age it was more of a nightmare.  I hope he continues to enjoy it and who knows, maybe someday we'll have a swimmer on our hands.

Goal!

Ethan has been enjoying soccer all month.  He has been playing with the Golden Eagles.  This has been his first run at actually playing on a team.  He has participated in clinics before but no actual games.  He's probably one of the youngest on his team but has enjoyed it and fit right in.  He's learned a lot and has scored a goal or two during the season.  I think his favorite position to play though is goalie.  Whenever his coach asks him to cover the goal he tends to not want to move down the field, as they don't usually play with a goalie.  Even though we've had a few cold, windy games and practices it's been fun to watch him play.  We look forward to the spring season!

Our Little Ballerina

About a month or two ago we signed Alys up for a dance class.  When I first talked to her about it she was adamant that she was not going to go!  I went and watched the first day and her teacher, Mrs. Macie was great.  She had fun things to play with while they were waiting to get started and she helped her find the right size ballet and tap shoes.  Now she loves it and she loves to wear her ballerina outfit.  She is learning ballet, tap and tumbling.  She will have a little recital coming up in December and we're excited to see what she's learned as she twirls in her cute little costume.

Canning, what's that?

Well, it's been about a month since I've talked about anything and my list is piling high so I thought I'd start with some canning.  When I was a kid I remember every year at the end of summer it was the dreaded time for canning!  That meant peeling pears, apples, peaches, making tomato sauce, shucking corn and cutting it off the cob and whatever else you could think of.  Some items always seemed to take forever!  Since I moved away, stopped in Arizona for a couple of years, stayed in Texas too long, got married and had kids; I kind of forgot how to do some of it.  So this year I thought I would take a stab at it just so I knew how to do it and there also seems to be a great abundance of fresh produce in the area.  Plus, we were also fortunate enough to share a garden with my brother and his family and my parents.  That was wonderful!  Here's some highlights of us working in the garden and the beautiful and tasty peaches that I canned.  They are a "Summer Lady" peach and very tasty.  I even grilled some of them and that was fabulous!!  Sorry, forgot to take pictures of that but definitely will next time.

A Family Camp out

For Labor Day weekend we went on our first family camping trip.  The kids have wanted to go for a long time, so with an extra day for the weekend we decided to take the plunge.  We went to a place called Mann's Creek.  They have a reservoir there and a few campgrounds.  We got in Saturday afternoon and got our tent set up under some nice shade trees.  That evening we just relaxed, played some crochet, baseball, etc.  We had some hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner which were yummy.  Then as were starting to slow down for the evening, the fun began!  The winds started picking up because a cold front was to be coming through.  We thought after a  while that the winds would die down.  Nope, not the case.  So as I lay there on the luxuriously soft ground, listening to the wind blow, I just kept wondering when I was going to have to crawl out of my tent to set it back up!  A couple of hours later, when it's dark and most of the other campers have settled in for the night we got some new neighbors.  While it was kind of funny watching them try set up their tents in 30mph wind gusts, it was not so funny when they were laughing and joking until about 2am.  Fortunately, the kids slept like logs.  Not to mention the zipper on the door of the tent we had did not work.  Needles to say, even though the first night went off with a bang, the rest was pretty good.

The next day we went for a walk to the reservoir, played some more games and had some additional family members join us.  My parents and some of the kids cousins came up for a night which the kids loved.  We had a great enchilada dinner made in the dutch oven by Woody followed by some peach cobbler.  I think sometimes we eat better when we do activities than we do at home!  All in all it was a good time and something the family will look forward to again.  Maybe we'll try an ice cave this winter...just kidding!

One night Benjamin was so tired he decided he'd just lay on the ground for a rest!  Poor kid, camping was just too much fun.