Halloween 2009

Happy Halloween! It is the spookiest night of the year!

Two scary vampires.

Obi wan is ready for action. Maybe he will protect us from the many vampires lurking in our neighborhood tonight!

It is called candy corn pizza. Get it? Kind of hard to tell in the picture. It did look like candy corn. I thought it was a cute idea plus the kids love pizza, so how could we go wrong? Yummy dinner to start the halloween festivities.

Carving pumpkins-- October 09

Carving pumpkins is one of our favorite fall activites. The exciting thing this year was that we were carving pumpkins that we grew ourselves. We found out that fresh pumpkins are much easier to carve too! They turned out great. We also put on the great halloween music Paul sent the kids and danced while carving. Note: we don't recommend dancing with sharp knives in your hands of course, but it sure was fun!

Jack fondly named his little pumpkin "peanut" .

I think he was all of our favorites.

Yikes, I just noticed a ghost behind the blinds... spooky huh? Who could it be?

Our favorite army man

Since our favorite soldier has not been able to put these up himself (the internet isn't so reliable in the middle of a war I guess) we chose a few of our favorites that he has sent us and hope to be getting more soon. This last one is the place where he calls home for the next year. We are so proud of him and are thankful for his sacrifice. While we sleep in our comfy beds, he has given up many of life's modern conveniences. He is tougher than us! We love you Dad!

Family photos are done!!!

We took these pictures in August. We wanted to get a great family photo before Paul left for Afghanistan. We are so excited that they are finally ready. And we love them. Come visit us to see the real, big ones in the house!

Halloween Goodies

The girls and I found these cute halloween cupcake ideas and decided to try them out. They turned out pretty darn cute, we must admit. And it was lots of fun too... what a bonus!

Coloring the frosting was my job, and the kids helped do the rest.

The best part... sampling the final project to make sure we did it all right.

OK, so this has nothing to do with halloween cupcakes, but while we were decorating the treats, I was also trying to get my Noah to finish his dinner. Apparently he wasn't that hungry since his dinner roll became a giant monster that engulfed Obi-wan Kenobi. All that's left are his feet. Poor Obi-wan. I had to take a picture of Noah's silliness/ cleverness.

Final harvest has arrived

Look at those beauties! They are almost to beautiful to cut off the vine.

We practised the day before... Noah wanted a picture of himself pretending to pick the pumpkin... notice the look on his face as he pretends to be pulling the pumpkin really hard!

The big day finally arrived and many of the neighbor friends came to participate. Grandpa provided the donuts and chocolate milk. Then everyone scouted out which one they wanted.

Noah liked rolling his pumpkin so much that he rolled it all the way to the car.

Time to pose with their treasures

After pumpkin picking, playground playing, and such various fun, the ladies found the carrot patch and found some gi-normous ones to take home too. It was a really fun event and we have decided that all that gardening work all spring and summer was so very worth it!!

Zoo Trip... or should we call it the baby animals extravaganza??

Words can not describe the cuteness of this baby!

Our very own monkeys take every opportunity
to climb that they can find.


Note the baby giraffe behind the gang.

Dancin with the radio crew.

We just could not wait... but the day finally arrived to go see the new baby elephant at the zoo. Little did we know there were lots of baby animals to visit... elephant, giraffe, snow leopard cub, 3 tiger cubs, and more. It was a really fun day. There was even a bonus; radio disney was there giving away lots of cool trinkets! What more could we ask for.

Noah's first day of kindergarten--Sept. 11, 2009

Noah was really excited to start kindergarten and to ride the bus with Lucy... until the day arrived.... and then he became pretty nervous to say the least! He became more and more nervous the closer we got to the classroom. Once he made it to the classroom he hung out in the back. He is a pretty shy little man and it takes awhile to warm up to new things. Now Noah is starting to really enjoy his new kindergarten class.

Swiss Days 2009

Kennedy, Melissa, Emily

Elle, Lucy, Madison

Emily's favorite part about swiss chorus is being in the parade.

Beautiful ladies just before we go get in line for the shuttle bus.

The kids had fun admiring their shadows before it was time to go perform.

Another year of the fun and craziness. The girls decided to be in the swiss chorus again this year and they practised all summer long with their friends. They did really well on their solos.

We are so proud of them. And don't they look fabulous too!

August family camping trip

It took some time and effort but Emily was successful.

She was very proud of her catch.

Noah doing his Yoda impersonation

Hike to the beaver dam

We had fun camping in the Uintas at Carter Creek. The kids had fun hiking, fishing, bug catching, exploring, and roasting marshmellows. It was a little rainy at times but still lots of fun. We want to go there again and again! It was our first time camping in an RV trailer and the kids thought it was pretty cool.

August Family Fun

Our 2nd annual hike up Mt. timp

One of our favorite parts is seeing the mountain goats

Family bike rides

Family picnics

August was a very busy month for our family. We were trying to check everything off of our lists of things we needed to do to get Paul ready for Afghanistan and things we wanted to do together before he left. We didn't quite get everything done we wanted, but we made a valiant effort and had a great month together.