Gardner Village October 2009

When we took our fall break trip to Utah, Grandma, Aunt Sarah, and I took the kids out to Gardner Village. They had some fall activities there and a fun restaurant to eat lunch at.



Here are the kids waiting for the pony rides.



Josh, with his Jack-o-lantern smile.


Rachel, David, & Josh


All 4 of them enjoying a candy stick from the sweet shop.


Emma



Rachel, riding her pony around the donkey wheel. I don't know how exciting it was for them, but them seemed to have fun.

Josh

David


Emma


Next was the petting zoo where Emma firmly rejected petting any animals. We all know she likes to keep her hands clean :)

David

The girls

"Mom, it's getting close to me!"


Josh wasn't afraid.

He was pretty happy.

There were a lot of cute photo ops there.


Emma enjoying her candy stick.


Enjoy the rest of the photos in this slide show.

Thanks so much to Sarah for taking all of the pictures!

Fishing Trip June 2009

So, this fishing excursion took place many months ago, when we were on a trip to Utah. It took me a while to get the pictures and then even longer to post them, but they were too cute not to put on the blog. So, even though it is way over due - the fishing trip.

Grandpa Brent always likes to take the kids to do fun things while we are there. David needed to go fishing for a cub scout requirement and there was this nice trout farm nearby. The kids had a lot of fun catching their first ever fish(es).


Here's Josh with his first catch.


David, wrestling a fish to the ground



Rachel, pulling up her first one.


You can tell she is pretty proud of it.



A cute one of David and Josh


David was really excited to be passing off his fishing beltloop for cub scouts.



He had a lot of fun.


"I got one!"


Thanks to Grandpa Brent (and Uncle Sam) for taking them and to Aunt Sarah for taking all the pictures.

We Wish you a Merry Christmas

We hope that everyone has a wonderful Christmas!

Card designed by Sugarhouse Ink.

Graham Cracker Houses

Making "gingerbread" houses is a fun tradition that my kids look forward to. With some help from Grandma & Grandpa (they sent some of the supplies), we had a fun evening decorating houses.

Before the kids began, I constructed the houses and glued the crackers together with hot glue. I highly recommend this step - often it can be frustrating when they are trying to build the walls and the roof and their house keeps falling down.

Here's Josh all ready to get decorating.



And David...


And Rachel and Emma



Emma was quite proud of her finished house



The big hit this year were the Gingerbread men cookies I bought on a whim. Rachel has a whole family outside her house.


Here's David's house



And the whole village



Up close of Josh's


David's


Rachel's


and Emma's


They sure had fun and were all very creative!

Preschool trip to the Firestation

We had our first official field trip with our home preschool group. Recently the kids learned about fire safety so we made a trip to the fire house. One of the first things they showed us was the room they use for "down time". It had a bunch of big recliners and they let the kids each sit in one while they taught them about fire safety.



Then it was on to the exciting stuff - the fire engines.

This nice firefighter showed us all of the equipment they use when they go to emergencies.



Then he showed us what he would look like if he came into your house in a fire. They kind of end up looking like something out of a sci-fi movie (and they sound like Darth Vader). It's good for the kids to know what they will look like so that they wouldn't be scared in an emergency.



Here's Emma waiting for her turn inside the fire truck.



The fireman was very patient and let all the kids have more than one turn sitting in the truck.



It was fun for them to see it up close.


Here's the whole gang!


I'm glad that Emma has a good group of kids to go to preschool with.

Halloween

This year we had a great time at Halloween. October had some crazy weather - freezing rain and snow (2 1/2 days off of school!) but we somehow managed to have perfect Halloween weather. The kids didn't even need coats (other than their cloaks!). We had a cute Little Red Riding Hood.



A pirate (putting on his best "mad" face).


Ginny Weasly (no, I'm not Hermione!)


And the famous Harry Potter.


I thought this was a cute one of Rachel and David together.



Here's everyone ready to go trick or treating.


Dad got out the glowsticks so the kids would be safe.


And he also made yummy homemade corn dogs for dinner.


We met up with the Kelsch's for Trick or Treating.


All the kids had a great time. We ended the evening with a Halloween movie at our house (with 1 extra hour to stay up!). We also had tons of candy left over - I sent it to work with Daddy to make the temptation go away :)

Happy Halloween!