Odds & Ends

A couple weeks ago the youth at church had a pinewood derby for their combined activity (boys and girls). The rules were that the girls could have their dads help them make their cars but the boys had to do it on their own. As you can see from the picture below, Nick DID make his car all on his own...hence the reason that his "weight" is a battery hot glued to the top of his car rather than in a hollowed out area on the bottom of the car. :) Amazingly, his car actually came in 1st in one of his heats and 2nd and 3rd in the other two heats.

This year for the kids picture on our Christmas cards we were playing off the word "bright" in our wish to everyone and had the kids wear sunglasses to symbolize the "brightness". This isn't the picture we used on the card but this is the one that made me laugh the hardest at Rocko with his sunglasses on looking over at Bryson like, "Come on dude...get your sunglasses on so we can get this over with." LOL! We couldn't believe Rocko left the sunglasses on and actually posed for the pictures!!!

I didn't take any pictures of our Thanksgiving dinner table, but I DID get this picture of Brian carving the turkey with his surgical gloves on...hahaha. He did not want to get his hands all yucky. :)

On Saturday after Thanksgiving we got all the fall stuff taken down and the Christmas stuff came out. I had to make more of an effort to get it out earlier this year since last year we didn't get the tree up till around the 12th or so of December. It's so awesome that the kids are old enough to put on all the ornaments and I just get to sort through boxes and decide what's being displayed and what's staying in the box.

...and this is what Brian does while the kids are decorating the tree. (That would be the remote in his hand.) :)

Hailey definitely is the queen decorator of the tree!!!

This time of year is so much fun! I love how much the kids love to help with the cooking on Thanksgiving and the decorating and wrapping for Christmas. It's also when the title of this blog resonates with me the most...others may make gourmet meals and have designer trees but what we have is just fine with me! I love my family and the time we spend together doing things the best we can. :)

Halloween, etc.

This year it was pouring down rain the day of trick or treating so Nick really didn't want to wear his big sumo suit with the fan. It did stop raining right before they went out but he was content just to wear the mask...he's on the right. His friend Dallin is on the left and they spent most of the night meeting up with girls, etc rather than doing a whole lot of trick or treating...I guess they're at that age. :)

Hailey, on the other, never wore any part of the clown costume we bought for her this year...shocking. :) She has never been really big on dressing up for Halloween but always THINKS she is going to get into dressing up each year. :) She convinced me that she could put a black hat on sideways and be a "gangsta". :)

This is just a random picture added to show what a kid can resort to to combat the boredom they sometimes feel on Sunday. Hailey said she wanted a snack so Nick made her this plate of vegetables and whipped cream covered strawberries...I think he's been watching the food network too much...hahaha. :)

Nick and his puppy!

Of course you can't forget the annual pumpkin carving...even though I almost did. We got their pumpkins about 2 days before Halloween and they did EVERYTHING from start to finish. I'm so happy I'm not cleaning out pumpkin guts or messing up on the carving anymore. :) Even though I feel like my kids are growing up way to fast and I'd love to slow down time, there are some advantages to having older kids!! :)

Such posers with their pumpkins. :)

I think these are the happiest pumpkins ever! :)

Hailey also painted a mini pumpkin with my young women when we did this for an activity. I thought it turned out really cute.