Trip to Texas, November 2012

 Andy was scheduled for a work trip to San Antonio in early November.  When I found out it was in Texas, I tried not to get my hopes up that it would be near my sister's family.  But, it ended up being less than 3 1/2 hours away!  So, thanks to Andy's Mom and a few friends, we planned on the two of us sneaking down together (with Andy's brother & boss)!  In fact, we were too cheap to pay the $1000 or so that it would have cost us to get another room - so thankfully Darren was kind enough to let me share the room with them :)!  Ha ha.  So romantic.  But, it was my first trip to Texas and so nice to get away for a few days!  We flew in on Friday.  Michelle's family came to spend the day in San Antonio on Saturday.  We did the river walk and rode on the little tour boats and also toured the Alamo!  It was lots of fun and so strange to be able to dedicate my time to my nieces and nephews rather than my own kiddos!  They would have had a lot of fun together though!  The above picture is in front of the Alamo and below are on the grounds.

  This was a bad call by me - so we ended up carting the stroller up and down and up and down - we had a good laugh though!

Waiting to load the boat!

The kiddos loved the boat ride!

 Riding on the elevator on the River Walk.

 It was "The Day of the Dead" while were were there and they had a little festival and lots of displays of loved ones that have passed on.

 A little Marilyn Monroe!

 You'd think with the diners we got dressed up for, I'd have one nice picture.  But these are all we got, unfortunately.  These were taken outside the hotel.  On the other side of these water falls, they had water slides that really made me miss the kiddos!

 They had a tabletop touch screen that we knew would amaze Drew, so we had to take a picture to show him!

 This pumpkin weighed 1,498 pounds!!!  You'd think I'd look small in comparison!

And, my sister and I had to get a picture with Mitt Romney the day before the election.  We voted right before the trip because we would be returning home about the time the poles would be closing on election night!  I wish we would have taken some pictures of us visiting Michelle in San Angelo. We were supposed to head home on Monday, but extended our trip a day to visit Michelle's family.  We rented a car and took a day to swing over there.  It was a lot of fun.  Too short, but a lot of fun and we are so glad we took this opportunity to go to Texas together!  We met some great people, Andy had some good meetings, and I was able to sit and read a book - C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters - the book for Book Group.  I really liked it.  I just might have packed half a dozen other books to read on our trip, but I did get one book read!  It didn't help that I stayed up until 4 AM the morning we had to leave and we had to wake up at 5 AM!  The kids had been sick all week the week before and I'd gotten behind.  So, I had some catching up to do.  But, thankfully, I was able to catch up on some sleep and it was so worth it and so overdue!  I think I have some pictures on my cell phone - I know I got some video of Shaylee's singing competitions and their crazy dog that gets SO excited when strangers come over!  He was hilarious!  So, maybe one of these days I'll do a 2nd post on our trip to Texas!

Reflections Contest 2012

This was our first year entering things into the Reflections Contest at the kids' school.  Jesi is the only one that actually entered anything and she entered a photograph and a painting.  Her photograph went on to be judged at the district level and she was so excited to win a trophy for her age group!

She was also very excited that Grandma Walker and Grandma Starkey were in town and staying at our house to come to the awards ceremony!

One morning a couple weeks before entries were due, we woke up to this beautiful sunrise - that looked like fire coming out of the canyon behind our house.  So, I encouraged Jesi and DRew to try out their photography skills.  Drew took a great picture also, but didn't want to fill out the entry form.  He was a great sport cheering for his sister though.  I was very proud of the way he handled it.  He is such a good big brother!

These pictures were taken the morning of the beautiful sunrise.

 And, here is a taste of some of the competition.  Nathan LOVED the BYU football painting and kept wanting to go up to the front to see it again!!!  There were lots of entries, especially in visual arts.  Apparently your best odds of winning are in dance choreography, drama, &  music.  Jesi thinks she might have to enter a few more things next year!

 And, here were some of Jesi's loudest cheerers!

Anyone know how to avoid the new Blogger fees?

I've been attempting to publish the last 4 1/2 years of this blog into a book or actually 2 books (1 of 2008-2010 & one of 2011-2012) as my sister sent me a 20% off plus free shipping deal from a site she has printed before.  This will rid me somewhat of the guilt I have for not being a better journaler/scrapbooker over the years.  But, as I was attempting to add a few photos to some posts that I had slideshows on (which obviously don't print), I was informed that I'd reached my 1 GB of storage in Picassa Web Albums.  Apparently you have to pay $2.49 a month for 25 times that much storage (which at the moment seems a little bit ridiculous) or maybe you can upload photos to Google +, where you have unlimited storage.  Does anyone do that?  Anyway, just wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to avoid the fees, keep your blog going, & not make the process too complicated :).  Does any of this even make sense to anyone?  I probably just need to upload less pictures or use a lower resolution as my friends suggested in the future and delete older years of posts in order to avoid the fee.  But, boy my kids would miss having it all on the blog for super easy access to the last 4 1/2 years!  Oh decisions!

Trunk-or-Treat 2012

Life has been a little crazy lately with sick kiddos, a trip to Texas, family visiting, etc. etc., so I have some catching up to do!  But, let's start with Halloween.  We aren't real big into dressing up for Halloween at our house.  Our kids love dressing up and we actually have our kids' costumes in their dress up box in the basement and they love dressing up often.  I remember one year when we decided to do a family Toy Story theme.  That ended in a tantrum (someone changed their mind once they saw all the pretty princesses at the party) that lasted the whole entire party and really put a damper on our family's mood.  I got some pretty good pictures that showed the kids' moods that year - posted in November of 2009.  So, ever since then, we keep things simple around here!  I've even toyed with the idea of taking extra costumes for in the car.  Drew was Spider-man this year, the girls were witches (they loved these matching outfits from our Witch Fest), and our neighbor let us use this darling little lion costume for Nathan.  Somehow, Andy convinced me 5 minutes before we had to go to the neighborhood trunk-or-treat that we should wear our old matching firefighter shirts (that I found on clearance for a dollar or two when we were first married) and put a bunch of yucky black make-up on to look like we had been fighting fires.  Of course everyone wondered what we were.  Kassi even thought I was a duck because we had gloves sticking out of our back pockets?!?  People asked Andy if he was a chimney sweep or a coal miner.  ;)!

 This cute little "good" witch decided to wash the table and the amount of water left behind required a lot of drying!  It was fun to watch her be a good little helper when she is typically going around singing her "I'm a mean old witch with a hat" song.  I should post that for any of you who haven't had the privilege to see.  It is adorable if you ask me.

Nathan was the only sad one that night - and thankfully that only lasted 5 or 10 minutes when we first got his costume on.  I guess I didn't prepare him well enough.

 When the girls saw me face painting a spider on Drew, they decided they needed a spider too.

 Nathan was a very cowardly lion at first, but a very happy lion once the candy started coming!

 Oh so cool Spiderman Drew!

 And, one hot fire fighter (if you ask me)!

 Jesi decorated a little bag with her name, a broom, a hat & some bats!  She apparently thought she'd get a decent amount of candy with her little brown lunch sack.

 Kassi on the other hand was counting on a whole backpack full of candy!  She does have a sweet tooth - which unfortunately would explain her recent dental appointment.

 We couldn't resist a picture of our little lamb with Kassi's little friend sheep.

 A few of our good friends in the neighborhood.

 One of our kids' favorite babysitters.  Our little witch decided to be shy and cover her face with her hat!

This hand moved - I think it scared me more than the kids!

 This motor home was too cute - about as cute as these buddies!

 My sister had this great, simple way to decorate her van like a monster.  I was all about simple this year!

 We enjoyed spending time with our old neighbors that moved a couple miles away back in August.  They joined us for the trunk-or-treat and a little bit of trick-or-treating afterwards.  We swapped this ninja costume for Nathan's lion costume.

 Drew may have left a trail of candy for other people with his bag!  He had a giant grocery sack though!  I think he and Kassi think alike!

 We discovered that some nearby neighbors make their own cotton candy for trick-or-treaters, so that will for sure be a tradition from here on out!  If you want to join us next year, let us know!!!

 Another tradition will surely be visiting Drew's 4th grade teacher down the street (who we are SO grateful for) who has this amazing jack-o-lantern that lights up and changes colors and could entertain the kids for hours!  I was a little embarrassed because as we were chatting, Kassi ripped off a piece of mostly dead, dried flowers behind her and fed it to the pumpkin witch!  This is the only picture I got of the kids actually trick-or-treating because the older kids were too fast!!!  It was a fun filled Halloween.  I am sad to say that we were planning on painting pumpkins that afternoon before the trunk-or-treat and they are still sitting on my front porch unpainted!!!  I'm toying with the idea of still doing it this week - but we shall see!