10-29-2009 Thursday - Carving Pumpkins!

This was Luke's first year to cut and clean his own pumpkin by himself! He was so proud!

Cutie Noel, scooping out the seeds!

I got a kick out of this scene - Drew and Holly using the safe pumpkin carving tools and Shera has the "Big Knife"! (Wouldn't ya know?)

Holly carved this free hand by herself! It had a little hanging man and moon above the tree too.

We always watch "It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" every year while we carve our pumpkins.

It's become a big joke that I always try to get out of carving a pumpkin. So, this year I did my own version of a "carved pumpkin" with mini brownie eyes and nose, marshmallow ears, and a banana mouth. Jeff still teased me!

Here they all are...

And here's their guts... All ready to eat... Yummm!!!!

10-27-2009 Tuesday - Fall Festival

Don't you just love those last minute finish making the costume evenings? If you are a mom, then you know what I'm talking about!

Noel wanted to be Little Bo Peep at the church Fall Festival Dance Tuesday and we still had to make her corset. We had twenty minutes to cut, sew, hammer in eyelets and get her to the dance!

Here's Jeff threading in the ribbon to tie her corset.

Noel's friend, Kaitlyn, came with her. Holly was supposed to go too, but she had the flu with a 102.6 fever. She stayed home instead... But the girls had a great time and Noel got a lot of compliments on her make-shift Bo Peep costume!

10-22-2009 Thursday - Holly's In a One Act Play

Last week, Holly performed in one of the IB One Acts at school. It was called, "How It All Played Out". It was written and directed by Sean Mabry, a senior here at Mission High. He is entering it into some national competitions. It's about a playwright who imagines her characters come to life and she has to deal with her inner turmoils that are portrayed in these characters. It was really well written and an excellent performance by everyone in it. Holly's drama teacher, Mrs. Kathy Harris, said she did a wonderful job! It was a great experience for her.

10-17-2009 Saturday - Holly Sings At The Walk Against Drugs

Holly tried out to sing the National Anthem at the City of Mission Viejo's Walk Against Drugs. This was the 21st year of this event and she was thrilled to be selected!

So we had to get up very early for the sound check at Mission Viejo High's football stadium. We were there at 7am and the program began at 8am. Here is Holly putting on her 4" shoes right before it started. (Crazy Girl!)

She was introduced by the sheriff in charge of the event and sang at the very beginning to start it all off. Holly had gotten a head cold just three days before and we were concerned she wouldn't be able to sing at all. But she pulled through and did a great job - especially considering she had a sore throat, sinus problems and stuffy ears. That is one of the big problems with being a performer - there is only so much you can do to protect yourself but sometimes it's just out of your hands!

She was so cute sitting up on the stand.

Our home teacher, Brother Bob Moncur came to watch Holly perform too!

There were a few thousand people that walked from MVHS down La Paz Road to Newhart Middle School. It's about a three mile walk you take through a wilderness glen. It's really pretty.

The cops stopped the opposing traffic as we walked across Marguerite Parkway. It was pretty cool to be part of a big red procession against drugs. (And stopping a long line of cars as we went through the intersection! The kids got a kick out of that!)

Even though it began at 8am, we were having a mini heat wave. It got up to 90 degrees on Saturday!

By the end, Luke was ready to stop and sat down at the bottom of our last hill and announced he wasn't going any further. Holly told him he could just live there then. Ha! Ha! We were at the very end of the line when we began the walk because Holly had to change into shorts. Then we got caught up to a good area. But, alas, I didn't wear good walking shoes (flip flops!) and I tripped and stubbed my toe. That was not good - and I had to rest and clean up the blood. That got us to the very last place again! :( But we finally made it and I came home and took a nap and rested from all my accidents that weekend. Whew!!!

Here she is...

10-16-2009 Friday - A Bit Of A Crash!

Friday night I was driving down to Trabuco High School to pick up Jeff and Noel from the football game when I got hit by a little blue car. It tried to cut a left just in front of me and we nearly hit head on!

Luckily, no one was hurt and neither of us had passengers. Well, I had the puppies with me, and they were in the front seat. But the air bags went off and that saved us. I never knew how much air bags smoked. It smelled like fireworks in the car.

Jeff and Noel were picked up by Holly and then came to me. The neighborhood there was so great. They brought me a bottle of water, leashes for the dogs and treats and water for them too. Unfortunately, both cars were totaled. We loved our Suburban - it was a great car and we'll miss it so much. But I'm so thankful that we walked away from it. I am banged up a bit and bruised some and the air bag actually burned my arm too - but nothing super bad at least. I went home, iced my arm, took a bath and went to bed to get ready for
another big day...

10-13-2009 Tuesday - Bougainvillea Down!

This was the best photo I could find of our bougainvillea in our backyard. It is huge and goes across our top balcony along our house. This photo was taken March of 2008 for Drew's senior year Mormon Prom.

Well, the whole thing fell down during the night in our last storm. We woke up to this on Tuesday morning! Quite a shock! The dogs didn't quite know what to do and were tip toeing around it.

It was too big to try and put it back up. So we cut it off and left the main trunk of the vine. Hopefully, it will grow back and we'll keep it less bushy in the future. The kids were sad to see it go because they had made a little tunnel on the back side to crawl through. Luckily, we had no bird nests or feeders in this one right now!

10-10-2009 Chefs Shera & Luke!

Shera and Luke made everyone lunch and dinner yesterday. We got to order what we wanted for lunch and they made the dinner for us. I ordered cheese and crackers and juice. By the time dinner was done we had 2 dishwashers worth of dishes. ( I should have taken a photo of the kitchen) But they got to be creative and I didn't have to cook! Hooray for Italian marinated uncooked egg noodles heated in the microwave! But Drew did tell me he was ready for me to start cooking again soon! LOL

This was my check for lunch. They supplied the money for me to pay. Wouldn't that be nice in real life?

10-10-2009 Saturday - Dove Chocolate?

I just love Doves!!!

But in the house???

We love our doors open, and we have about five bird feeders.
But I've decided the two don't combine well.

The flying dove - wish it was the chocolate kind!

10-5-2009 Monday - Family Night at Pumpkin City!

Yay! It's Pumpkin Season again! So for family night, we went to Pumpkin City!

The kids love playing the games and winning the prizes.

Holly and Jeff had a battle with the blow-ups!

Luke and Shera did go on a couple of rides too!

Pumpkin line-walkers.

Q: Why is a moon on an outhouse?
A: Back in Colonial times when many people couldn't read, a man's outhouse had a star and a woman's outhouse had a moon. The cutout gave them light inside the room. It is thought that the men let their outhouses fall into such bad shape, that it was the women's that survived.
(No surprise there!)

This is about as close as we get to farming & camping these days!

We had a big pumpkin just like this in my elementary school playground. It always brings back great memories each year when I see it here!

10-3-2009 Saturday - General Conference Weekend

We enjoyed the 179th Semi-Annual General Conference of the LDS Church this weekend. We played Conference Bingo, worked on photo albums, ate, and napped. Our home teacher of 13 years, Brother Moncur, asks each of us every October and April visit, which was our favorite talk. That is always a very difficult question to answer with so many great talks to choose from our church leaders. But this time I can easily pick that it was Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's talk and testimony of the Book of Mormon and Jesus Christ. Our whole family was so moved by his conviction - I loved it!

Here is Jeff relaxing during conference.

We missed Saturday morning's address to go to a very touching funeral. The kid's voice teacher's 39 year old daughter, Heather, had passed away from the swine flu. She left her husband and 7 year old son. We went down to Fallbrook and attended the ceremony which was in their horse corral. It was probably the most unique funeral I've ever attended. We were all asked to wear jeans and boots. Heather showed horses and dogs (she has the #2 Bassett in the U.S.) and loved hard rock, so they had an animal parade and showed her animals during the funeral to the music of Billy Idol. We all clapped to the music and watched. They told all sorts of funny stories about Heather. Her son showed us a collage of his mommy and I couldn't stop crying. At the end of the funeral we all clapped to the tunes of ACDC.
(Side Note: Get your vaccines this year.)

After the funeral, the kids got to feed the horses and of course, the questions started coming. Now, if you have a daughter, then you know the question that I'm talking about... "Can I have a horse daddy?????" And daddy's answer is always the same, "If we move up to Utah and buy a cabin, then you can have a horse." End of discussion...

Sunday morning I thought I would try to make homemade cinnamon and orange rolls for the first time. The girls helped me make them all the while listening to Luke complaining that he didn't like orange rolls. I cut the cinnamon rolls very unevenly (see back tray) but I got the hang of it and I think the orange rolls looked quite spectacular!

The best part was that they all tasted great! As we were all digging into our rolls, (I made 40), I asked Luke mid-meal, "So you must like the orange rolls afterall, you are eating a second one now I see." Luke shook his head profusely and said, "No, this is my third one!" We all started laughing. Home run!