Church news

There are two things I wanted to write down before I forget them:
1. Our primary program was last month and Alan was assigned 2 parts: a scripture and his teacher asked an open ended question and all the kids in the class took turns answering. He worked so hard and memorized Moses 1:39. When it was his turn he stood up there and repeated the lines with no problems. He was so proud of himself for memorizing that scripture!

2. At the end of October Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the 12 apostles came to visit our area for stake conference. Alan and my mom actually got to meet him and shake his hand. Alan thought that was pretty cool, and so did we!

Autumn leaves are falling down

All of my pictures ended up very white but I guess that will work. We have had a very nice fall. It didn't get really cold till the beginning of November so the trees kept their leaves for longer and we got to enjoy all the pretty colors for a while. When we did have a cold snap it looked like it was raining leaves on our block. Our city sends around a leaf vacuum truck and if all of your leaves are raked up along the street they will take them away so that you don't have to bag them. Here are the boys helping me rake (or just playing in the leaves):

Conner felt that we needed to knock all the leaves down before we could rake:

Micah was thrilled to be part of the action, and just to be outside:

Go Alan Go!

We watched from our porch as they vacuumed up our leaves
Good bye fall and hello winter!

Halloween 2011

This year we took the kids to our ward trunk or treat a few days before Halloween and then we took them around the block on Halloween night. They were so excited about trick or treating, or "twick or tweeting" as Conner would say. The original idea was for Reed, Alan and Conner to be cowboys but the week before Halloween we didn't have a hat or boots for Alan. My friend suggested that Alan and her son should dress up as the Kratt brothers. My kids favorite tv show is a PBS show called Wild Kratts. On the show there are these two brothers and they have creature power suits and they go on animal adventures/rescues. So my friend made these cute vests (creature power suits) and they were the Kratt brothers.

Alan likes to do funny poses for the camera

Conner was a cowboy

You can't have a cowboy without a cow. Micah was a very cute little cow:

Reed dressed up as a cowboy as well. Here he is showing off his cow wrangling skills:

It was a fun time. I was in charge of Alan's class Halloween party at school so I went and put together treat bags and supervised the frosting of sugar cookies. It was fun to see Alan with his classmates and meet some of the kids he talks about. This year I just let the kids have at their candy. I took it away about an hour before dinner and an hour before bed. So it only took about 4 or 5 days for the candy to disappear.

Jack-o-lanterns

I love carving Jack-o-lanterns - it is such a fun tradition. I love watching our kids' reactions. This year is was a universal feeling: disgust.

Conner keeping his hand as far away from the slime as possible

Reed helped Alan while I helped Conner

Micah was really interested in what we were doing but when he put his hand into the pumpkin he was completely grossed out.

He was disgusted that his hand had slime on it.

Micah gagging. He would gag every time he watched Reed put his hand into the pumpkin.

We decided on a spider and a scary face for the designs

We were pleased with the final product, especially the spider