Luncheon

Please come to a luncheon directly after Olivia's baptism. We will be having sandwiches and chips. We have bought food for 40-50 people so please stay for the food if you come to the baptism. The luncheon will be in Harvest Elementary School's faculty room (I know the Assistant Principal there).

Reminder: The Baptism service starts at 10:30.

Eight is Great

Olivia turned 8 on Monday Oct. 27th. I can't believe that she is already 8 years old. It seems like it wasn't that long ago that I brought her home from the hospital. She is such a good girl. She is so artistic, so loving, so creative, so helpful, so happy, so willing to please, so grateful. She loves to come home from school and teach her brothers what she learned. We are so lucky that she is a part of our family.

Here she is when she was just a few days old.


Here she is now on her birthday. I brought her the flowers at school. She was so excited to get them.



For her birthday we did a magical party. We got her a top hat and Jenn made her a cape. She got to perform her magic show again with a few new tricks. We played Dance Dance Revolution, made wands, played with dry ice, Jeremy made balloon animals. Then we ate cake and opened presents. It was a lot of fun.






Thanks to all of you who brought presents, sent cards or called. It made her day.

Here is her birthday cake. Jeremy and I did a rabbit cake coming out of a hat. To go with our magic theme.

Two YouTube videos

Here's a funny one:


Here's a scary one:

Breaking Dawn

I just finished reading the final book of the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyers. I can't say that I loved these but they were ok. I don't know if I will let Olivia read them until she is much older. In the first couple of books Bella skips school, lies to her parents, has a boy spend the night in her room, has manic depression because she broke up with a boy and also due to the sexual content that is in the last book. The main character, Bella, I found annoying with her "Wo is me" attitude all the time and it got old fast. I did like the character Jacob in the books and I also liked the character Alice. They were both likable and believable characters for a welewolf and a a vampire. So yes,I read the books. But no, I won't read them again and I probably wouldn't recommend that any one else read them either.

The Cutest Kids On The Block

New Calling

Last Tuesday, Jeremy got called into the Stake President's office. We were nervous but we were thinking that maybe he would be called to be some type clerk. Boy were we wrong. Jeremy got called to be the Second Counselor in the bishopric of the the new ward that was just created. We sat there in shock and just stared at him. Surely he was joking he couldn't really mean it. But he did. Jeremy accepted the calling and I said that I would support him even though I just felt like crying. He would be called this Sunday at a special Stake Meeting. The rest of the week Jeremy would just shake his head over and over again. We were in a a state of shock all week. Plus we weren't supposed to tell anyone except close family. Jeremy called his parents and they said that they were coming up to support him too. His brother Bryan and his family came and so did Jeremy's Grandparents. This will be a big change for all of us. Jeremy will be extra busy with all kinds of meetings and I will be extra busy with the kids. We don't really know what to expect.
So today it became official and now we are waiting to see how our lives will change.


So here's the joke my mother in law just told me : When they are looking for a new bishopric they look for the most kind, patient, loving person and then call her husband.

Ward Halloween Party

Last night was our ward Halloween party. They didn't have a Trunk or Treat, but they did have other things planned. There was a chili cook-off. Robin's chili won the "Just like Mom used to make" award -- whatever that means. They had a costume parade around the gym. They took family photos on the stage. And there were rooms full of fun Halloween activities. The kids were well-behaved and we all had a good time.
Garrett was a frog. He had a extendable tongue that you can see in the movie at the bottom of this post.
Olivia was a witch. Her joke she would tell people as they went around was that she had turned Garrett into the frog.
I was a mad scientist (again). That's about the easiest costume we could come up with, plus I figure the more years I wear that lab coat the more I get my money's worth for buying it.
Jennifer was Malificent from Sleeping Beauty. Can you tell she's been working on it since August?

Robin was The Cat in the Hat, and Devin was a lion. We think he liked his costume, which was fun because when Garrett and Olivia were babies they didn't really want anything to do with wearing a costume. Reminder: Devin is 8 months old. The costume is a 12 month costume. It's way too small for him.There's a lion on our table!
The costume parade.

Little Helpers

Garrett helping put away the silverware from the dishwasher.
Olivia helping put away clean clothes for Garrett.
Devin helping unload the dishwasher : )
Devin making sure Jack's cage is still ok. He loves this cage

Pumpkin Patch

We have Fall break right now. My friend Marianne invited me to come up their house and play and then go to the pumpkin patch. It was a lot of fun. Marianne and I met when we both worked at DT in the cafeteria at BYU. We used to hang out all the time but we are both considerably busier with kids now. We at one point even lived in the same apartment complex at BYU. She is one of my best friends. So anytime I can get together with her I really enjoy it.
This was a pretty cool place that we went too. You got to go and pick your own pumpkin, they had tractors the kids could play on a corn maze for kids. Thanks Marianne.

Carolina the Great!

When Olivia started Spanish class, the teacher gave her two choices: Go by Olivia or by a Spanish version of her middle name, Carolina. She chose Carolina.
Last Wednesday there was a Red Ribbon week (say no to drugs/violence) assembly where a
magician came and put on a show. We had two of the same tricks that he used and so Olivia asked us if she could take one to school to show her class. She took a fake thumb that has a glowing red light in the tip. The next day, she took a "magic" coloring book that has images that appear and disappear. Instead of having her show the class that day the teacher suggested that she put on a whole show for Fun Friday.
So on Friday, I helped her put on a little magic show. The last few weren't actually magic as much as they were a fun science demonstration. I had to cut out 5 minutes to get the file size down enough to upload, but you can see all the good parts.
We thought she did a really good job considering she did not have much time to practice. The kids in her class were really impressed. She came home with the biggest smile ever! We're so proud of her!

My School Website

This year I am the computer teacher at my school. To make my job easier I created a website with different links for the different grade levels. I found another teacher in the district who had made one so I used a lot of her links but I also used a lot of my own. Feel free to check it out. If you have a good website that you use please feel free to share it with me. I am always looking for more websites that I could use.

http://my.uen.org/105595

I wish I knew how to make it cuter but I don't since I used the UEN site to make it.

The best $700,000,000,000 we've ever spent

I've been trying to wrap my head around this whole financial crisis mess. This video is the best one I've seen that shows how the whole thing came about:

Jars, jumps, and crawls

I think we're finally done canning fruit! Kristi brought us more apples, Robin's old teaching partner Heather gave us two boxes of peaches, and Kindra lent us her steam canner. After making multiple trips to the store to buy more jars and staying up way past our bedtime many times, we finally got it all canned. Here is a picture of the fruit of our labors:

In the last fews days Devin has also figured out how to crawl. Olivia made this moving of him. If you notice, Garrett picks up a toy, throws it, and tells Devin, "Go get it!" We combined that video with some video of Devin in his toy. We have such good friends and such great kids!