Thanksgiving

We had a big Brunner Thanksgiving yesterday. We met at a church where there was about 40 people there. We had some great food and enjoyed visiting. We cooked the ham, brought rolls, a green jello salad, a tossed green salad and the yams. I had never made yams before but everyone said that they were good. Olivia especially loved seeing Brent and Shayla. For those of you who don't remember Brent and Shayla stayed with us for about a month when they were waiting to buy their house in Eagle Mountain. Garrett loved eating the rolls.




(This picture Jere and Garrett are sneaking rolls before the blessing) : )

I took the pictures from Theresa's website. Thanks Theresa.

Baby Update

Robin had a doctor's appointment today. Everything's good. That's 29 weeks down, 11 weeks to go.

The microwave bit the dust

After 10 years of marriage, 3 apartments, 1 house, 2 kids later, our microwave that we got used from my sister for $20 when we got married finally died. It kept blowing the circuit and it didn't heat things very well. Now this microwave that has been apart of our lives, is now going in the trash.

Jeremy and I went and bought a new one. We were amazed at how quickly it would heat things. We hope it will last 10 years too.

Happy Birthday to You, You Live in a Zoo

Jennifer celebrated her 26th birthday. She had to go go to work all day, so while she was at work we went and decorated her car. When she got home we had a dinner and I made her a bat cake. Olivia was really excited for her and couldn't wait for her to open her presents. Olivia drew her a picture of a dragon and gave her candy from her tricker treat stash. We have had lots of treats lately from Olivia's Birthday, Halloween, and Jennifer's Birthday. Plus our neighbor brought over a cake too.

Halloween Costumes

Here are a couple of pictures of how Robin and the kids looked on Halloween before leaving in the morning.

The Mad Scientist

Here's something you can try at home with some dry ice. Something I didn't mention in the video is that you probably want to soak the cloth in the soapy solution overnight.

Birthday in a nutshell

We went to Chuck E. Cheese for Olivia's birthday. She got to invite two friends. We all had a ton of fun! Thanks to everyone who sent gifts!

Trunk or Treat

Here are 3 pictures from our ward Trunk or Treat last night. Robin was at a faculty party so it was just Jennifer, Olivia, Garrett, and me. Olivia was a snow princess, Garrett was a motorcycle racer, Jennifer was Poison Ivy (think Batman), and I was a mad scientist. I stayed with the van and Jennifer took the kids around.

After all the candy had been passed out we went into the church for a few other activities. We had donuts, decorated cookies, and did the fishing booth. Garrett was so mad when he got his prize from the fishing booth. He totally expected a real fish!
We all had fun. And just think, we get to do it all over again in just a few days.

Pumpkin Time

5 Day Weekend

So we are having 5 days without students and loving it! We spent all day yesterday "nesting". We went through our storage closet and took out everything that wasn't food storage. Robin went through all the baby clothes to find the ones we'll use with the new baby and to also find the ones we'll never use again. I went through our old college boxes and computer boxes to find books and things to either toss in the garbage or try to sell on eBay.

Today we made the trip to Deseret Industries. Here's a picture of what our van looked like:


We had 8 big trash bags full of clothes and toys. We can actually walk into our closet again. It's such a great feeling!

Is there room for one more?

Today I decided that I would tell my students that I was pregnant. I read them a book called Mr. and Mrs. Murphy and Bernard. It is a story about 2 animals and how there is just enough room for the two of them. Then one day a dog comes and holds up a sign that says, "IS THERE ROOM FOR ONE MORE?" They say No at first then as then story goes on they make room for him in their home.

So after finishing the book I told them that in my family, we were going to make room for one more and that we were going to have a baby in February.

One kid raised his hand and said, "Who's having the baby?"

I was a little surprised and said, "I am having the baby?"

Another kid raised his hand and said, "Does that mean you're pregnant?"

(I don't have the brightest class in the world.)

How about an $8 slice of pie?

Well, we had one pumpkin survive the harvest. We had 3, but the dog chewed up 2 of them. We decided that we'd pick the last (and biggest one) before the dog got to it. We didn't think it would last until Halloween so for Family Home Evening, we decided to make pumpkin pie.

Here is Olivia showing off how big the pumpkin got. Garrett never seems to get that he's supposed to look at the camera until the flash goes off. We seriously took 4-5 pictures and these were the best ones we got of him.


In this picture, we are removing the innards. Olivia and Garrett had tons of fun helping with this part.

The recipe we followed suggested that we microwave some slices for about 15 minutes. We fit about 1/8 of the pumpkin in the microwave at a time so we put the rest in pots on the stove. We boiled them all up for what seemed like a really hot time.


Robin scraped the soft part off the rind and I blended the chunks into puree. We ended up with about a gallon of pumpkin puree. Robin said it reminded her of baby food. We thought about doubling the recipe to make more than one pie, but decided to stick with the recipe and store the rest in the fridge and freezer.


Jennifer was really excited.


Good thing, too! We only used about 1/4 of all the puree and it still made 3 pies! The recipe wasn't clear about the order to add the other ingredients, so some of the spices didn't get dissolved (that's the brown stuff in the pies), but they sure tasted good!

By calculating the total cost of our garden and dividing by the amount of produce we got out of it, we joked that each slice of pie must have cost about $8. Oh well, it's been an adventure!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

With the cold weather and planning for Olivia's birthday, we've started thinking ahead toward Christmas. What is the plan this year? Are we doing the sibling rotations? If so, who has whom? Just wondering.

Baby update

Two More Pictures

Well, I don't know about you, but we sure weren't ready for summer to go away quite so quickly. Here's a look at the weather we had last Saturday:

Also, here's another car the kids made. We can't believe how big they are getting!