A week dominated by....

...unfortunately not by the above Christmas baking and decorating. The last three or maybe even four days have been dominated by poo and vomit. Gross! Gabe was throwing up Sunday night, we spent our "day off" cleaning out the basement toilet and Lily was throwing up tonight. That doesn't include the vomit Richard had to deal with at work. Yuck. Hopefully the next couple of days with be much more seasonably oriented as we celebrate the Nativity of our Lord.

Lord, have mercy. Please let nobody be throwing up on the 10 hour drive to the coast.

Christmas came early

We decide this year to get one big gift for the whole family; she arrived early:

Can you believe it?

Are you amazed to see hockey pictures here?!
The men is our parish went to a hockey games last week and R had such a good time that Tuesday he brought home two tickets from work and he and Gabe went to the game that night. The local team donates tickets occasionally to the Salvation Army and we were the lucky recipients.
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The past couple of weeks have been full of other happenings as well. Lily joined Girl Guides and is having a blast - as I'm sure you can imagine. We also joined a Homeschool Coop that meets on Fridays and is going to an awesome opportunity for all of us to meet to people and learn new skills - we just caught the end of Spanish! And below is Lily's latest history project - a model of Jamestown.

Fun Day!

Carving pumpkins is one of the kid's favorite parts of Halloween. Last year we were spoiled and got to carve lots of pumpkins but with the early freeze this year we only had one.

Gabe was Spiderman, of course! He wore his spiderman costume over spiderman jammies. So cute. We got John a Superman costume because we couldn't find Spiderman in his size but he decided not to wear it. And when we got to Marla's house to trick or treat he decided he didn't even want to go! So funny. He had fun playing with Sam's toys and handing out candy. I missed getting a good picture of Lily; maybe she'll dress up again today. She put together her whole costume - a black cat. Cute.

What month is this anyway?

John is 3 today!

We decorated cupcakes this afternoon and ate them and decorated more! John blew out 2 sets of candles it was so much fun.

And here he is opening his big present from Mom & Dad - a pirate ship! As I type, the pirates are making war on all who come in range!

October is flying by

Lily's birthday was almost 2 weeks ago and I'm just now downloading the photos. We've started a new tradition on birthdays where the birthday person gets to choose all the meals for the day and then we do something fun as a family like go bowling. Lily wanted fondue for dessert so here are the kids thoroughly enjoying the chocolate and fruit!

John laughing

I was going through photos on the computer last night and came upon this video:



My little cutie pie will be 3 next week!

Gold panning

We went to Fort Steele yesterday on a field trip with Lily and Gabe's school. They learned how to pan for gold and Gabe even found some! Apparently all the streams and rivers in this area have gold and there are still people in the area who make their living finding it. There is even a stream nearby that has no claims on it so anyone can pan there and there is gold to be found. Some historians say that more gold was pulled from the Wild Horse River gold rush than from the Californian rush.
Anyway, the kids had a great time. I was so cold - they panned for two hours without feeling the cold but I did! Then we all had dinner together cooked in the wood stove in the cookhouse. The fire wasn't started early enough and it took forever but who cares when you have a bunch of other kids to play soccor with and a donkey to meet.

Kite Flying

Faces

I just downloaded the newest version of Picasa and it has a neat new feature where it sorts all your photos into people albums. So as I type it's scaning my files and sorting them. It just pulled up this cute picture of Gabe - I don't even remember this photo.

Yellowstone Canyon

In case you didn't feel like wading through all those photos in the last post here's some highlights:

Yellowstone

Just a warning if you are going to watch the photos - there are 300 of them!! I added comments which you'll see as you watch.

We are having a great time here - only 2 days left to explore. We're going to find more geysers today!

End of Summer

This is what I've been up to the last couple of weeks:

The picture doesn't really do justice to the amount of canning I've been doing so here's a list (I love listing what I've done!): 14 quarts, 7 pints cherries, 10 quarts peaches, 7 1/2 pints rhubarb jam, 7 1/2 pints cherry jam, 7 pints pickled beets, 6 pints bread and butter pickles with 12 cups more cucumbers soaking to can tonight, 5 quarts stewed tomatoes, 10 quarts diced tomatoes. In the refrigerator is a batch of green pepper/jalapeno jelly which has to sit overnight before cooking up and canning tomorrow. I'm also hoping another box of tomatoes is coming my way tonight and I'll use up the rest of the green peppers and jalapenos sitting in my back entry in salsa and more stewed tomatoes. I might be making jalapeno jelly too; I have that many peppers!

Shockingly, I haven't spent all my time in the kitchen. Below are pictures of our parish picnic on Sunday in celebration of our Feast Day. And I met with Lily and Gabe's teacher and have planned out the kid's school year! Gabe is starting Kindergarten!!

water fight!

3 legged race

Another Quotable Quote

As John was climbing down from the top bunk his Dad says, "You're going to an adventurer or wanderer."
John replies, "I'm going to be a rooster."

"I'm not a boy, I'm a John John!!"

The John John in his new sandbox!

Fishing at Horseshoe Lake

Grandpa brought the kids fishing poles. They had a blast fishing at the lake; Lily got the hang of it right away. Unfortunately their bait kept falling off the hook!

More Camping

Lily and Sina were so sweet together. Lily watched out for Sina, carried her around, brought her dolls and then started telling me she wants a little sister - boys are no fun! Yikes. Lily and Justin made pancakes for breakfast on Monday morning.

John & Jensina

They loved the lake and playing together in it!