Guess What?!?

We have 14 new eggs! This time we know a little more and perhaps we will get more than 1 to hatch. They should be coming around the middle of February. YAY!

Christmas Lights

We all went to temple square to see the lights on the day after Thanksgiving. Tara had a date there so we had to go spy on her, but there were so many people there that we never did see her.

And we turned on our house lights that same night. FUN!

grahm cracker houses

Here we are the Saturday after Thanksgiving making our grahm cracker houses. The only reason I can come up with for all the sad faces would be that Spencer isn't there. But we really did have fun making them!

Here we have Matthew, Tara, Brock and Holly working hard to make a masterpiece.

Mom/Grandma making her house. Notice the frosting on the chin. Still the same mom!

Kristi decorating and solving the problems of the world.

Happy, lovely Becca. This is going to be her favorite picture ever!

Matthew didn't want to watch the BYU game. This seemed the lesser of the evils. And we made him do it.

Tara just looking confused.

Mark loves these girls and they love him!

Here is how the manly men make their houses. They DON'T! Bumms! (Mark did make a house. He spread frosting on the top, unwrapped a lollipop and stuck it in the frosting. He calls it "Ode to riding in the backseat of the van". Dad/Grandpa drove us up to Holly's house.)

And our houses - so much fun! We really did have a good time, I just caught everyone in a grumpy moment.

Halloween - kinda

We didn't do a whole lot for Halloween this year since it was just Mark and me, and I don't like Hallloween. We did go to Logan one weekend to visit Tara and go to the temple there, and while there we all picked out pumpkins. So on pumpkin carving night we had Melanie, Jackie and John carving with us. Ben was supposed to do one, too, but he bummed out, so I have his pumpkin in my garage waiting until Ihave time to roast more pumpkin seeds. Here are our pumpkins.

Marks

Tara's

Spencer's Brazil Flag. It looks much better in dyalight, so you get to see 2 pictures of it.

The fun group (what a mess!)

Well, he's gone.

So Spencer went into the MTC in Provo today. I'm gong to do this blog in an order that makes sense to me. I'm an emotional woman, so I can do what I want. Mark says I'm a "basket case". Nice. I guess I really am. I am so glad he is going on a mission, but my baby is gone. There are no kids coming home tonight. Sadness.

Anyhow, Here Spencer, Tara and John are packing. Yes, Tara's John. He's back. They aren't very good at packing, are they?

After "packing", we went to the stake center and Spencer was set apart as a missionary. I'm so glad Nickell and Aaron live close! It was very nice to have them there! Spencer thinks they are about the best people ever. Great, more tears!

Nickell brought her house bug over for us to look at after he was set apart. It is a cool bug. I think it's dead now, and I'm not sure what I should do with it. I guess it's gonna get flushed because I sure don't want it crawling back into my house.

We all went to bed pretty early last night, and Spencer slept in for the last time in 2 years. Here he is pretending to sleep for the picture. Cute, isn't he?

We had a fine breakfast and did the last minute packing things. He was very anxious to go!

But we weren't finished with him yet. Mark made him try on his Japan mission tag just to see what a tag will look like. Looks pretty good, I'd say!

Tara did all sorts of gymnastics in her dress to get creative pictures. Nickell has influenced both children in this way.

Then we took some pictures out by the locust tree, since it's so pretty right now.

The kids did one last quick trampoline moment (cute) and Spencer did not even break his arm!

This is Spencer's "We're finally leaving the house" dance. He looks very missionary-ish to me!

Packing the car.

And our last glimps of him before he took off with some elder that is going to Russia in 2 weeks. You just drop them off at the curb now, and they make you drive away out the back side of the MTC. Then, when you discover your son's camera and immunization record on the back seat afterwards, you have to go all the way around to the front again.

And now, whenever she is with us for the next two years, Tara gets the seat behind me. The one with legroom! Wahoo!

No Brazil - yet

So! Pretty weird thing just happened...I got a letter today from the Church Travel Services saying that Brazil just recently changed their visa application process, so I have to do a bunch more stuff to get the visa, and the Provo MTC is forming some sort of special missionaries-who-can't-quite-go-yet group that I'll be joining...so...I guess I'm not flying to Brazil on Tuesday, I'm going to the Provo MTC on Wednesday...hopefully. Weird.

The other side of the puzzle . . .

So, do you remember the gigantic puzzle that took me months to finish? This one?

We decided to mount it on a sheet of wood because its kinda pretty and I'm quite proud of it, and display it above the coat closet where nobody will notice it anyway. Actually I decided. Mark just went along. The we (again, that means I) decided that Tara will paint a Christmas snowy scene on the back of the sheet of wood so I can just turn it around for Christmas time. She finally started. Here's what she's done so far.

Isn't the lonely penguin cute? Now you all should comment about how great it looks and what a fantastic painter she is so she will finish it and I can get it out of my family room. Oh, the candy cane man is the north pole. Comment about how you could tell that right away, too.

And another important matter, I have received Mindy's and Heidi's. They are really good. Everyone else get on the ball. Time is running out!

Josh's Baptism

Ahhh, aren't they cute? These two brave boys let us sleep in the beds while they took the couch and floor. Alex, Josh and Emma even slept on the floor the night before their first day of school. What nice people! Thanks, guys! Your beds were great! We had a really great baptism on Sunday, August 22. This was the scene just before we went to the church. Actually, this is what my house looks like a lot of the time, only replace Grandpa with Spencer. What would we ever do without our computers?

Spencer baptised and confirmed Josh, and I am so glad he got to do that. He really was worried about doing this but did a great job, and look! Josh is all official now! They are two great looking lads, aren't they?

We all had lots of fun taking pictures. It was fun to take pictures and not be in them. Look at all these people who come for Josh!

I have to say this was probably my favorite thing. Joshua and Nico became fast friends very quickly. They are so much alike! It was so entertaining to listen to the conversations they had, and a little bit hard not to bust out laughing! I love these guys!

Lori and Zach also became very good friends. Zach pretty much went to Lori whenever he wanted anything. It didn't take him very long to find that she couldn't tell him no. All he had to do was smile at her with those huge puppydog eyes, and she gave in. And he knew where to find the treats! Super cute!

Zach's Ice Cream Dance

This is just pretty funny, and he was dancing like this the whole time he ate the ice cream.

San Antonio

On August 22, Mark, Spencer and I went down to San Antonio, TX. I have never been in Texas for any real amount of time. This was a very fun trip . . . mostly. Everything but the accident. I'm going to leave that one for Amy to tell.

It really is a beautiful city, and it was very warm so it was just right for me.

In this picture we are all sitting on a little boat that goes along the river walk. This is an amazing part of the city with great restaurants (I'm told) and beautiful landscaping, and since there is a bit of water here, it's not too hot.

Once we got off the boat, Mark and Spencer and I walked around downtown and visited some of the old buildings. This is . . . ummm . . . art? I think? Maybe it has some meaning, but we never got close enough to read what the artist intended, and I sure am not artistic enough to figure it out on my own. It's kinda neat, though.
You can't go to San Antonio and not visit the Alamo. Honestly,my first impression was, "They all died for this?" It's a pretty small building with a pretty short wall around it. Even when I saw the diarama I was a bit underwhelmed. But they did not fight for the buildings, they fought to make Texas a part of the country even when they knew there was no help coming and they would all die. Pretty impressive. Phil Collins is apparently a fan of the Alamo, and has donated certain items to the museum. But the best part of all was Davy Crockett's hair. They really have it! We could clone him, if we wanted to! How cool would that be? (Maybe not) Zach wasn't so sure of Mark at first, but they became pretty good buddies.

Home at last

We got home on Sunday, August 9. That is a long drive! But we did get to stop and see some beautiful sights on the way, and we listened to "The Invisible Man", "Small Steps", "The Screwtape Letters", "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", and "The Jungle Books". To be honest, we slept through most of the jungle books. Some of them are very dull. Mark didn't sleep through them. THat's why we're still alive.

When we got home, we did what we all wanted to do. We picked stuff that was ready in our yard. Mostly blackberries. YUM!

Twin Falls, Idaho

On our way home we stopped in Twin Falls, Idaho. Now stop laughing. Even Idaho has some pretty great scenery! This is the Shoshone River and it is really beautiful. Not too far up river from Twin Falls are the Shoshone Falls.

This is the Shoshone Falls. Really quite spectacular. The best time to view is in early spring, when ther eis a lot more water coming down the river, but it was really very impressive even in August.