Happy Halloween!

Our two Lucy's and Ricardos at the Party!

This year's Halloween Party theme was Famous Families. We had a really great turn out. We decided to do the invites by E-vite which was very successful and took so much less time and money. This year we had 17 couples attend. We were surprised and happy so many were able to come. We played Round about Ping Pong. (name is wrong here) You hit the ball and put the paddle down for the next player to hit it. It's fast paced and so much fun! We had some really good ping pong players. Then we had introductions and ate yummy food. We had everyone bring a favorite finger food. There was caramel apple dip, veggies, caramel popcorn, yummy cake, spinach dip, queso dip, homemade root beer, and much more. Then we played the Lifesaver game where you pass the lifesaver in a line with a toothpick in your mouth. Very tricky and funny. Then we played Family Feud. This was awesome. Everyone got to participate by giving answers about Halloween. Bonnie and David let us use the game they made up for one of their Halloween parties. The program even had the sounds with it when you clicked on the right answer or the X. Devin was the host and I was the computer girl. We had a costume contest (see results below). Then we played the M and M game where you suck them up with a straw into a cup. You get a turn when you roll doubles on dies. We forgot the dies so we had to use cards. It worked. We have a fun time planning and doing the party. It's been a fun tradition.

Devin and I posing as "Adam and Eve" (no we were not winners)

This is Ellen and her life partner-- They got the funniest Award

This is The Umpa Lumpa Family--Most creative Award

Charles Mansen and a follower--Scariest Award

Lucy and Ricardo- Best Overall Award

Pictures

We had a fun picture day with Abi. Here are some of my favorites.

I learned to order pictures from Macey's online and then they are done in 1 hour! That's pretty awesome. The hardest choice is what picture do I put on the wall and which ones do I give Grandparents because they are all so cute. This photographer (Julie) was the same one that did our Titensor Family shoot last year. Deonne has used her for her family and individuals several times as well. She does such a great job. Check out her webpage at: www.simplyouphoto.com

Happy Fall!

Sick and Cookies

Cookies cooling on wax paper

Cookies with frosting and sprinkles

Have you every ate a cookie this big?

I have been fighting the flu this week. I started getting sick last week with a sore throat. Then I sang at an all day rehearsal on the 10th and lost my voice. Monday I started getting body aches and had a fever that night. I had three really hard nights of fever and chills. During the day I had a really hard time getting much done because I felt so sick. I stayed home the whole week with a few outings that I needed to go to. Anyway today I feel much better and only have an occasional cough. So far I am the only one in my family who has been sick with the flu. What are you thoughts on getting the flu shot. Has anyone gotten in ans still got sick? What about the H1N1 vaccine? I'm a little skeptical about getting it for my kids but I don't want them to get what I had. It's a tough decision.

This week was the primary program. The kids were promised cookies as big as their head if they sang really well. Three of us cooked the cookies and then we had a team of teachers who helped frost and package them. I was planning on doing one double batch of cookies everyday, but getting the flu kind of dampened that plan. Each double batch of cookies made 11 cookies. On Thursday and Friday I worked hard to get my part of the cookies done. My friend helped me out by doing 22 of my cookies so I only ended up cooking 48 cookies. Thanks Alison! Devin and the kids were a huge help with decorating the cookies on Saturday. They also put all the cookies in the flat bed of the truck and drove them to the church. Wow what an ordeal.

The Primary Program was so neat. Just for the record we had 124 children participate in our program today (if all came we would have had 163). All of them had a speaking part. Because of sickness and kids out of town we did have some missing. It went very smooth and the kids remembered their parts very well. The singing was beautiful! Our music director is also the USU choral director. He has done such a great job with those kids. The spirit testified of the truthfulness of the importance of families. I had such a hard time on a few parts singing because I was crying. My favorite song is "Families Are of God"I'm so grateful to be in the Primary Presidency. I've learned so much. The Primary children really deserved those cookies. We ended up with over 200 cookies and gave all our teachers, scout leaders, and activity day leaders a cookie as well. We have the best teachers! They all helped out so much to put this together.

One of the things the first counselor has done every year is take pictures over the year at activities and then the day of the program we show a video with all the pictures. She makes sure every primary child is in the video. The pictures are shown with all the primary music playing in the background. The kids love to see themselves. It was so cool to see every child in our primary pictured even though they don't come to primary all the time. One of our activities we made the goal of getting every primary child to the activity. We didn't get everyone but we sure got close. Seeing those pictures was touching to me.

Our family ended up bringing home about 8 cookies that were extra. Yummy! We had birthday cookies for my Dad instead of birthday cake. My parents were so helpful in watching our kids so we could go to our Halloween Party (I'll blog on this later) and then they stayed over so they could see the kids in the Primary Program. I think I'm going to rest this week. Well maybe a little.

Fall harvest

I had a poll on the blog about what went well in your gardens and here is the results

8 people took the poll

What did the best in your garden this year?

Fruit trees 0

Squash 1

Tomatoes 5

Carrots and beets 0

Didn't have a garden this year 2

Green beans and peas 0

I thought for my own sake I would write things I learned this year in gardening.

1. Because my pear tree got fire blight disease I'm going to spray for that next year

2. I didn't get one apple off my two apple trees and my neighbor said her parents only get apples every other year. Lets hope that's true and I get apples next year.

3. I loved loved doing my garden in the square foot fashion because.... I hardly had any weeds. I kept track of everything and knew what every plant was. I loved assigning a few squares to my kids. They got to choose what they wanted to plant and then they took care of it. It was a really good experience for them and they enjoyed it.

4. Watermelons don't work growing up a trellis. I think because the stem is so thin it doesn't have the ability to carry that much weight. Traeden was devastated when his watermelon fell of the vine.

5. I can grow carrots! But getting them to germinate was a trick. I reseeded some squares 4 times and some still didn't come up. I think I need to water a little more regularly at first for these seeds.

6. Pumpkins grow great up a trellis. It was so cool to see this large pumpkin 4 feet off the ground

7. I need to do more green beans and plant them sooner.

8. Eggplant flowers were really pretty but we only saw one actually turn into an eggplant. (not going to do that again)

9. Definitely going to do more beets

10. Spinach was way fun. I'm going to try to spread out the harvest better by planting one square every week till it gets too hot.

11. Zucchini is always a huge producer. The trick is to harvest these every day so they don't get big.

12. Tomatoes--I'm only planting the early tomatoes. We hardly had any that got red before it froze. We just have too short a season.