Halloween Activities So Far

We have had a busy week of Halloween activities. On Monday we went to the library Halloween carnival. It was pretty fun. They had about seven booths or so of games that the kids were able to do. Things like search among the books to find spiders, toss the ball, fish for candy, and so on. They also had free donuts and cider.

Then on Wednesday my school (Idaho State University) had their Halloween carnival. They had a ton of booths. Some of them were just handing out candy, but most of them had some type of small activity to do. The kids got a ton of candy there, which is good because we needed some to hand out on Halloween night and for a party that we were going to on Saturday.

On Friday we had a couple more community trick-or-treat events. The first was at a local RV store. They had about 10 or so booths from stores in the community. They were all handing out candy, but then some of them gave out some good coupons too (free kids meal at Texas Roadhouse, $15 oil change and car wash, free kids meal at a local pizza place, etc.). Then we went to a joint community one at a park. It was raining out and we had to stand in a line for about 30 minutes in the rain. The kids didn't mind, but I was getting grumpy when I kept seeing people cut in line. In total there was probably 20 tables or cars giving out candy and it took us over an hour. That is one that I told Rebecca I did not want to do again in future years.


One of the booths was giving out stuffed animals, so that was a cool part at least.

Today we carved our pumpkins. Rebecca's brother and his wife were here to carve with us. They carved a pirate one and we did the one eating a child. The kids also carved their little pumpkins.








Then we had our ward Halloween party. It was in the backyards of a couple families' homes in our ward. It was great! It was a combined Halloween and meat smoking party. So tons of people brought in smoked sausages, brisket, ribs, ham, salmon, pulled pork and more. Rebecca and I ate way too much, but it was all really good. They also had an outdoor pizza oven going, tons of salads, rolls, jellos, and desserts. We brought a popcorn cake. Then after eating they had a ton of Halloween/carnival games and a bouncy house. Julia, Ethan, and Christian all just ran off and played on their own. I took Agnes around. We did pin the potion on the witch, pumpkin tic tac toe, bean bag toss, eat the donut off the stick, bobbing for apples, bingo, wrapped her up like a mummy, tried to roll a cookie off our forehead into our mouth, stick your hand in buckets of gross stuff, and musical chairs. She got a ton of candy at each and was really excited about that. So the houses that it was at both had pretty cool back yards. Some of the cool features that they had were trampolines, basketball court, toy sets, a covered pizza oven eating area, putting green, splash pad, and fire pit.






After that we hurried home and got the house ready for the graduate students from my school to come by. They all come trick or treating to the faculty members' homes every year. Instead of getting candy though, they just hang out for about 30 minutes. They also have the children judge their costumes to see who has the best. Our children colored pictures to give to their favorites. Julia gave one to the Cat in the Hat, Ethan to a student who dressed as a knight and brought his sugar gliders, Christian to cookie monster, Elliott to a pirate, and Agnes to Minnie Mouse. We also had apple fritters for them to eat.

Now all we have left is the actual trick-or-treating on Monday night.

Last Soccer Game

Ethan had his last soccer game this Saturday. Rebecca and I are glad it is over, but are also glad that we did it this year. Ethan did have a lot of fun, he developed some skills, and got to spend time with friends throughout the week, but it just took up so much of our time with practices on Monday and Wednesday and games on Saturday. I got to coach them for a couple games (one of which was their only win) and after doing that I decided that I would be up for coaching them for the entire season next year if they end up needing a coach.

Here are some pictures of Ethan that one of the other parents took of him a couple games back.

Primary Program

We had our ward primary program this year. This is a huge primary with lots of the age groups split into two classes because there are so many children. Our children did a great job with their parts and the songs were really neat. I would say that about half of them I hadn't heard before.








As a reward for their doing so well I agreed to play Monopoly with them. We had played together once before about a month ago. They did pretty good, but we only played for about an hour. Today we maybe played for 2-3 hours. They still did great on it. I was out of money before then, but they were all in and doing well by the time we had to stop for dinner.

Fall Activities

Now that the weather is starting to get a little colder, we have been enjoying a lot of fall activities. Although we don't get too much of it around here, it has been fun to see some of the leaves change color on the trees.



Speaking of trees, we have been starting to put some of our trees and bushes in. We have these one type of tree that we have to have in our safety strip between the road and our sidewalk. Usually they cost $180 each, but one of the nurseries in town is going out of business so after waiting for their price to drop a few times I was able to get all the ones we needed for much cheaper. We have also started picking up some bushes as we have seen them on sale, but that has been difficult because we are not 100% sure exactly what we want it all to look like. Slowly, our grass has also been coming in, but so have a bunch of weeds. All of our neighbors yards look so great, so hopefully ours will get there some day, but it may take a few years.



Every fall we also like making up donuts. Actually, we enjoy this one so much we probably do it on a monthly basis now. Here are some apple fritters. These are really yummy. Apple fritters were always my favorite donut growing up, but I would have to say that these beat any store bought ones. They are also super easy - at least way easier than our yeast donuts that we sometimes do.



We also had General Conference. This year Rebecca and I decided to make the kids packets by hand. These ones worked really well and occupied them for at least 2 of the sessions (4 hours). We were busy eating for some of the other sessions (our traditional breakfast cinnamon rolls for both Saturday and Sunday and the children did some Legos too for part of one of the sessions.

Here is Julia's finished packet:

Their first job was to draw a coloring page for the cover for one of their siblings. Since Agnes was not able to do one, I let Julia draw her own.


Next they were to design a tie that I would have to wear if I were ever to speak in conference. Since that would never happen, I was able to confidently promise the children that I would wear these ties if it ever did.


This was a dot to dot I made. I was pretty impressed with my work. None of the children were able to guess that it was a temple prior to connecting the dots.


Word search


Conference bingo. They got treats as they crossed these words off. They started this bingo in the second session and through the remaining three they never heard the word "Bible". We ended up giving it to them once the final prayer was said though.


Then they were to draw four pictures of conference stories that they heard. Julia, Ethan, and Christian all remembered the stories of the missionary who kept breaking his prosthetic leg while riding his bike and the missionary who almost fell of the mountain side. I didn't think they were even listening during those talks so I was surprised that they each came up with those on their own. Julia asked if she could do a couple from previous conferences. She did one of a boy eating twinkies with pigs (it was okay because the twinkies were still in their wrappers) and one where cows were falling off a truck. Rebecca and I couldn't remember either of those stories, but Julia swore that they were shared in conference. Does anyone else recall these two stories?


We also had our annual Harry Potter party. Each year we try to get in all of the movies during the month of October and read some of the books too. We have been starting this tradition off with a party. This year the party include a dinner with some traditional food from England (Rebecca made bangers and mash with an onion gravy). We made all new wands for everyone. I was really glad about this because a few months back Christian was acting out the final scene from Harry Potter and he broke my Elder Wand in half. So now I have a new one. Then we played a polyjuice game. We had identified a few characters from Harry Potter that we could all choose to be. We pretended to drink our potion, then thought of who we wanted to be. But we couldn't get caught, which would happen if two people were pretending to be the same person. We would then reveal who we were and if there were two or more people who were they same, they were caught and out. We would then eliminate a couple characters and keep playing until only one or two people were left. The children picked up on this game quickly and really liked it. Then came a couple quidditch games. The first we had three laundry baskets on our two couches that face each other. Two children also sat on each couch with the baskets. There were three balls and the children tried to throw them in the baskets on the opposite couch, while the other team blocked and tried to throw the balls into their own baskets. The children really liked this one too. Our second quidditch game was find the snitch, which was just like sardines. In this game one person took the snitch ball and ran and hid somewhere in the house. Then everyone had to try to go find that person and when found hide with them until the last person finds the group. It was a fun party and we look forward to doing it again next year. If anyone wants to join us, they are more than welcome.







Our children had their parent teacher conferences this week. There teachers all talked about what great kids they are. The first grade teacher said that Christian already met all of the standards for first grade and so she is starting him on second grade expectations. Ethan and Julia are both reading maniacs, and Julia in particular seems like she is trying to break the school record for book reading points this year (they use the AR point system and the principal has promised a lunch with any student who gets up to 500 points). That is about 30-40 of the books that Julia reads (e.g., Princess Academy, Little House on the Prairie), so it really is a lot. The most recent series that they were into was The Dollhouse People.

Ethan has been into the Origami Star Wars books and he has been spending lots of time making those. Here are a couple Yodas we made together today.

Before coloring


After coloring

It's a Boy!

We had the ultrasound yesterday and found out that we are expecting a boy. Rebecca and the boys had guessed it, but the girls and I thought the baby would be a girl. Julia again was a little teary eyed when she found out, but she loves her brothers a lot so I am sure she will warm up to him. Agnes is still in denial. Whenever we tell her it is a boy she says the baby is a girl. All three boys are super happy now that they know they will way outnumber the girls in the family.

Extracurricular Activities

In our family we typically like to keep things pretty simple and do as much together as a family as we can. So, we often avoid a lot of extracurricular activities. This year though we decided to go ahead and sign Julia and Ethan up for two activities.

For Ethan, his friends at school and church all do soccer together. In this league they do not keep score at the games, but it still seems to be somewhat competitive. We tried to get on a team that all the other kids in our neighboring streets are on, but ended up getting placed on another team instead. It has turned out well because Ethan knows most of the kids on this team too and the coach is very kind with the boys and doesn't really care too much about winning. The coach also has a daughter that Julia  is friends with a school so it has provided them with a regular opportunity to play together too. Anyway, Ethan has one or two games per week on Saturdays. And then he has two practices a week on Mondays and Wednesdays. So this is definitely taking up a lot of time. But Ethan is always happy when he gets to go and so maybe it is worth it.











We offered soccer to Julia too, but she declined. Ethan's practices are at the exact same time as a girls team with all of Julia's friends on it, so she sees them there a couple times every week. Seeing that, I was thinking she was going to be bummed that she didn't do soccer, but she hasn't said a word about it. I think it is just less interesting for her. Instead of soccer, we signed her up for horse riding lessons. Her lessons are once per month, two hours per time. We agreed that she could go through December. This last Tuesday was her first time. She loved it! When we got there we found out that it is not really lessons, but open riding time for beginners. So the ranch workers provided Julia with about 10 minutes of direction and then they were just there to help out if she needed it (there were about 10 people there for the open ride, all their first time, and 7 horses and maybe 5 ranch helpers). Julia did great. She started off on a easy horse that pretty much new what to do on its own. But then they put Julia on the stubborn horse. Another girl had been riding the horse prior to Julia and it would just go stand against the wall until a worker came and told it to walk around. It would do that until the worker left to help someone else and then it would go back to standing against the wall. Anyway, when Julia got on him, he tried to do the same thing. But Julia wouldn't allow it at all. She used all the right commands and signals and made sure that horse was doing what she wanted it to do. Her last horse was a faster one and one that didn't like the other horses (it would bite at them if they got too near) and Julia did a great job on that one as well. All of the workers kept on saying how natural Julia was and they had never seen someone (adult or child) pick it up so quickly. At the end they made a special effort to find Julia before she left and tell her that she has a real talent and that she should make sure to come back again and again. Julia was all smiles the whole time. She did say it was hard to walk after, but she is still counting down the days until she gets to go again next month.

Eastern Idaho State Fair

A couple weeks ago we went to the Eastern Idaho State Fair. The fair is in Blackfoot, which is about 20 minutes away from Pocatello. We figured with the drive and the cost of tickets for everyone, it wouldn't really be worth going. However, our home teacher gave us two adult tickets, so we decided to make the trip. I am glad we did because it was a lot of fun. The fair wasn't anywhere near as big as the Puyallup Fair or the state fair that we got to go to when we were living in New York, but it was bigger than the Alaska fair and anything I can remember us going to in Oklahoma.

We started off in the buildings that had all of the vendors. We didn't spend too much time in there, but it was still fun to see all the different things that people had to sell. The boys were facinated by one knife shop that had swords and other weapons to sell too. Ethan almost bought one, but fortunately we were able to talk him out of it. Rebecca and I have been working on letting the children have a little more independence with their money, but we don't want to see them waste it either (the swords were $100). In this building they also had the safety and other public works booths so the children enjoyed meeting Smokey the Bear, learning about railroad safety, and shooting some electronic rifles at targeted animals that would light up if they were "hit". Mentioning Smokey the Bear reminds me of a joke Ethan recently told me: What do Smokey the Bear and Alexander the Great have in common? (See the end of this post for the answer).

After that we took a break for lunch. We packed a pretty big lunch from home so we just found a seat among all of the food vendors to eat. After we ate our own lunch we enjoyed walking around all of the food vendors seeing the different fair foods that they were selling. It smelled really good.



Next came the animals. They had a lot of them to check out and even pet and feed. Our children probably liked the rabbits the best to look at, but their cages were out of reach, so they did not get a chance to pet them. There were a lot of horses and some of them were really huge. Some of the horses wanted to be petted so they would stick their heads out and try to nudge people as they walked by. I was most surprised by the milking cows. They looked a lot different from the milking cows that I have seen in the past. They looked like their body was falling off their bones. I wish I would have gotten a good picture, but the bones for the top part of their front and back legs just really stuck out and then they had a huge belly and udders hanging down from there. It made me feel sad for them, but I am sure they are well taken care of. We also got to hold chicks, feed goats, and pet some sheep.












After that, we found a community garden area. They had a very tiny hay maze and then free vegetables that had come from the garden. Rebecca got a whole bag full of finger potatoes, tomatillos, and peppers.



Then we stopped for a Mother Goose magic show. While waiting we played a few games in a tent next door. Ethan enjoyed a game of checkers with Rebecca. The children loved the magic show. It was just right for their age. But Rebecca fell asleep during it and I had to get up and walk around a bit. It was good, it just seemed to go on for a long time. Her final act was to make a cake. She threw a lot of ingredients into a bowl and then put a cover on it and when she took the cover off it was a bunny. She let all of the children come up one-by-one to pet the bunny, which our children loved.





Last was the craft, art, and awards buildings. The entries in all of the categories were fun to look at. They had huge pumpkins, some great artwork at all different ages, and some neat contests that we have never seen before (like submissions for edible hats). The food entries were not all that appetizing though because they had been sitting out already for almost two weeks.

After the fair we went out to eat at the Pizza Pie Cafe (we had some free coupons for the children's classes and our own that we had got at the Chubbuck Days) to celebrate our finally getting seeds down in our yard. It was a long, fun day!

Answer: They both have the same middle name.