He's Home!

My little brother Chris came home from his mission yesterday!  He served 2 years in the philippines.  We're so proud of him and so excited to have him home.

Rudolph Party

My mom threw a darling Rudolph party for the grandkids. They decorated gingerbread houses, had a hot cocoa bar, played musical chairs and best of all a visit from Santa! We had dinner after and cupcakes. The kids had so much fun. Thanks Gram!

 

Pictures

I received a coupon for free pictures at Kiddie Kandids so I decided to take the kids in to get their annual pictures taken.  We are planning on a family session with our friend soon...

The Nutcracker

Reagan has been really into "ballet" lately, so we decided to go to the local ballet school's performance of The Nutcracker at the Egyptian Theater.  She has been talking about it non-stop all week.  My mom and niece CC joined us for a night of fancy fun!

This is the "I hate this cape and I never want to wear it again" face.

 Dancing during intermission - the whole intermission.

Captain America

We're so proud of Aaron!  Ogden Fire Department held their captain testing which included a written test, map test, inbox test (prioritizing 10 different scenarios a captain would deal with in a given day), presentation on a particular problem the fire department needs resolved, and a panel interview with all the chiefs.  They rank the applicants by score and Aaron came out number 1!  There are currently 2 captain positions open so Aaron will be promoted in the new year.  We are so excited for him.

Halloween

We celebrated Halloween at Scott and Carly's this year. Everyone looked so great in all their costumes!

Grammi and Gramps Visit

Grammi and Gramps came for a visit on their way back to California. We had a fun visit, catching up.

 

Grammi brought wonderful surprises for us all.  We listen to our antique wind chimes all day and love them! Ashton's surprise was a new handmade quilt for his bed, great-grammi (to him) quilted the whole thing herself.  It is lovely and warm!

 

You can see his newly decorated room here, complete with his new quilt on his bed.

We were so glad to see Grammi and Gramps and can't wait till next time!

Wheeler Farm Pumpkin Patch

We took the kids to pick pumpkins at Wheeler Farm this year, I've never been there so it was fun to see what it was all about. The kids loved the animals. Rj went crazy over the bunny rabbits.

They Say...

Ashton goes to a spanish immersion school.  His afternoon teacher is from the Dominican Republic. On Monday it was Columbus day and he came home with a coloring of the Santa Maria, Pinta and Nina ships. I asked him what he learned about Christopher Columbus in class.  He promptly replied "Christopher Columbus discovered America, and when he came here he enslaved all the people."

Ashton's morning teacher is from Spain.  I asked him to get the bowls out for dinner.  Ashton: "In Spain they don't call them bowls."  Thinking he would use the spanish word for bowl, which is bol - sounds almost the same,  I asked him what they call them.  He said something that sounded much more like jibberish.  Realizing what was going on, I started to giggle.  Ashton didn't realize that his teacher has an accent and he thought she was using other words - not even spanish words, just other names for things. 

Reagan will only use a British accent when referring to Harry Potter.  "'Arry Pott'r"

She also says "m-kay" for okay, and sounds like a little valley girl...too cute.

 Whenever she tells a story she has to do all the voices.  I sound very high pitched, and Aaron always sounds a bit grumpy ;).

 

In the October Mood

 

Yesterday we took these fun "ghost" pictures of the kids.  I think they turned out great!

We went to visit a friend in Malad and stopped at this old school house.  It was literally two rooms!  I really wanted to steal the old doors ;)