Say Cheese!

So here are some out-takes from our attempt at a Christmas card picture.  I just grabbed a few-and not any of the incredibly awful ones with strange expressions, closed eyes...

One of these at the fountain almost made the cut, but I was outvoted.

Jessica loved this picture, because she said it described all of our personalities. I can't remember all of it, but basically-Jeffrey is the star/center of attention. She's not jealous. ha ha. She'll need to comment and remind me what everyone's expressions say about our family dynamics.

The great thing about digital photography...

...you can take 100's of shots to gaurantee at least a handful of good ones to choose from.

The downfall of digital photography...

....you take 100's of shots!

And here are the fearless photographers, Adam and Rebekah! Actually Adam, took our family piture last year, too. So nice to have them close by!

Boo!

Pretty, scary-huh? It didn't last long. Turns out, my dog doesn't appreciate the whole, let's-dress-up-the-dog routine. For a dog that thinks he's a person, he sure doesn't appreciate clothes.

Amanda and Mark went shopping last minute for some costumes and trunk or treat decorations. Mark found some great mice to put all over the car. (I had camera trouble. As a result, I have only a few pictures of the costumes, no pictures of carving pumpkins, trunk or treating, or anything else Halloweenish.) Mark also found a light up mouth piece. Pretty cool and went well with his suit. :) Amanda decided last minute to go as a clown. She has some great sun glasses and other gear, but the camera died before she could get those on. Brandon (not pictured) was the fat tourist again. Fun, easy, Brandon. Taylor pulled off the Dunder Mifflin 3 hole punch -again, not pictured.

The missionaries set up a trunk or treat booth with a side walk chalk plan of salvation all laid out. It was awesome. I have some other pictures from some of the sisters at our other blog. They were pretty clever. I've heard of other missionary creativity-but no photos yet.

But if i don't have every picture, at least I have this one.  This sums up our Halloween this year. Big demands from the kids, not so much follow through from the Mom.

Here's the story behind the costume. It started mid September. Jeffrey was doodling in one of the drawing books. He came up with a picture of a demon vampire with two sets of glowing red eyes and 3 sets of hands, blood dripping all over the place. He insisted we take the sketch to Costco so they could make the costume. Again and again, I tried to explain that Costco didn't make costumes. Finally he was persuaded, but only slightly. He was determined to have that costume made. If Costco wouldn't make it, then we could bring them the photo, and they could send it to the makers and then sell it to us. All so logical to his way of thinking-I just 'didn't get it.' I finally convinced him that it was totally cool to make your own costume. That's how we always did it growing up. So we went to Target and bought several sets of gloves and some poly fiberfill. He stuffed the gloves and that's as far as I got. I don't know if it was laziness or fatigue, but we ended up at the halloween store looking for a plain black robe-we found a demon outfit with glowing red eyes (one pair-too bad, but still!) We stitched the extra hands on and my bacon was saved! He wore it to the school carnival Friday night, but was afraid his batteries would go out, so he only used them on 'special' friends.

And I love this part-creative writing at school. Maybe he'll grow up to be a writer/costume designer. Who knows. It worked for George Lucas.

Today I want to remember....

• coming home... and feeling like it was home, because it was where my family was 
• getting a package from my grown-up daughter and feeling like a kid when I saw the letter with my name on it
• cleaning the kitchen with my other daughter and realizing she is well on her way to being an adult, too 
• eating cookies Brandon and Jeffrey made by themselves 
• having Taylor hold still long enough for a real hug 
• singing, “This is the night we’ve waited for” with kids that are singing it along with me even though they’ve probably grown out of it a long time ago, and wondering how long we can keep it up. Wondering if they’ll sing it with their own children. 

A good day.

He's back.

Elder & Sister deCesare have come back to the mission after a year hiatus. He's up to his old bag of tricks, including plenty of treats for Jeffrey. Have you ever even seen a rice krispie treat this big? Later I'll post a video of his first day back to ZDM's: cue fog machine.

(There were 8 of these strips total. I don't think anyone was able to finish theirs.)

First Day of School

Sunday Stick Pull

Here's Taylor keeping the family close with some family togetherness activities.

Buenas Noches

This is a picture of Amanda and I learning how to cook in Spanish together. Senora Holmes taught us how to make food from where she lived in Peru.

We made Causa Rellna and Palta a la Reyna. My favorite was the Palta a la Reyna.

When we were all done, we made lemonade. I had a wonderful time learning to cook.

Thank you Senora Holmes!

Photography pin

This was a fun outing-though I don't know if you can tell it from the pictures. I had to get some shopping done for zone conference, and the kids, although bored, weren't that excited about going to the store with me. So we brought the camera along. They're always bugging me to let them take pictures of their own, but it seems like we're always in a rush when we're in picture mode...and since Brandon's working on different scout activity badges and pins, I thought I'd let them get creative. These first 3 are Brandon's attempts at capturing interesting angles and patterns.

The following three are fun to look at-but sad because bikes aren't meant to hang on a wall! (see our previous post about the bike trail.)

Here's Amanda having a go at-in a moving car no less.

I don't know how he did, but Jeff managed to get three shots of this rabbit as it ditched from side to side to get away from us. I tried several times, but all mine are blurry. He has 3 like this that you can actually see the rabbit!

Here's one Brandon took, but the lighting didn't work quite right (even on auto)...so we played with the picture at home later.

This was so fun, but I think I'm in trouble. It's so easy and crazy, the kids will want to do it all the time.

Jeffrey and I were at a local high school waiting for Amanda and Brandon to finish a piano rehearsal, so we had another experiment with changing angles on a subject. Anybody have a favorite?

At that same high school-we tried playing around with blurred images. Not too impressive, but fun to try.

We're going to try some with optical illusions, but that have to wait for another day.

Happy Thanksgiving

There's nothing better than being together with your family for Thanksgiving...and this year, we were all together.


It was such a perfect day, and it started out exactly right; cool and cloudy with light showers. Turkey football players all over the valley (especially missionaries) had so much fun playing in the mud. For us, it felt like a taste of home-true fall weather. We were favored with bursts of sunshine and warmth between that wonderful rain through the rest of the day. Taylor got up really early to exercise with the missionaries (they've been doing that around 5:00), but afterwords felt too sick to go play football. He stayed sick the rest of the day and was our only Thanksgiving causality. I think there's a picture of him laying on the couch in a blanket watching all of us eat and play games. He didn't feel well enough to participate, but he didn't want to stay in his room and miss out on the fun.

We had Elder Marquardt and Elder Endemano join us for Thanksgiving dinner at 1:00 (Have to leave plenty of time in the day for left overs!). It was our first Thanksgiving without any extended family, and the first Thanksgiving dinner we made completely by ourselves. (In 19 years, our first! Can you believe that? It helped us realize how truly blessed we are to have always been surrounded with family and loved ones.) Despite our small crowd (9), we pulled out all the stops and making all our traditional family favorites; dressing (not stuffing), sweet potatoes, stuffed mushrooms, true southern greens, rolls (Amanda is getting to be a pro), and then we tried a few twists with the turkey and mashed potatoes. I made the turkey in the pressure cooker (90 minutes, and it was great-even the white meat was tender and juicy) and garlic mashed potatoes. The gravy was great-but the potatoes were so good on their own, I hardly touched it. We made all kinds of pies and cakes, and then bought some others just for good measure. We had so much food! After we ate, we'd hardly made a dent in anything. (The elders were pretty happy about that...they're our kind of people. They love left overs.)

We took some time the rest of the day to relax with the family. It was so different than last year with all the kids visiting in California, we really appreciated having everyone home. We had such a great time, it made up for missing our friends and family all over the country. Elder Marquardt introduced us a new card game called Cowboys and Indians. Of course we played Nertz and spoons...and a few others, but we also had fun with some groups games we haven't played in a long time. We played the brown paper bag game and found out just how flexible Elder Marquardt is (go yoga!), and...so that we have a gospel principle involved, we saw the opposition in all things in his companion-Elder Endemano. Ha! Unfortunately, Elder Endemano wasn't the only person straining to reach their face to their toes without falling down flat (Ouch-it hurt). Jessica and Elder Marquardt ended up with a draw-both able to pick up the bag even when it had been whittled down to a wisp of paper. We also intrigued the kids with body mechanic phenomenons and had some strength contests. It was a lot of fun.

After the elders left (and came back for left overs and left again), we ended the evening with a twilight bike ride. The sky darkened, the moon was hidden, but the sky remained rain free-perfect for us to appreciate the first taste of Christmas lights around the neighborhood. (Thanks dad, for getting our lights up!)

It really was a perfect day: being with the people we love most and enjoying it, talking together about our blessings and why we are grateful, and in all this understanding and acknowledge God's hand in our lives for which we are forever grateful.

"Now my Brethren, we see that God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in, yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth. Now this is my joy and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever. Amen." Alma 36:27

Happy Birthday Amanda! We love you.

Amanda is a teenager!!! That hardly seems possible. I still remember the Thanksgiving not so long ago when G'ma Dot & G'pa Gene came to the Lemon Street house and the picture I took of Grandpa's big hand holding her tiny little fingers. And now, she's grown-up! We had a great week-end celebrating her birthday. The Brasher Grandparents came into town. We still have to get some pictures from Grandma's camera...but here are a few that we do have. Not yet pictured was our Saturday trip to BJ's for pizzookies, being welcomed and spoiled at church on Sunday, and all the attempts at birthday spankings. OK, she managed to duck the gun on the spankings-don't ask me how.

Jeff gave her his special treasure box, and put some candy corns in it. It was a very sweet moment. Later he decided they should share the treasure box and he would keep it until she needed it. And then... much later I think the candy corns some how ended up eaten. Somehow.

Yes, there's a candle in her rootbeer float. She opted for no cake this year (bless her heart!), so we put the candle in the float. One problem, as we started to pour in the rootbeer, the candle started to teeter. We had to sing "Happy Birthday" a little quicker than usually so she could blow out the candle before it toppled over. I don't even know if she had time for a wish.

And to finish the evening..some friendly...not too competitive games including chess, scrabble, & nertz (pictured below). Happy Birthday Amanda!