Finding the perfect tree

One of our favorite family outings of the whole year is going to a Christmas tree farm and cutting our own tree. This year a nice mexican man with a chain saw offered to cut ours down. It was awesome.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Finally

Today Kurt started talking. He said about a dozen words that he has never said before including...apple, Elmo, moon, truck, hot, ball,cracker and Daisy. Yay!

Veteran's Day Primary Activity

For our Primary Activity we decided to do a service project on Veteran's Day. I put this video together
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em5OkOeXm2Q to show the kids, then we wrote letters and put packages together for some brothers in our ward serving in Iraq and also thank you cards for the men and women in our ward who are Veterans. The kids wore red white and blue and decorated patriotic cupcakes. Can I just say I LOVE saying the Pledge of Allegiance with children. It was a beautiful experience to be involved with.

For Sale

Our house is officially for sale. In this market it'll probably have a sign out front for a while, but the ball is officially rolling. We hope to be able to buy a couple acres about 10 minutes away. Same ward. Same school...different surroundings...deer and forest instead of wandering cats and stop signs. It will be awesome if it all works out. If not, we're good here too. We'll wait and see!

Halloween

Halloween this year was a bit different for us because Kurt was sick with the flu and to get him into his monkey costume (even for the pictures) was not an option so here's Nicole as an army girl, Nathan as Darth Maul, Derek as a jawa from Star Wars, Lauren as Dorothy and Kurt as a toddler who is sick and gets his pacifier whenever he wants.

Star Wars in Concert

Dave and I took the kids to Star Wars in Concert at the RoseGarden last week with my parents. It was an amazing orchestra with a huge screen with scenes from all the movies. The guy who played C3PO was there narrating. It was awesome. The kids were in Galactic heaven.

Ramen noodles

I came into the kitchen looking for Kurt and this is what I found...Are you hungry Kurt?...

Woolly Bears?

Anyone else not know that these caterpillars are referred to as woolly bears? My boys found these at school today and begged to bring home their little woolly bears. So they brought them home for the night and set them free the next day.

Baptism

Nicole's good friend Ashlynn has been taking the missionary discussions for the past month and has been coming to church with us for 4 months now. What a wonderful blessing it has been for our family to see her testimony grow and to see her so excited to be baptized.

Hello Kitty

Lauren turned 5 on Tuesday. She had a Hello Kitty party and invited her close little friends. What a sweet group of girls. They decorated cupcakes and ate popcorn and then they played outside (thank goodness for beautiful 75 degree fall days). We had a great time. Audrey, Hannah, Lauren, Mari, Emily and Sarah We had her family party after dinner. Brigham and Tyra's kids came over with Grandma Baird and Grandpa Pederson also came over. Here's Lauren with cousin Nedra enjoying some cake with way too much frosting. Charity and Artyom came for a visit last week. It was so great to see them. We had cousin Sofia sleep over with Lauren one night. Here's the slumber cousins all ready for bed

ps...I fully accept that I am a blog nerd. It's almost 1 am.

A sweet surprise

Saturday night after we got home from the fair, I got a call from my little sister Tess. She lives in Boise with her husband and is 34 weeks pregnant. She asked about what we did that day and I went on and on about the fair. I asked how her baby in her belly was doing and she said "good, do you want to see it?" I started balling and ran to the front door and there I saw my baby sister with the most adorable baby belly. Careful don't smash the baby! Tess I love you!
Thanks Tess and Ryan for coming to see us!

The State Fair

On Saturday we went to the State Fair with the kids and Grandma and Grandpa. Lauren has an image in her mind of the fair from Charlotte's web, so all she wanted to do was 1. Find Wilbur and 2. Ride the ferris wheel like Fern and Henry Fussy. So we saw many many farm animals and about 50 pigs that looked like they weighed at least 400 lbs. I feel a little embarrassed to admit that I didn't know that pigs could be so amazingly huge. Wow, just thinking about it...those were some seriously fat pigs. Anyways, so at the very end of the pig pens we saw one mother pig (which by the way she was quite a bit smaller that the other pigs we had seen). All her baby piglets were in a heap on top of each other sleeping...except one little runt. We found Wilbur! We started to get really hungry for some serious fair food. We got this mountain of fries that was about 12 inches tall and shaped like a cone. It was awesome. So the entire time all Lauren can talk about is riding the ferris wheel and when are we going and on and on over and over. So finally it was time to go ride this big huge wheel in the sky that we've been able to see since we arrived at the fair. We get there and ...you guessed it...poor little short Lauren was less than an inch under the "You must be at least this tall" sign. Oh Man Seriously!!! She was so sad but so sweet about it. I think everyone has a "to small to ride the big ride" story from their childhood. Mine was Lagoon. I was 7 and I couldn't ride in the little boats with Ylfe and Adam. I am scarred. I've never been back to Lagoon. Lauren and I went and found the carousel while Dave took the other kids on the darn ferris wheel. Maybe next year. The kids had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa. Here's some alien wood carvings. We watched the guy carving the tree with a chain saw. The boys thought that was pretty cool.
Can't go to the State Fair and not get elephant ears.
And a carmel apple for my little Fern.

First day of school

My little kindergarten girl. Lauren was so brave going to her new little classroom. She put her things away and sat down a bit shy and started fingerpainting. When she got home from school she sadly announced that nobody in her class accept her and Tacie (a little girl from church) liked the song Popcorn Popping. I asked her if she had started that song. And she said, "Oh no, Mrs. Ally was singing it, but the other kids didn't know it. So just me and Tacie and Mrs. Ally sang it. I sang it nice and loud." That's my baby! So nice to know that her teacher is a member. Nathan and Nicole started Tuesday and Derek and Lauren started Thursday. So far, so good.

This is going to be a great year.

Name this movie

"I have spoken. All depart."

(This sweet shirt was found years ago stashed in Grandpa Pederson's closet with it's original tags from the late 70's. We assume it was ment for Jon or Dave maybe Ryan, but I think Kurt pulls it off quite well. Even a little stylish...maybe.)

Art week

This year for Christmas I wrapped up a blank canvas and painting pallet each for the three older kids with a note that promised them one week of private painting lessons during the summer with Mom as their teacher. Nicole had hers in June, Nathan in July and Derek just finished his up this past week in August. Their art week was monday through friday from

8-10pm with me helping them step by step to complete a masterpiece. We had so much fun and ate so many late night bowls of ice cream and Lucky charms.