Turkey Bowl

Husky Stadium on a sunny, dry day. Some great ball is played here, not so much this year, but the only game I really follow anyway is the annual turkey bowl game,

when my son plays

alongside his dad.

Randy, Malcolm, Cayden, Ethan

Annual Turkey Bowl at Husky Stadium.

Each year the Institute reserves the field for the students to have an amazing game night.

One of the perks of Randy's job is that our family can come too.

The girls and I like tossing the ball around a little bit, but hours on end in the cold doesn't entice us more than a night by the fire watching a chic flic and eating ice cream.

Cayden looks forward to this every year. It is big for a kid to pretty much have free run of a collegiate football field for hours on end. He invited some of his football loving friends to come spend the night with him. They played football, but also had fun running up the bleachers, having kicking contests, and downing tons of hot chocolate.

A little more hot chocolate to keep them going,

6 hours of play and you need some sugar.

Disney on Ice - Worlds of Fantasy

The family at the Princess pre-show. Cayden said he would be in one princess picture and after that, he was "all good."

My fantasy, everyone smiling in one picture in one shot-

Almost.

After she turns 2, maybe our chances will increase.

Opening Curtain-

Overpriced popcorn always taste better in a Disney themed bucket.

Great show. Everyone, except Makezny who had some wiggle and attention span issues, really enjoyed the show. Great costumes. The shows really did come to life on the ice.

Love Cinderella, but Sleeping Beauty is my favorite. When I was pregnant with Makayla, and we were mulling around names, I offered up Aurora like Sleeping Beauty, Randy laughed, a-"roared" back at me and asked incredulously, could I really be serious? Believe it or not, I was.

By the end, "Ms. Minnie Makenzy" was done, even Disney couldn't 100% captivate Makenzy's attention.

As for the rest of us, we enjoyed the performance. Disney's marketing works on me, I am ready to head back to Disneyland or some other fantasy world where time and money are no object and sugar has no effect on my energy level or my bottom line.

Cross off list - one more family memory.

Activity Day Mom and Me

A little R and R at the M and M, Mom and Me

Activity Day Leaders: Makay, Shawna, (9 yr. old leaders) Barb, Melissa, (10/11 yr. old leaders) Me, Bridgette (not pictured, 8 yr. old leaders). This is my 3rd go around in activity days, I keep getting put in because I've just had a baby and/or Randy has a time consuming calling, or I am lucky.

I'd seriously do activity days over a lot of other callings, especially compassionate service. Topic for another blog, but seriously when I was asked to pull someones weeds for a family that had older kids when I was big ole pregnant with little toddlers to boot, among other stories, well......

let's just say this is a much better fit for moi!

Barb is the master mind behind our lists, e-mail updates, and anything else that needs secretarial type skills, thank you!! The rest, the creative force.

We hosted a potluck dinner. Each age group brought in a part of the meal that they made with their mom. Madalyn and I made

• easy peaches and cream salad.

2 packages peach flavored jello.

2 cups boiling water.

1 gallon softened vanilla ice cream.

Soften ice cream. Mix up both jello packets with hot water. Mix jello mix and ice cream together. Put back in freezer to re-set. Optional, garnish with fresh peaches and whip cream.

This is seriously the bang of molly Mormon recipes; ice cream and jello!

Barb took pics of the girls, had and A-Z worksheet for things we are thankful for a great filler while waiting for everyone to show up, had a yumma dinner, the momma's shared loving, special notes with their daughters, and then we had dessert. Easy peasey, but achieved the main goal of spending time with mom and daughter.

My most favorite Madalyn, ever!

Salmon Run

Northwest Salmon. A part of 3rd grade curriculum up here. Cayden's salmon picture from last year.

Madalyn's class visited the Issaquah salmon hatchery. Madalyn took her camera on her field trip and captured all these salmon. The Cedar River is mostly full of sockeye salmon.

Madalyn and some of her friends.

Swimming upstream.

Soccer

Two boys. 3 days practice. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. 2 games Saturdays. Often overlapping. Lots of stinky socks. This was Cayden's first year playing soccer since "soccer groupie" age; the group chases the soccer ball. He wanted to play football. However, the football teams around here play on Sunday, have major time commitment (4 days a week for several hours) which doesn't gel with our family balance, and I think he could get injured more easily. So....he agreed to soccer.

He played on the U-11 recreational league. Opposite of his brother, he is one of the younger players. The team has been together for about 3-4 years. During one of their games, the referee stated that he thought this was a select team because they played so well.

His coaches were awesome. Very committed and great with the boys. Great conditioning program. They played them all well and played to their strengths.

One incredible moment of the season was during an early October game. Minutes into the game, Cayden playing mid-field took a leftie shot and scored a goal. The only goal by either team that game.

Randy really got into the games. He said it is so great to finally see real play happening.



His team took 2nd place.

Their league involved some traveling to other cities to play teams in their division.

Cayleb is a 2nd year soccer veteran in the 3-5 year old league. As a 5 year old, he dominated. Why they put 3, 4, and 5 year olds on the same team, I do not know. In fact, I even called the city just to make sure. Sure enough, they seemed to think that the was the right division. So he bowled right over the other kids, less aggressive, holding onto their parents, playing with the grass, and looking over at the snack mom's stash.

Cayleb was literally the whole teams defense and offense.

As such, he played all games the whole time.

No subbing.

He was indispensable. If your going to watch kids run after the ball in a little short, legged throng, your kid might as well be the ring leader. So for us, it was fun to watch this year.

His team, Chaos, so aptly named was ran by him and "the 2 girls". He was the defense and offense all the way. He got the ball to and from the goals. They set it up at the net and scored. He also ended up with 2 visits to Dairy Queen for scoring goals.

His team won all their games, except 1.

Big brother's athletic supporter.

From Cumorah's Hill

The youth in our stake just put on this program. It is a musical production along with
spoken parts and scriptures that artistically illustrate how the Book of Mormon speaks to us today. It creatively shows how the scriptures have relevance to us here and now.

At first, Makayla was a little reluctant to participate. The practices usurped their regular weekly activities and had additional practices on Saturday. Yet, she decided to use it as one of her young women goals. At the conclusion of this testimony building production she was so glad she was a part of it. Thank you to everyone for all of your work. Our family truly enjoyed it and was moved by it so much so we are buying the CD and uploading it to our i-pods.

Halloween

Blue hair and blue eyes

Rockin out.

No one can quite clone the excitement this Clone had for Halloween this year.

Cayleb - "It is the freakin' best, a thousand and thousand days of fun!" So Halloween is only 1 day, but he had a weekend full of parties, 5 in two days, so it was almost a thousand days of fun.

Girls are always cute as princess ballerinas

One more of the "scary" houses. Cayleb says, "It kind of freaks me out!"

Do you dare drink witches brew?

This house was way too scary for a princess. Not even dad's cajoling could get her to come inside.

activty day halloween

I always looked forward to the holidays at school. At Halloween, I still remember making bats and ghosts, reading scary stories, and having the room mom's host a Halloween party complete with decorating sugar cookies following the annual costume parade.

However, we happen to live in a politically correct school district that fears making an offense. As such, Halloween and all its trappings are so minimized it is hardly recognized at all. No parades, no parties, maybe a pumpkin sugar cookie if you have a really, really nice teacher. Nonetheless, you may dress up as a character from a book, a community contributor, or something from you current studies if your teacher says it is o.k. Madalyn had the option of being a salmon, seriously, or a character from a book. In first grade, when she could be a community contributor, I assured her from my personal first-hand experience, cheerleaders were community contributors. This year a book character, a baby, was the upstream choice from salmon.

However, in our activity day planning and my lamentation over the good old days of celebrating holidays we decided to plan a Halloween party, free from evil intonations, homages to the freaky and frightful, but instead just a fun, make believe, hang out, sugar high party. the GIRLS-

Madalyn Ms. Drop Dead Gorgeous 2009
A little play on the words, gorgeous came natural, but a little white powder and black face paint and she turned from gorgeous to dead gorgeous.

The classic Mummy Wrap-

Madalyn's team won the race by strategy,

holding out their Charmin rolls and having her spin.

Spider Cupcakes
How to:

1 cupcake

Girls frost with chocolate frosting

Dip frosted cupcake in chocolate sprinkles

Add shoestring licorice for legs

Candy for eyes and or mouth

Finished product easy, cheap, and cute!

Spidey cupcake variation.

Melissa was so cute and had candy bars and Halloween cards for each girl following the card game - everyone wins! Madalyn won the grand prize again, a cute bag stuffed with candy and Halloween novelties.

An a-MAZE-ing Time

Annual carving of the pumpkins.

October is in full swing, the leaves have changed colors, the weather is cooler, the days are shorter. But we would rather be in Hawaii. So we went Hawaiian. Plus we are hooked on the tropical sorbets at Costco and look for any "special" reason to indulge. If you haven't tried them, they are sooooo good and sooooo cute, served up in coconut shells (12 for $13). Plus, Sis. Bush has never had Hawaiian haystacks or the sorbets so we needed a Hawaiian menu.

Sis. Bush, who started her mission with us, is back in our area again. We love having you with us. Sis. Birch, we are her first area. We love having both of them and love them frequently dropping in. Bush and Birch - a definite companionship.

The Sisters looked so cute, we told them to take the lei's and be "Hawiian Sisters" for Halloween. Last year, Sis. Bush and Sis. Lauchner were Salt and Pepper (black and white dresses), your limited when your a missionary.

Later in the month:

Some things elicit the oncoming of autumn;

corn mazes, pumpkins, hay rides, farmers, barns.

After we went through the corn maze, several times, the kids plucked some corn feed and fed the pigs. It was so gross we all had to take a turn. Stepping in the mud, smelling the slop, and seeing why I use the reference "pigsty" when referring to our playroom, Cayden said he liked his virtual farms much better than real farms.


Reward - all the kids were happy today.

Signs posted on top of this hay bale maze hay read, "Danger, Goats Only"

So the kids played "goat tag."

Our own hay ride around the farm with Farmer Ted as our driver.

My animal lover Maddy, petting the donkey named "Too Cute", now isn't that cute.