Thanksgiving Carols & Chandeliers

I love the holidays!! I got to spend almost this entire week with my family. I love just being home, playing games, eating yummy food... My family enjoyed some other fun activities as well.

The first activity requires a preface. When we were little my dad would call us all into the living room and then we would sing. This is probably a pretty normal activity for lots of families, but for us it was torture. My dad would dig up these complex musical pieces and make us practice the parts. We rarely performed these fancy musical numbers (thank goodness), but there were a few times we were asked to sing as a family - at church functions, family reunions, and even at a wedding in Finland once. Anyway, as much as we hated this when we were younger, we now love to sing together. On Thanksgiving evening, my youngest sister (and also the best singer in the family) suggested we go Thanksgiving caroling. We all practiced "For the Beauty of the Earth" and then visited several of my parents neighbors that were home without family and sang for them. They all expressed a lot of appreciation and we felt good that we had the opportunity to something kind and fun!

My parent's neighbors are serving as missionaries for the construction of the Rexburg Temple. On Friday, they called to see if any of us would be ineterested in putting together Chandeliers in the Bride's room of the temple... what a silly question!!! Of course we jumped at the opportunity. We spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to hang hundreds of crystals in the right way to create a beautiful chandelier. Afterward we got to take a tour of the nearly completed temple. It was beautiful.

Is it really already November?

This picture of my cute husband and baby is from my sister-in-laws wedding reception... I had to post it because it is so cute!

This week I had to do one of my least favorite things... that is take 'A' to get her picture taken. She hates having her picture professionally taken and cries the whole time (thus we haven't done it since last January). My goal was to get a picture of 'A' and 'L' together in their holiday dresses and then get pictures of 'L'... Things did not turn out as planned - I ended up with a whole bunch of cute pictures of 'A', one good one of 'L' and no good pictures of the two of them. We have Aunt Pika and mini m&m's to thank for 'A's pictures. Thanks Pika!

I got to have lots of GNOs this week! I met up with two of my best highschool girlfriends for dinner. I love these girls and I am so glad that they live in Utah so that I can see them!

Then, on Friday my sister and cousin came up from Provo. My aunt Pika, grandma and cousin Boogie also joined us. Boogie taught us how to suck hot chocolate through a grasshopper cookie - so good! We got a little silly about it (funny things happen when girls are left alone with chocolate) as demonstrated by this video...

The Great Pumpkin

This is Fisher and his prized pumpkin.
In the spring he asked my greenthumb grandma if she would order some pumpkin seeds guaranteed to grow 100 pound pumpkins. He asked his dad if he could have a little space in their garden to grow his pumpkin. The result was this 75 pound pumpkin! (and two others). He is so proud of his big baby and I am so proud of my pumpkin head!

For Family Home Evening we carved the pumpkin. Curly thought it was great, but couldn't figure out why her little knife wasn't cutting as well as Fisher's keyhole saw. Lou also thought it was great when her parents stripped her down and put her inside the pumpkin, as you can see from the video. Fisher was very creative in his design of the "telescoping" nose.

On Halloween Curly was a sheep or a "baa - sheep" as she calls it. It took some major bribery to get her to wear half of her costume. Lou was a cute duck. Of course I had to dress up as Old MacDonald. We went to our community "trunk-or-treat". Curly was in heaven - so much candy so little time! Even after I took her goodie sack away she kept finding candy. She has got a mouthful in all of the pictures I took!

Wedding Weekend

The great thing about weddings, besides the obvious, is that you get to have a mini family reunion! Fisher's last single sibling got married on Saturday (that's the third Lake wedding in 4 months), so we got to spend time with all of Fisher's family. The ceremony was very nice and we attended a yummy luncheon afterward. Curly loved the bride's "pretty" dress and kept picking up the train and following her around. We spend the evening after the wedding at Fisher's parents. 'A' and her cousins put on their Halloween costumes and their Oma sent them trick-or-treating to all of the rooms in the house. I have lots of wedding pictures in my web album.

Since all of the family was here, Friday night was the opportune time to have the annual "Lake Family Tomato Fight." Here is how it works. Those that want to participate put on their armor and meet in the garden. We divide into two teams (typically with spouses on opposite teams) and divide the frosted, rotten tomatoes between the teams, then it gets pretty techincal... you throw the tomatoes at each other until they are all gone. It is a lovely tradition.

We also enjoyed a visit to Gardner Village this week to see the funny stuffed witches with Fisher's parents. Fisher and I took the girls on a short hike to a pretty reservoir in Bells canyon. There are lots more pictures of all our fun in the October photo album.

Ecuador Girls Unite!

Friday night was our night to babysit in our ward babysitting rotation. Then I found out that some of the girls that I went to Ecuador with 5 years ago were getting together. Fisher is so great! He said he could handle the babysitting so that I could go see my girls. So, we met in Provo and spent the evening catching up and reminiscing about our time in Ecuador. It was so great!! Even though I rarely see these girls, it was like we were best friends again - talking about anything and everything. We missed the others who couldn't come, so we are thinking about planning a weekend reunion next spring!

Curly had a few firsts this week. We had free admission to "Discovery Gateway" (The Children's Museum), so we checked that out. I am not sure who had more fun - Curly or Fisher and I. There were a lot of cool things to do. Curly's favorite place was "the neighborhood" that had a child size house, construction site, grocery store, farm, and gas station. She also liked this little "birdhouse" in the toddler play area (see picture). Fisher liked the animation studio where you could create your own video with plastic figures and a backdrop. It was a fun afternoon. The other first for Curly was going to a movie theater to see "Ratatouille." We all went to the dollar theater on Saturday. Curly did pretty well, she got a little restless at the end (so did Lou and I). I think the storyline was a little too old for her, but she liked the mice - er I guess their rats.