For the Record

Favorite Thing About Being Snowed In

• Brayden - Make Castles and climb in them
• McKayla - Just playing in the snow and being with my family
• Zach - School being cancelled
• Tyler - Snow Balls, throw them at Dad
• Nick - The oppurtunities to serve

Now we're a Mac

Bought it Saturday. We'll see how it goes.

For the Record

Favorite Macy's Day Parade Balloon
Nick - Buzz Lightyear
Zach - Pikachu
McKayla - Dora & Spongebob
Tyler - Buzz Lightyear
Brayden - Spiderman

Let it snow!

Over 24in of white fluff. With drifts that have to be over 4 feet.

Happy New Year!

We hope everybody had as great a New Year as we did. We continued our recent tradition of inviting a bunch of people over and having. It was a great time. And if you haven't read Elder Holland's Article in the Ensign yet about looking forward to the future, please do it is great.

Macy's Day Parade

Here are some pics from our New York/Macy's Day Parade trip.
Pikachu: Zach's favorite

Orange Hats, to make us standout in the crowd

Phantom of the Opera, watched it the day before thanksgiving.

Macy's store

Best View in the house

To Infinite and Beyond!

A lot to catch up on..

Because of some computer issues it's been awhile since we have posted. Ok so we went to Disneyworld and had the time of our lives. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa.

THEN, we celebrated Brayden's birthday (though we did that in D-world too). Now our baby is FIVE!

THEN, we went to New York City to see Phantom of the Opera and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

We had a lot of fun and once pics get put in order we will share them with everyone.

Ultimate Question: Red Vines or Twizzlers

Jen - Twizzlers
Nick - Red Vines
Zach - Twizzlers
McKayla - Red Vines
Tyler - None
Brayden - Whatever is in front of him.

Wizard of Oz

Pics will be posted soon. But here is some news about Tyler & Zach's play.

http://www.doverpost.com/entertainment/x1799923713/Young-actors-experience-the-onstage-magic-of-Wizard-of-Oz

Perfect Nachos

Aren't they Gorgeous!

Costume Party

So the kids were invited to a costume party by a friend of the fams. It was a theme (Princess and knights, etc), so I asked the kids if they wanted to get dressed as such. They said yes, Kayla would wear her Snow WHite dress, Brayden his knight costume from last Halloween. Zach wanted to be a Ice Wizard, and Tyler wanted to be a fire wizard. Well we only had one wizard robe, so one trip to the craft store and WOW a two headed wizard. Because of the schedule with play practice, Zach was going to meet us at the party. But that meant that we needed to take the kids' friend Ally to the party with us. Well, thinking that Ally and Zach would switch, I let Ally fill in in the two headed Wizard:

Unfortunately, this made Zach feel a little left out not having a costume.

But not to fear, one trip to the restrooms, and...POW...TP MUMMY. The costume party was a hit.

Memories of Halloween Past

Seeing ads for Haunted Houses etc reminds me of a haunted house we tried taking the kids to a couple of years ago. Three years ago, while awaiting to start in the AF I was working at USD. My job required me to work with a number of undergraduate students, who included sorority and fraternity students.

There was an advertisement for a sorority/fraternity Hauted House and Halloween Carnival in the college paper. The paper said that the hauted house portion of the event was "family friendly" from 4 to 6. At 6 it was supposed to go full board. So I asked my co-workers what kind of family friendly because at the time the kids were 2, 4, 6 and 8. She said that it would be ok for them. So we go...

We walked in and the bottum floor was decorated fine and we went to go to the haunted part. Zach and Kayla were really scared (Jen stayed with Brayden). The Sorority girls and their male counterparts were yelling up the stairs: "Really really little kids coming TONE IT DOWN." Well Zach and Kayla were too scared to go up but Tyler still wanted to go. One of the Sorority sisters offered to take him, and he said he wanted too. So why not...how bad can it be?

They went up, Kayla, Zach, & I played the carnival games (they got spoiled with candy rewards). Soon, Tyler and his excort came to the carnival. She said he only wanted to see two of the six upstair rooms and decided to not try going to the basement at all. He played the games and all of us left.

On the way home Jen and I asked Tyler what he thought. He thought it was fun. So I asked what the first room was like. He said it was evil clowns singing twinkle twinkle little star "but in a slow evil way" (his words not ours. ) This seemed to not phase him though Jen and I were a little worried, not to mention wondering what psychology bills would cost after that. Hoping maybe it would get better, I asked about the second room. His response: "There was a guy...torturing a girl."

Needless to say, next time maybe not the best to trust a sorority girls or frat boys on what a family friendly haunted house would be.

Change in a Drive Thru

So I snuck out for a pair of Banana Milkshakes the other night. The total came to $5.78 so I gave the people $6.03. My hope was to get a quarter back. I then witnessed a complete and total breakdown within the restaurant as the employees seemed to not be able to understand what was going on. I had thought about just leaving and sacrificing the quarter to the arithmetic Gods. However the whole "Drive offs will be prosecuted" signed made me a little worried that in their confusion they may have forgot I paid. After about four minutes, I saw the employees seem to find a calculator and they were able to complete the transaction. Word to the wise, keep change simple at a drive thru.

For the Record

Movie Review of Aliens in the Attack
Brayden - B The big battle at the end
Zach - A+ Awesome Fighting Scenes
Tyler - A+ Down right Hilarious
Jen - Loved the rotary phone scene
Nick - Funny-Good-Enjoyable Family Movie

Two days until Happy Day

Remeber, the Zach created holiday of Happy Day is October 1. Find something to do for someone to make them happy.

For the Record

Favorite thing they saw
Brayden - Boiling Mud (at Yellowstone)
McKayla - The Wedding in Cheyenne
Zach - Hershey's Chocolate World
Tyler - My Birthday & Yellowstone

Classic Rock?

I am now officially old and lame. (Though I have known it for awhile) On the way back to Dover last week, while driving through Iowa we hear this: "Up next Nirvana on Iowa's best Classic Rock Station..." AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Old D-World Memories

Scouting News

Last night kids had their rain gutter races. They had a lot of fun, Zach's boat did better than Tyler's. But Tyler, got his Arrow of Light and moved onto 11 year-old scouts.

Happy Birthday Tyler

Tyler turns the big ONE-ONE today. He had a party while the fam was in Washington, but we still did some celebrating today. So on the way home we went by Hershey's Chocolate World.