Pumpkin Carving

Today we carved our pumpkins! Here's how they turned out:

This one was Michael's design

This one was Evelyn's design, carved by me. Evelyn ate the seeds.

 We also had Evelyn try bobbing for apples this year. We thought she might actually have more success trying it this year since she is no longer afraid to get her face wet. (That just makes life a little bit nicer, doesn't it?) So here is a movie of her bobbing for apples. She did eventually figure out how to get a good bite from watching her mommy try.

  

A Chance Encounter with Superman

This post was taken from another blog I attempted to write years a go....it only had one post. This is it. I think I'm going to let that blog die. But once I thought I might become a genius. So here it is: all my genius:


We know that superheroes need vulnerabilities, otherwise they just become obnoxious. This almost happened with Superman; luckily someone came up with kryptonite so that it would actually go on for more than one episode. Unfortunately, kryptonite doesn’t really do it for me. I mean, I can’t relate to it, so I have a hard time sympathizing with some overly-muscled, x-ray visioned, super-speed (not to mention flying) person struggling so desperately any time a pebble is introduced to him.
But what if Superman had a very recognizable fallacy? I mean, he’s got these super powers, but what if having super powers gave him also like a super active immunity or something? Superman with Rheumatoid Arthritis? Can’t you just picture it? He may be able to burst through walls, but...

Verses:

You know, this is a Superman whose greatest weakness is when someone steps on his toe. This is a Superman who has to sleep in a flying position because he got stuck in that position. This is a hero who has difficulty making a fist, so he head-butts instead. This would be a true hero who would truly sacrifice his comfort for the well-being of "the general good" because of his gifts. This is a Super-hero I could watch.

The Joys of Mismatched Furniture

To get after- Conference wiggles out:

Ipod History

So we just barely figured out how to get our pictures from our ipod onto our computer. Yeah, it took a while. But now we have all these cute pictures I have to catch up on! So here goes!
Last Christmas we cut out snowflakes together, and Michael had cut out a piece that looked like a mustache! So we had to pause in our cutting and color them black and have a photo shoot. So here we are being strange.

Penny likes to nurse her octopus toy named "Woobley." She nurses it so vigorously! I guess it's better than when we had the cat that nursed Pheobe!

We took a tour this summer of Temple Square and the conference center. This was taken on the roof of the conference center.

Penny likes to be the ogre of Evelyn's castle. She used to fit through that little drawbridge but now she has to settle with this. Anytime she can she inflicts casualties in Evelyn's game. And the only thing to get her to stop is by pulling out the dragon. That is a scary dragon! It roars, and bites, and flies! But if Penny happens to pass by a little soldier in her fleeing, she still snatches it up and happily runs into the next room to give it a chew.

 

 Evelyn found an ewok hood in Disneyland. She was so excited! She was pretty obsessed with ewoks because we had her watch the original Star Wars Trilogy in hope she would be less terrified of Star Tours. It worked, but we had to listen to her say "Yub-Yub" for the next 5months. She decided she wants to be an ewok for Halloween this year. I almost wish we had bought that hood!

 This last summer was one quite filled with wildlife. We found these little baby skunks by the river. They were about the size of a six week kitten, so I'm guessing they were about that old. They were exploring the outside world while mama skunk was snoozing in the den--those naughty babies! They were absolutely confident and had no fear of us, while on the other hand, we were pretty nervous of them! I thought they were adorable though, and it made me think of Jane, who always wanted a pet skunk!

Then, in July, we noticed that every time Evelyn climbed her favorite tree, a hummingbird would start swooping around. I figured it must have a nest in the tree, and we found it! The nest was about the size in this picture: like you had cut a golf ball in half. We kept our eyes on it, and pretty soon, we saw some little needle beaks poking out of it! The hatchlings had emerged! Two little baby hummingbirds! We got this picture: they're still a little wet from hatching. We kept watch on them for a couple weeks while they grew. Pretty soon they got too big for their nest. One time when we went to check on them, one of the babies tried to fly away. It had more success falling. Michael got to pick up the tiny thing and place it back in the nest! He said its heartbeat felt like a constant vibration. About two days later, the birds left the nest. We kept checking in case they ever returned, but they never did. Michael and I were sad!! I guess you could say that we got a little glimpse of what it would be like to be empty nesters.

For our anniversary, we bought year memberships to Thanksgiving Point. This is Michael in the Curiosity Museum. We built the legos up all around him, and then he had to break out. It was funny that originally it was just Evelyn and me building the tower, but as people came in, they'd laugh and join in. The tower turned out to be 6 feet high!

 Evelyn  is hanging like a sloth at the Curiosity Museum. It times you to see how long you can hang without falling off. Evelyn hung for over two minutes! This picture was taken right before she fell: hence the face. Michael, by the way, could only hang for about 20 seconds. The hard part about it was you couldn't straighten your arms because your weight would hit the mat underneath and it would stop the timer. So you had to keep your arms bent. That's  a good workout!

Here's our little gremlin again. She always makes us laugh. We bought her that box to store her toys in so the house wouldn't be constantly cluttered, but it became her favorite toy! This is her with her head through the handle. (She gets her head stuck a lot!)

Believe it or not, Penny is asleep in this picture. Sometimes she sleeps with her eyes open with just the whites showing. She is creepy. And she usually sleeps with her tongue out.