New Year's Eve Mystery Party

Matt's birthday is on New Year's Eve. Normally we don't have a birthday party for him on his actual birthday, since people might have other parties to go to. But this year everyone was free, so we had our family party on Matt's actual birthday. We made it a Murder Mystery Party!We've done several "How to Host a Murder" parties over the years. They're really fun! Everyone is assigned a character - usually one with a funny pun in the name - and some costume suggestions. Then everyone dresses up and we sit around sharing clues and trying to figure out who the murderer is. I LOVE mystery parties! The name of this particular mystery was "The Good, the Bad, and the Guilty" and it was set in the old west.

Here I am with the birthday boy. Our characters were Elvira-Lynn Fekshin (the local madame - oh la la!) and Wyatt Hertz (the Sheriff who sadly once shot himself in the tender parts).
Next we have Kory and Tandy. Kory's character was P'elvis Swagarin (described as "Solemn, poker-faced, bowlegged-he's a cowboy's cowboy"). Tandy played Dee Adela Muerte, a thrice widowed Mexican beauty who now works at the town undertaker.
Joey played Elias Truist-Heath, the up and coming heartthrob gunfighter. He filled in for Alicia since she was stuck at work much later than anticipated, and did a really great job.
My mom played Helena Handcart, mother of thirteen sons. ("Unfortunately, she had to bury all thirteen of her sons after they were tragically killed in a shoot-out at a dairy farm. The now infamous gunfight at the Parkkay Corral left her with nothing but memories.")
Wendy played Butch Chastity, the first lady of outlaws. Sean played Chief Breaking Wind, leader of the Cowpai tribe.
Here's the family, gathered around the table and ready for fun!
Simon really liked playing with Wendy's cowboy hat.
"Here, Wendy - YOU wear the hat now!"
Here's Matt, ready to open gifts. Doesn't he look delighted?
Here's his birthday cake. We went with the cowboy theme. I love the fence and cactus around the sides, though they're kind of hard to see in this photo.We all had a great time. Our family rules.

Christmas Lights at the Temple

Every Christmas, the Temple has a special display on the grounds. There are tons of beautiful lights, Nativity scenes, and they have Christmas music playing. It's really beautiful. We've never gone there together as a family, and decided that this would be a good year to start!

Here I am with Joey and Kristin.
Here's Simon. He turned away at the last second, so this isn't a great photo. But it's the only one that sort of captured the lights on the palm trees.

Our three. I can't believe how big they're getting. And I can't believe they were all basically smiling and behaving for this photo!

Here's Matt and the kids. At this point in the evening, we're all freezing since it's about 40 degrees outside (and was threatening to rain, if I remember correctly) so we headed home for warm cocoa and a Christmas movie!

Christmas 2010

Here are a few quick snapshots of Christmas. As usual, we had Christmas Eve at my mom's house where we ate "snacky stuff" and then opened gifts. In our family, we open all our gifts on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning.

Here is Simon opening his gifts with Grandma. He still doesn't quite get the concept of ripping apart the wrapping paper - which is probably a good thing, since otherwise he'd probably unwrap every gift under the tree!

Kristin got a new book all about Princesses, and she started reading it right away!

Wendy got a fun geeky sweatshirt. See, it looks like just a hand - but when you unzip it, it becomes the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" symbol. Subtle geekery is awesome.

After opening gifts at Grandma's house, we all went back home and unwrapped the gifts waiting for us there. Here Joey unwraps a gift from Grandma Lynn: a 4x4 Rubik's Cube!

Grandma Lynn also gave both Joey and Kristin their own umbrellas. They were so excited! And I was excited, too - at last, they won't keep stealing mine!

And here's Joey checking out a quilt his mom made him. It has pictures of planets, rockets, and astronauts on it. And the back is orange, his favorite color. Can we get a WHOOP WHOOP for mom?

Catching Up: December 2010

Oh, we're getting close to being caught up!

December is always a whirlwind of activity. Christmas shopping, cookie baking, and birthdays! First up was Wendy's birthday. On her actual birthday I had my office holiday party, so that evening while I joined my coworkers, Matt took his big sister out to dinner and a movie. Awww, siblings who like spending time together! The next night, we had the family over to our house for dinner and birthday cake. And, of course: presents! Here is Wendy opening a shiny wee gift from her mom:

And here is Wendy behind the GIANT box from her brother. What could it be?

Why, it's 40 individual presents! Oh my! (I will spare you the photos of her opening them all. Suffice it to say, she got lots of fun stuff!)

And one of the gifts was The Macarena Monkey. (Though, I think it's more a gorilla, which is NOT a monkey...but whatever. Point it, it sings The Macarena.) It's been a proud family tradition since 2001! We pass it around from family member to family member on various holidays. We usually try to disguise it so the person doesn't know what they're getting. We hid it in a Zappos box this year. Since Wendy has fallen in love with shoes lately, I thought it was fitting!

And here the birthday girl makes her wish!

Hope you had a great birthday, Wendy!

Kristin Loses a Tooth!

The weekend after Thanksgiving, we took another trip to the Van Omering dairy farm. They have a pumpkin patch there for Halloween, and then they switch to a Christmas tree lot after Thanksgiving. It was quite a change from when we went there for Halloween - and not just because there were pine trees everywhere! In October, there were tons of people. But Thanksgiving weekend, there were only 3 or 4 families. It felt like we really had the place to ourselves. While we were at the farm, Kristin pointed out that she had a loose tooth.

When I told her it would probably come out at some point that weekend, at first she was scared. But then we talked up the Tooth Fairy, and she calmed down. We had a great time playing on the farm. We discovered some new things we hadn't noticed the first time we were there - like the football field! Joey and Matt had a great time practicing their field goal kicks.

Joey was also excited because there was a ping pong table. He figured he'd be an expert since he plays so much Table Tennis on the Wii. He soon found out that video ping pong and the real life version are not the same! But we still had a good time. Kristin had a great time playing in the hay maze.

After playing at the farm, we then went out to dinner at a place called The Studio Diner. It's a cool old-fashioned diner on the lot of a local TV production company. While we were there, Kristin complained that her tooth hurt. It was clearly ready to come out. So, Matt grabbed the tooth with a napkin and out it came! Kristin was so excited!

Catching Up: November 2010

The big event for November is, of course, Thanksgiving! We hosted the meal at our house again this year. The novelty of having enough space for the entire family still hasn't worn off. I remember when we lived in our tiny apartment, and barely had enough room just for our family! We've been in our house over two years, and I still sometimes can't believe how very fortunate we are to live there. Despite some imperfections, and I really, truly, love that place. Anyway, on to the update! Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and we had a really nice one this year. The food was great, and of course the best thing was the company!
After dinner, we took some family photos. Here is one of Tandy and Korinne. Aren't they lovely?

Here's mom, looking great as always.

Me & Kristin.

While we were cleaning up in the kitchen, we kept noticing Simon was climbing up on the table. I went over to see what he was doing, and discovered he was licking the butter!

Here's a photo of our whole crazy clan! This is the first family photo we've taken in quite some time. I love when we all get together!

At the end of the evening, after eating, playing games, more eating, and more playing games, our "nephew" Sam came inside for a visit. Wendy and Sean had Sam out in the car, and it got really cold that night. Poor puppy was freezing. So we brought him in next to the fire to warm up. Joey and Kristin were excited to have a dog in the house. I hope it doesn't give them any ideas!

Halloween Fun

No update for October would be complete without talking about Halloween! We had a fun one this year, with lots of fun activities going on. Even Simon was in the Halloween spirit. We went to Target one day, and Simon found this mask in the dollar bin. He insisted on wearing it the entire time in the store, and then wore in most of the night at home.
Clearly, he found it entertaining.

Here Simon is in his actual Halloween costume. He was one of the Incredibles. Doesn't he look cute? I thought for sure he would hate wearing that mask, but he kept it on all night. In fact, he threw a fit when it got loose or started to come off. Sadly, when we were headed to the car at the end of the night, Simon started to cry because he didn't want to go home, and we lost the mask. Pity.

Here are the many, many pumpkins we had for carving!

Here are Matt and the kids hard at work cleaning out pumpkins and getting them ready.

Here's a photo of all our finished pumpkins. Note how Joey's was carved to look like (what else?) Pac Man.

Here's Joey in his costume: Mario!

I wanted to make sure people knew who Mario's mom was!

Kristin dressed as a yellow crayon. Yellow is her favorite color!

In addition to the Halloween stuff at church, and trick-or-treating, we also had a family Halloween party at my mom's house. Here's the gang:

We had a Halloween-themed murder mystery party called "An Affair to Dismember." Murder mystery parties are always so much fun, and this one was no exception.

The Pumpkin Patch

This year for the first time we went to the local pumpkin patch at the Van Omering Dairy farm.
The Van Omering Farm is just a couple miles from our house, and it is SO AWESOME I can't believe we haven't gone down there before. But it will definitely be a tradition from now on. There are so many fun things to do. First of all, there are lots of pumpkins to choose from:

There's also a hay maze that the kids can climb through.

And there's a mountain of cotton seed to play in. The kids can sled down it like snow. Well, not exactly like snow - but it's fun, just the same. Kristin got tired of trying to get the various foam discs to work, so she resorted to simply rolling down the cotton seed hill.

Joey tried to slide on a disc, but it would often slip out from under him.

There was a small petting zoo with various farm animals. I even joined Kristin, even though one of the baby cows took a liking to me and kept licking my pant leg. Go away, cow! (I wish I had a picture of that!)

They also have a hay ride, where they drive you through the dairy and talk about how things work on the farm. It's very interesting, if a bit smelly. And they have these cool stations where you can practice "milking" a cow. Here's Joey giving it a try.

On this particular day, we had all planned to go to the pumpkin patch as a family, but Simon unfortunately had the stomach flu and couldn't leave the house. Matt stayed home with him and I went with Joey, Kristin and Wendy. It's a shame Simon missed out because I know he would have had such a great time!