December 21st – massive snow storm:
Anthony braves the storm to survey the damage:
Building gingerbread houses:
December 21st – massive snow storm:
Anthony braves the storm to survey the damage:
Building gingerbread houses:
Traditional Halloween didn’t really happen this year for lots of reasons. It was celebrated on Sat the 30th. It started hailing at prime trick-or-treating time, so there weren’t many that came. It was just plain miserable outside. We didn’t even get our traditional fire set up out front. AND we forgot to get a picture in all their costumes. Oh well.
One notable thing was that James bought his costume this year with his own money! It was $21.34 and was a Star Wars character – like Jango Fett, but something else. This year Samuel wore a different costume each day of the week. Ben finally settled on wearing the orange jumpsuit prisioner costume and a blue wizard-looking hat. So he was the “Prisoner from Azkaban”. Yeah. Nobody realized it until we told them, then they smiled. Pretty ingenious for a 6 1/2 year old (who just finished having the book read to him). Anthony was himself, which made costuming easy. And Jacob just stayed inside with mom while she made homemade tomato soup, grilled cheese and fresh apple cider. LaReita’s cousin (well, 1st cousin, once removed) Jonathan Mitchell* was the door handler. Dave drove in the car being the back-up for the boys and friends Carlos and Cesar as they ran through the cold drizzling rain.
*Jonathan works for Dave and LaMont in the Find-A-Code business. He and his wife moved to Washington this summer. He came back here this week to do some conferencing with Dave.
James and Kooper (neighbor boy) were working on their Tracking merit badge and needed to take some pictures of animals in the wild. On the walk in the canyon they came upon a cave. Anthony took these pictures of Benjamin and Sam in the cave.
James also took some pictures of our chickens “nesting” in the tree in the back yard at night. Every night, one-by-one, the chicks fly up into the tree to roost for the night. Chickens in trees, who would’ve thought.
We’d been promising the boys that we would go to the Lagoon amusement park all summer long and we finally found a free weekend. Mom took Jacob and Sam on the kid rides while dad had to endure the roller-coasters with James, Anthony and Benjamin.
First day of school pictures with dad. James in 6th grade, Anthony in 3rd, Benjamin in 1st.