Three

It's true! Anna is three! I know, I can't believe it either. As you can see, she was pretty excited about it.


We went all out for Anna's birthday and took her to a Christmas concert, which she kind of, sort of, enjoyed. (Okay, it was Aleah's piano recital, but oh well.)


Then we came home for cake and the opening of gifts.


Here she is trying to blow out her candles. It was pretty funny.


Happy Birthday Anna! We love you!

Turkeys and Indians

We had a very nice Thanksgiving. My parents came down to spend the week with us, which was really nice. They also filled our freezer with a side of beef. Gotta love that!

Josh had his first Thanksgiving program at preschool. He was an indian and he was very excited. Since Dalen and my parents missed the program, he stood on his stage (a kitchen chair) and did repeat performances multiple times. It was very cute!


On Thanksgiving morning, my parents got babysitting duty with Josh and Anna while the rest of us took off to try and offset some of the gluttony that would occur later.

Seth and Dalen went to the Annual Unofficial Ward Flag Football Turkey Bowl. Seth loved it. Dalen loved being with Seth, but he is still dealing with kidney stone issues and he decided that maybe football and kidney stones don't go together all that well.

Aleah and I went to the 19th Annual Turkey Trot, along with 14,500 other Austinites. Aleah's friend Ava and her mom, Natalie, came too. It was really fun. Aleah, who has NEVER run a race in her entire life and who did no official training for this race other than playing soccer, pumped out the entire 5 miles without walking once! I kept telling her to slow down and pace herself, but I guess there was no need to worry. She ran up the final hill at the end of the race like she had energy to burn. She's amazing! Next year I'm going to just let her take off and tell her to wait for me at the finish line. Aleah and Seth are both looking forward to doing another race soon. I love it!


Then we ate and ate and ate. And of course, I love that too! Happy Thanksgiving!

Stones

It might actually be funny if it wasn't so incredibly painful. Poor Dalen. We hope this is over soon.

Halloween

Another All-Hallows-Eve has come and gone. This year was very fun. I really like Halloween falling on a Saturday, can we do this every year?

We started our celebrations the weekend before Halloween with the annual cul-de-sac pumpkin carving party. It was a lot of fun, but the kids are looking pretty serious here. Maybe having pumpkin guts all over your hands does not go along with smiling. But in the end I think they were pretty happy with their carvings.


Evan and Robyn (Dalen's nephew and his wife) joined us to carve their pumpkins. They moved to Austin a few months ago and we are loving having them here!

Anna insisted on cleaning out her own pumpkin,
at least until she got bored.

Here are the final masterpieces.

This year's costume lineup included . . . .

A fierce looking Skandian. I know he looks like a Viking, but Seth was really Erak the Skandian from the Ranger's Apprentice books. These books are Seth's number two favorites right after Harry Potter.


Cruella de Vil


A Jedi


A kitty. It didn't take Anna long to figure out that most of what kitties do is lie around on the furniture and look annoyed with you.


Mr. Fredrickson from the UP movie.


And a very mean wicked witch.


The kids had a lot of fun at the trunk or treat up at the church and then they went trick or treating through the neighborhood. Josh especially liked it this year. He has asked numerous times since Halloween if we can go trick or treating again. I always tell him we can go again next year, but he wants to go right now. Why wouldn't you go beg from the neighbors when you are in the mood for candy? Heaven knows the wicked witch won't give him any.

Happy Halloween!

Remembering Grant

Dalen's father passed away in September. He was a very good man who lived a good life. We are forever grateful for him and for his example and his influence in our lives.

Grant was born in 1920 in Roosevelt, Utah. He was the youngest of twelve children. When he was about five years old, his father, who had been a blacksmith, became paralyzed. Grant and all of his family worked very hard to support their family.

Grant served a mission for the LDS Church in the Spanish American Mission, Spanish speaking, which served the southwestern United States.

Grant after his mission around 1943.

He then served in the Merchant Marine during
World War II.

He attended BYU, graduating with a degree in horticulture. This picture is of Grant with his mother Lydia in 1947 at his graduation from BYU.

Grant and June were married in 1948.

They have five children. (Dalen is the youngest.) They also have 21 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren and counting.

Kerri, Brent, Letha, Mark, & Dalen

Grant was a landscape architect. Most of his career was spent working for the State of Utah Parks and Recreation Department as a park planner. Some of the projects he worked on include Wasatch State Park, Utah Lake State Park, Antelope Island, Dead Horse Point, and the Dinosaur Park in Vernal, as well as others.

After retiring, Grant and June were called to the California, Oakland Mission where they served in Vietnamese and Chinese branches.

Grant was always a gigantic tease! I cannot believe it is possible that I don't have a picture with him sticking out his tongue, because he ALWAYS stuck out his tongue when you tried to take his picture. But I wasn't able to locate one. I think someone needs to send one of those my way!

Grant was a wonderful father and grandfather. We love him and we will miss him!

Dalen and his dad on the day we got married.

Grandpa with Seth and Aleah - Summer of 2000
(The giant polar bear in the background was a big favorite too.)

Grandpa & Seth

Grandpa & Aleah

Grant, Dalen, Seth, Aleah, and snowman.

Grandpa and Josh

Grandpa and Anna

Anna's blessing day

When you are awesome...

Today we kicked off the new soccer season with four games. Yes, four. Seth had one, Aleah had two, and Josh, in his very first season of play, had one. It was quite a day. And, like a dah, I forgot the camera. But hey, I have weeks and weeks ahead of me to remember.

Josh was pretty excited about his first game. Actually, I think he was every bit as excited about his uniform as he was about the game. Seth was really sweet and helped him get his uniform on including jersey, shin guards, and soccer socks. Josh ran around the house posing in his new duds for a while before we went off to the game. Josh had a great time playing. He paid attention to where the ball was and he went after it. He even scored several times. This is how he described his game: "It was kind of slow at first, and then I was awesome and we won!" So there you have it. When you are awesome, you win! What more can I say?

Time flies when you're having fun.

Yes, this is the summer vacation travel log blog. So if you'd rather not look at a bunch of pictures from someone else's vacation, I would suggest that you click on that "x" in the upper right hand corner.

This summer seemed to fly by. It was incredibly busy. The kids did a few camps and they had lots of activities with friends. They got to see the Biscuit Brothers and Joe McDermott at the Children's Day Art Park. Aleah went to Sea World. Seth went tubing down the Guadalupe River. And they all spent a lot of time in the pool, which was good because this has been the hottest, driest summer that I remember since we have lived in the great state of Texas.

Seth and Aleah got to go up to Utah and spend time with family. I flew up with them and spent a weekend and then left them with Grandpa and Grandma Turner for a week. They had a great time! They saw some of their Fredrickson family during the time that I was there with them. Then they spent the next week with the Turner side. They went to Holden for a few days and got to ride/drive Grandpa's four wheelers and chase the cows. They went to Lagoon with their cousins. They spent a day at Snowbird where they got to ride the alpine slide, get bucked off a mechanical bull, and practice rock climbing. They even went hiking with Uncle Curt until they found some snow in the mountains and had a snowball fight. They told me it was awesome! They went to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. They spent a day fishing. Then Grandpa and Grandma flew them home and spent a week here with us resting from all the fun they had up in Utah.

Shortly after that, we took our family vacation. We started by going to the George Bush Library and Museum in College Station, Texas. That was really fun. I was very impressed with how family friendly it was. We spent over two hours there and could have spend more time, but they were closing so they booted us out. The kids enjoyed it a lot.



Seth and Josh both felt that they should get to sit in the Presidential chair of the oval office (replica). Maybe they'll have to let the people decide in the end who gets it.


I loved this quote: "Any definition of a successful life must include serving others". Dalen and I left the museum feeling surprisingly inspired and with the belief that the most important things to George Bush (#41) were family, faith, and service.


We then headed over to Arkansas where we spent a few days camping at Lake Ouachita State Park. It was beautiful! When I called to reserve our camp spot, they said we would be "on the lake". They weren't kidding. This picture of Josh and Anna was taken from our camp site.


We swam in the lake.


We slept in tents.


We cooked tinfoil meals in the fire -- which were surprisingly good if I do say so myself.



We rented a canoe.



We rented a paddleboat.




Josh wanted to be like Dash from the The Incredibles movie and be the motor for the boat.


And, of course, we made lots of s'mores.




We then went "rockhounding" in the Ouachita Mountains. (More info here.) Did you know that Arkansas and Brazil have the best quality quartz in the world? Yeah, me neither.


Here are a few of the quartz crystals we brought home.


We visited the town of Hot Springs, Arkansas to check out (you guessed it) the hot springs. Let me tell you, that water was HOT!


We visited Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs. We got to tour some of the bathhouses and we filled up all of our empty water bottles with spring water at the water filling stations located along Bathhouse Row. After that when the kids said they wanted a souvenier, I just told them to take a sip of water.


We then headed over to Little Rock, Arkansas. The Riverfront Park was fantastic. The kids enjoyed climbing on the playscapes and climbing rocks and sliding down the very long slides. One of the old train bridges had been converted for walking traffic only and it had great views of the city and the Arkansas River. I kept trying to find the "Little Rock" that the city is named after, but no luck. How little could it be if you actually name a city after it?



While we were in Little Rock, we visited the Bill Clinton Presidential Library. Trying to be as impartial as I possibly can, I would say that it was not particulary inspiring. First of all, it was NOT family friendly. The kids were bored because it wasn't very interactive - you had to do a lot of reading to learn anything. The layout of the museum encouraged running the length of the building and screaming as loudly as possible to listen to the resulting echo. We were there about an hour and I don't think the kids (or I) could have stood any more. We left with the belief that the most important thing to Bill Clinton was politics. I'm glad we went though. It was interesting, especially by comparison.


Finally, we headed north to Branson, Missouri. We went to a few shows, which the kids LOVED! We especially liked the New Shanghai Circus . They were amazing! (Pictures taken from the web.)



And the Haygoods were definitely not bad.


We went to the fish hatchery, which was really pretty cool.


Dalen was mighty happy when we hit a car show. Josh is not looking too happy here.


But he cheered up considerably when a few of the car owners let them play in their cars.


We finally made the long haul home. It was a VERY fun trip and I think everyone was glad we went. Time really does fly by, so hopefully were are making the most of the time that we have together. I sure love these happy, smiling faces!