Sweet Sixteen TOMMOROW!!!

So tonight's the first date.....with dad, of course!

Leaves, Leaves, Leaves......

Poor Chris! Do you know how many times our yard has looked like this so far this fall? He spends his evenings and weekends raking leaves only to have it look just the same the next day! We are going green this year and mulching our leaves, then using the mulch under our bushes and in the natural areas. Of course that requires lots of running over them with the gas powered lawn mower, so I don't know how green we are really going! But at least we are keeping them out of the landfill!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sending thankful wishes from our house to yours, courtesy of our own little Indian, Starry Sky!

Isn't Kindergarten fun?!!!

He's Got Rhythm

Last week was the 5th grade program and Joshua has been talking about it for weeks! He is my first boy who LOVES singing! He walks around the house singing the songs and was so excited when he was selected to play the xylophone in the program.

We have EIGHT 5th grade classes at our school, so they had to split them into two groups for the performance or there wouldn't have been enough parking available! I didn't realize until they so graciously informed us that they would be Joshua's last elementary school program. I got a little misty-eyed and swallowed down the lump in my throat.....who gave these kids permission to grow up anyway? :)

Here's a video of Joshua rockin' out to the pinata song.....so cute!

A Model Citizen

For the third year in a row, Joshua has been recognized for his citizenship. Each quarter, the teacher is asked to select two students from her class that best exemplify the core values. Joshua was selected and we attended an award ceremony at his school. If you look closely, you can see him 3rd from the right. (I did take better pictures, but they gave away too much identifying information and I am a bit wary about the internet :)

Afterwards we went to McDonald's to celebrate the citizenship award and STRAIGHT A's for the first time since Joshua went into the program at the gifted school. They really make the kids WORK for their grades there and they spend alot of time talking to the kids when they come in about not getting discouraged because in K-2 these kids all got straight A's and in the gifted school, not very many of them do. This is Joshua's 3rd year in the program and it has taken him this long to reach this milestone, so he was VERY excited (this picture doesn't really show it, but I promise, he WAS excited!)Congratulations Joshua!

We are so proud of you!

Faith and Our Founding Fathers

Remember how I said that I really wished I would have lived in colonial times? Well, I had the unique opportunity today to be an extra in a PBS documentary called "Faith and Our Founding Fathers". The portion I was in was filmed in Colonial Williamsburg. My call time was very early this morning, so I had to leave home at 3:15 am......not something I would want to do on a regular basis! After getting my costume and visiting hair and makeup, this is what I looked like.

I was officially a "street person" and was one of the lower class peasants or servants. I have never been on any kind of a movie set while they were filming, so it was a fun experience to see how things were done. We had to be ready to film as soon as the sun came up, so the children were practicing their part while the director, Lee Groberg, watches in the background. He is an incredibly kind and gracious director and I couldn't get over how complimentary he was to everyone who worked with him. There was never any yelling and there was always lots of praise to go around.

These two cute kids are in my ward. Their dad worked on the production crew, so they were assigned children's parts. I LOVED the little girl's costume!

It started misting right before the sun came up. I didn't even realize it till I took this picture and it looked like it was snowing! Fortunately, it stopped pretty quickly and didn't develop into rain.

Here is the black preacher practicing his part before the sun came up.

It was fun to see all the diversity in costumes. I kept stopping people and asking to take their pictures! The incredibly cool costumes of the fine ladies made me wish I wasn't just a poor servant!I absolutely loved this lady's hat and jacket! Isn't it so cool?!!!

And here they are, filming at last! I think we had been on the set for 2 1/2 hours at this point.

Mark Mabry was there taking pictures for a companion photo book that will come out when the movie comes to PBS. You may know him from his "Reflections of Christ" photo exhibit.

We had a time schedule to keep; we had to be out of Colonial Williamsburg by 9 a.m. when it opened to the public. We filmed right up to the last second and they told us all to be ready to grab our stuff and RUN as soon as they said "CUT"! It was hilarious to see everyone running as fast as they could holding onto hats and props! It was pretty cool to see how quickly the film crew could move their stuff out of there!

All in all, it was a fun experience. I was in several scenes that may or may not end up in the movie. You might see me in the background washing windows, walking, putting coins in a collection plate, watching a preacher speak, or standing outside a factory listening to young boy read the newspaper. It will probably be at least a year before this movie is shown.

Oh, and I made $75 for my few hours of work, so I spent the rest of the morning at the outlet stores before I had to be home to get my kids from their bus stops!

Birthday Time!

November is a big birthday month around our household! So far we have celebrated two birthdays!

Savannah turned SIX....and Samuel turned NINE!

It was Samuel's year to celebrate with a family party. His favorite present was this Wii game....

I might have to put him to work in my kitchen now!

Savannah got to have a dress-up party with all of her friends! According to her, it was the best day of her life!

Halloween

It was a perfect weekend at our house! We had so much fun going to parties and trick or treating! Unfortunately attack of the musical costumes hit and we had a lot of changing clothes, but other than that, it was great! Joshua was a knight in shining armor and Savannah was the damsel in distress.....remember, Savannah wanted this costume because she liked the one I made??? Yeah, well, she didn't like it so much when it was actually made, so she rotated through costumes for our Halloween festivities! She wore that costume for actual trick or treating.
Here she is as a princess wearing my jr. prom royalty crown! I knew that thing would come in handy if I held onto it long enough! This is how she dressed for Trunk or Treat at church.

And finally, here she is as a witch (which is the costume that I had originally got for her to wear this halloween....). She wore this to the neighborhood fall festival.

Samuel was a very cool skeleton (which I did NOT make because Kmart was selling the costume for $10 and it was so worth my time NOT to make it and it came with gloves and a very cool hooded mask which were promptly lost before any trick or treating happened......)

I volunteered to make homemade rootbeer for the neighborhood party and the kids had SO much fun helping me make it! No one had ever even heard of doing this before and thought it was the coolest thing EVER! I got so many "I don't even like rootbeer, but I LOVE THIS!" comments that I stopped counting! It was definitely a hit at the party! If you have never made homemade rootbeer, here is your recipe for the day.....

Homemade Rootbeer

3/4 bottle Rootbeer extract

3 1/3 gallons water

7 cups sugar

3-4 lbs. dry ice

Mix extract, water and sugar in a 5 gallon drink cooler until dissolved. Add dry ice saving out a few pieces to add later when serving. Allow to bubble then rest about an hour before serving. DO NOT cover cooler until the bubbling is stopped! When you are ready to serve you can add a few more pieces of dry ice to the cooler for the bubbling, foggy effect!

Renaissance Faire

Joshua's school held a Renaissance Faire in conjunction with their unit of study in Social Studies and it just happened to fall before Halloween, so they were the only kids who got to dress up for their Halloween party this year. (Yes, it is very lame here and kids do not dress up at school for Halloween.....as a matter of fact, we don't even have Halloween parties; we call them Autumn festivals....) Anyway, each group had to make a booth at the Faire with something from Medieval times. Joshua's group made a Jousting Booth, so he and Chris tried it out the night before!

Joshua was so excited to wear his knight costume to school. Here he is with his teacher, Mrs. Scarpinato.

Chris and I got a big laugh out of the rules they had made for their booth.....it appeared to be very well thought out!

And here is the actual Extreme Jousting in action....it was the most popular booth, by the way!