Halloweeeen

Our neighbor's yard decorations.

This is our electrocuted jack-o-lantern.

Halloween is always a big deal in Laie, especially on our street where hundreds of kids of all ages go trick-or-treating. I didn't have a costume, so I decided to use my old Hogwarts robe from a few years ago, and added some accessories to be Luna Lovegood. I even made my own spectraspecs glasses using a template I found on the internet. They looked just like the ones in the movie! I think it turned out to be a pretty awesome costume- someone even asked to take a picture with me :)

Hiking Club!

We finally had our first hike for the school Hiking Club which me and Alayna put together. It was a lot of fun, we went to Turtle Creek. A couple of dogs even hiked with us all the way, and one of them almost got run over on the highway because he was chasing after us when we were driving home. We had to pull over and take him back to his house. I guess he jost got really attached in the two hours we spent together.

Cross Country Meet

Here I am at the end of the race. I looked and felt like I was going to pass out, but luckily I didn't. I discovered that jogging three miles is not the same as running your hardest for three miles. Don't click on this picture to make it bigger, cause I look horrible :p

This is the start of the race. We got spread out pretty quickly.

Coach, giving us some pointers before the race. He was nervous, because it was his first meet as a coach, and we were nervous because it was our first meet period.

More Cumorah

It was unusually cool this summer in the Rochester area. We didn't usually mind that, though. Can you imagine how hot it would have been in our heavy costumes if it was hot and humid? We did have one night when the pageant had to end mid-way due to heavy lightning.

A few of our primary children. Aren't they adorable? They usually were, but it was also hard work!

Rehearsing one of the batle scenes. None of us were in this scene, which is why we were able to take this picture. The battle scenes were the "cool" ones to be in.

The destruction scene. Gives you an idea of the scope of the staging.

Hill Cumorah

Well, here we are several months later, finally getting around to updating our blog. We have way too many photos to include here, but here is something to whet your appetite. We really had a fantastic experience and I couldn't possibly explain all the spiritual experiences we had. We had moments of shear exhaustion, but loved meeting the interesting people, reliving the scenes from the Book of Mormon, giving, serving, and having lots and lots of devotionals.

Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick

This is the trebuchet at Warwick Castle. Pretty major slingshot!

This is a sample of what the wax figures inside the castle were like.

An outside view of the castle. We had Noah with us, so poor grandpa was the workhorse, carrying him on his back in the pack all day. It was a very entertaining castle for all of us.

We did the "ten-minute" tour of Stratford. Basically we just walked around and saw things like the outside of the Shakespeare museum, etc. It's a picturesque town on a nice river with cool looking buildings. That's about all I can tell you.

We prefer the tan and brown to the fakey black and white that you see in the above picture.

Day Two in the Cotswolds

The Cotswolds is an agricultural area that used to be the "wool" district. Now it is a place people love to visit because the villages are well preserved and the farms are so picturesque. We went on two long Cotswold walks, the last of which was about 7 miles and we went to 3 villages.

This is the lovely, quant village of Snowshill.

We stayed overnight on the spur of the moment in this B and B. This is the back yard. We just weren't quite ready to leave the area after our day at the farm and the playground.

We were walking through a field when we had this scary cow encounter. We had this huge herd of cows running toward us and we didn't quite know what to do. Luckily, we discovered that cows are mostly just curious, and not aggressive!

One of many thatched houses in the Cotswolds.

Cotswold Farm

We planned to stay in the Cotswolds for one day, but we found this fabulous farm and spent a lot of time just at the farm. Noah just loved it! This is a picture of a really hairy cow. This farm has a lot of rare breeds of animals. They also had a lot of fun things for kids, like the scooters below.

They also had great petting areas where the kids could actually get right in with the bunnies, piglets, etc. He had a great time and we actually enjoyed it as well.

England

This is one of the many pubs in Birmingham.

This is a boat in a locke in Birmingham. The boats are super narrow in order to fit in the lockes.
Robyn took us to a large pond that is close to her house. There were tons of swans. Here is a mommy with her two babies on her back.

After about 20 hours of traveling, we finally arrived! Even though we were majorly jet lagged, we stopped of at Oxford. This is part of the Oxford campus.

Flood, Faith and Favors

I know this is from, like, 5 months ago, but here it is. We kind of forgot about it, and Dad finally remembered to email it to himself from his work computer so we could post it. This is a picture of President Eyring when he came to see the damage from the flood in December. It was a really cool experience to have President Eyring and all his body guards, or whatever they were, come to our house and talk to us. We could feel the spirit, and he even said something like, "You have a very sweet spirit in your home. I'm glad I had the opportunity to meet you." Mom said to him (and the others who visited) "Sure come on in. At least we have an excuse for our house being messy!" It almost made the flood worth it (at least for that day).

Oh what a busy day!

Today was a crazy day; in the morning I played in the OIA individual tennis tournament, and then I rushed over to my Vocal Motion Heritage Festival competition. I was supposed to start my match at 8 am, but the school of the girl I was playing against was late, so they put other people on the courts first! So I didn't start playing until around 8:50 or something. Then my match took around 2 hours which is a lot longer than usual, partly because my opponent took so long in between serves and switches, and she bounced the ball like, 20 times before every serve; oh yeah, we had a lot of long rallies, and the score was pretty close too. But I lost. Anyway, by then it was like, 11:00, so I just had time to take a shower before rushing off to Windward Community College for our vocal motion competition. We did okay, but it wasn't our best, and something was wrong with the CD. Halfway through one of our songs it skipped to the next song, and we had to stand there and smile for a few minutes while they figured it out. But we still got Gold despite all of that :) It was a pretty good day, but I'm just glad this crazy week is over!

We had a fabulous ski trip north of Eden Utah. It was warm, sunny, and beautiful. To make things even better, we ran into a family zip lining. They were so generous and let us zip line with us. They had all of the necessary equipment and knowledge. We had to climb the tree and onto a high 3x2 platform to hook onto the zipline and jump. (It wasn't until I was half-way up the tree that I remembered I was afraid of heights-Heather). We enjoyed visiting with this nice family. On our way back, we enjoyed some glorious scenery. What a nice way to spend time together! Note that the top picture looks black and white, but it was naturally colored and stunning that way.

Here are a few pix from my trip to England. It was a cold two weeks, but wonderful to see Robyn, Paul and Noah. And I made it just in time to welcome little Eli to the family.