Pre-Christmas

 The great Christmas tree hunt of 2013.  We actually decided on one of the first trees we saw, and it was close to the car.  Unheard of for our family.

 The kids entertaining Leo while Brandon cut the tree down.  Poor dog ended up all tangled up around a tiny tree.  

 Finished product.  I love having our tree up.

 We did gingerbread men instead of a gingerbread house this year and the kids loved it.

 We take our work very seriously.

We managed to use up the rest of the Halloween candy and ended up with 4 cute gingerbread people (I think Grace made a girl).  

IPhone Pics

These may not be the greatest quality, but here's a few pics from my phone.  

Our little BYU fairy.

 Evan at Scout Camp.  They do an egg drop the last day, and he decided to use a fishing net filled with toilet paper as his catcher.

He was very excited when it worked.

If you caught it unbroken you got a golden egg handkerchief slide (if it broke you got a broken egg slide).  

 Grace and I have done a lot of preschool projects.  This was part of G week.

Finished product - and her fingerprint flowers on the side.

L week involved lots of footprints

 C is for cloud

and candy corn.  There have been many more crafts, but these are the ones she's demanded photos of.

 Hamster races for family night one week.  What else do you do when you have four hamsters?

 Grace's dental appointment, complete with x-rays and foam flouride this time.  They were very impressed with her.

 Helping at the kindergarten pumpkin patch (can you tell Grace and I spend a lot of time together).

 Grace's first ever swimming lessons.  She spent the majority of the time underwater, but would bob up for a brief second to give us a thumbs up.

 Evan carved this polar bear out of soap for one of his Cub Scout things.  He managed to earn his Bear in a month.  Now we just get to work on extras until next September.

Modeling a new-to-her swimsuit and dog purse.  We get some great hand-me-downs and she loves it!

Halloween

This year Brandon did all of the carving, and I played with the camera.  Not a bad gig.  I did some crafts with the kids while he carved too - perhaps I will get some pictures of those too.

 Love the intense face.  We take our carving seriously around here.

 Evan took forever to decide on a design.  Apparently we have done too well with the carvings the past few years, and he thinks we can do just about anything.  Luckily we talked him down into this easier design.

 Brandon was away for work on Halloween, so I tried to get plenty of pictures of our trick-or-treaters.  Two power rangers (I had no idea these were popular again) and Rapunzel.

 Love how he chose to pose.  Such a funny kid.

 Grace loved her hair

 Just like her real hair, always in her eyes.

 The kids all came home with lots of candy following our two hours wandering the neighborhood.  They are slowly consuming it all, but its not gone yet.

The day after Halloween I bought a matching family set of aprons.  So funny.  We may need to do more family cooking now.

Fall Photo Shoot

We love the vibrant colors we are seeing this fall to we ran out to get some shots of the kids.  Our boys have gotten better at giving a more natural smile.  Or maybe we have gotten better at directing them to do it.

 Grace somehow has a knack for striking a pose.  Maybe she is just a big ham.

 This one she may be trying a bit too hard.

Tromping through the pumpkin patch

We have a tradition of going to a pumpkin patch to give the kids the experience.  But some years we go through the pumpkin patch and then head to Walmart for cheaper dryer pumpkins from Eastern WA.  This year, we managed to stay at the farm as Kyle and Grace sought pumpkins of a smaller variety.

We love our DSLR.  Still a lot to learn, but even for point and shoot, the quality is excellent.

 Pretty sure every pumpkin patch we have been to has a big tractor to sit on.