October Beginneth

And here we are. Practically caught up. You want to know what we did the first couple weeks of October? Here you go.
The beginning of October, we went to a wedding reception. Congratulations. We've been friends with this family for years. They are such great people. The oldest son in the family got married and their wedding reception had a carnival theme. Cotton candy and popcorn and a balloon artist- you know who that is. Jeremy did balloons at the oldest daughter's wedding several years ago, too. My, how time flies. 

It was such a nice evening. I was thinking I'd take the kids and only stay for a little while since they had school the next day. We ended up staying pretty late. Oops. We had a great time, though. I really enjoyed seeing people I hadn't seen in while.

Jeremy finally made a certain balloon sculpture for the youngest daughter of this family. He meant to make it for her years and years ago and finally was able to.

Jeremy and Lucky did a special project and carved an apple for a shrunken apple head. Lucky designed it. Jeremy used the knife. Lucky painted it with lemon juice and stuck in the clove eyes. Now it's been sitting for a while and it did spend some time in the oven to get some of the moisture out.

Nichole and Jr. had student led conferences at the junior high. Some of the teachers had activities set out for the students to show their parents. In Jr.'s science class, he was able to demonstrate Newton's laws of physics and drop a screw into a narrow necked bottle by placing it on the top of a hoop and whipping the hoop out of the way. Pretty cool and Jr. was good at it.

October 4 was National Taco Day. We kept with tradition and had tacos that day. Not a very hard tradition.

For General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we had friends visit us again and of course we had Conference Nachos.

Nichole got creative... again. She decorated her cup with a dragon... again. She likes to do things with her hands to pay attention to talks and things so she crocheted a little person while listening to Conference.

I don't think I took a picture of the brownies but Nichole and I kept up with tradition and made brownies to eat while we watched the Women's session of Conference.
Our younger boys also listened to some of the talks and definitely heard Elder Bednar's talk about the cheetahs using distraction, deception, and diversion in the grass as they hunted topis, a type of antelope.
Our children weren't the only ones who paid attention to that talk. For Family Home Evening we decided to go hiking at Big Springs to look at the Fall colors.

When we got to a big field, the boys wanted to be cheetahs and take turns showing themselves and crouching and creeping along in the grass. There were other families at that field and we could hear some of the comments coming from other kids, apparently deciding to be cheetahs themselves. "Look at all the cantaloupe." "It's a whole field full of cantaloupe." We got a kick out of that.

That was October 7, which was also the 170th anniversary of Edgar Allen Poe's death. We didn't see any ravens at Big Springs but the older kids were quick to point out that we were surrounded by death and decay since we were up there when leaves were falling.

Jeremy and Lucky took some time to go to Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point. Lucky got to ride a horse and they both went on a tractor ride.

Nichole, Jr., and I went to BYU to watch a faculty recital- Deseret String Quartet. Since Nichole plays violin and Jr. plays cello, it was nice to take them to a performance where they could both hear and see those instruments played by just one or two people each.

The elementary school was doing a "Grand Lunch" where anyone grand in a student's life was invited to come have lunch with them so Jeremy, Lucky, and I had lunch with Jr. Jr. I remembered to get pictures of Jr. Jr. during lunch this time. And being the overemotional person I am lately, I almost cried during the lunch and taking Lucky to his class since we were already at the school. I did cry all the way home. "I just love my family so much."

Nichole and Jr. had their first orchestra concert of the year. Spooky Halloween themed music. They both did well.

And Lucky wanted to be in the picture.

Lucky and Jr. had their parent-teacher conferences. I don't have pictures but they are both doing well at school like their siblings.

And now we are caught up. Wow. We did a lot in October and it hasn't even been two weeks yet.

Wonder-ful Celebrating

After our crazy Summer with the 7 Wonders of the World Balloon Art Exhibit at Thanksgiving Point's Museum of Ancient Life (you have no idea how many times I said that while making YouTube videos this Summer), and after things calmed down a bit, we got together with the other balloon artists and had a celebration to thank everyone for their hard work.

And of course we couldn't do this sort of celebration without themed food.  So I would like to share with you the foods we had based on the ancient wonders of the world and the modern wonders of the world.

 Hanging Garden Salad with Lite House Dressing

(the salad even had flowers on it)

Golden Apples (because of the Greek myth where Atalanta chooses to follow Artemis but later has to get married because during a footrace she slows down to pick up golden apples her suitor throws in front of her)- for the Temple of Artemis

Zeus Juice (we forgot to get a picture of the pitcher of orange juice we made up for the party- sorry)

Mousse-aleum Cake (okay, so it was chocolate pudding cake, but close enough- we did not feel up to making chocolate mousse with all the other things we were doing)

Colossus of Rhodes Rolls

 Great Pickle Pyramid

 Chichen Itza Pizza (you can even see the shape of the step pyramid on the left pizza)

 Petra Floats

 Colosseum of Croutons

 Egg Roll of China

 Taj Mahal Cheeseball

We wanted to be respectful of the statue of Christ the Redeemer, so we didn't have themed food for that Wonder, but we made sure to say a prayer before we ate.

It was so nice to celebrate with our friends in a relaxed atmosphere where nobody had to be pumping up and twisting balloons.  We just got to eat and chat and play a little Phase 10 toward the end of the evening.

Our family also had it's own little celebration at a different time.  The kids were real troopers this Summer with me dragging them to Thanksgiving Point every week, sometimes multiple times a week.  They were awesome.  So we took them out to the Olive Garden to say Thank you.  Great kids.
It was fun.

Oh, no.  Jr. Jr. says drinking Sprite turns him into a Daddy-eating piranha. 

During the process of preparing this blog post, I realized that with the ancient wonders of the world I blogged about in July, I forgot to put a picture of the balloon Lighthouse of Alexandria.  It should have been between the Colossus of Rhodes and the Great Pyramid of Giza.  Oh, silly me.  So here is that picture of the Lighthouse of Alexandria for your balloon viewing enjoyment.