Stone Soup

Yesterday was soup day at Zak's preschool. Each child invited one adult to come with them. The whole day was based around the story of Stone Soup, and Thanksgiving.

They started out singing their welcome song, and then sang a Thanksgiving song:

Oh, I'm glad I'm not a turkey, a turkey, a turkey,

Oh, I'm glad I'm not a turkey on Thanksgiving Day.

They'll bake you and baste you, and then they will taste you,

Oh, I'm glad I'm not a turkey on Thanksgiving Day.

(Okay, why does this program double space sometimes, and you can't change it to single space?)

Then they did the Pledge of Allegiance.

And counted the days of the month to 24.

Thier Thanksgiving poem said:
A turkey is a funny bird
It's head goes wobble, wobble.
He only knows one single word
Gobble, Gobble, Gobble!

Then they acted out the story of Stone Soup. It was so cute, and they did such a good job.

Then they made turkeys, and the feathers said the things that they were thankful for. And then we had soup to eat and healthy snacks that the kids all brought to share. It was fun to see a little bit of the things that they do in pre-school.

Thanks for inviting me Zak.

Fondant Part 2

Well, Brian just finished turning the fondant, and we split it to make cherry chocolates, and oranges.

We roll the fondant into balls to prepare it for dipping

In a few days, we will dip them. The oranges are my favorite, but there is nothing like oranges dipped in milk chocolate. It is one of my favorite things about Christmas. I can't wait

Making Fondant

Brian is in the kitchen right now making Christmas candies with the kids. He is teaching them some of the science of how it is made, and letting them have a try turning it. You can tell that they have watched him do it many times.

Zak and

Les had to climb up on the counter to get the leverage.

They love to help make the candy, and I am so glad that Brian lets them. He was just telling the kids that he never got to help his dad do it. The first time he got to even touch the Christmas candy while it was being made was when we started doing it ourselves.
We are so grateful that his dad took the time to teach us and pass on this tradition before he passed away.

Turkey Trot

Today our family went to Smithfield to do a Turkey Trot 5k with some friends. All of us but Zak raced, and he told me that he was exhausted from the ride!

Les stuck with me the whole time and finished in about 40 minutes, but he took 3rd place in his age group. He ran almost 2 full miles of the race, and walked with me on the two big hills.

Amber ran the whole way and Brian held back with her. She finished in 29 minutes, and came in seventh in her age division. I though that was pretty good since her age division went up to 14 years old.
I realize now, that I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was. The treadmill doesn't have any hills at all, and these roads were definitely not flat (it wasn't that bad, except 2 good hills, but since I am used to a treadmill, I sure noticed it.) Oh well, I'll do better in the spring.

The kids are amazing racers, and they are getting their daddy's bug early. Good job guys!

Chocolate!!

Last week, I spent Wednesday night teaching the ladies in our ward how to make fondant. We made cherry chocolates, orange dipped chocolates, truffles, almond dipped fondants, unflavored dipped fondant, fondant fudge, and penuche.


I usually don't start this process until after Thanksgiving, but this year we started a few weeks early for this.

Now I want to go to the Chocolate Show on Friday and learn how to do it better, and get a few answers to some questions that I have had over the years. So I am wondering, does anyone want to go with me?? I would have to go early in the day, and be back by the time school gets out. Let me know!

WOW, What a Night!

What a night we had last night!! The kids knew that we had some kind of plan, but they didn't know what. We pretended that we weren't sure what we were doing either. At about 4:45, we suggested that we take the new train into Salt Lake. We hadn't done that yet, and the kids keep asking when we will. When we got there, we suggested that before we decide what to do, lets go see if there are any Disney characters out in front of the Energy Solutions Arena to meet from the Disney on Ice 100 Years of Magic. When we got there, of course there were no characters out front so we decided to go look in the windows to see if we could see any. When we got up to the door, the lady said come on in!!! the kids thought that we were getting in without tickets! They were so excited that they didn't realize that Brian was showing the tickets to the other man at the door. It turned out perfect, and the lady didn't even know she was helping out our plan. It was SO fun.

On the train!

Jesse from Toy story.

It's a small world.

Mulan.

Lion King

The stars of the show, of course, Mickey and Minnie

Beauty and the Beast

The Mickey Mouse Club band and Jimminy Cricket

The fairy from Peter Pan

All of the princesses with their princes.

I don't think that the boys blinked the whole show. They were mesmerized. It really was a great show, and I think the kids were perfect ages to go. They really enjoyed every part of it, and it had so much in for the boys, (unlike Princesses on Ice) that Les enjoyed it all too. It really was a good show. And a fun night to treat the kids to with such a fun surprise!

Reflections

This year Amber and Les entered the PTA Reflections contest at school. Amber entered 3 different categories, and Les entered 2.

The awards were given last night, and Les came away with a first and a second place. The theme this year was WOW!, which really made it easy to fit almost anything into a category somehow.

This is the robot that Les made of recycled things from around the house. It was quite and adventure to get to this final product, but WOW is all I can think of to say about it. With his robot, he took first place in 3-Dimensional Art!

This is the photo of a deer he took a few weeks ago while we were on a drive up near Snowbasin, and we pulled over to watch them. When we stopped to see them, he said wow, so I suggested that he take some pictures of them for Reflections. I guess it was a good idea because he won 2nd place in photography with it!
Amber wrote a great little poem (called a cinquain) about the seasons for the literature competition. She didn't win anything, but she did a great job on all of them!

This is a picture that she took of a waterfall that we hiked to in the summer. It was beautiful, and she took a really good picture of it.

Last but not least, she created this dog out of Legos for 3-dimensional art. It was really cute, and very creative.This is just another angle of the dog that shows it a little better!

Good job guys, you are very creative!

Pumpkin Carving

All three kids carved their own pumpkins this year. Amber did hers all by herself, and Zak and Les needed a little help, but for the most part they did it all by themselves. they turned out really good.

Amber just did hand prints, but it turned out pretty cool! Les did a skull, but he said that he put a pirate hat on it.

And Zak just wanted to do a pumpkin that was spooky! The kids had lots of fun and I was glad I could take pictures without getting slimy!

Duct Tape Guy...to the rescue!

Let me preface this post by saying that I have been learning how to use the manual settings on my camera. For these pictures, I was using an automatic setting, but I must have changed something that I need to change back, and so a lot of these pictures are blurry, but you can still get an idea of how goofy my husband is!

As promised, here are the pictures of Brian and Bill cruising around town on their scooters as super heroes. It was SSOOOOO funny. I think that several of the people in other cars got whiplash from the double takes. As I followed behind them, I could hear people laughing from other cars. I wish I had a digital camcorder to show you all how funny it really was....use your imagination!

Brian decided to be Duct Tape guy because it matches his scooter!

This is Brian's buddy Bill. Brian got this idea from because Bill did this last year. His scooter is blue, so he matches his scooter too!
Off they go to save the day! They got stopped at the stop light. You should have seen the stares, honks, waves, and laughs...
maybe this will give you and idea.

This guy was actually yelling to them,
This was the car right next to me, they were talking to me in between stares, and laughing very hard.
This person wasn't even watching where they were going...
And this guy just looked at them like this the entire time they were at the light.

Back to Bill's house. No more laughs for now I guess, It really was funny and these two really are crazy, but they had a lot of fun. Thanks Bill for humoring and entertaining Brian for the afternoon!

Trick-or-Treat

This year our costumes were pretty simple. We have been going so many directions that I didn't have time to make anything fancy. Les is a Lego....

Amber is a pioneer, I had fun making the bonnet from a pattern that I found online....

And Zak is Bob the builder!

I am was having trouble with my camera taking pictures that weren't blurry, so some of these aren't the best pictures, sorry about that! The kids got so much candy that we are going to have to save some of the chocolate in the freezer for another time.