Halloween

Halloween in a favorite at our house so although it is long past we can not forget it. It is a holiday that lives on continually in our home. At least once a month I have someone say, "mom for Halloween I want to be ..."

This year we had a couple really fun Halloween parties. We went to Julia's house, a friend from dental school, and carved pumpkins will a bunch of brainiac dental students. Good food, good fun. I think it was the best pumpkin carving party we've ever been to.

The next fun we had was the Halloween party at the YMCA. Very well organise and loads of fun. I don't have any pics of this one, but they has all kinds of crafts, strobe light dancing, games, haunted house, smores and more. We love the Y! Someone pulled the fire alarm about 10 min to eight which was perfect. That way we all got home in time for bed.

The morning of Halloween Karl sat all the kids down and told them we could have a lot of fun, but the house had to be cleaned. He's a bit of a drill sergeant when it comes to cleaning the house. This is the kids sitting listening to his lecture.
They got it all done, so we had a party. We had some friends over and did a quick trick or treat just around the block and came home and had pumpkin pie and cider and candy and games and I don't remember, but it was fun.

Rebecca was a pirate Eldon McKay was a vampire

The girls ended up being siamese mummies

And Zac was the cutest cowboy I have ever seen.

This is my favorite picture of all...Check out Karl's cute rear. Our friend snapped this one. Not even realizing Karl's stance, but we love to laugh at it. Karl and I were pirates as well.

getting caught up

So I lost the cord to my camera and olny have a card reader on the computer that was not working for a little while, so I got a bit behind. Therefore I am going to try and play catch-up. This first post is one fall day after church a couple of the kids and I went to the park and I ended up with some of my favorite pictures form the year, so I have to post them.

These, I love! Zac was so funny this day. Lydea told me to wait to take the picture because she needed to pull her socks up. Zac decided that he needed to pull his up as well.

Then he insisted on posing just like Lydea. Too funny.

Hopefully soon I will get to posting Halloween, that bathroom that is finally finished, Thanksgiving, Lydea's birthday and baptism, and Christmas.

Computer Success!

Our computer woes began over a year ago with this desktop. It began randomly sutting down, but only sometimes producing the archetypical BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. Other times it would just stop working and then refuse to boot unless we let it sit for an hour or so. Strange, because then it would work fine again, sometimes for days.
The beast's healthy intervals got shorter and its sick intervals got longer, so we ran some diagnostics and I determined to replace the hard drive. With that done (I had a lot of help), I loaded a trial version of Windows 7 (I had a lot of help) and declared victory. Next day, Megan calls me at school and lets me know that the machine began acting up again as soon as I left home. Curses! I rechecked the hardware specs for Windows 7. I reloaded. No dice. I loaded Vista again. It didn't finish loading, but the machine finally offered me another clue. BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH & PAGINATION ERROR IN NON-PAGINATED AREA. After a quick google search, I found what I hope is the answer.

Random access memory. Stick by stick replacement to see which one was bad. It's not actually very hard - and it looks like I discovered the bad stick on the first try. I replaced the first stick and reloaded 7. Voila! It's up and running. We'll see though. I'm at school now. The computer's sixth sense will kick in and it'll break. I better check my messages.

If you didn't like this post, you can still be glad. Now Megan has the tools she needs to keep posting.

Planned success posts: bathroom remodeled, basment finished, kitchen remodeled, bathroom 2 remodeled, crown molding installed, bedrooms remodeled (x4).

Boyd's Orchard

Haylee, Eldon, Carson, Zac, Lydea, Elana, Rebecca
We went to Boyd's Orchard this Wednesday for a little field day with the Mendez's. It was fantastic! Perfect weather. We dresses a little too warm. I love orchards-they are better than Disney to me. I have some fun video clips too, but I can't figure out how to get videos on here from the Mac, so maybe I'll put them on later. I hd fun playing with some of the pictures that's why the colors are kind of funny on some.

Rebecca, Gabe, Eldon

Elana, Haylee

Carson, Eldon McKay

Carson, Lydea

Zac

Rebecca

Haylee

Eldon McKay

Lydea

Haylee

Fun at the fire station

We had a great time at the fire station the other day. Tons of kids from church playgroup. The fire fighters were awesome. They pulled out the ladder truck and put the ladder all the way up and all. It was fun. In the picture just below I look really stupid, but I'm telling Rebecca that she shouldn't be scared of the fireman that he is her friend.

Caron was the oldest there because all the other kids are in school. They let him put the whole "get up" as he calls it on. He tried running in it. It was pretty funny.