Halloween and pumpkins

With fall upon us we've been busy finishing up soccer seasons and now it's Halloween.  McKinley was the only one who wanted to carve a pumpkin this year and so she did.  She found an idea online and took one of our pumpkins and did the whole thing herself.  

Halloween was another quiet holiday...with only McKinley going trick or treating.  The rest of us had a pretty quiet evening with our home on a dark dead end...but she had a good time going around with friends.  She was a happy blue unicorn! 

Fall Break in Idaho with Grandma

For Fall break McKinley and I were able to fly up and see my mom in Idaho.  She has bought a new house and is remodeling the whole thing so it was fun for us to go and see it.  It was in the middle of being sheet rocked and we got ready for the kitchen to be taken down.  We also were able to ride her horse Carlos and do some yard work.  We had fun cooking and eating and cleaning out a shed as well.

 
We also tore down a really ugly railing from the front walkway...that was fun!!

 We enjoyed visiting and meeting Charlie, the amazing cat my mom got from the shelter.  He's a real riot and finally got used to us after a couple days.  We had fun snuggling with him and playing with the remote mouse toy as well.  I'm so glad we were able to visit.

Be still my heart...what a wonderful surprise!

On Sunday afternoon we were all just relaxing when my phone began to "ring" with a tone I'd never heard before.  I looked down at it and it showed Ethan's mission president Facebook video chatting my phone.  I didn't know whether to answer or not.  Was it a mistake?  What would he be calling for...on Facebook??  So I pushed answer and saw and heard my son playing with the choir at Stake Conference in Brazil!  Who does that?  I was so happy to hear and see him sharing his talents.  My heart could almost burst as I listened to the choppy live feed from this sweet man's phone.   About an hour later we got another "call" and it was a second musical number with the choir and we were able to grab a camera for a last 15 second recording.  What amazing Sabbath day blessings!  We love the Juiz de Fora mission!

Evan's homecoming dance proposal

Here in Utah there is a fun tradition of dance date asking having to be cute and creative.  It sometimes makes things pretty ridiculous but for the most part the kids have a really good time with it.  Evan decided he was going to ask a girl and they are both soccer players, so he wanted to incorporate their likes into the proposal.  So he came up with the ball with his name on it and a poster that reads, " I hope I'm not being too FORWARD, but can I SCORE a date to homecoming?"  Pretty cute!  He left the poster and ball on her doorstep and texted her to check the front porch.  A few days later she answered with a pair of sports socks and a poster that read, "Getting asked to Homecoming by you knocked my SOCKS off!  I would "toe"tally love to go!"

Rocky Mountain Cup on field experience!

I was able to be the fan representative for RSL to walk the Rocky Mountain Cup on to the field before the RSL v. Colorado game.  It was such an amazing experience and I have Dave to thank for it.  He was the one who entered me into the contest to be chosen.  He saw a Tweet that said "tell us why you should be the one to walk the cup on to the field" and he replied with my name and a little bit about how much of a fan I am.  When we talked with the people there they said that his entry was chosen because everyone else entered their own name and he suggested mine, so it was so selfless.  What a sweetheart!  I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to be on the field for the opening ceremonies and down on the field for warm ups and the anthems and all that.  And what made it even better was that RSL beat Colorado 4-1 and won the cup!  It was a fun night!

Pearson family summer reunion 2017

Since Grandma Pearson passed away we no longer have the Pearson Christmas party and have tried to have a summer Pearson reunion instead.  This year the summer kind of got away from us all and we tried to pull a reunion together when we heard that Todd and Robyn would be in town from Oregon.  So we got the word out that we would be having the reunion on a Sunday evening at Mark's house.  It was our family home evening night, so we knew it worked for the Smith family.  Unfortunately not too many others were able to make it.  But there were a few and we had a great evening visiting.  Hopefully we can get a better turn out in the coming years as we make this new tradition of a summer reunion.

Solar Eclipse 2017!!

There was a lot of hype about the solar eclipse that was going to sweep across the United States and have places with total solar eclipse viewing.  It was talked about everyhwhere...and we should have gone to see it where it was a total eclipse (about 4 hours each way), but we did watch it from home.  It was fun to see the way the moon got in between the earth and sun and the shadows of crescent suns.  It was about 92% coverage here in Draper, but really it seemed to just get dim and as if it were cloudy, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky.  

We didn't even have approved glasses to wear, so we thought we could wear the welding helmet, but even that didn't seem to be working.  So we were able to make a contraption with a shoe box that allowed us to see the image in the box of the crescent.  It was interesting!!