Thankful for Family!

This Thanksgiving was a wonderful celebration of family. It was a week long celebration with fun, food, and family! We were blessed to be able to spend time with both sides of our extended family this year. A few days before Thanksgiving we headed up to Park City to be with Grandma Libby, Grandpa Irv, and Vicky and Jim and the girls. We had such a good time hanging out and visiting...we didn't take pictures!! We visited the new Utah Museum of Natural History (fabulous!!) and celebrated the twins birthday with ice cream cake!

On Thanksgiving it was the Smith family feast! We had 50+ people over for a big Thanksgiving dinner and desserts. It was a beautiful warm day and the kids played outside after we ate. We all visited and chatted and ate, and ate, and ate. There was a little football and several watched part of the James Bond marathon! All in all it was a huge success and very enjoyable!






We were also able to celebrate Trenton and Maxwell's birthday which actually fell on Thanksgiving day. So Happy Birthday cake to end the evening!

Sticky Strength

Today is the science fair at Evan's school and we finished up his project on Sunday. He tested three different tapes...packing tape, duct tape, and gorilla tape...to see which tape was the strongest. It was a great experiment and he determined that the gorilla tape was the strongest. I'm not a big fan of science fair projects, but this one was an easy and fun project that came together well.

Halloween Night

Before everyone headed out for some Trick-or-Treating I was able to snap a picture of my beach bum, referee, $100 bill and BYU cheerleader! Living in a subdivision was good pickins for our candy haul...and the kids are still consuming it!

The weather was perfect and trick-or-treating was really fun in a neighborhood of friends. The older kids went off with friends, but McKinley and Evan stayed with us for over 2 hours of door to door begging for treats! There was even a BBQ, a fire pit, and a haunted driveway thrown in! All is all it was a great Halloween night!

Carving Pumpkins w/Larry

We were staying with my sister and her FIL came over to carve pumpkins with all the kids. Grandpa Larry was able to carve 3 or 4 pumpkins and supervise the carving of several others. The creations were great and unique...the kids drew their own designs. But most importantly, everyone had a blast! Thanks Larry!

Our last Pinewood Derby

Tonight was the Pinewood Derby for our Cub Scout Troop. There were 12 racers and it was quite a night. To make it fair there had to be 132 races. Everybody raced everybody else twice (each side of the track). Evan's car was green and gold and shaped like an arrow. He designed it, cut it, sanded it, and painted it himself...with very little guidance! His car came in 5th overall and he had a great time. There were no tears from anyone involved...and that is a successful derby!

Family Halloween Party

This year Nana asked me to help with the Halloween party for all the grandkids. I always like to plan parties... and this was no exception. It was actually pretty easy since I just did a bunch of things that we did at a Halloween party in Texas last year!

We gathered early to take advantage of the sunlight and the warmth and started off with a chili and hotdog meal! After eating we were ready to play: We had donuts on a string:

Bobbing for apples:
Facepainting:

Playing in the leaves:
And a candy walk, pumpkin bowling, and sack races! It was a lot of fun and the whole family enjoyed spending the evening together!

Blue Knight State Cup Finalists!

This past 2 weeks our Blue Knights 01 team has been competing in the State Cup soccer tournament. It was a long and very hard road to the top! We had a fabulous season, coming in 2nd in the league and followed it up with this tournament. We had to face the #1 team twice in this tournament and beat them in the semi-finals to advance to the finals! Sadly, we lost in the final game, but our boys played so hard! We are so proud of their 2nd place finish in the state! Way to go Blue Knights!