Halloween 2014

 HERE ARE SOME PICS OF OUR LEGENDARY HALLOWEEN THIS YEAR!

Laura and Chaz-bot at a jubilee Witch night festival celebration extravaganza event

Here's Aiden getting buried in corn by a bunch of his friends at Hee-Haws farms

The girls wanted in on the fun too so I couldn't resist the temptation to get in and help

Here's Chaz going down the slide

From the right angle and if I tell you what this is you can see that it's Laura taking Ruby down the slide

Carving the pumpkins we got at Hee-Haws

Ruby didn't like the idea of eating the pumpkin guts

The kids had to take a break to do some twerking

Ruby and Laura posing while Aiden focuses on his design

The final products, they did a fantastic job, well, the girls may have received a little help but they at least picked out the design

So this year Aiden and I decided to go as The Wet Bandits from Home Alone, we decided last Christmas so we've had plenty of time to procrastinate getting ready. Aiden was to be Harry and I would be Marv

Getting ready for our Halloween costumes, we had to shave Aiden's head the night before for the school Halloween parade, we could have used a bald cap but that would have been too fake!

Aiden apparently has no shame whatsoever because in spite of our council he didn't want his entire head shaved so we just did the top, he even went to school and church like this.

I think our costumes turned out awesome, I was surprised however at how many people actually didn't know who we were but I'd like to think that those who did were slightly amused. 

Laura was afraid that if we used real tar on my feet I would walk in the house and make a mess so she got black paint to use instead

Crowbars up!

Laura and Charly went as matching pink Witches they were so cute!

It took like 10 tries to get this pic because Ruby was super distracted

You can hardly tell but Ruby was crazy excited!

The whole bunch of us

Harry! Don't move!!

Grammy and Poppy stopped in to see the kids too

After the street Trunk or Treat Aiden and Chaz talked me into taking them door to door Trick or Treating. Here they are taking a through inventory, categorizing and eliminating any undesirable treats. (which typically involved them trying to pawn the nasty candies off on their dad)

Here's Ruby the next day getting ready to have some candy for breakfast

Two wrongs don't make a right!

In this very special and important blog post I would like to discuss something near and dear to my heart. It involves something that I am very passionate about and feel very strongly about

You have probably heard the phrase "Two wrongs don't make a right" and up until this moment you have probably not fully understood this phrase, but that is what I want to talk about. "Two wrongs don't make a right" means that if you have one thing that is "wrong" or "bad" you cannot combine it with another thing that is also "wrong" or "bad" and have it turn out good. So this brings me to the specific item that I would like to present....

Oatmeal raisin cookies!!

Have you ever grabbed a delicious looking chocolate chip cookie and took a bite of it only to realize that it's an oatmeal raisin cookie, and then got in trouble for spitting it out all over your third cousins new Persian rug that she just purchased from Ikea?

 First of all you have the first and primary bad tasting ingredient, Oatmeal, I know in your head you're saying "oatmeal is good, what are you talking about". But is oatmeal really good? Think about what must be done to oatmeal to make it suitable for consumption. In order for oatmeal to taste good you must first add a great amount of sugar, and/or fruit and any other number of ingredients to help improve its natural taste. If you don't believe me just eat some oatmeal made with just water and no sugar, you'll quickly change your mind.

Now that we've established the first "wrong" we can move on to the second "wrong"....Raisins! I don't need to go in to a lot of explaining as to why raisins don't taste good, they just don't, I mean what do you expect from a dried up grape. If you have a bowl of grapes that goes old you just throw them away, but if a company puts them in a box and sells them they must be good.

So you've got oatmeal, which by itself doesn't taste good, and you've got raisins which also don't taste good so why on earth would the two of these items taste good when combined? It's unfathomable!

So, in conclusion....oatmeal raisin cookies suck!

Bear Lake 2013

Here are some pics, and possibly offensive comments regarding our awesome Bear Lake trip

Here's Ruby helping get ready to go

 As soon as we arrived we all headed to the Pickleville Playhouse in Garden city

This is the play we saw

It was quite warm inside, fortunately Laura had an extra diaper she was able to use as a fan

The play was quite hilarious, all of the actors also worked in the theater and shave ice shack next door. It was funny to see the actors selling concessions then run on stage and perform in the play.

Sar-Bear and Max posing with the Hero of the story Sheriff Avery, which she later admitted to only liking him because his name was "Avery"

Here's Charly with two of the Bad Guys!

Of course the kids had to have a pic with the star of the show Juanito Bandito!

Here's Poppy doing his first ever PhotoBomb!

This guy was Keytons favorite, when I asked him why he said it was because they look so much alike

 

So this year I wasn't going to do crepes or anything fancy for breakfast but due to overwhelming pressure and demands I decided to continue the tradition

As always my Legendary Crepes held true to being the best crepes anyone has ever tasted (also the only crepes anyone has ever tasted)

Attacking Auntie Em at the pool

Shamri is one of the few people who Ruby will stay with for long periods of time

Once again Grammy decided she wanted to take some more promotional photos to try to get advertising with another company, this time it was with lunch meats.

Well yet again Grammy's photo made it on a product, but she was extremely disappointed when she found out her photo only made it on to a package of Oscar Mayer Bologna, she hates bologna! I told her  "your an amateur model you've got to start somewhere, you can't just expect the first pic you send in to land on an add for roast beef you have to work your way up!"

Later that day Laura and I went on an ATV ride with Emily and Korey

We found this awesome little canyon called Hodges Canyon

The trail was sweet! kind of narrow and shady from the tall trees

Squeezing through a tight spot made even tighter by the other riders parked in the middle of the trail

There's nothing like a raspberry shake to end an awesome ride!

Shamri showing us how all the boys chew their Copenhagen at the county fair

"This is what they do right before the spit it into their chew cup"

Korey was finally able to get Ruby to calm down enough to let him hold her, I'm pretty sure he tricked her and at that point she was unaware of who was holding her

THE BEACH

Ruby outrunning Poppy as he attempts to spray her with sunscreen

Here I am making an obvious attempt to live up to my shirt's logo

 Here is Aiden getting chased down by Poppy after squirting him, we had never seen Poppy run so fast before

Poppy somehow caught up with Aiden and as a punishment held his head under water for a full 5 minutes

 

Keyton didn't learn from Aiden's mistake and Poppy had to teach him a lesson too, but rather than holding his head under water poppy held his head under sand for 5 minutes

In the back of Corey's truck, heading to jump on the water trampoline

Max having a meltdown because he had to wear a pink life vest!

Once we got to the water we realized that the trampoline was a long ways out, the kids just swam off leaving me as the only adult to make sure they got out safely. Fortunately we had life vests

Aiden getting ready to do a roundhouse kick, the trampoline wasn't as bouncy as you'd think, the water absorbs a lot of your bounce, having 12 people on it at once doesn't help either

We all took turns jumping off into the water

Here's Sarah doing a sweet trick, she's making it look like she's sitting in a chair, well I guess the pic doesn't do it justice, you have to see it in person it's quite intense!

A bunch of the kids jumped in together, Keyton chickened out at the last second

Aiden even tried a front flip

Laura and Emily finally drifted out at the very end only to turn right around and swim back to shore because our time ran out

So when we went to rent the boat Poppy agreed to watch Ruby, notice the sand mixed with Cheetos in her hand! 

When I got back Poppy had crashed and Ruby was no where in sight, when I asked Nick and Cynthia where on earth Ruby was Cynthia let me know that the boys were watching her..... somewhere, which was obviously a great comfort because ten year old boys don't get distracted at all around cousins and water

Fortunately Ruby was hanging around where the boys were, I can't say that she was being watched at all but I'm just glad she stayed around the family!

When Korey came back with the boat he took the boys out on the tube but the water started getting really rough and we ended up returning the boat after only two hours

 

The outhouses were way too far away, but that really didn't matter to Keyton. I'm just glad there was a patch of grass there or he may have gone on the beach, he had to go so bad that he didn't have time to remove his life jacket

SLIDERS

Shamri insisted that we buy the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles buns that are shaped like a turtle shell....

 her favorite Ninja Turtle is Donatello....

 but her favorite characters on the show are Bebop and Rocksteady

Here's Poppy teaching Sham how to grill burgers like a Gangsta!

The Slider Bar, we made a TON of sliders with pretty much every kind of topping available. I also made my special burgers that I thought were dang good, then Emily told me how they are so good that she likes to just eat them without the meat, toppings only.

 After dinner Ashlynda was getting fussy so I decided to help out

 I gently rocked her in my arms

 I sang her a lullaby

I softly laid her down

I swaddled her in her blankie

And finally I, ever so tenderly, carried her off to bed

Whooo! you know It's a good Pepsi when it burns your throat going down!

Auntie Em snuggling Rublet

Aider McButkiss showing off his burned and swollen face

Keyton got a little burned on his face, but it was his rear end that got it bad from the emergency trip to the bushes

The view from our deck just before the sun went down

At Merlins, some hater moved my dollar but at least it's still there

Ruby had to touch the dollars

Poppy looking awesome in his new shorts

Chaz, enjoying the big wood chair

Every time I tried to take a pic of Laura she would close her eyes, so here she is doing everything in her power to not close her eyes

Me and my Chazbot enjoying our raspberry cheesecake shakes

The bathroom lines were too long and there wasn't a large grassy knoll anywhere near so Sham gave in to the pressure...literally

The Spiritual Healer

As I have mentioned in the past, Sarah is an extremely spiritual person and is not afraid to prove it. This time she claimed to be able to heal Shamri's bum knee by performing a spiritual ritual... this is her story.

When we arrived at the beach that morning Sarah insisted that Shamri apply a special sunscreen in a very specific manner, we all thought it was a joke but she said that it was in preparation for a ritual later that night

Before beginning the ritual, Sarah insisted that everything be perfect and in harmony with all that is spiritual. Here she is making minor adjustments to Sham's hair so as to not offend the healing spirits

To begin, Sarah and Sham maintained constant, intense (and somewhat awkward) eye contact while Sham repeated a special prayer that Sarah recited. Sarah kept getting mad at Sham for looking away and would have to start over

Next, Sarah pulled out an old book which contained even more prayers but in a strange and unknown language which she recited in a very loud and extreme voice

As the final step in the ritual, while reciting the prayer Sarah put her hands on Shams knee and sealed in the healing powers using special spiritual stones

 We were unable to see the effects in person but when I picked up my developed 32mm photos from the one hour photo this is what it looked like

Ella is also following in her mom's footsteps by using the spirits to perform unbelievable illusions, this photo was taken on the deck of the cabin

Getting ready for some serious gaming!

Emily kept telling us that she could feel the ghost of a little girl looking in the window between Sarah and Shamri, to my knowledge this was not one of the healing spirits summoned earlier that night by Sarah

Letters to Cole

Grammy decided that because Cole wasn't with us we should all write him a letter describing our Bear Lake trip and nothing else

Here is Poppy's letter to Cole, he originally refused to write a letter so in order to convince him Carol had to buy dinosaur stationary to make it more fun

Upon closer examination of Poppy's letter if you read what is written his true intentions are discovered. It also looks like he just made a bunch of squiggly lines after that first sentence in order to make Grammy think he wrote a real letter

Everyone got in on the letter action, look at that pile of letters! I'm sure Cole will be thrilled to spend his entire P-day reading letters

Of course I had to give all the kids a ride in my RZR

Even Grammy got in on a ride, I drove slower than normal so she wouldn't get scared but toward the end of the ride she said I was going too fast and she didn't feel comfortable

We weren't supposed to, but we used the garage to park our ATV's

I'm not sure why Aiden was running around in his underwear

We had planned on going to church that day but it was crazy hectic and the power went off so we didn't end up going but rather had a little gathering of our own

The kids performed a lovely hymn

The power just didn't want to go back on so Emily and Korey ended up having to cook that nights  dinner in another cabin nearby

Because of the power outage we couldn't bake our pizzas so we used the barbeque, which worked very well until the propane ran out!

Playing some pool, or at least playing with the pool sticks

The girls doing their best to dunk uncle Korey

Fredericos underwater photography

As our tradition whenever we go to the pool we must take plenty of underwater photos, this time we tried doing specific poses to give it more of a professional look, here they are....

Old west Gun fight at high noon (Shamri is the villain in this one)

Angry mob!

Laughing hysterically at a funny movie

Suffering from allergies...achoo!

Serious

Goofy

Um..I'm not sure there is a single word to describe this one!

Fighting

Street fighter 2 turbo champion edition

Twoo wuv

Confusion

A yewow gwape

Ashlyn having another melt down

From the content look on my face it is obvious that one of my favorite things to do in the world is EATING!!

The delicious Sunday dinner painstakingly made by Emily!

After dinner we played some volleyball

Grammy even played for a minute, until Ruby got fussy and she took her inside for us

The only bad part about the game was the thistles on the grass, and if someone hit the ball out of bounds and it went down the hill

Poppy was really getting into the game, Sham and Korey had to help him up after he fell down

Here's a shot of Keyton getting mad and throwing the ball at the ground

He then stormed off in anger

Korey made him come back and you can tell that he wasn't happy

After the intense volleyball game Sham and I took the rzr into town to get shakes for everyone but the drive in was closed, so we went to the gas station to get ice cream, we both got excited when we saw the ice cream freezer which only created more disappointment when we saw that it was full of frozen pizza!

Worlds worst ice cream scooper. Why on earth would a bank give out an ice cream scooper?

This may look like their playing a game but Laura and Lamar are actually getting ready for an extreme high five because they kept choosing the matching character over and over in the game

The Bear Kills the woman

The woman kills the man

The man kills the bear

Goat Carts

On our way home we stopped at the go cart track

Charly got to ride with me, she must have known that I am the best driver and that we would win, and we did!

Keyton spun out

Shamri spun out

Aiden spun out

Keyton spun out...again for the 4th time

Keyton started to cry because he knew our vacation was over!

SIDE NOTE

To all those who may be getting tired of going to Bear Lake every year. Please consider that this vacation is something very important to Grammy and Poppy, and although it may be the same location each year we all have a blast. Think of all the things Grammy and Poppy do for us like watch our kids all the time and help out with anything and everything we could possibly need. After receiving so much charity and good will from them let's show them our appreciation by doing something they want to do for once (without complaint), and make it a priority to get work off to be there. How many work days has Grammy and Poppy missed to help us or do what we want them to do?