H O T Popcorn Ouch!!

Joel volunteered to make caramel popcorn balls for the ward Linger Longer last week. Caramel Popcorn is one of Joel's favorite things - and it's been years since I made it. He was so excited to be making popcorn. He had the boys helping him (in the kitchen I had just made spotless - of course!!!).

I had cub scout meeting to attend. So I left the 'boys' in the kitchen with their pots and pots of popped popcorn. They had a large pan of syrup bubbling on the stove on it's way caramel stage.

Though boys can be good cooks - and the caramel popcorn turned out great. I have learned over the years that you can't always trust them in the kitchen. I think I finally have all the popcorn tidbits, kernels and sticky sugar finally cleaned up. But poor Remington, Joel's little helper, got some horrible burns. They are healing up nicely. He said they never even hurt that bad. I hope they fade away and don't scar at all. He keeps them well ointmented and covered. You better have strong stomachs to view these photos.

Belly Laughs . . . New Pajamas . . . Santa . . . & Logan!

Here are a few more photos.

Belly laughs - you can tell how much fun the Christmas carols were at our house that Christmas eve.

A few years ago, I made brand new pajama pants for everyone at Christmas time. Now it's become a Christmas tradition. Some of the kids have every pair and as they wore them throughout the week, we heard - these are from last christmas when . . ., and these were the first pair I got . . ., and, I stole these from Mathieu so I could have a pair. . . . and now Erin has her own, and I promised to teach her how to make some more if she wants to learn.

Joel has a Santa suit that he wears at various times of the year. He has a ball at the Holloway house restaurant during a special Christmas brunch they hold. He refuses to get paid, but asks for a box of their delicious orange rolls instead. He wears it during the yearly memorial day parade and throws blow pops to the kids. He also wears it while the rotary hosts the salvation army red kettle campaign every christmas eve. They get quite a few donations. But here, I don't think Logan was enjoying any of it at all; he did make out quite well on Christmas morning though. . . Logan that is.

Our first Christmas as grandparents. What a wonderful experience. We are truly blessed with the best kids, the best daughters-in-law, and the world's best grandson. Probably the best memory of all of Christmas was when 11 of us attended the temple - as a family!! We did baptisms so all the kids could join us. What an awesome night. Next year Hunter will be old enough to go with us. We should make it a yearly tradition.

Christmas Eve . . . and the gangs all here.

Christmas Eve was fantastic. We had 7 kids fly home on one airplane - it took 2 cars to get everyone back to the house. It was so nice to have everyone 'home' again. We didn't all fit into the house anymore - a few stayed with Grandma and Grandpa - thanks! So, we had Bert & Anna, Alex & Stephanie, Grandma & Grandpa, and all the rest of us under one big roof. We had a simple dinner and really enjoyed each others company. Matt & Erin planned a little program to get us into the 'Christ'mas mood. It was excellent. Joel has to add his own flavor to everything - you can see how his singing had the kids doing belly laughs. Here's a little taste of our Christmas Eve at Home.

Procrastinat. . i . . . o . . . n!!

So, I had this fabulous idea to make a cute little homemade book for my adorable grandson for Christmas. I was going take pictures of all the kids, laminate them and bind them into a small book. One that a 6 month old could manipulate and chew on; one that would be about indestructible; one that he could get to know his aunts and uncles, grandma (that still sounds weird) and grandpa. And like some of my great ideas, the better they get, the less likely they are to get done.

I did get some last minute photos and thought I'd share them with you. I WAS going to include all kinds of ideas into the book. Each child was going to feature a certain color, so that Logan could learn colors. Each page was going to have a little 'toy' hidden somewhere in it so Logan could play 'eye-spy' and identify things - hats, balls, 4 wheelers, monkey, shirts, socks, etc. Hunter was going to be the 'brown' page and we did get some pictures of him with our brown dog, Jessie. Madison of course is our little pink princess, with her pink webkinz horses. Hunter and Madison had fun posing, and these are a few photos from a last minute attempt to still make the book happen.

I decided to take Jonathan's senior pictures this year. Over the years, we have had 4 sets of senior pictures done with some awesome results. The photos are really nice, but the prices kept creeping up every year, and the expectations from the photographer were humbling. They all acted like I should be buying great big wall portraits for my home, and spending lots of muulah on the senior photos, cuz, like, it's the only time they will be a senior in HS, and well, most of my kids didn't really care. I guess the last straw was when Liz's photographer charged $40 to send a photo of her to the school, by e-mail no less. I knew at the very least I could do that.

So Jon and I went out one day, months ago and we had fun taking some shots. Jon is a typical boy and thought going out in whatever he had on was just fine by him, thank you very much. It took some talking to get him to change in to ONE other outfit. I'm glad, because those photos turned out the best. I still haven't had time to photoshop them and take out the blemishes on his face, but I did e-mail one to the school, and have about 90 others saved on the computer. They aren't photographer quality, but I think they will do just fine. I wish I could have had more time with him, more outfit changes, and time to go to a park, or a different setting other than just around the house, and I still want to get another zoom lens and some filters for my camera, but all in all we didn't do too bad. You can see his personality in his smile, and that is what matters most.

D.C. Zoo

While we were in Washington, Drake took us to the DC Zoo. It's a great zoo. Just the right size for a couple of hours of walking and seeing the animals. And it's free!!! Nice!, only parking was $16, and the snacks were so overpriced. But we had a wonderful time. The animals were fairly active, and kids had a good time watching them. We saw lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my! A building with aquarium animals, and my favorite, the komodo dragon. The dragon was great. The kids on one side of the glass, and the dragon on the other. Unfortunately there is some glare from the glass on the pictures, but it was still fun to see the kids nose to nose with a real dragon. We even saw some pandas. They had cows and horses too. Weird.

At one point in the zoo we were wandering around outside looking at the animals, and I came around a corner and they had a big computer monitor there, separated into 6 sections. They had different cameras around the zoo and were capturing pictures of animals and 'things'. I took and look at the monitors and saw . . . myself! I was in the zoo. I was laughing and called Rem over to see, the monitors changed, and then Rem was in the zoo too, Drake came around the corner, the monitors changed, and there were Rem, Drake and I all on the screen. It was quite funny. Rem grabbed the camera and took this shot. So, I guess what my mom said years ago is true, I am a monkey in the zoo.

We had fun, and have hopes of traveling down again soon. Now that I have made the trip on my own, it should be easy to do again.

Great Falls, VA

On Veteran's Day weekend, the 4 youngest and I escaped to Washington DC to visit Drake, see old friends, and have some fun time together. This is us at a state park called Great Falls, in Virginia. Just behind the kids you can see the Potomac river. We arrived at the park and we were amazed at the number of folks out enjoying the beautiful fall day. Though it seems we are in the wilds, we were surrounded at all times by tons of people. Think Boughton Park with everyone in Bloomfield there at the same time, and you may have an idea of what it was like. We had a ball though. It was quite the hike.

Our journey began on a nice, flat trail, an easy walk with a canal on one side of us, and the Potomac on the other. We took a side trail to the real 'hike' and we had a ball. It started out nice and easy, pretty soon we were stepping over rocks, then stepping on rocks, and in the photo of the kids climbing the boulders, that is the trail. Oh, and to the right of Rem and Madi, well, it's a drop a couple of hundred feet into the rapids of the Potomac. Just below Madi's elbow, you can see the rock wall on the other side of the river.

Photo #1, me hiking the hard part of the trail, Rem was on the trail below me and took this shot.

Photo #2, the easy part of the trail and the beautiful fall day it was.

Photo #3, the kids on an overlook of some of the rapids. We saw kayakers there. Fun.

Photo #4, some of the local wildlife, a monkey in a tree.

Photo #5, me and the handsome guide.

Photo #6, hikers on the medium part of the trail.