Halloween Bowling

Since we chose to forego our annual Halloween party this year, due to our home's current state, we thought that bowling would be a nice substitute.

Bowling in costumes that is....

Esther and I decided that we wanted to lose a little weight, so we recruited our husbands to be our personal trainers.

Pictured: 

Cindy Lou Who, Calvin and Hobbes, 80's rockstars, Bootylicious babes and their personal trainers.

And tonight, we are laying low.  Barbecuing with the family, watching the World Series, and passing out candy to trick-or-treaters.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

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Character Parade 2010

Every year, we have a Character Parade at school.  This year, the fourth and fifth grade teachers each decided to dress up as a different Little Miss.  

This was mine:

My room mom is amazing this year.  She transformed my room into a Halloween wonderland for our party.  We were decked out with black tablecloths, caution tape, spiderwebs, bats, skeletons, strobe lights, and even Halloween music.  It was so much fun!

It was fun for me to have my room decorated since I can't decorate my house in its current state. Maybe I can have my house back in time to decorate for Christmas?

(p.s. when I was putting my pictures in a folder, I accidentally titled the folder Halloweed....hmmmmm.)

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Mr. and Mrs. Pelto

I am finally getting around to posting the wedding.  I did not have a ton of pictures from the night on my camera, so I have been trying to collect pictures from the other 5 million cameras that were there that night.  So, even though I know there are more pictures out there, and that they are probably much better than the ones I have, I can delay no longer.  So, I will give you the best I've got.

{Beautiful cake made by Janice, my mom's cousin and Brandon and Derek's mom.  She also made the cake for my wedding.}

{Grandma, Aunt Ruth, Uncle Russ, and Aunt Carol}

 

{Us with our mama....and Norman in the background, another one of my mom's cousins}

{Impromptu swaying with Brandon and Kevin, the Father of the Bride...who is also my mom's cousin}

Kasey's family has an ice cream shop in New York.  So, after the reception, the party continued there!

It was so much fun!

Thank you Kasey and Adam for letting us be a part of your big day!  

We loved every minute of it!

P.S. Your gift is coming soon....I promise!

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Meet My Family Monday.....and my first guest blogger

Since I am bringing back Meet My Family Monday, I decided to spice things up a bit. Annette is a blogger herself, so I decided to ask her to do a guest post for the blog. I did do an interview with Derek and Annette, but decided to scrap it and have a post straight from them instead. This is much more interesting and fun.

So, without any further ado, meet:

Derek and Annette

Meghan and Evan

Whipple

Hi everyone, I'm Annette...the wife of Mindy's cousin, Derek.  Mindy asked me to share a little bit about us and my blogs.  First, I thought I'd share about the Swensons because I know that's why you're really here reading.

Before Derek and I were even dating I had heard about his cousins from California that visited each year.  Four sisters that could talk Derek and his brothers into just about anything.  Sounds pretty scary, huh?  Somehow I also had the impression that these Swenson girls were girly girls...something I am not.  Needless to say, I was a little apprehensive about meeting them.  As it turns out, they were really sweet and have become even sweeter with time!  I was invited by Mark and Shirley to go to Niagra Falls and Darien Lake amusement park with all of them, too.  Even though they probably asked a ton of questions, they made me feel welcome and comfortable though I definitely felt old (maybe because I AM older!).

This past visit in October is when we really got to spend a lot of time with these now grown-up cousins.  It was an awesome, fun visit and has made us want to visit California soon, but after our children are a bit older and can fly without making a plane full of people unhappy.  Even they can't persuade us!  Blogging has helped them to stay in touch with us, and thanks to Mindy, we know a bit of what's happening with the Swensons and Carmacks, too.

The interview with Mindy probably represents us well.  Derek and I tried to answer the questions but there were plenty of interruptions and even laughs.  Meghan and Evan keep us on our toes in many ways.  We like to spend time outside when the weather is nice, but we stay busy inside too, playing, reading, and making little crafts.  We're greatly blessed, and are grateful for all that God does in our lives.

I actually started blogging in February of 2009.  Meghan had just been diagnosed with a speech disorder called apraxia, but suddenly she was making progress in her speech.  At 27 months she said "mama" and "dada" for the first time.  I wanted to share these and many other developments with family and friends, but I didn't want to overload email inboxes with unwanted pictures and updates.  (She now speaks well for her age, though at times she is still difficult to understand.)  So I entered the blog world with our family blog, now called Net's Notes.  Eventually, I realized that I wanted a separate place to share about my love of books, the preschool crafts and activities we were completing, as well as my own crafts.  That's how our "other blog" Live, Learn, Love came about.  Our family blog now focuses just on our day to day lives with some pictures of some adorable kids and life's craziness thrown in to the mix and the crafts, books, and recipes are at Live, Learn, Love.

Since I'm a stay at home mom, I find myself in the kitchen most afternoons during nap time.  I've posted some of my favorite recipes like a delicious and easy chocolate chip cookie pie, grilled pizza, chicken spiedies (a local food to where we grew up...so good!), French dip, cinnamon rolls, and others.

I pretend to be crafty, but really...not so much.  Really, I am just better at procrastinating.   I've made some Three Little Pig finger puppets, personalized wall hanging, and a family tree.  More often, I am crafting with Meghan, and recently Evan, too.   Some of my favorites are foot print and handprint trees, a shape owl, button snowflakes, and a button game.  I used to be an elementary teacher, and it is fairly natural for me to teach my little ones at home though Meghan does attend preschool now.

Meghan and Evan just had birthdays!  Meghan turned four and Evan turned two.  Yep, they are exactly two years and one week apart.  They are finally to the point where they play together, and Meghan even shares a bit!  They rough-house with Derek and me a lot.  Of course, games of chase and hide-and-seek are pretty popular, too.  Evan is passionate about tractors, trucks, and trains.  Meghan loves to play dress up.  They both love to get physical in all their play.  Evan imitates everything she does-or at least he tries to.  It's a lot of fun to watch!

Thanks for letting me share, Mindy!  I bet you weren't expecting all of that!

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So, I know you are all wondering what it is we convinced Derek and Annette to do on their wedding night.  This is it:

  They actually went on a hayride with all of us that night before heading off to their romantic getaway.  And actually, it really didn't take much convincing at all.  This was an annual event.  How could they miss out on that?

Thanks for taking the time to write this post Annette!  You're the best!

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Keeping Me Company

I couldn't resist putting her as close to me as possible.

It worked out great...until she smelled a little bit of last night's dinner and started licking the table profusely.

But, when you're a dog and you're almost 15, you get away with a lot.

And she is milking it for all it's worth.

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Happy Birthday Chris!

Happy Birthday Chris!

We read about Lupine flowers today in my class and I thought of you.

I love you!

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Flat Tire

The morning of Kasey and Adam's wedding, we headed over to the farm to hang out for a little bit.

We were almost there when we heard an EXPLOSION!

I have experienced this sound before....on a freeway connector where there was no shoulder...so I knew what it was.

I told Amy to stop driving, and being the oldest and bravest, I stepped out onto the dangerous road to inspect the damage.

Lucky for me, there was mud right outside of my door that my lovely shoe got to take a bath in it.

After a thorough inspection, my prediction was proven correct. Our tire was not just flat...it had exploded.

In case you are wondering, we did not keep driving on it after the pop.  The little nail we found in the tire did that damage all by itself.

Thankfully, Uncle Russ took charge when we got up to the house.  He orchestrated a huge rescue operation.

He hopped in the truck, grabbed the jack and Brandon and Derek and headed down to the car.

As you can see, we were very concerned about the heavy traffic traveling down the road. 

Fastest tire change I have ever seen.

(But I am sure that AAA had someone just around the corner....right?)

And can you guess how old Uncle Russ is?

You're wrong...He's not 70.

That man, the one operating the jack in all those pictures, is 87.

He is unbelievable.

I love him!

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Hope vs. Biola

 {Biola in red. Hope in white.}

This game was unreal.

You would think that it felt a little weird for me to be rooting against Biola, but strangely, it did not.

I think the Biola fan sitting next to me helped out on that one.

He sat there yelling to the ref to give Nick and the other Hope coaches a red card!

And the refs were a whole other story.  They unashamedly favored Biola, and the linesman on my side of the field was unbelievable. He and loud mouth Biola fan became fast friends on the sideline. That ref spent more time chatting it up with Biola fans and antagonizing Hope fans than he did watching the game.  I had so many things lined up in my head to say to both of them, but whenever I would open my mouth, nothing came out.
I am such a chicken.

Biola was up 1-0 going into half time.

The Biola fan moved to the other side of the field to be by Biola's goal in the second half.

I have to say I was a little disappointed by this fact.

I had spent the whole first half mentally preparing some pretty great snappy come backs for him, all of which would go unused now.

Late in the second half, Hope tied the score with a header into the net!

Woo Hoo!

Thrilling.

Then, we went into sudden death overtime.

The Biola fan moved back to my side.
This gave me a little extra rush of excitement, as I put my witty remarks on the tip of my tongue so they would be ready to roll right out of my mouth with the first jeers and sneers against Hope.
I was so ready for him.
(Until he actually did jeer and I gulped back down those words instead of letting them flow out of me like I had planned.)

After a horrible call, Hope fans exploded out of their seats, and started yelling at the center ref.

So, humpty dumpty linesman on my side of the field couldn't help but get into the action.  He picked out one of the Hope fans and started yelling.

"I've reffed soccer longer than you've played."

"And, I've played at a higher level than you."

"I've been reffing for 23 years.  I think I know better than you how to make calls in this game."

Um, hello, they weren't even yelling at you.

And, if you've really reffed for 23 years, you'd think that you would act like a professional, not a junior higher trying to prove yourself.

(These are all things that I wished I had said, but of course did not.)

But, despite having to play against the talented Biola soccer team AND against the refs, Hope pulled it off in overtime.  They scored in the first two minutes on an amazing shot!

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the disappointment of the Biola fan and the ref.  

That's mean. 

I know. 

But, I really did enjoy it.

Biola is not used to losing to Hope, and wrote a story about the game here.

Quote from the article:

"However, the wheels came off late on a pair of flukey goals by Hope."

Sorry Biola, a header into the net and a shot rocketed from 40 yards out are NOT "flukey" goals.

But, I still love you Biola! 

And I am cheering for you to beat everyone else.

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jones road

After Meghan and Evan's birthday party, we decided to go for a little walk to see all the leaves.  It took some convincing to get Brandon to come along, but that's normal.  We have spent much of our time trying to convince Brandon to do things.  Like coming to California...that took a lot of coaxing. Honestly, I am catching on to his little trick.  We all know he just loves to feel loved, so he pretends to not want to do things so that we will beg him.  I know what is actually going on in his head.  It is probably something like this....

 "Oh my gosh.  I am SO excited to hang out with the Swenson girls.  I want to spend every moment I can with them. But, I can't let onto this fact. I have to play it cool.  But, I really hope they beg me."

Derek is the same way.

You will never guess what we convinced him to do on his wedding night!!!

(actually, it didn't take much convincing.)

But, that is a story for another post.
Let's just say Annette is a trooper.

Anyways, the walk was beautiful.

 {Brandon and his son Arden}

We could not get over the different colors the leaves were.  They were not your typical red, yellow and orange.  They did not look real.  The trees looked like they were spray painted with fluorescent paint.

 {Some of the people in this picture were too lazy to walk.  They drove to meet up with us.}

And then some of us hung out in the leaves again.

So, now we are trying to figure out what other family we can convince to come out for Thanksgiving.

Update

See more pictures from Annette's blog here.

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