Each year to celebrate around Halloween time our church does a few different things for Awana's. We don't celebrate Halloween, but we do give the children a chance to dress up since many of the children are from around town and do go out trick or treating. Our family does not trick or treat, but we have so much fun coming up with costumes and making them rather than purchasing them. In previous years we would flip through the Family Fun magazines to find some cool homemade costumes. This year, since we had exhaust the Family Fun idea's, we looked and looked through the internet. You will see their choices below :-) The Sparks in Awana's don't "dress up", we do Pajama night!! So all of us, children and leaders put on our PJ's and have a fun night! Here is a look into an evening in Awana's :-) Remember that I am a Spark's leader, so I didn't get any good pictures of the T&T children... that is where Ed teaches :-)

Here is our "hot air balloon" :-) Logan...

Then we have our "head in a jar" or "jar head" :-) Corben...

In Awana's we line up each week for flag ceremony. The Sparks hold up four flags, one of each of the following colors; red, yellow, blue, green. Last night Brekyn and Griffin were both chosen to do flags. Brekyn had yellow and Griffin had Red.

Brekyn and Stephanie are best friends in Awana's. They noticed last year they had the same PJ's, so this year they talked and planned to again wear matching PJ's for pajama night :-) Here they are washing up after snacks, silly girls :-)

Here is Griffin standing in line waiting to leave games and go to story :-) He is chatting with one of the other boys in line.

Here is Ed coming up the steps from T & T class at Awana's.

The children are going downstairs from game time, they are headed to story time.



The kids are singing the SPARKS song, we sing this song every week :-) "We are Sparks for Jesus, Sparks to light the world"...

This is our story leader, Miss Phyllis... she does a wonderful job telling stories each week. She brings in new characters and tells stories in a "to be continued" type manner, to keep the kids interest :-) She is a wonderful person!!!


Since Griffin had a Birthday in October, we celebrated his Birthday last night. We celebrate birthday's the last Wednesday of each month. Griffin our "baby" is now 6 years old!!

Our furry friends...

Here are a few pictures of our furry creatures that live with us. We do have a couple hamsters that are not in the pictures, but they are furry and live with us also :-)

Here is Fluff our 16 year old "farm kitten". She was born in my husband's dorm room 16 yrs. ago. He had to find a place for the kittens, I took Fluff to my home and he found a place for the others :-) Little did he know we would marry and still have Fluff all these years later :-)

Here we have the newest member of our family. This is Blaze, Logan's dog. We were told he would be a small dog as he was said to be part mini australian shepherd and part Shitzu... well once he "grew up", we found out he is actually probably part aussie and part schnouzer. Needless to say, he is just a wee bit smaller that the two aussies we have, so much for SMALL dog. Logan will show him this year in 4-H. He has a pretty good personality, as far as dogs go :-)

Again, we have Blaze... showing his sweet self. I think he is actually posing for the picture :-)

Here are our two Australian Shepherds... Gumbo is a Blue Merle which means he has the black/darker markings. This is Sean's dog, he has shown him in 4-H for the past two years. Then we have Dink, a Red Merle... he is Corben's dog. Dink has some social problems, so although he did participate in 4-H for one year... he is now done with 4-H. Dink may be going to a good home in just a few weeks. It is really hard to have a dog live in your home for a couple years only to have him move away. Dink will be much better off with his new family, as they will have a man in charge of him and he will have lots of "siblings" :-) I will post more as the time gets closer.


Brekyn and Blaze pose for a picture together :-) Brekyn is sitting on the floor as is Blaze... Can you tell he is not the "little" dog we were really wanting :-)

All of our dogs are rescue dogs, it's a great way to get a new pet!!!

Continuing our Bird Study for Science....

Here is Sean filling the feeders, while the others look on and wait to hand them.


Here is Corben up in the tree hanging yet another bird feeder. Our curriculum called for two bird feeders to be hung, somewhat close with the same food. However, the feeders are two different colors and the experiment is to see which color, if either, the birds choose the most.

Our "in house" photographer... capturing herself on camera again :-)

Here is Corben again... he hung one of the new feeders/ Logan hung the other.


The children have learned SO much about birds in just the few weeks of our Science on birds. Our front yard looks like a smorgasboard for the birds :-) We now have two plasic feeders with sunflower seeds, a squirrel feeder with an ear of corn that the Blue Jays seem to enjoy picking off, We have a bird house that is not being used at this time, There is a suet feeder containing our homemade suet... the sparrows LOVE this thing!, we have a muffin tin feeder that Great Grandma Morrow gave to the boys it contains mixed seed as does another feeder that looks like a house shape, but is open on the base for food. Then the boys built a podium type thing that is flat on top to hold the "bird bath", we are having problems with the design of it... we will look into getting an actual bird bath in the near future :-)

The kids are daily taking bird pictures and calling each other in to see any new species :-) They are having a lot of fun with the bird "sanctuary"!!

Da Boyz in Da Yard...

Almost every night for at least an hour the boys can be found in the backyard playing the outdoor sport of the season... It just happens to be football at this time :-) It is fun, but can be frustrating watching and listening to them. I am sure it is a boy thing, but wow... the pushing an shoving and such as they "play" together :-) Here I am posting a few pictures that Brekyn our up and coming photographer went out and took (that is why you may see a "close-up" of Brekyn every now and then! She likes her picture taken also, but since she has been taking them lately, I think she feels left out. So she tends to turn the camera onto herself and tries to get a picture of herself :-)!

One a nice day, we could have up to 15 children in the backyard :-)

Ok, here are my "new hairdoo" pics...

I said I would post a few pic's of my haircut... According to mostly everyone else, they can't tell I got it cut. I can tell a HUGE difference as I had LOTS of layers put into it and it feels like I have no hair compared to what I had.

This is just a couple days before my appt. I know my face is goofy, it was one of those "hey mom" pictures :-( Grrr...

This was done just after my cut, by my hairstylist. I was trying to grow out my bangs, but decided I didn't like it that way, so you will notice in the next few pics. I chopped a few bangs back into place :-)

The day it was cut.

Just done today.

Today, how I styled it, with my new straightener :-)

Our TV Dinner experience... Our Funny of the Month!!!

Ok, I assume you all know what a TV Dinner is (I shouldn't assume, but it just seems like one of those "common sense" things) If not, you will soon! :-) Here is our Funny of the Month...

Sean is a member of the Civil Air Patrol (basically a junior branch of the military), anyway they have MRE's in their 24 hours pack. MRE's are basically a meal all in one package, but I believe it is all dehydrated... so in case of emergency the CAP member would have two meals to "live off of". So Sean put two in his backpack.

Well a few days later Corben and Logan were at the neighbors house just hanging out for a couple hours. Logan noticed MANY (he said like 20) red boxes of the same type shape in the freezer. When Logan asked what they were, Jacob (our neighbor boy) said, "They are TV Dinners, I eat them when I need to go to football practice or something or when dad is not home for dinner".

Well, Logan was still a bit baffled, because later that evening he said at dinner... Jacob has a lot of MRE's... He calls them his TV Dinners :-)

We had a great deal of laughing, Ed and I, over that comment as we quickly realized our children had no idea what a TV Dinner was :-) SO... while getting a few groceries at the local Jack & Jill, I noticed TV Dinners were on sale for $1 a piece. So, as any good mom would... since it was a learning experience :-), I purchased 5 TV Dinners of variety. The children were just thrilled, although it took some time deciding who got to eat which "dinner". I found it fascinating and HAD to take pictures of this whole new learning experience for our children!! It has been our Funny of the Month!!!

Sean cooking his 1st ever TV Dinner :-)

Everyone enjoying a "not so healthy" meal :-)

Logan chose pizza!

You see Brekyn and Sean eating.

Corben digging in!

So if you are still wondering what a TV Dinner is, it is basically an all in one meal that comes frozen. You pop it into the microwave and like 3-5 minutes later you are eating. These have been fun for the children, but not a good thing for the pocketbook with a family the size of ours :-) We plan to make them the meal that the children get to enjoy when mommy and daddy get a night out (and that only happens like once every other month or so)!!!

Helping out the Conservation Dept...

The past three years our family has enjoyed what our local conservation department calls a Halloween Hike. They do not do anything that is scary, they actually do all this to promote education and family activities. They typically choose animals and such to portray through skits while explaining maybe what they eat or where they can be found etc. Well this years theme was Olympics and they did a great job, again!!! We were especially proud as this year, Sean joined the many other volunteers as one of the people in a skit. He loved it and would like to do it again next year. Anyway, in order for this to take place in the evening when all is dark, the conservation dept. lines the trails with carved pumpkins and they insert candles :-) Jack O' Lanterns. We don't celebrate Halloween as most do, but we do enjoy many activities this time of year and this Hike is one of them.

Here we are all getting directions on how the conservation dept. wants the pumpkins carved. This is mostly a quick talk on safety :-)


Sean digging deep to clean the pumpkin guts completely out!!


Logan looks to be doing a good job, but mom had to help him more than she would have liked.


Corben went through the whole thing alone :-) As with most activities, he was the first one done cleaning out the pumpkin, had the biggest pumpkin, and was the first one done carving... doing everything by himself ;-)


Brekyn was pretty slow, but she also did it mostly alone. Her friend Morgan was sitting next to her and she helped a bit! Brekyn did great!!

AND... for our finished products...

Sean...


Corben...


Logan...


Brekyn...


Griffin...

Here is Sean getting a first look at his "Flea" costume. We thought it was kind of funny, but the conservation dept. does a great job making several costumes for each part.


Sean becoming a flea :-)


Here is our little flea, or should I say HUGE flea in comparison to a typical flea :-)


Sean was in a skit with a "chigger", "lice", "tick", human, and ?? I can't remember, there was one more parasite. Anyway, the "tick" was a friend of ours, also in 7th grade. He is supposed to look like a bloated tick :-) Good job Cody and Sean!!!!

Another Nasty Day... and upcoming weekend!

Well I have lots of pictures to post of our events and activities, however my computer decided it has had enough with the pictures. I guess it is full... so that is Ed's "thing" for the weekend. He is going to take pictures off the laptop and put them on disc's. Usually I could do this, however... the laptop decided it doesn't want to burn CD's anymore, so he is going to be transfering them or getting them through the network to put them on disc.

We attended the football game this evening, eyeyieyie... SOOO cold!! Praise God the rain quit for the day, but wow was it cold. I just got home with Sean, Brekyn and Griffin as we thought half-time was enough for us. Daddy thought he could tough it out and stay for the entire game, so Corben and Logan decided they would also. I am feeling so much better now that my toes are not frozen!! Brekyn and Griffin decided their footy PJ's would be great for tonight! I wish I had a pair :-)

We fixed hot cocoa and they are just enjoying a bit of tv before they head off to bed. I told them 9pm would be fine for tonight...

We also attended the Conservation Pumpkin carving event today. Each of the children got to carve a pumpkin that will line the hiking path tomorrow evening at the hike. Sean is participating in a skit along the hike. The conservation puts this hike on each year, you walk a bit and then watch a skit about animals or something to do with the outdoors/nature, then walk a bit more and another skit. I believe there are 6 skits. Sean is in the last skit and he is playing the part of a flea :-) His lines are memorized and he is all ready.

Well, I am going to join the little ones for a bit before they head off to bed. I also need to get that book finished tonight! I'm almost there :-)

What a dreary day...

Well today we accomplished a lot with school and such inside the house. It has been cold, cloudy, and rainy all day today. The children were able to play outside some this afternoon once the public school children were off the bus. Brekyn and Griffin decided to stay indoors. Sean spent the entire afternoon/evening in the garage. Corben and Logan played football with the neighbor boys, then they played basketball before coming inside for dinner. Ed joined Sean in the garage for about an hour before dinner and again for a couple hours after dinner. They are working on building a very large shelf, more like a platform to be able to store things off the floor. Friends of ours are in the process of remodeling their home due to the recent Iowa floods and they tore off the front porch. This gave Ed all kinds of idea's as to what the roof from their previous porch could be used for. I guess the platform for the garage won out in the end. It will free up a lot of garage floor space. The children are excited for they will get the workbench that is under the platform for "their own workshop/tools". It will be mostly Sean and Corben... but Logan has plans to ask for tools for Christmas this year :-) They are surly growing up quickly!!

Griffin and I ran a few errands this afternoon once school was finished. We had to buy more dog food, run to the library for a few books and some movies since the weather is not to be good the entire weekend, then on back home.

This evening was pretty relaxing as we were able to just hang out at the house, a pretty rare thing for us... or for ALL of us together anyway :-)

Well, I am off to bed to read for a bit. I am reading SARAH... a book about Sarah Palin written by Kaylene Johnson. It was at the library and when the kiddo's saw it, they said mom... it is Sarah Palin you should read it. So I have it... I need to get to reading it since it is due back in a week!!

Our homeschool band at practice this afternoon...

The three older boys are in the homeschool band. Sean plays trumpet, Corben drums, and Logan flute. It is a small band, but they seem to enjoy it. They sure are learning alot more than I ever did in music!! Their teacher is Mrs. Jean and she does well with the band. The band practicing hard. Mrs. Jean is playing a baratone, not usually in the band, but it sounded great with the rest of the instruments :-) Us younger ones go to the nursery to play, while the older ones are practicing :-)

Logan at his last football game of the season

Logan's Team 2008 WAPELLO LIL' INDIANS

Logan played in several games. This last game he was only on defense, but that is where he prefers. If you ask him it is because you just block and tackle... you don't have to memorize all the plays. Each child is different and they are all needed for a team!!
GOOD JOB LOGAN!!!

Get in there Logan!

Taking a break and needing a drink...

The little guys think they are just as good at football as the bigger guys :-) Here Griffin plays with a few of his buddies behind the parents. Griffin and Casey were on a "team" together, they huddled to "make their plays"!! So cute...


We take it easy while watching the games :-) Corben and Daddy all laid back...

Good game even though we lost, 0-6

One last huddle, what a good season!!