Chess Tournament

Samuel and Jacque have been in the chess club since the beginning of school, and last weekend they had their first practice tournament. They got to go to another elementary school and play kids that they hadn't met before. I think they had a lot of fun. It was neat to walk into the gym and see several tables full of chess boards, all ready to go.

Samuel did really well. This is his first opponent. I think he got to play a total of 4 people. The kid actually had Samuel checkmated at the beginning of the game because Samuel moved a pawn, putting his king in check. They had a rule that if you touched a piece, you had to move it. Samuel had touched his pawn, so I guess he had to move it, although I don't think you are allowed to put your king in check either. However the kid didn't recognize that he had"won", and the game doesn't end unless someone calls out checkmate. So if you don't realize you've won, then it doesn't count. You could take turns checkmating each other throughout the game and still not finish.

After that, Samuel dominated the game. He does a great job killing the other person's pieces, especially if he has his queen, but he has a little bit of trouble finishing the game by capturing the King. Last night Aaron worked with both Samuel and Jacque on how to finish the game. They aren't experts but I think if we keep up the practice, they will be fine chess players soon. I think he had 1 win and 3 draws.

Jacque was a fun one to watch. I was a little worried that they had matched her up with this girl. The girl looked like a fifth grader, and I thought Jacque was going to get creamed. However, I don't think the girl knew much about chess. As I was watching Jacque, she'd move a piece and then say, "Look, now you can kill me with your piece right here!" and the girl would do what Jacque told her to do. Jacque would kill the other girl's pieces every now and then too. Her other two games went similarly. At the end of the day, after having 3 draws, she was a little disappointed that she never won! I tried to comfort her by telling her that even though she didn't win, she did a great job teaching the other kids to play!

On the way to the tournament, Aaron commented, "You know what would make this tournament interesting? If they had one for the parents too!" Well after 45 minutes of being a very supportive dad, the tournament got very interesting! I looked around and found Aaron with one of Samuel's friend's dad. They played two games, Aaron won the first game and Ryan won the second. They both enjoyed it. Ryan is supposed to be a really good chess player and was glad to have someone who could challenge him. Aaron felt the same. He's a little rusty because he hasn't have anyone to really challenge him for years, but he and Ryan might be getting together again to play.

Calista and Ellen were good sports. Most of the time they just sat on the floor and played with some extra chess pieces laying around. We had to leave the tournament early because after an hour of "playing" chess, Calista and Ellen had had enough fun!

FHE Visitor

This week our visitor was Esther! Calista got to choose her own costume and I think she did really well. I like the first picture (not smiling). It kind of makes her look "royal." Then the second picture really shows Calista's personality. I thought about shortening her "train" but Calista wanted it long and loved walking around with it just dragging behind.

The kids knew this story pretty well since we have a movie, "Esther and the King" from the Liken the Scriptures series. I am very impressed with this company because the movie follows the scriptures really well. It has real people acting, not cartoon character, and its a musical. I really think everyone should get this movie if they have daughters because it shows that the most important thing is being yourself and putting your trust in God.

I'll chalk this one down as another successful Family Home Evening!

Samuel is 7!

I can't believe that 7 years ago I was a mother for the first time! I am so thankful to have Samuel as the oldest child in our home. He is such a good example to the rest of the family. He is very kind and considerate of others, especially when someone gets hurt. He's responsible, respectful and safe. At school he is a self-manager, which means he gets special privileges. He has been a more faithful reader than I have been to reach his goal of reading the Book of Mormon. There are many nights that I think it is too late to read, but he is willing to stay up a little longer. We are almost done with 2nd Nephi and his reading is already getting much faster. I'm always amazed at some of the words that he can read or sound out all on his own.
We had a fun birthday. Yesterday we made a cake and took it to Tricia's house for a mini b-day party. Tricia watched our kids while Aaron and I went to the temple. When we got back we visited until Calista, Ellen and Caleb got up from their naps. (Tricia was so nice to put them down for a nap!) Then we ate cake and the kids got to play a little longer with their cousins. They must've played hard because both Samuel and Jacque fell asleep shortly after starting our drive home and they were still tired enough to go to bed at bedtime!

Mom gave me a cupcake decorating book last year where we saw a cute alligator. Samuel decided he wanted a cake and not cupcakes, which sounded easier to me, and we followed the decorating instructions. It was fun to make and yummy to eat.

Growing up we always had the "spanking machine." Whoever had the birthday had to crawl through everyone's legs while they were spanked (lightly of course). You had to go through the tunnel the same amount of times as your age, so Samuel had to go through 7 times. He was a good sport. It was fun to have Grandma and Grandpa Baxter here!
For his birthday, we got Samuel an alligator so he would be able to remember his cake, a pair of pants (not pictured) because all of his other pants have holes in them, a transformer carrier airplane - which came with a small transformer truck which fits in the cargo bay, and a toy pirate pistol. I think he enjoyed them all.

New Christmas Advent calendar idea

We grew up using an advent calendar that had a bear going from outside to inside the house, from room to room, looking for Christmas and he finally found it on Christmas day.

At Thanksgiving, I overheard my sister-in-law talking about another idea. You use the the advent calendars with the pockets on the bottom. In each pocket you have an activity that you can do as a family or with the kids to celebrate the Christmas season. You can make cookies for a neighbor, read a book on Christmas, watch a Christmas movie, make ornaments, put up the tree, decorate the tree, build a snowman, making paper snowflakes, play a game...etc.

It sounds like lots of fun. Some of them might need to be moved along the way, because you might not have snow on the day chosen for the snowman, so you can save it for a snowy day! Depending on how many ideas you have, you can do it for the whole month, or make it the 12 days of Christmas! You can also repeat several of the options to lengthen it out.

It sounds like a fun way to spend the Christmas season with the family. By the way, my brother-in-law makes awesome snowflakes. He made one with carolers on the outside, and another with angels. See how creative you can be!

FHE Visitor

Mary was our visitor for tonight's Family Home Evening! We probably should have waited until the Monday before Christmas, but there are only a few women to act out in the scriptures that the kids could think of. I could probably come up with more if I tried, but Jacque really wanted to be Mary. I think she was a little disappointed that she didn't get to wear a blue dress since the movies we have with the story of Christmas, all have Mary in a blue dress. I just told her that no one knows what color the dress was and it might have been white too! She had fun telling the story of Mary, or at least answering the questions we asked her about Mary and the Christmas story.

I think the kids are really enjoying acting out the lessons and taking turns being in charge of the music/prayers/lesson/game. Ellen got to be in charge of the music tonight. She chose to sing, "The Family is of God" known as "Family" to her, twice for an opening song, and "Once I was a baby" sang to the tune of "Once there was a snowman." She and Calista learned it in nursery.

The kids get a little impatient waiting for their turn to be in charge of the game or lesson. I need to make a FHE board where they can see that we all take turns. Any good ideas of FHE boards?

A New Discovery

I love it when the kids discover "new" things. The other day Ellen discovered the fun that comes when you combine wearing a dress and standing over the vent! We were getting ready for Church and I hear this, "Look! Look!" I look over by the door, and there is Ellen, looking out the window with her dress flying up around her. I thought it was pretty cool that she discovered that on her own. I don't remember anyone else picking up on that.

The heater happened to turn on shortly after Ellen and Calista got in their play dresses. Ellen ran over to the vent saying, "Look! Look!" again, so I decided to take pictures of their fun.

We had a visitor come to FHE tonight

Ammon the missionary to the Lamanites came and joined us. He told us the story of when he protected the King's sheep by fighting the wicked Lamanites, and how he was able to defeat them because the Lord was with him. Here's another picture of our visitor:
Samuel was a little dubious about dressing the part, but by the end he was pretty excited. I'm planning on making the kids dress up clothes for FHE's/Sundays. This was actually scraps that I had lying around, but they worked just fine.

We did it!

We actually paid off our van!! Yeah, it only took us two years!! We were supposed to still be paying on it for another 3 years, but we got the title today in the mail...so its official!! Now we are going to try to start saving money for a down payment on a house (some day when we are more settled). We want to take the money we had been paying on our car loan, and put it into a savings account of some sort. Do you have any ideas of where the best place to put money: savings bank, ingdirect (or something like that) or other options (not including your bank account) :]

Veggie Pizza

Aaron and I are trying my mom and dad's diet. On this diet, you don't mix your meats (fleshes, dairy) and your starches (pastas, breads, wheat, rice, potatoes...) and you wait for three hours after you eat something before you eat anything else. And you eat your fruits separately, but only have to wait 30 minutes before you can eat again. The best part is that you can eat as much of that one food area as you want, you just can't mix them. It seems to be working for us. I had never noticed how much I snack!

Well last night, Aaron and I were reading the Tidbits and saw a recipe for veggie pizza!! I was so excited and thought I should share it with you. Are you ready?? Here it is:

Veggie Pizza

1 frozen cheese pizza

2-3 cups vegetables (spinach, peppers, mushrooms, etc.)

Preheat oven. Top frozen pizza with variety of vegetables. Sprinkle with additional cheese if desired. Bake according to package directions. Serves 4.

After reading this, I thought that I should go into the recipe business. It doesn't look to hard! This is supposed to be a funny post, so hopefully you at least smiled a little! Hope you all have a great day!

Our Costumes

We had three fairies and an Iron Man this year. I made the fairies outfits (except the wings) and then bought the Iron Man costume since I was running out of time.

I even tried to do Ellen's hair too. It is long enough to put gel in it, which makes her hair curly and stand out a little. It looks a little fuzzy here. Calista ended up not wearing the white fuzz on her hair. It made her look too much like an angel.

Samuel with the Iron Mask on

Samuel without the mask. I painted his

face the same as the mask in case

the mask got stuffy.

Samuel and Aaron went to Baker this weekend to help people move and to work on the truck with Adam, so the girls and I stayed home. I took them to the trunk or treat at the College on Friday night. They got lots of candy, played pumpkin toss, and got their faces painted. They had a lot of fun.

Aaron and Samuel got back this afternoon, so Samuel was able to go with us to our ward's trunk or treat. There were a lot of people there this year. The last couple of years it has mainly been just our ward, but this year there were even some community people trick-or-treating, and the other ward helped hand out candy. We brought a big bowl of candy, that Aaron handed out to the kids. Whoever those kids were, they must've been excited. I was amazed at how fast he got done. He just smiled and said he just "gave it out as fast as he could." Probably meaning that instead of just a couple, he gave out handfuls!! I don't care as long as we didn't have to bring it home. Our ward also hands out donuts and hot chocolate. It was fun for the kids to be able to wear their costumes two times.

When we got home, we let the kids eat most of their candy, just trying to get it rid of it fast. I went through the candy and got all the hard candies and suckers and put them in a bowl to hand out to other people. I figure they are the ones that stay forever in their mouths, so they probably are worse on the teeth...what do you think "Dentist" Trace?

After all of our candy was handed out at the door, we turned off our porch light so no one would come. But that supposedly doesn't mean anything any more. We turned off our kitchen and dining room lights, and that still didn't work. We ended up turning off all of our lights except one light in the living room, that doens't shine directly at the door. So far it works, but I was amazed at how many people just come if a light in the house is on. We were also amazed at how old some of the kids were that came for candy. Growing up, we stopped trick-or-treating at the age of 12, which I think is a great rule. Once we get out of Primary, you are too old to go around asking for candy. Go ahead and dress up and have fun, but buy your own candy!!

Carving Pumpkins

We finally got to carve our pumpkins!! Ellen got left out on this activity, but she didn't seem to mind. We even bough candles to put in our pumpkins this year! The kids were really excited to see them glowing at night. It happened to be a windy night, so the candles didn't stay aglow for long, or maybe it was the cheap candles (I got them three for a dollar at the dollar store).

Samuel and his "vampire" pumpkin. If you look close you can see the two long teeth. Aaron has taught me something about cutting out the top of the pumpkins. If you are cutting a zigzag (or other design) top, make sure that you have one leg on the zigzag longer than all the others so you will know which way the lid fits back on! I remember having to turn the lids several times just trying to get it to sit down right. Also make sure your knife is at an angle when you are cutting so the lid doesn't fall straight down. Maybe you already knew these tips, but I didn't until a couple of years ago.

Jacque and her pumpkin. She is one who likes to pose for a picture. Each of the kids got to draw on their pumpkin exactly what they wanted cut out. Jacque must've gotten a little confused. Instead of drawing a face, she drew letters and numbers...thus the tattoo. Aaron took some alcohol to the writing and most of it came off.

Calista really enjoyed cleaning out the inside of her pumpkin. I think her pumpkin was my favorite. I don't know if it was just because it didn't have the triangle eyes, but it just looked really happy.

Calista's love of dogs

Calista is very afraid of dogs. I'm not sure how she got to be so afraid, but when I was visiting one of my elderly friends, Calista wouldn't even put her feet off the edge of the couch because there was a dog in the room. Yes it was IN the room, across the room in fact. And whenever the dog came near, all of a sudden, Calista would be climbing onto my shoulders. We've tried to work with her on her fear of dogs, and I'm not sure if its helping. We've walked peoples dogs, held her while she pet the dogs, and when she was at Mom and Dad's house a couple of weekends ago, they would give her candy everytime she was able to pet Aimee.

On our walk this morning, we passed a dog behind a fence. We say "Hi" to the dog and kept walking. (Calista and Ellen were in the bike stroller that I was pushing). After we passed the dog Calista says, "I like dogs. I like Aimee...when Aimee gets shot, Grandma won't have none more dogs." (For those of you who don't know, my mom and dad's german shepherd dog was shot by some unknown person about a month ago.) She said this kind of happily. I'm not sure if she was looking forward to that time when grandma would have "none more dogs" or if it was just the way she thinks life goes. I had to laugh to myself about it.

Daylight Savings Time Ends

Don't forget that we get to set our clocks back this weekend! Time officially changes Sunday November 1st at 2:00am.

A Bunch of Videos

While I was at mom's this weekend I decided to take advantage of her

fast Internet and load a bunch of videos that I've been waiting to share!

This is a funny video of Calista learning to ride her bike with training wheels.

She moves her legs as long as there isn't any resistance on the pedals.

Jacque can ride without training wheels!!

Samuel is being a tricky bike rider. He can ride with only one hand!!

Super Ellen!! I love her squeals here.

Here's a video from the air show we went to.

Hello from Ellen!

Most of you have already seen this video off of my

mom's blog, but for those of you who are not in my family,

this is a great video. It will brighten your day!

Apple snakes

I love making things with apples with this apple corer peeler. I borrowed Leslie's last year and then found on on sale this year at Bi-Mart. It makes this process so much easier. Calista was a great helper peeling and coring the apples. Once while they were working,

she commented that they were making apple snakes!!

Apple Pie Filling

Mom came over yesterday and we made 49 quarts of apple pie filling and then split them so she took 24 home and I got to keep 25! Aaron's excited because apple pie is probably his favorite pie. We had a little bit of cut apples left over so I made a couple of pies last night. We'd gotten a really good deal on apples from an orchard outside of Milton Freewater, Oregon (40-50lb box for $10).

The other best part of yesterday was that Mom took Samuel, Jacque and Calista home with her!! She was going to surprise Grandpa. Hopefully it was a good surprise! We are going later today, but they were so excited to go with Grandma yesterday. Since we only had one kid last night, we went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant. Aaron usually says he doesn't care for Chinese, but after last night, he said it was pretty good. So maybe we will get to go again :) Ellen liked the sweet and sour pork the best, but she did eat some pork fried rice. I also ordered pork chow mein, which I think is my favorite. It doesn't look very appetizing because it looks like a bunch of steamed cabbage and other stringy veggies, but the sauce or something else makes it really yummy.

Samuel

We have some exciting news! Samuel hasn't had to patch his eye since the end of August, and at his eye appointment last week the doctor said that his lazy eye is doing really well. In fact he can see better in that eye than his "good" eye! His good eye couldn't see one or two letters in the 20/20 range, but that is still really good. We are done patching and he won't have another appointment until March!! He will always have glasses, but now his lazy eye will focus with the help of glasses.

More news. Samuel has become a really good reader, and after listening to General Conference on Saturday, I had the inspired idea that Samuel should try to read the whole Book of Mormon before he gets baptized! As a family we have read it at least 4 times in his lifetime, but it would be fun to have him read it. It took a little bit of coaxing, but then he got excited. We figured out that if he was going to get it done in a year, then he'd need to read 1.5 pages a day or three columns. The first day he actually read all of chapter 1, the second day he read chapter 2 and some of chapter 3, and then it slowed down a little. He is halfway done with chapter 4 now. Either Aaron or I will sit down with him and read along to help with big words, but I've been impressed with the words he can read all by himself. I don't think I could read that well as a 1st grader. I would like to challenge anyone else to make this a goal this next year too! Looking on the Internet I found some Book of Mormon reading charts off of http://www.sugardoodle.net/Book%20of%20Mormon/index.shtml which were cute, and another mom did the same thing with her daughter, except they'd take turns reading verses. I think it's a great goal to have, and it would be fun to look back upon that he accomplished a big goal when he was young. Another thing the Kerns' do when they finish reading a particular book of scriptures (Book of Mormon, Old Testament...) they write the date in the front of the book so they can remember how many times they've read it. It has been fun to see how many times we've read them, although I haven't been as good at writing them down right after finishing the book.

Cute Ellen

I was washing the dishes one day, and happened to look over at Ellen. She was licking the top of the honey container (the honey had solidified, so we cut the top off to get to the honey on the bottom). As I looked at her, she smiles and says, "Yummy!"

I just thought this was a cute picture. Aaron is so nice! How many people do you know that can lay on their back with a child sitting on their chest and still be able to play the guitar?!

FHE - Pumpkin Fun

I went to Honk's dollar store and bought some paintbrushes yesterday, so for FHE we painted pumpkins with real paint! The kids had a fun time. We only got three paintbrushes, so we had to improvise. I was hoping that Ellen wouldn't be interested in painting, but she was feeling left out. I tried to think of a substitute, and Jacque came up with an old toothbrush! It made me a little worried that she try to brush her teeth, but luckily it didn't happen!

Cute face. I think she was excited!

Calista, admiring her masterpiece and looking very pleased.

Jacque, putting on the final touches.

Samuel working very carefully on the fine details.

The final masterpieces. If you look closely, you can see Samuel's Vampire face. I think he has a thing for vampires right now, and no, it has nothing to do with the whole "Twilight" thing either!

More Air Show pics

Our cute pumpkins

We wanted a fun activity for General Conference weekend so we decided we would paint our pumpkins since its too early to actually carve them. We found some glitter glue and decided it would work. After waiting for the pumpkins to dry from being brought into the house, we started decorating. The glue worked pretty good for being about two years old. Every now and then it needed a little encouragement, but thanks to Aaron's help getting the lids off, we managed just fine. (They were adult proof because they were threaded backwards. I was ready to tear it off with pliers before Aaron came and saved it).

Samuel's vampire pumpkin

Calista's fairy pumpkin

Jacque's balloon pumpkin

Ontario Air Show

We attended the annual Ontario Air Show a couple of weekends ago. The kids a fun time looking at all of the different airplanes. They got to sit in one, but my camera decided to have a low batter right after Samuel sat in it. It did decide to resurrect by the time some air stunts were happening, but my internet connection is too slow to upload those. Here are some random pics from the air show.

Ellen, Jacque, Samuel, Calista
Calista

Ellen and Aaron

Jacque and Samuel

random pic

I'll post more pictures later when I have more time!

Our Garden is Finished!

With the turning of the seasons, our garden is all done producing. We picked our peppers earlier this week, and I was surprised at how many we got. I cut them all up and froze them for future use without taking a picture, but we filled two large mixing bowls with peppers. Our watermelons didn't amount to much, but our pumpkins were awesome. We got 12 pumpkins including one small green one that had escaped into our neighbor's yard. The kids were really excited about getting to bring all of the pumpkins inside, and asked to have their pictures taken. I am so grateful for digital cameras that let me take so many pictures and share them for free! Some of the pictures were silly, of course, but these were my favorites.