The Day Before

It is the day before All Hallows Eve. We are all very excited and the yard is completely ready. We have three pneumatics set up this year and all are run by remote control. I did a quick night walk-through minus sounds as a preview.

Also, Krispy Kreme has holiday themed donuts. They should have filled them with raspberry filling instead of cream.


Tomorrow is the big day!

Jack-o-Lanterns, Ahhhhh......

Tonight we carved our Jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. It has been a treat this year, Papa (Jen's Dad) is here for Halloween. The kids are really enjoying him.


Today he and I went over and ate lunch with Sam at school. I am getting very excited about Halloween. Less than two days to go. We have had so many compliments about our decorations this year. We even received a card from people that we don't know thanking us for our great decorations. The addressed the card, 'To the Halloween House" since they don't know our names. Here are our jack-o-lanterns, I do not think an evil spirit will come near our house!

This is Dan's


This is Becca's


This is Michael's


This is Sam's


This is Clyde's




This is mine. It ate Jen's and made it puke.


Here is the group shots of the awesome Jack-o-Lanterns.

Balloons, Family and Halloween

It has been over a month since I have blogged and have too much to update. As usual, I will try to get caught up. Last week was the Morgantown Balloon Festival. Since we have Church in the afternoons we were able to go see a balloon race Sunday morning. It was fun to watch them all set up, take off, fly right over our heads and then watch them disappear in the fog over the ridge.





We also have finally took more family shots of us. It is amazing how hard it is to get 6 people to look at the camera and smile. These are the best that we got and considering how many shots it took to get these three, I am very happy with them.




It has been looking like Halloween around our house for the past week or so. I added a 'before' shot so a point of reference can be made. The graveyard is up. There are several modifications this year. The goul is now a pumpkin scarecrow and is now a remote control pneumatic. I can make him grab at people from anywhere in the yard just by hitting a button. Much better than having to mess with valves. Papa (Clyde - Jen's Dad) is coming out for Halloween and he built a surprise for Halloween which is another pneumatic that I will feature in a future blog. It is going to create quite a few screams on Halloween night. He-He. These pictures are from a couple of weeks ago and there have been some more changes that I will show soon. I bought another anatomical skeleton for the yard so that one could lay in the front dug grave and the other, Dr. Bones as we call him, can stand in the yard holding a lantern. We have been getting quite a few people driving slowly past our yard and numerous compliments on the decorations. Many people look forward to our decorations and what we will add this year. Stop by if you are in the neighborhood.

Here, fishy fishy...

Last night I took our cub scout pack to the WVU Agronomy Farm for a fishing activity. This pond is perfect for kids because you catch a fish nearly every cast. All of the boys had a great time. Becca and Dan came along to fish. Becca caught her first fish ever and Dan caught his practice casting fish. Dan will make a great fisherman, it only took him a few tries and he was casting perfectly with some distance from the shore. Michael caught two fish which is amazing for him since he had to wait for the bobber to go and he is not one for waiting.

New School Year

Mike and Sam started school last week. Mike is now at a new school and he has to ride the bus to get there. He really likes his new school and doesn't mind riding the bus. He is excited that he gets to start music this year and he has picked out the viola to learn to play. I am very excited that I get to help him with this.

Today was Becca's first day at kindergarten. She was very excited and ready for school.

So Far Behind in Blogging

We are back from our July vacation. We left for WI on July 14th and returned on Aug 1st. It was a crazy drive there with 5 kids (our 4 and cousin Lauren) and two dogs in our Envoy.

We first stopped at Nana and Papa's house before heading off to Hawaii. The kids and dogs loved Nana and Papa's extremely large yard and all of the food (especially the berries) from the garden. Sam and Mike loved Papa's mutant carrots.

Becca tasted mulberries for the first and last time.

While we were there we found Darth Dan.

The 4th of July was a blast this year. It was a fairly busy day. The schedule was:

8:00 AM - Pancake breakfast at Church
3:00 PM - Picnic/barbecue
4:00 PM - Pinata
6:30 PM - 4th of July Parade
8:30 PM - Fireworks Display

This year was nice. We had several families over to share the day with. We had lots of little children to enjoy the pinata and the fireworks. We decided last year that the city's fireworks were way too late for our kids to stay awake so each year we would put on a display at our house. This year was a bit longer than last year lasting around 30 minutes and $225. That ends up being $7.50 per minute for fireworks but it was totally worth it. We had quite the audience! There were around 15 kids from the various families watching. One of the fellow dads in the group used his camera to create a time lapse of the fireworks display and it can be found at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN6vaFB17Es

It is pretty cool to see. Cut and paste into your browser or go to youtube.com and search for 'Todd West's Backyard Fireworks'.

Here are two attempts to end the pinata!



Michael had the final hit and the mad rush for candy followed.


Here is the 'crew' waiting for the parade to start.


Jen is so prepared. The kids started getting antsy because we were early to get curb-side seats so she pulled out the ring pops for everyone.


Here are some of our favorite fireworks:

This is all that was left after the firework show.