Ever played the game Quelf?

A challenge to Grandpa!

Yesterday the Clarks came over and dug up some buried treasure. Someone who once lived here made a treasure map. It is quite challenging to figure it out. Brandon spent the most time cracking the code and finally, with the help of all, found the X that marked the spot. See the video on how it went from there . . .

The loot has now been put back and the challenge is extended to Grandpa Harlow when he comes in December to also figure out and find the buried treasure!

Josi reading Scriptures

Please put in your comments the subtitles you think belong to this clip!

Photos

I have been wanting to get pictures of the kids this year. I finally got a few, outside the theatre on Josi's birthday. I don't really like all of the buildings in the background, but the grass was so green and the palm trees were great. The kids just wanted to run around so I only got a few that turned out at all. Here are the best of them. I think I may have to try again later though.

Josi's 4th Birthday

For Josi's birthday she wanted to go to the theatre to watch Bolt. Unfortunately it didn't come out until the next week. She settled for Madagascar 2, which she was still super excited about. The kids and I went and had a lot of fun. It was really cute.
I also decided to give the icecream cake another shot. This time I decided to put real cake in it, not just icecream. So Josi picked out the cake mix, which was strawberry and I used strawberry swirl icecream. She found a tinkerbell candle in the baking section when she picked out her cake so I got that for her too.
My second attempt turned out much better and I also gave myself more time.


She got Sleeping Beauty from us, a couple of Dora card games and Strawberry Shortcake figurines from Grandma and Grandpa Baird and she chose this horse with her money from Nana.


She is so happy to be 4. She tells everyone that she comes across, including the cashiers at every store we go to that she is four now. She tells me all of the things she can do now that she is bigger because she is four. Wow, I can't believe I have a 4-year old.

Twilight

I, like a lot of other girls/women have read the 'Twilight' series by Stephanie Meyer. The movie for the first book just came out yesterday. I haven't been terribly excited to see it, because the movie people always ruin it and I think the actor they chose to play the lead guy isn't as good-looking as the character is supposed to be. But, I have wanted to see it just for curiosity's sake. Last night my sweet husband surprised me with tickets to go see it. He arranged for Karin to watch the kids and told me we were just going to go hang out with the Clarks for the evening. When we got there I started to get settled in and Karin looks at the clock and says, "you two should probably get going". I was quite confused and looked over at Ben for some clarification. He just gets a big grin on his face and says "surprise!" and pulls out a folded up paper. It was the online tickets to go see the 8pm showing of Twilight. So we went, just the two of us, to the theatre and we got popcorn and drinks and candy! That hasn't happened since before Josi was born. We rarely go to the theatre anyway and even then we drag the kids along so we don't have to find and pay for a babysitter. (Thank you so much for that Karin. Not many people will work for cold movie theatre popcorn:)

It is probably good that I went in with such low expectations for the movie because I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It did have it's issues for me (like all novel to movie adaptations) but overall I was pleased with it. Thanks Babe, I love you so much! Thanks for this great surprise.

Hyrum's 2nd Birthday

For Hyrum's Birthday we had pizza and let the kids play Mario Kart by themselves. Hyrum rarely gets to play it. He is just so little still. He was so happy that we let him do it by himself.

I made an ice cream cake for him. This was my first. I decided a little late to do it, so I didn't get to let it set up enough between layers so it was a little melty. The next day it was much more yummy.

When we started singing happy birthday to him he was a little embarrassed. It was so cute.

He liked his icecream cake so much, he licked the bowl clean.

Hyrum got two Veggie Tales DVDs from Grandma and Grandpa Baird, 'Cars' jumbo crayons from us and 'Word World' playdough with fruit molds with the money that Nana sent him.

He was so excited by it all.

THANK YOU NANA, GRANDMA AND GRANDPA!

The molds are so cute. Each fruit is made up of the letters that spell the word.

For My Mom and Rooster

This post is for my mom and little brother, Andy. This is the handywork of my little man Hyrum about 3 weeks ago. He dumped half a can of comet (which was the whole can) all over the bathroom floor. Andy did the same thing when he was about Hyrum's age.
Here are his cute little handprints.

More Home Improvements

With the holidays drawing near and the potential of many visitors during them, Ben and I decided we should get a couple of the little projects done that we had been putting off, because we could live with them. The first was in the kids bathroom upstairs. We haven't used the toilet since we moved in, because we were told that it leaked. So we replaced the wax seal under it, which looked like it had never created a seal at all. Because we have tile floors, we had to use two seals. We also replaced the handle which had been broken and the fill valve because it made a terrible sound each time the toilet was filling back up.

Our next project was in the 1/2 bath on the main floor. The sink in there was not attached to the wall so it wobbled. This first picture is from before we painted the house. It had nasty yellow stuff dripping down behind the sink.
After we took

the sink off we found that

the bathroom wasn't built to have a pedestal sink there. We had to cut out the drywall, put in a backer board to attach the bracket that holds the sink to the wall, and then replace the drywall. This is after we had done that and I was just starting to re-spackle it.

Here is more of that nasty yellow stuff. It looked like someone tried to glue the sink to the wall, so we had to scrape all of that gunk off.

Here is the finished job. It appears that I am a genius with spackle :) You can barely tell we had cut a hole in the wall. And now it doesn't budge at all.

Our last project was to paint our dining room table to match the chairs we got. Karin was kind enough to come and help me with it. I had never done anything like repainting a table so I was nervous to do it myself. First we sanded it then painted it. I got the blackest black that Lowes had but when we opened the can of paint, it looked navy blue! I decided that it was just the reflection of the sky because we were outside. That made Karin laugh:) Ben helped me bring it back inside when he got home from work. The first thing he said was "It's blue". When the light bounces off just right, it does look a little blue.
So here are the before and after pictures. You can be the judge(s).

And here the table is (minus the leaf) back in the dining room. It looks pretty good, but I think I will put a coat of polyurethane to protect it better and make it easier to wipe off.

Here is my crack-up little Josi. She touched the table right after I had finished one of the coats. Karin always gets the best pictures!

Hyrum's New Do

For Hyrum's Halloween costume we actually shaved his head like Mr. T.'s, then used mascara to make it black and stand up straight. Saturday morning I fixed it. I think he looks pretty cute with a mohawk.

Immediately after these pictures were taken I had to completely shave his head because we were going to a barbeque for Ben's work that a customer was putting on. He didn't think he should take his kid with a mohawk when he is trying to impress a customer. So now he is a little cue ball.