Ben the Artist

"I'm a artist," said Ben, age four, as I drove home from taking the kids to school. He went on to explain that an artist is someone who draws well. He said he's my artist. I suppose that is because I always rave about his drawings, which I think are really cute. Here's one of his latest samples. It's a picture of me, on a fairly good hair day, with more than ample belly buttons.



Later on, we discovered that his artistic abilities carried over to sculpture. He made a couple of really cute blue monsters from play dough today.


Here's his first monster, a happy one from the look on its face. After I took pictures, he added fingers and toes!



Here Ben is, posing with his first monster.




And here is the second blue monster. This one has a mustache and all his fingers and toes. Maybe I'm biased, but I think his artwork is really cute and quite sophisticated for his age.

Michelle Settles on a Plan...We Think

Michelle told me yesterday that she has decided to get a nursing degree. I talked with her about her previous plans to go into physical therapy, and how nursing may be more practical knowledge for her life, and she finally decided I was right. She talks about the possibility of serving a service mission sometime in her life.

So, now she's trying to decide on a school. She's leaning towards BYU-Idaho, and spent some time last night starting the application process. She really wants to figure out housing....

Meanwhile, we got all the leaves raked up in front of our house and shook the walnut tree until it rained walnuts. Now I get to crack them all open. Big job. I could let the kids help me, which would result in nuts and shells EVERYWHERE! Did I mention we have two walnut trees?

All these beautiful leaves on the maple tree in front of our house came down suddenly this week. It made a pretty carpet all over the grass and sidewalk. I sent the kids out to rake (play in) the leaves.



After much hard work, they came up with a really big pile. They look like they got big muscles workking so hard, don't they? Come see our big pile, Mom!



Ha ha! Alex is in the middle of the pile. After that, each kid had to take a turn being buried in leaves. Now, if I can just get them to actually rake UP the leaves into bags, my lawn can breathe.

Michelle and I took a tour of LDS Business College today. She's leaning towards NOT going there now. It is a nice campus, it just didn't feel right to her. She's looking into other options. I'm sure she'd love advice from her college-attending cousins and those involved in medical (nursing) programs. She wants to either commute from home this next year, or at least know someone wherever she ends up going.

Meanwhile, the kids have today and tomorrow off of school and we're gearing up for our annual Halloween party. We'll be showing "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavre Cave" again thi s year. It looks like we'll have about 12 guests!

Halloween 2006 at the Dupaixs

Here are Lisette and Dallin, dressed up to go the ward Halloween party. Lisette found this costume idea in a Family Fun article I'd saved, and insisted that I make her this costume. It turned out great. She won first prize in the costume contest!

The ward also had a pumpkin carving contest. We were to bring an already-carved pumpkin. I wanted something different, so I was searching the Internet for patterns when I found a website that told how to convert a picture to a pumpkin carving pattern. The ones on the website were very impressive. The guy used Paint Shop Pro, which I already have, so I decided to try converting a picture of Joseph Smith. This was the resulting carving.



I was kind of disappointed, until we turned off the lights. It was really hard to get a good photograph of it, but here are the best ones. I was amazed at the three-demensional detail!

I'm definitely going to have to do this again. If anyone would like me to convert a picture to a pumpkin carving pattern, just let me know. Hey, we could do one of Dad!












Just a week before Halloween, we got hit with the first snowstorm of the season. Tooele got quite a bit of snow, and Ben was SO excited to get out in it and build a snowman. I wasn't sure where he was working, and was surprised when I saw his creation. He did this little snowman all by himself. Pretty good for a 4-year-old, huh?