Pumpkin Carving 2007

It's pumpkin carving time again, and this year several of the kids wanted pumpkins carved in their likeness. It's not an easy process, and not one the younger kids can even do. So, Mom got busy on the computer and then at the pumpkin carving table.

I started with this photo of Ben. I tweaked it in Paint Shop Pro, and came up with a pattern.



The resulting carved up pumpkin looked like this. Not bad, but wait until the lights go out.






Pretty cool, huh? I have made a pattern of George Bush, but I don't know if I'm going to get to it. I still have 2 kids left to do.

Autumn in the Canyon

For Family Home Evening this week, we took a trip up a local canyon to look at the fall colors. We were afraid we were too late to see much, but we were pleasantly surprised at how very beautiful it was.


We had a storm come through a few days ago, and it left some snow on the ground up here. You really can't see it in the pictures, but there was snow on the ground!



Isn't God an amazing artist?







Here are the kids posing for a picture. They're cold, and want to get back into the warm car. They really enjoyed the outing, though. There were cattle all over the place, and they were pointing them out all the way up and down the canyon.

Milestones

School has started again, and for the first time, all of my kids are in school! They go to 4 different schools, actually, which is also a family record. We drove Michelle up to BYU-Idaho. It was sad leaving her and even sadder not having her around. But, she is doing well and getting along well with her roommates--all of whom are from California!

Bountiful Garden This Year

Last year, I really struggled with my garden. Half of the seeds didn't germinate, and of those that came up, about 90% got eaten by earwigs before they really got a good start. It was very discouraging.

Well, this year it's a different story. I was much more choosy about what seeds I used, and the result has been spectacular! We also had much less of a problem with earwigs, so everything that came up, grew to maturity! Here's a picture of the garden.



The little dishtub in the foreground is what the ducks wade in when they visit the garden. We got the ducks so that we could have organic bug control. I am happy to report that it has worked very well. They just love to root out the snails, and I haven't even seen very many squash bugs this year. I had worried that they either would eat the honeybees or my garden plants, but that really hasn't been a problem. The ducks have worked out very nicely. They spend the night in the dog run (sans dog, of course).




At the far end of the garden, behind the corn rows, I've placed this twig trellis that I made. It supports a vigorous Armenian cucumber vine at present. I picked the first cucumber this morning, along with a bunch of greenbeans.

Face Painting

I had this brilliant idea one day, while sitting at our booth at Farmer's Market. I decided I needed to offer face painting at the market. Fortunately, I have plenty of willing live-in models. Here are some of my first tries at face painting.


Argh! Avast ye matey!



Lisette looks a lot like she did for Halloween last year in this full-face puppy design.


Dallin in one of the tiger faces.



Who is that masked man? Ah, Spiderman.



Here's a montage of several other designs I tried on the kids. There are others, including small designs like hearts, unicorns, butterflies and turtles for cheek or hand designs.

New Vehicle

Well, our old truck has been making some odd sounds, so Paul took it in and had it looked at. We were told that it had a worn ring, and that we should either rebuild or replace the engine. To replace the engine would cost about $3,500 (we didn't want to rebuild the engine on such an old truck).

We decided to go shopping for something that could hold our family (or at least most of us), and still pull the trailer. It was not an easy combination to find. The trailer weighs almost 10,000 pounds fully loaded, and most SUV's engines are too small. Add to that the fact that we were looking for a used vehicle, and the options got even smaller. We ended up finding a wonderful used Suburban at one of Larry Miller's used car lots. It was literally the only one we found that would fit the bill after 2 days of driving around searching car lots. Sometimes a car salesman would tell us their vehicle would pull our trailer, but we'd learned where to look for the manufacturer's specs as to how much it was really designed to pull. We didn't want to buy something that would get ruined because we towed something too heavy for it. Anyway, the only problem with the Suburban we found was the price. After talking it over and using 2 of our previous vehicles as trade-in, we decided to go ahead and purchase the Suburban. Here's a picture of it.



It's a 2003, which, coincidentally, is also the year of our trailer and our Taurus--the car we didn't use as trade-in. Our insurance went down a little, which helps, but it's still going to be a stretch to make the payments on this baby.

We spent the weekend before July 24th up a local canyon, camping in our trailer. It was fun and the Suburban did a great job pulling it. It's really a fun vehicle to drive, and it's loaded with "bells and whistles." As a fellow Suburban owner said, "It can pass everything except a gas station." It gets about 10 MPG, which is about what the truck used to get.

Beautiful Gardens

I thought I'd share some of the other pictures I took while on the tour.

Temple Square Tour

I took a tour of Temple Square last Wednesday with the Master Gardener group from Tooele. At the end of the tour we went up to the top of the Conference Center and looked at all the plants up there. Just before getting on the elevator to leave, I snapped this picture of temple square at dusk. You can click on it to see a larger version.

I remember as a child seeing the Salt Lake Temple and it was by far the largest building in the area, and was very visible from a distance. Things have sure changed since then!

Our New Trailer

We decided to invest in a travel trailer and found a good deal on a used one at Blaine Jensen RV Saturday. We signed papers today on it.

The exterior of our new trailer. I still say we need to paint a big blue 'Y' on it!


Paul checks out the "garage" storage area in back of the trailer.



This is the couch that turns into a double bed.


The dining area also turns into a double bed.

Paul tries out the queen sized bed. Pretty comfy.


Here's the little kitchen, complete with sink, stovetop, little oven and microwave, plus lots of cupboards.



And, last but not least, here are the three bunks. That makes a grand total of 9 sleeping spots!

Christmas 2006

What a great Christmas we had at our house! Everybody got just what they wanted. The kids got a karaoke machine, games, candy and more; Dad got a nice new down filled coat and slippers; Mom got new dishes, new bedding, a new digital camera and a replacement part for her pasta machine!

We were thrilled this year to have my parents close by, and to spend Christmas eve with them and other family for the first time in about 18 years! How blessed we are!

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?