Minivan: Fully Loaded

[re-posted due to a blogging error]

Everyone is getting sick of me making them stand still for these.  :)

Tonight we finally managed to get the pumpkins carved up.  All of the kids except Ciera worked on their own with little assistance.  Ciera wasn’t very interested in participating.

I think they turned out pretty good.  I was a slacker and didn’t do one this year.

Click the picture above to view a slide show of the evening.

I’m proud of Tanner and his football team.  Today we played the undefeated Monroe Bearcat Black team (our team is Bearcat Orange).  This was the final regular season game against the home town rival.  Everyone was pumped up for it.

This year the Black team has been completely dominating everyone they've played, usually scoring 3-4 touchdowns in just the first quarter of each game, with final scores of 30-40+ to zero!  No team has scored on them all season long.

Well, today we managed to hold them to a single touchdown in the first quarter, no touchdowns in the second, and just two more in the second half.  Sadly we failed to pull off a score ourselves.

Final score was 20-0.  Black’s lowest score of the season.

Secretly I think most of us expected another blowout, but the kids played great and really gave em a game. 

Now on to the playoffs!

The leaves have been raining down from the trees on Microsoft’s campus.  I had to walk through this river on my way to/from the bus today.

Picture taken with my phone – so not great quality.

Well, after our last nail-biter win, Tanner’s football team is officially in the playoffs!

We are now 3-3 on the season.  Started off rocky, losing our first three games, then rebounded to win the last three straight. 

Now we have one more game left in the regular season, but regardless of the outcome, we definitely play at least one round in the playoffs on Halloween day!

The final game of the season is against the #1 team in the league.  They haven’t lost a game yet, but more than that, they haven’t even allowed a team to score on them! 

I’d love to see us pull off the upset of the century and win, but all said and done I’ll settle for a score!

I expect a heck of a game and hope the weather cooperates!

I have to say without my wife our family (especially the kids) would not likely have the fun we have each year when it comes to the holidays.  While we may not decorate as much as some of our neighbors (I swear they spend days/weeks working on it), Jody doesn’t slack off in my opinion.

Here are some pictures of just the exterior of the house.  There’s also all kinds of stuff inside that I haven’t captured pictures of yet.

Click the picture above for a slide show of the other decorations.

Man they are all over our yard now.  Far worse than it was during spring and summer.  I keep thinking with the cold weather we’ve had lately that they would be disappearing, but they seem to be thriving!

These shots were taken this morning of the most common species found around the yard.  I’m not kidding when I say these are everywhere!

These are the pictures of the kids taken by the school’s selected photography studio this year. 

I’m glad that now days they are willing to just sell us a CD with the Copyright for the pictures.  This way I can save lots of money by having my own prints done, and I can share them easily without the need to scan them.

We recently had to deploy additional baby security this past week.  Our youngest, Ciera, has decided that climbing anything and everything is her current life mission.  All of our kids have been climbers, but I’m starting to wonder if she takes the gold medal as there seems to be no stopping her.

As you can see we have a tall table – which to her is Mount Everest.  Rather than letting her fall off this mountain (yes she has reached the summit a few times already), we have resorted to these “safety” straps. Without these in place she will pull out the chairs and scale her way onto the table. 

So far this solution seems to be working.  But I’m not convinced she’s given up yet – just slowed her down.  She’s fearless.

Before grooming:

After grooming:

Note: These pictures are from earlier this summer.  Meant to post this then and forgot until I saw the pictures again today.