FHE

Last night we had FHE with Dave and Melis and their kids as well as Jan and Jenn.  We had a little lesson on the first Thanksgiving and then Melis had a couple of really cute activities for the girls.  They made an Indian headband with construction paper and and a teepee out an ice cream cone.  It was really cute.  Here are some pics of the festivities:

Emma and Annika had finished their headbands and they were making some for Matthew and Mieka.

Our little Indian brave!

Matthew pondering deeply about the meaning of life.  Actually he was being fed some pears and was very excited to be eating, as usual.  As a matter of fact he was so excited that he left his little Indian headband on for a very long time.  He looked so cute!

Emma is trying to figure out how to apply frosting to an upside down ice cream cone.

She ended up getting help with the frosting, but she decorated the rest by herself.

In the end they both ended up just wanting to eat the candy.  They both had fun though.

Some Cute Pics!

We got our pictures back from the photographer last weekend.  I didn't care for the one of my whole family, but I thought that a lot of the other ones were really cute.  However, I think next time we will not try to do my whole family at the same time as we do our individual family since it is a little hard to get the kids to smile and stay focused that long.  However, we did get some cute pics.  Here they are:

For some reason the pictures all look really washed out when I upload them onto the blog.  They are much brighter on my computer, but at least you can see them.

Here is my whole family, 37 people!

Here are Jan and Jenn with all the kids.  This one was funny!  Imagine 16 adults standing behind the photographer being silly and trying to get their children to look at the photographer and smile.  It's a wonder that they didn't all start crying with all the confusion.

Here's a couple of our family shots.  I wish the kids had been smiling, but we had been there for about 1 1/2 hours by then and they had pretty much had it.

I like this one where we are looking into the water.

This is unusual.  Emma never smiles for the photographer.  We got lucky here!

Matthew really did not want to smile at all that day, but I still thought he was cute!

I love this one of Matthew and Daniel.  They look so handsome!

This one is my favorite picture, I LOVE IT!

"There's lot's of prophets around here!"

Jan, mom the kids and I went up to the Church Office Building on Wednesday to visit Jenn at work.  We had a nice time.  We met some of the people Jenn works with and they were really nice.  There were a lot of pictures of prophets on the walls and lots of men wearing suits and Emma said, "There's a lot of prophets around here!"  It was really cute!  Here are some pics:

right outside the cafeteria where we had lunch, it was huge and had tons of different tasty food choices.  Matthew is holding Jenn's name badge.  He loved to play with it.

After lunch we went outside for a bit to have a look around.

Here is one of Emma looking at the statue of Emma and Joseph.  She loves Emma (obviously) and every time we see the billboard for the Emma Smith movie she gets excited, so she was really excited to see this statue!

It was windy and cold!

Matthew is holding Jenn's badge again!

A day at the Zoo!

Emma, Matthew and I went to Hogle Zoo last Friday with some of my family.  Emma had a wonderful time.  She loved the animals and most of all the carousel.  Matthew did very well and wasn't fussy until the very end.  His favorite part was a strap on Melissa stroller.  He played with it most of the time, at least it kept him happy.  I guess he isn't way excited about the zoo yet. 

It was nice for both me and the kids to get out, and we all had a nice time despite the bees that kept trying to attack us at lunch time!

Emma on the carousel!  She was so excited about the elephants this time.  She kept asking to see them and then was so excited to ride the elephant on the carousel.  

Here is Emma showing us how long her arms can go.  They aren't quite as long as an ape yet!

Here is a picture of most of the children in the group standing in front of the giraffes.  Emma is on the far right and Matthew is in the back seat of Melissa's stroller, playing with the strap of course.

Here is a close up of Matthew.  You can see his little hand grasping the strap that kept him occupied the entire time.  I love his expression in this picture.  It is so typical of how he often looks!

The Pumpkin Patch

It has obviously been some time since I wrote, so this is actually a week old, but I thought I would write about it anyway.

We went to the Cornbellys Pumpkin Patch at Thanksgiving Point for FHE a little over a week ago.  We went with Dave & Melissa and Jan & Jenn.  The girls had a wonderful time.  They were so cute and just so excited to see everything and try all of the fun little things they had there. 

The first thing we saw was a little kids play area.  They had a cute little play house with a slide that Emma loved.

In the same area, they had princess dresses that the kids could dress up in and a pumpkin shaped coach like the one in Cinderella.  The girls like that a lot.

Here they are sitting in the driver seat of Cinderella's coach.

Emma dressed up like Cinderella and sat inside the coach like a princess.  The dress was very large, but she seemed to like it anyway.

After the children's play area we went through the children's corn maze, played a ducky racing game and plalyed on some toys and slides they had there.

Here is Emma coming out of a little black tunnel.

They also had a little "train" ride that the kids could ride on.

Here are Daniel and Emma in the "train" ride.  I guess Daniel is just a big kid.

Here's a picture in the pumkpin patch.

Here's Emma and Annika  sitting in all the pumpkins they had for sale.

This was at some point during the night.  Matthew looks a little board, but Mieka sure looks happy!  They were both very good the whole night to just stay in their strollers and be happy.

Matthew looks a little more excited here.  I guess the pumpkin must taste pretty good.

They had this enormous rocking chair there for taking photos on, so Daniel, Emma and Annika jumped up and got their pictures taken.

Just as we were getting ready to leave, they announced that they were going to start the pig races so we stayed for a little while to see that.  Unfortunately it wasn't very exciting and Matthew was getting pretty bugged.  As you can tell from the picture, Daniel was loving it!!  :)