The "GRINCH" comes to town

About 5 years ago Willie Dunford asked if I would dress up like the "Grinch" for a ward party...I had so much fun with it that it's continued year after year and I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to not dress up as the "king of sinful sots".  Here's a few pix of the day I visited Heather's preschool kids...I think I only made one student cry (there's always at least one) but by the end of my visit we were pretty good buddies.  

 Harley's always a little hesitant to put on the "Max" getup

 This is hilarious.  I ran over to the elementary school to visit some classes and went to Kate's class first.  I decided to make a frightening entrance and jumped into the classroom and yelled something kinda loud and obnoxious.  I scared this kid so much that he fell completely out of his chair and hit the floor.  He was laughing, I was laughing and the whole class erupted in laughter.  It was seriously the best reaction I've ever had...very worth it-I just wish I had the video camera running when it happened.  

 I think I asked the kids:  "Who likes the Grinch?"  I have quite a fan club.

The upside to this character is being obnoxious and rude to everyone I come into contact with because...hey, I'm the Grinch and...I can, and will every time I put this getup on...the downside?...trying to get all of the green off.  I can't wait until next year...

Kate's Christmas program

The first grade Christmas Program is always entertaining-of course for watching your own child but also to look around at the parents too.  It's quite amusing that as soon as the first graders march into the gym to line up on the stage, about 900 dads with video cameras jump up and start to film...yes, I'm not ashamed to say that I was one of those dads.  It was a great program packed into about 45 minutes.  Here's a clip of one of the songs performed:

Canyon Gallery commercial by Eli

I told Eli he should come to the gallery sometime and make a commercial for me. Here is his take on what the commercial should be like-it's pretty funny.

The Christmas tree hunt...

Eli is really into making movies with his new video camera he received on his birthday. The day after Thanksgiving we decided as a family to go cut down a Christmas tree for our house. Usually Heather, along with the kids and most of her family will congregate somewhere in the mountains of Nephi (about 3 hrs away or so), pay 5 bucks and cut down a 47 foot tree, strap it on the top of the car and bring it home. It sounded hard to do this year and way too far away. We found a tree farm closer to where we live that would let you go out in the vast array of Christmas trees, find the perfect match and then cut it down. When I say vast array I'm really being sarcastic. This farm had mostly "Grinch" type trees that hung weird no matter how you looked at em...or they looked half dead, or they just looked well,... stupid. We had to browse the whole place just to make sure we were getting the right one for us. Here's Eli's video of "tree hunting" that you certainly will enjoy (set to the Superman theme song). Blogger doesn't produce the greatest quality movies but this one is cool anyway. Enjoy:





The worst part of putting up the tree is...the lights! It's kinda like prepping for painting a wall...it blows! The fun part is putting the decorations on. The lights?...not so much.


Kate loves to sweep up any messes...or pine needles from
the tree. Liam prefers the vacuum




Harley makes sure we're doing it right


The tree...in all her glory.

Thanksgiving

This year Thanksgiving was hosted in our home...YIKES! The pressure was on to have a perfect experience for all who would be coming. As you can see in this picture of Kate, the turkey came out perfect! It didn't happen without plenty of blood,sweat and tears, that's for sure. Heather and Clayton found a perfect way to cook a turkey from foodnetwork.com by Alton Brown...thanks dude! There also was a recipe for the best dressing I've ever had...honestly, it was incredible: cranberries, apples, italian sausage...how could you go wrong? Here's some pix to give you a feel for how the day was.


Here's Liam quite proud of the uncooked turkey

...and let's throw it in the oven.














The day turned out perfect with Grandma, Grandpa & the Cheney family-Happy Thanksgiving!

Disney Piano Recital

Eli and Chloe were in a piano recital recently. Their teacher thought it would be fun to make it a Disney Movie theme. Basically the requirements were to pick a favorite Disney movie and then play a song from that movie. Chloe wanted to play "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" from The Lion King. Thanks to her Aunt Amy's makeup skills, she became one of the lions from the movie. Eli couldn't wait to dress up as his hero "Woody" from Toy Story and show off his skinny legs in his "jeggings". Oh, you've never heard of jeggings? Kate actually introduced them to me a few months ago-they are a legging that looks exactly like well worn skin tight jeans, hence... jeggings. Here's the funny part of the story. Heather made Eli's costume a week or so in advance just in time for Toy Story 3 to make it to the Kaysville Theatre. If any of you know Eli, you know that he has no fear of doing pretty much anything in front of a crowd. He decided to go to Kaysville Theatre with some of his friends dressed in full character to meet his fans. He was quite surprised that so many kids wanted to meet him that night. "Hey Woody, will you come say hi to my little boy?" was one of many requests that the moms and dads in the crowd would ask. He felt like a celebrity for a moment-he's quite the character.

Fall Break at the Cheney's Cabin

Fall break comes at a great time for everyone...the kids have already been in school for about 6 weeks and with Fall in the air...it's time to get outside and have a vacation. The Cheney's invited our family to join theirs for an unforgettable getaway to their cabin. Here we are posing for the future Christmas card for this year. We thought we'd save some cash and have a combined card for both families...in fact, here's the card everyone...so now we don't even have to send one out-happy? Just kidding, well here's what we did while we had a few days together:

The weather was amazing...around 65 and sunny everyday while we were there.

...and the scenery was incredible too.



One of the first things Josh wanted help with was to take down a few aspen
trees that were threatning to fall down soon and take out some power lines.



Clayton was more than willing to climb up the tree with all his
climbing gear and tie a rope around the top to help with the takedown.



It was no problem for this climber.




The tree removal crew.




Doing the final checks on the ropes and heres a video clip of
the results:

Sisters

...and the cousins.

Best friends

What the??? Eli's new facebook profile pic

Here's a clip of Eli showing off how strong he is...or looks:

The next day we went to Ruth Lake in the Uintahs to do some

rock climbing and fishing. It doesn't look too cold here but it's about 45 degrees.

Heather was content as long as she was sitting in the sunshine.

Now it's starting to look and feel much colder...we had no idea that we'd be

climbing surrounded by snow.

Eli's showing off that he's grown this past year...this is his jacket from last year.

Clayton's fine with the cold weather...the disguised person next to him is Chloe

who wore several jackets.

This is the area that the kids would wait for their turn to climb. It took

forever for the sun to finally hit this spot for warmth.

Clayton does a lead climb to get the rope in place.

All set.

Liam's up first and checks out the scene.

A view from the top

Chloe gives it a shot

Liam and Eli make it to the summit.

The rock was very cold on the fingers but the kids did awesome.

It was a little warmer than "ice fishing" but I think between everyone who fished, only 1 fish was caught.

Cold or not, the girls were busy making their yarn hair bows.

I recently bought a new camera since Kate broke our other one. The new camera is

very cool and takes great close up shots.

The last day we were there Josh took us to a place where the kids could catch small fish

with a net-they had a blast doing this.

Got one

The grand prize of "net" fishing

We had so much fun together for the few days we spent at the Cheney's cabin. I almost forgot to

mention that we almost lost Harley in the Uintahs when we went climbing and fishing. I forgot to throw the leash in the car when we left for the day so luckily the kids had some yarn from the

bows they were making. We rigged up a "leash" for him and headed to our destination. It wasn't until we went from climbing to the lake for fishing that he was missing. After about 30 minutes at the lake I realized he was gone. Josh took off back to the climbing rock (about a 10 minute hike) and there Harley was, shivering next to a big rock. Sorry Harley, you probably wish you belonged to a more responsible pet owner.