Thanksgiving!

Some of the kids found a King Snake. My uncle was not thrilled they disturbed him and made them put him back. Yay Uncle Alvin! Adrienne was so terrified she ran to the corner of the barn. Sorry Adrienne...it still makes me giggle. I don't know the kids names' in the picture. They are some of my cousins' kids and I don't know which cousins. If any of you recognize them let me know.


We had every meal here. This is about 1/3 of the family. 1/3 wasn't in the "barn" at the time and the other 1/3 didn't come this year. Notice the disco ball hanging from the ceiling. This is for the dances we have during the reunion. They usually invite the youth from town. We don't want people marrying their cousins right? Notice the torture devices on the wall. No really it's farm equipment and cooking utensils. I think they're even still used. I washed a potato masher with a handle that was made from a tree branch. Very exciting.


I'm not going to attempt to name all the people in the pictures though the sweet lady in the rocking chair is my Grandma Hancock! I'm so lucky to have this family!


Hans spent every waking minute in the kitchen with his Dad, Mom and Aunt Lavern. Many others helped many hours but those 4 never seemed to leave. Those dutch oven yams were amazing!

Happy Birthday Luke!!!

That's right ANOTHER birthday. What a great baby Luke was! I couldn't get enough of him. He's grown up into a funny, sweet, creative, entertaining 9 year old. I'm so thankful for Luke and all the wonderful things he brings to our family!

Happy Birthday Cole!!!

That's right we have celebrated yet another birthday in our house. Cole is 11! What an amazing 11 years it's been with this kid. It's so fun to watch his "obsessions" grow from Blues Clues, to Batman, to Star Wars, and now sports. When Cole gets into something he puts his whole heart in it. I couldn't find my box of pictures that have all his baby pictures so this is the best I could come up with.
Happy Birthday Cole!
Here are the pictures!!!

More Halloween...

This is our group of trick-or-treaters. We had more join later but I didn't get another picture.


I couldn't find Noah's costume for trick-or-treating so I improvised.

Let's play...

Very appropriate to Halloween is posting about our "pet" spider. I'm not sure how long our tarantula has been around but we first noticed it just over a year ago. Yesterday I saw it on the wall close to it's house (hole). So I quickly took a picture (unfortunately with my phone). I love spiders. I've instructed our pest control company to avoid the area around the tarantula and it's doing fine so far. So here's the "game". I have a link with pictures of different species of tarantulas. Everyone take a look then post a comment about which one you think it is. If you have any ideas about whether it's a male or female I'd love to hear your opinion on that too. My guess is female based on it's width. I'm also hoping it's a female since they live 30-40 yrs. as opposed to a male's 3-6 year life span. Then after all that fun go ahead and submit a name idea. Tarantula Gallery

Costumes...

Here are the rest of the kids dressed to go to the ward party Friday night. The only thing creepier than Cole's costume is the fact that Sage's unicorn looks like the dementor (Cole) sucked the life out of it.

Smurfette...

Ashley decided to be Smurfette for Halloween. It's been fun coming up with the costume and I only had to sew the hat! Noah was completely mesmerized. I thought he'd be scared but he thought it was great. Ashley went to a YW costume party dressed like this and had to walk passed all the other wards youth that weren't dressed up to get there. A year ago she would have refused to even get out of the car so I'm proud of her for overcoming that fear.

Happy Birthday Ashley!!!

Ashley turned 13 on the 16th! Here's how I'm thinking of it...in 2 years she'll have a learner's permit. AAAAAAHHHH!!!!! Really though, I'm so blessed to have Ashley as my daughter. We have so much fun together and I know that's a rare thing at this age. I love her so much.

Fall!!!!

Fall is my favorite season. I'm so excited it's cool outside! The kids were pretty excited too. They ran right outside in their rarely used jackets to play. Including Noah. He could stay outside for hours. He loves it!