Friday Flashback 10.29.10

Well, I just don't have (or make) the time to blog like I used to. Maybe someday I'll get back into putting something up every day, or every other day, we'll see.

But today, I have some time...

Look at this old Halloween picture...
Only four years ago... crazy!

This year, we couldn't be less prepared for Halloween. We are mostly recycling costumes this year, except Duncan. He's the only one that wanted to be something we didn't have. He'll be a Bakugan character named "Dan". We'll hopefully carve pumpkins tonight. Our ward "Fall Festival" is tomorrow night, and we'll be spending the day in Pasadena on Sunday. Should all be fun.

Scouted 4 Food

Last Saturday, Duncan (and I) participated in something called, "Scouting 4 Food". It's a food drive. Between the hours of 8am and 4pm, scouts all over the area were in front of stores asking people to buy a couple extra items, and donate them to the food drive. The cub scout pack Duncan is in, volunteered to collect food from 8am-10am in front of a Stater Bros. They did awesome. They filled the equivalent of about 6 blue bins!

Here's Duncan with a fellow Wolf as they began their service.



A shot of Duncan working his charm on shoppers entering the store.

Once the cub pack was done at 10am, I needed to go to the Abertsons where the Boy Scout Troop was doing the same thing from 8am-12noon, to see how they were doing. Duncan was a bit tired, but decided to stay since only ONE scout showed up (I was a little unhappy about that).

I was very proud of Duncan. He was a little shy in the beginning, but the more he did it, the more confident he got. He did have some rejections, and those did weaken his confidence, but he had more successes than rejections. The cub scout motto is "Do Your Best", and Duncan certainly did that. Scouting is fun.

Fair Trip

Time to get a little caught up on some bloggy items...

It was a little over a month ago, but we took a trip out to the L.A. county fair during the opening weekend.

We had a great time. It was pretty darn HOT the day we went, but it was hot most of the time anyway, so it was kind of unavoidable. We got there very close to the opening time, so we could beat some of the heat. We did, but we were in the heat a lot too. The kids did great dealing with the heat though. So, here are some pictures from that day...

We did the outdoor stuff first. We visited the animals and the kids did some "farming".


After the farming, they were led to the "store". I'm pretty sure the idea was to show how we get the food we eat. It's all so hectic, that the idea gets lost in the shuffle. But, the kids had fun with it, so that's good.

In one of the children's' buildings at the fair, the theme was medieval times or something. There was a photo-op area, and in that area was a chance to "climb" Rapunzel's hair. We told them to pretend like they were hanging on... but they just leaned back.

I had to take matters into my own hands, and demonstrate it for them. By then, the boys were not interested in doing it again. Plus there were a bunch of people waiting to take their turn.

Tegan did it just like daddy, but Jennan thought the boys' method was just fine.

There was also a dinosaur building. We walked through that and saw all the cool animatronic sets. Outside, there were a few dinosaurs as well. Liam tends to like the flying ones pretty well, so he wanted a picture with this one. Anna had the other kids go in the shot too.

There was a pirate section. It was outside, so we didn't go here till much later in the day when the temperature was dropping. We had spent the afternoon going through all the retail buildings (along with about 80% of the other fair goers that day). We didn't spend much time here, but it was kind of a cool area.

Before we left, the kids wanted to energize their feet. It only lasted a few minutes before they were back to complaining about all the walking, but we were on our way out, so the whining didn't last too long.

Like I said in the beginning, we did have a good time. Part of that is the kids being older and more interested in all that we're seeing and doing. They can walk a lot longer. They're easier to feed, etc. We look forward to next year's fair.

Friday Flashback 10.01.10

Hey, look at me... I'm blogging!

Today's flash back photo comes from all the way back to April 28, 2010! Wait, what? That's not that long ago...



Duncan getting some awards he had earned, at the pack meeting in April.

Well, it turns out, that was the last day we took any pictures with the new camera I gave Anna six months previous, in October of 09. Why was it the last picture? Very soon after this picture was taken, the camera got washed in the laundry! We tried the "rice" method of drying out the camera, but it never worked again. We've been using our old camera ever since.

A few weeks ago, I found a deal online for a camera that was very close to the one we washed, and I bought it! It's a slightly nicer model that the one before. It's a Sony DSC-w330. what it enables us to do, is see those pictures that are on the memory card of the last camera. Luckily, the memory card was fine after it's washing. So, yeah. It's nice to have a nice camera once again.