GoldenGrams

This morning I was thinking about the candy window we did back in 2004.  I was looking at the pictures and I thought I would share them with you since we didn't have the blog back in 2004.

ZCMI in Salt Lake used to have window displays during Christmas that were made entirely out of candy.  When ZCMI discontinued it Provo City took over and had the candy windows in the windows of businesses in downtown Provo.  We participated for a couple of years.  This was our entry.  It was a lot of work.  You might notice the picture of me and Rebecca on the fireplace and on the bookshelf.

Every surface that you see had to be made from something edible.  The pictures of us were coated with sugar.  The walls were frosting and gum sticks.  The floor was dyed coconut.  The fireplace was rock candy.  The bookshelf was rolled out Tootsie Rolls.  The door was pretzels.  The tree was sour straws.  The man was mostly fondant.  The popcorn strand was nerds so we had to buy a large quantity of nerds to sort out the white ones.  You can imagine where many of the rest went.

I can't remember what award we won for the window but it was featured on TV and on promotional posters.  The theme for this year was "O Christmas Tree."  We called our window "O Blasted Christmas Tree."

Maybe tomorrow I'll do a post about other candy windows.

This year I wasn't planning on doing anything extravagant with our costumes.  You remember last year's costumes? Well, this year I had no such motivation.  However, I had an idea last minute and went with it.

This costume is a little more...shall we say...revealing...than costumes I'm used to, but I couldn't resist:

I don't know how you'll react, but this costume has been enough to freak me and Dallas out.  Talk about scary!

With that costume as inspiration, we turned into a skeleton family.

Brooke and Caroline at our Halloween playgroup party.

I'm mad Caroline is blurry.  Turns out Brooke doesn't have a black shirt, and I didn't want to buy one.  Luckily, someone at the party happened to have a skeleton shirt just Brooke's size and they let us borrow it.  How nice!

We met up with our friends, the Fraziers, and trick-or-treated with them at the mall.  It was crowded, but we preferred that over getting rained on!

Check out the Fraziers' costumes:

Don't you want to be their friends now, too?  They are the characters from Alice in Wonderland - Alice, the White Rabbit, Tweedledee, and Tweedledum.

Tired girls after our evening trick-or-treating.

These next pictures show our annual Halloween party with my Mom's side of the family.  This is mostly for my parents' benefit as they were not there to see the costumes since they were attending the First Annual Glen Thomas Family Reunion in Omaha, Nebraska.  Some of us didn't like the idea of a fourteen-hour car drive merely to visit our siblings whom we never see, so we didn't attend.

While I was taking pictures of the costumes, someone said, "You should take pictures of the food!  That's what your Mom will really be sad she missed!"

There was tons of food and this dinner was deemed by all as the most successful potluck we've had to date.  So, Mom and Dad, was the visit to Omaha worth missing this?

We carved a pumpkin the other night.  Brooke and Caroline loved the excitement.

Be impressed - we grew that pumpkin in our garden.

I've been sitting here trying to figure out what those black spots are on our pumpkin in the next picture.  I just realized that I did auto-red-eye correct and the computer was trying to fix our jack-o-lantern's red eyes.  Ha!  I'm not going to re-edit the picture because 1) I think that's funny and 2) I'm too lazy.

Boo!

I feel guilty that we didn't post anything about Christmas.  We had a fun Christmas.  We just didn't take many pictures.  And I usually use pictures to inspire my posts.  Thus, I'm feeling very uninspired.

Hmm.

I guess I'll just upload what we have and you can peruse at your leisure.

Happy New Year!

Visiting Temple Square

Caroline with Grandma Golden

First taste of solid food

Just waking up

Caroline and Grandma Allen

I loved watching Brooke play with the nativity.  There was something profound about the way she would arrange the figures--everyone focused on the baby Jesus.  Everyone including a rubber ducky.

And what's this?  A lone sheep gone astray.  Find your way back to the fold!

We had a fun Thanksgiving.  Of course, the best part was being with family.  Unfortunately, we didn't take many pictures, but we did take a few of our girls with their cousins.

In this picture, Caroline (on the right) is next to her cousin, Adeline.  Adeline is about three months younger than Caroline.  We put them next to each other for a size comparison.  Generally, Caroline is the smallest baby around because she's only five months old.  Seeing her next to an even smaller baby completely shocked me.  She looked so big and chubby!  This picture doesn't do it justice.  Dallas was more on the side of Adeline, so the perspective is off.

Below are more pictures highlighting a wonky perspective.  These pictures feature Brooke and Caroline with my brother's kids.  We weren't expecting them for Thanksgiving, but my Mom found a sneaky way to get them to come at the last minute.

All weekend, we talked about getting the kids together for a cousins picture.  This was the best we could do.  Brooke insisted on sitting in a chair.  Right in the middle of all the kids.  And right in front.  This makes her look like a giantess from the land of Brobdingnag.

To give you the proper perspective, Natalie (the one holding Caroline) is almost 7, Emma is almost 5, and Luke just turned 2.  Brooke is 2 1/2.

My Mom and I laughed over these pictures until we were crying.

Good times.

The wait is over!  Here we are in all of our Halloween glory:

Cinderella, the Pumpkin, the Fairy Godmother, and the Prince

Let's take a closer look at my babies (and by babies, I don't mean Brooke and Caroline.  I'm referring to the costumes I labored over, of course!).

Cinderella and the Fairy Godmother at our ward Trunk-or-Treat.

I know, I know.  Fairy Godmothers should probably have wings.  And wands.  I was obviously more into making my own costume than caring about Brooke's.  By the time I got around to shopping for fairy wings, the store had sold out.  Oops.  Sorry Brooke!

Inspecting the loot.

Special thanks to Jacob and Laurie (my brother and sister-in-law) for unknowingly providing Caroline with her Halloween costume!

I just can't get enough of that cute face, drool and all!

My new favorite show is Project Runway.  This is the first season I've watched, and I just love it.

I watch in awe as the designers design, shop for, and then create these amazing outfits in a day or two.  I think part of the reason I like it is because I don't know anything about sewing so when anyone sews anything, I'm immediately impressed.  Also, they make it look so easy.  So easy that sometimes I start fancying myself a designer, thinking I could do that--just whip out a dress on a whim.

Therefore, I blame Project Runway for putting the idea into my head that I could sew our Halloween costumes this year.  Never mind that I don't know what I'm doing.  Never mind that I don't have any supplies or patterns, and that even if I did have them, I wouldn't know how to use or read them.

By all accounts, this endeavor was doomed to fail.  However, surprisingly, the costumes are coming along better than I expected.  (It was a little touch-and-go when I realized I needed to attach sleeves to my costume.  Sleeves!  I contemplated throwing modesty out the window at that point, because, hey, if there's one thing I learned from the movie Mean Girls, it's that Halloween costumes should be as skimpy as possible.  However, I stood strong and found a way to make them.)

We'll post pictures soon, but now I need to get back to the sewing machine!

Well, today is the last day of my thirty-one day marathon.  Some of you are happy that I'm done since Rebecca hasn't felt compelled to post anything and you are only here for Rebecca. For those of you who are going to have to have therapy from separation anxiety, I'm sorry that this has had to come to an end.

In honor of today's last post I planned an event to give you something to read about.  We celebrated Cinco de Mayo.  The Latin American blood runs deep in our family.  Rebecca and I spent a day in Tiajuana on our honeymoon.

To help us celebrate I built a pinata out of flour and old newspaper.

As it happens, the only spray paint we have is gold so it was our golden egg.

We invited the Fraziers and the Lintons to join us because it is more fun in numbers.  We also invited another neighbor who was walking by.

I didn't think it would take so much force to open up the pinata.  It's only newspaper and flour.

Ava, Emma, and Brooke loved the idea of candy!

We all got together on dinner and had a great Mexican feast.

Happy Birthday to Alvin. You're getting older.  Just face it man...one day sooner today than yesterday, you will be a dusty set of bones for some future civilization to dig up and wonder about.  There is no way to turn around and head back the other direction.  Kids who you once resembled will be calling you "old man" and "the geezer".  Anyhow, good luck with that whole getting old thing, I hear it's in style.  As for me I'm going to have my cryogenic chamber between Michael Jackson and Walt Disney.

Today is Stratton and Anna's wedding so today is dedicated to Stratton and Anna.

This is the picture they picked for their engagement picture.

I don't want to forget why we celebrate Easter.

Yesterday we attended Brooke's first Easter egg hunt.

It's a good thing that I gave Brooke some practice getting eggs while we were up at Grandma and Grandpa's house last weekend because the eggs went fast.  We were one of the few parents who actually allowed our child to pick up the eggs.  The rest of the parents were flying around picking up all the eggs for their children and, as a result, Brooke didn't get many eggs.

Brooke wasn't very happy when Mom went to participate in the women's egg hunt.  She just wanted Mom!  If you know how loud Brooke can be when she is crying, you can imagine how far and wide her voice carried!

Here's Rebecca racing against all the other women.  I was part of the men's egg hunt but in the initial start I ran into a guy who was standing in front of me but didn't take part in the race.  As a result there was no chance for me to catch up with the sweeping mob.

Brooke actually enjoyed the Easter Bunny.  I was thinking that she would be absolutely terrified by him.

I would like to wish a happy anniversary to my dad and step-mom.  Their anniversary was yesterday but since we weren't going to be blogging any more, it would have made little sense to have created a post for them yesterday.

Of course, we are going to keep posting.  In fact, I have something special planned and in the works.  I can't believe you actually bought our joke.  Did you know that they took the word "gullible" out of the dictionary?

Because of the time constraints of actually writing a blog and because blogs are becoming so blah, we have decided that we are going to stop updating this blog.  We have fleeting thoughts about posting every blue moon so don't stop checking to see if we have changed our minds.