We took Brooke to the ward Christmas party to meet Santa Claus. She was anxious about getting to Santa, but when the time finally came she wasn’t too keen at being on Santa’s lap. It turns out that she was just wanting the treat bags that Santa was handing out.
Brooke was enraptured by one of the little girls of the ward who was trying to unwrap a piece of candy. Brooke, our little chow hound.
A very quick recap of last year’s Christmas festivities in the Thomas house.
[quicktime]http://blog.dallasgolden.com/Media/ChristmasMovie.mov[/quicktime]
Every year my mom’s side of the family gets together for a Halloween dinner. Some of us get more into dressing up than others, as you will see, but we all have a great time nonetheless.
Without further ado–Halloween 2008!
Can you guess who we are?
No, Dallas is not a wall. Here’s another pose in case you still don’t get it:
Get it now? He’s the yellow-brick road! And yes, Brooke is a ballerina, but not just any ballerina. She’s the ballerina munchkin. Grandma Allen gave her the tutu and we had to put it to good use!
Here’s another look at the munchkin:
These next pictures are of my extended family so many of you will not know who they are. Sorry. Just enjoy the costumes.
This is the best picture we had of Sam and Kathy. (Sam is the blue wizard.)
Andy and Amanda and family:
My grandpa (a devil) with Rachel:
My grandma (a witch):
Clint and Nani:
Bryce. It may appear that he’s not in costume, but turns out, the day before he went to a store to get a game for his Wii. At the store, the employees were all wearing black t-shirts and giving them away for free. Bryce took one and used it to dress up as one of the employees of that store.
Those are all the pictures we took. I just realized that we didn’t even take any of my parents. Oops.
We had a fun Halloween!
A couple of years ago I was taking a film production class in which we were broken into groups and each person was assigned to write a script. We then voted upon the script which we wanted to film. My script was met with much enthusiasm and was voted as the script to be filmed. Now I have a theory that nearly every new filmmaker/film student will without fail do either a corny comedy, a Star Wars fan film, a pointlessly violent whatever, or a horror. And I must admit that I fell into that theory with creating Facing Fear, but I kind of think of it as more of a exploration into an idea.
When I was writing Facing Fear I came up with the concept of fear’s purpose. Then I wrote the script outline around that. I came up with one short scene in my mind with all of the shots, which brought on the concept of having Fear living in the forest. That specific scene I was very insistent about having in the film so I made sure it was there and you can see it in the film when Clark first gets out of the car and senses Fear. The rest came together into the script which was shot.
The final film didn’t get as much open enthusiasm as we had expected and after sitting back and watching it over and over again I see places where I would like to have done it differently to improve some of the poor dialog and editing to make the film more engaging. Overall I feel pretty proud with what we did with the limited resources we were provided with and with the knowledge I had at the time. I also have to brag that my film was the only film shown which caused my somewhat pompous professor to actually say “wow” to himself over some of the shots.
So here is Facing Fear! It is about 12 minutes long so don’t watch it until you can devote the time to it.
Also we probably would rate it at a mild PG-13 for blood and minor horror.
Rebecca’s sister, Sarah, got married this weekend down in St. George. We were there to witness the occasion. The wedding was in St. George and the reception was in Cedar City.
Our cute family
Abe and Klarissa
Ben and his girlfriend Chelsey
Glen with a sign at the reception barn
Rebecca’s family with Jeff
Jeff being hoisted up by his friends
Jeff Excell
Brooke hanging out with the women folk
Jacob’s family: Natalie, Jacob, Emma, Laurie, and Luke
Natalie, Brooke, and Emma
Sarah with all of the kids
Ben, Kim, and Glen
Lastly, Sarah and Jeff Excell. You may be saying to yourself, “If this is a post about Sarah and Jeff’s wedding then why are they the last picture on the post?” We did this so you would keep scolling down to the end of the post. You have made it so congratulations! And congratulations to Jeff and Sarah Excell!
