Turkey Balloon Launch

Souveniers

 Dad brought souveniers back from Canada. It was like early Christmas.

Cousins in Town!

 Rebecca could hardly speak through her giggles while we played Balderdash Sunday night.

 Sam and Eva played "doggies" for hours on end.

Baby Nora kept score.

Volleyball Champs

 The Broomfield 1st Ward YW won the regional volleyball tournament this weekend. Rebecca couldn't participate as much this year because her ballet rehearsals often conflicted with practices and games, but she got to be there on Saturday morning. And she had fun.

 Check out those crazy socks.

The pep talk worked!

A Suit's Homecoming

 Ben's suit was made in Canada, so he decided to take it on a little trip so it could see its homeland. Here Ben and his suit are visiting Vancouver. Ben is wearing a nametag because he presented at an engineering conference during his suit homecoming tour. The conference is called IMECE: International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition. I think it's kind of like the Continental Congress, only it's in a nice, cool place, and they're not actually forming a government. Instead, they watch Power Point presentations and eat good food. I think Ben's suit is lucky for several reasons. First, the suit is with Ben. Second, it gets to hear all the cool Power Point presentations (if it has some kind of auditory sensing system). Third, isn't Ben really handsome?

It Floats!

This contraption actually floats in the bath tub and can be steered with a remote controller. Spencer's going to see if the lifeguards at the community center will let him drive it around the swimming pool.

Folk Tales

It snowed! There have only been 15 years since 1880 that Denver hasn't gotten snow in October, and this happened to be one of those magical 15 years. Ah. It was the loveliest Colorado fall I can remember. There weren't any blizzards to knock the leaves off the trees prematurely. Today, though, it's cold and white (and pretty), and we've had a fire roaring in the fireplace all morning.
For literature this week we studied folk tales from around the world. Each of the kids chose a folk tale and then presented it in a new way. Spencer did "The Half Chick" from Spain and retold it in comic book form.
Rebecca chose "The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal" from India and retold it with this cool storyboard. I love her innovation with the paper cage. Ingenious!
Eva reenacted "Connla and the Fairy Maiden" from Ireland. It's cool to find folk tales about fairies, and she was excited to find out that we have some ancestors from Ireland. Does that mean we have ancestors that were fairies? Perhaps. It wouldn't surprise me to find out Eva has fairy ancestors.

Dance Festival: Thriller

Stake Dance Festival

After spending from 8:00 to 4:00 at Monarch High School for the Lego competition, we went home, rushed through our Saturday chores, stopped by McDonald's and grabbed some hamburgers, and went back up to the high school for the Boulder Stake Dance Festival. Our awesome Broomfield 1st Ward youth danced to Hand Jive from Grease. They did a marvelous job.

This is the grand finale, Cotton-eyed Joe.

Lego Robotics

Look at this great Leo Robotics team, The Thinkers. They met at Monarch High School at 8:00 Saturday morning to get ready for the state qualifying meet. It was the first time any of them had been to a First Lego League competition, so they weren't sure what to expect. But they did a great job and learned a lot.
In the morning they had several practice rounds before going in to the real competition.

Mr. Ben gave them a great pep talk before their last competition. They didn't move on to the state meet, but it was a great season.

First Lego League

With a fresh supply of candy, Eva and Rebecca have decided to try out grandma's M&M test taking methodology. They like it.

The 2010 Candy Trading Negotiations took place Sunday night at the Terry home. All came out triumphant.

Sickies

Spencer and Eva have succumbed to the nasty, horrible, awful sickness that has been going around the 'hood. It lasts about a week and has kept many a child away from the Sacrament Meeting Program and Halloween. Horrors!

We are counting our blessings that it struck one child after the primary program (well, sort of) but allowed her to participate in Halloween, and struck the next child the day after Halloween. When will the third child be struck?

Daddy Time

Eva waited for this Activity Days Daddy Daughter Date for months! She sewed a skirt to wear to it, made Halloween placemats, made invitations, and planned a fun time. Here she is next to Sister Larsen's tempting kitty litter cake.

Ben and Eva created the most heavily decorated pumpkin of the bunch.

Here's Eva with her beautiful meatloaf mice. We learned that making meatloaf mice out of ground chicken is not the best idea. Chicken doesn't have enough fat in it to keep the mice from drying out into little mummies.

And when he isn't making shower costumes or going to Halloween parties or doing construction projects or working on research or teaching high school, Ben coaches a Lego Robotics team. Their qualifying meet is this coming Saturday, so they've been putting in some hours. You can see that our house doesn't have as much floor space as is desirable for a Lego Robotics team, but at least nobody gets lonely.

Karate Kid

Anybody remember this scene? Ralph Macchio kept getting beat up by the cool, blonde karate guys but he had told Ali that he'd see her at the dance. So Mr. Miyagi helped him build this shower costume (very discreet) so he could go to the dance incognito.

Well, Ben had somewhere he wanted to go incognito, too. Only it wasn't to a dance. It was trick-or-treating.

But he couldn't fool this pirate at the ward trunk-or-treat.

It's Count Spencecula (that's a truly weird-looking weird). Do you think he's hiding some candy under his cape?

Rebecca couldn't decide if she should be a dog or a clown, so she was a dog clown.

Here's Eva with her friend Anna.