Happy Halloween!!!

Halloween is so much fun! This has been a great season for our family. Last night we carved our pumpkins and had a wonderful time. Bryce always hates pulling the guts out of the pumpkin, he doesn't care much for goopy, messy things. Gavin and Dad worked hard together to make a happy/scary pumpkin. Aubrey designed her jack-o-lantern face and then cut out Logan's pumpkin for him while Dad cut out most of hers.

Parker did his cutting entirely by himself. It got pretty hard but he really stuck with it. Logan was very protective of his pumpkin and didn't want anyone to get too close to it. They turned out well and it was a great night for our family.

Earlier in the month, we also took our yearly trip to Gardner Village to visit the witch displays there. If you haven't ever been, it is a really fun (and free) activity, especially for kids. This year we downloaded a scavenger hunt that you can do while you are there and after we found everything on the list, we got a 25 cent cookie from the bakery at Gardner Village. We all had a really exciting time and the kids all loved the cookie at the end.

All in all, it has been a great month and a wonderful holiday. We are looking forward to trick-or-treating tomorrow and class parties and all of the fun that comes with Halloween. Have a very...

Happy Halloween!!!

From the DeMouxs

What is Joy Anyway

Children bring us joy. I don't mean that only in the grand sense of things in some immense gigantic way. I think children remind us of the joy that there is in small things. Today, we went to the park to play. Bryce, Aubrey, Parker and Gavin made immediate friends with every other child at the park (age 2 years to 11 years). They ran around like banshees (which is fine when we are outside) and had a wonderful time with their new bffs. However, Logan was the one that really got to me. He is at that akward age where he doesn't want to sit in the stroller while the other kids play, but he is a little too young to actually be able to do much serious play. Walking on sand is a challenge for him. Yet, because it was hard for him to balance on the sand, he fell over and his little hands ended up immersed in the tiny particles. He was immediately thrilled. He spent the next 30 minutes grabbing handfulls of sand, raising them shoulder height and then dropping them. He couldn't get enough. He ended up covered from head to toe in sand, but he had the time of his life and I remembered how much joy there is in a pile of sand.

Also, Bryce has been working on a project for the reflections contest at his school. Their subject is "WOW" (whoever came up with that lame idea should be sent back to kindergarten where people still have immaginations). Bryce originally wanted to make a video about some times you might say "wow" in your life, but that didn't work out. So, he decided he would take a picture. His subject was our easily excitable dog, Moka. Bryce spent about 45 minutes in the yard trying to get a picture of the entire dog (we ended up with lots of pictures of rear ends as Moka ran through the frame before Bryce got the picture). He stuck with it and we were really proud of him. Take a peek at the picture he chose, he is really proud of it. He, too, is a joy!!

Melissa Hypothesises

I have a theory on smartness (yes, that is the technical term). I propose that an adult female has a certain reservoir of smartness available to her. Each time she gets pregnant, the growing baby, in need of smartness of its own, saps some of the smartness from her reservoir, leaving her happy, but less smart than before. I think I am a prime example of this as with the birth of each child I become more scatterbrained and less quick witted. I simply don't remember things that used to be no problem. However, this weekend I had a surprising surprise. I got a call from my younger brother looking for help with his calculus homework. Naturally, knowing that my smartness is depleted (not to mention it has been 12+ years since I have attempted any calculus) I was skeptical about whether I would be able to help. However, my reservoir of willingness to try anything once is not so depleted so I opted to give it a go. Happily, when I arrived at his house and opened the book I found that although my smartness has thinned, apparently the calculus pods were still intact. Between the two of us (with one late assist by my brother, Kevin) we were able to complete the assignment without too much difficulty. It was nice to be able to work on difficult problems and solve them. It helped me remember the person I once was, smart. My eight year old has a tendency to think that I don't know anything, or very little, and sometimes he is right. It was a great joy to remember that I do know something once in a while, and that my smartness isn't entirely gone.

Happy Autumn

Fall is such a great time of year. We have spent the last couple of weeks canning, and boy are we all tired of that. But, now we are fully stocked on canned pears and peaches and we have more peach and pear jam than we know what to do with.

But, more exciting than that, we are really looking forward to Halloween. The kids are all thrilled about the upcoming holiday. They have already decided what they want to dress up as. Bryce wants to be a secret agent (not a spy...don't get them mixed up or you get in trouble), Aubrey wants to be a princess/fairy/dancer/teacher. That should be interesting. Parker wants to be Shadow the Hedgehog (thank goodness, we can reuse the costume I made Bryce last year) and Gavin wants to be a fireman or pirate...he can't decide. Logan is going to be a skeleton...he doesn't get to choose,oh, the troubles of being one. Our house is appropriately spooked with decorations of all varieties and we can hardly wait for the big day. What a wonderful time of year!!!

Our Family

It's been a great nine years since the start of our family. We couldn't be more thrilled with the way we have grown (and boy have we grown). After our marriage in August 1999, we welcomed our oldest son, Bryce, in June 2000. Then Aubrey, Parker, Gavin, and Logan joined our family in quick succession. It can be hectic and a little crazy sometimes, but we wouldn't change it for anything.