Happy Halloween!

Halloween Costumes

Megan and Ian were very particular about what they wanted to be for Halloween this year. Megan chose to be a Jedi Padawan, and Ian had his heart set on being a Jawa. After finding and modifying patterns from the internet, going to the fabric store a couple of times, visiting the local thrift store, and much sewing, we present the final products:

By default, Erin got to choose an already-made costume from our dress-up box, and she ended up being a cat. She refused, however, to participate in the costume photo shoot.

Halloween Carnival

Each year we attend our ward carnival, which is an evening filled with fun games, a cake walk, dinner, and socializing. Our Primary President, Heidi, was most thrilled with her new game, Plinko! She spent a good part of her summer finding all the materials for it and constructing it. Surprisingly enough, Megan did not choose to bring home the cake she decorated for the cake walk. Instead we ended up with a chocolate zucchini bundt cake, which we have all enjoyed over the past week.

Halloween Night

The Pfrenders invited us over to go trick-or-treating in North Logan. They provided pizza for the children, and we brought along some take-out from Indian Oven (our favorite local restaurant) for the adults. Erin was initially scared by the Halloween festivities and only visited a few houses. The others (Megan, Ian, Eric, Craig, and Garrett) went out with the dads and came back with a couple pounds of candy each (eek!). We need the name of the dentist in town who offers cash in exchange for children's Halloween candy.






















Stay tuned for more exciting adventures, coming soon from Sydney, Australia (assuming this trip is for real)...

Potato Harvest in Amalga

We said we were done with canning, so it's a good thing that potatoes store well for the winter in an uncanned state! The Showell family in Amalga invited homeschoolers to participate in a service project collecting potatoes from their grandfather's field for the local food pantry and jail. Several families turned up for a couple hours on a beautiful autumn morning, and we harvested around 4000 lbs of Canadian Gold potatoes! Each family also got to take home as many potatoes as they wanted.

The farmer dug the potatoes with his tractor, then the families collected all the good ones (those without cuts, rotten parts, or green parts) and put them into giant bags. In the end we filled about 2 1/2 of these bags!

All the children had a wonderful time helping out, and they were so excited to see the full giant bags. We thank the Showells for giving us this opportunity to serve and also for the nice winter supply of delicious organic potatoes.

Megan holding some of the potatoes, Ian demonstrating the use of his potato "gun," and Erin playing with the farm puppy:

And here is some video footage (creatively edited by Kevin), so that you can almost feel like you were there too:

Homeschool Science Day at USU

One amazing mother (Kami H.) in the CVHS group coordinated an awesome Science Day held at Utah State University Tuesday afternoon.

Entomology Lab Tour
~by Megan & Ian

The first class we went to was about insects. First, we got to look at the many boxes of pinned insects. One of them looked like a box of pins, but when you looked closer, you could see tiny wasps that were about the size of the head of the pin. The many varieties of butterflies they had were very pretty. After looking at them, we all sat down and the teacher told us about insects and answered our questions. Afterwards, we looked at the insects again. They even had a live tarantula in the lab, but a tarantula is not an insect. It is an arachnid. All of the insects were very cool. They even had a huge Goliath beetle!

Anatomy Lab Dissection
~by Ian

The next class I went to was dissecting a pig's heart and lungs. Dr. Anderson told us about what we were going to do before we did it. Then, one of his students told us about the different parts we would be cutting and feeling. We put on aprons and gloves. First, we cut the heart. Then, we looked inside it and put our fingers in the holes. We got to feel its heart strings. They were so strong that you could hold the heart up by them. Next, we cut and looked at how the blood went through. After we were done with the heart we did the lungs. We cut through the part where the air goes down. At the end there were two holes that went down to each lung. Then, we got to carry it over to the sink and we got to push the air in with the air hose and the lungs blew up like a balloon. I think the flap closed on one of the lungs because it stayed up like a balloon, so when we got back to our table, we popped it. I used my fist and my partner used scissors. It was really fun and cool.

Engineering
~by Megan

There aren't any pictures in this one because Mom was with Ian at the dissection. The engineering was a tour, not a lab. First, we went over to where they displayed some of the things that students had made for competitions. There was a cement canoe that floated! There were also some models of airplanes. After learning about those things, we went to a different building and learned about some of the experiments that they were working on. Then, they had one of the kids with us put on some waders and get into a small pit with sand in it. Then, they put water in the pit. It gushed all over and swallowed up the kid's feet! Then, it settled again. He was able to pull his feet out of the sand. Then, they put water in it again. It did the same thing, but this time the boy couldn't pull his feet out! They had to pull him out of the sand that time. It was interesting and fun too!

Robotics Lab
~by Megan & Ian

The robotics lab was really cool! First, they let us watch a RoboCart that we could control with our movements! It was great! Next we got to see a scanner that was hooked up to a tiny computer that could tell a blind person how to find items on a shelf. First you would scan an item, and then the computer would tell you where the item that you wanted was in relation to the one you had scanned. There was also a small black robot that rolled on a black line. It was made to sense where the black line was, because the black line was on a white piece of paper. The last robot was one that could tell you where you were with sensing pads. It was on a walker. The robot lab was one of our favorites. (See video for demonstrations.)

Physics Demonstrations
~by Megan & Ian

The last class was Physics. We always look forward to it. In the picture, Professor Coburn is putting liquid nitrogen into a cup. Liquid nitrogen is very, very cold. He had some balloons that he put into the nitrogen. They shrunk because the air turned into liquid and the air molecules were not bouncing into each other. One of the balloons didn't shrink. It was because it had helium in it, but it didn't float because it was long and skinny and that shape doesn't float in the air (it is the orange balloon in the picture). He also did cool things with lights. We had been given little plastic squares that could show rainbows if we looked at the light. It was really cool. We all liked his bead demonstration. He had a full container of plastic bead necklaces all strung together, and he showed us that if you pull a small length of the string, it all would start racing out. It only took a little bit of time for all of the beads to come out of the container. He also showed us that when you lifted the bead container high, they would come out fast, but if it was low, it would come out slowly. It was very fun.







Here is a video showing some of the activities in which we participated. Warning: Anatomy dissection may be disturbing to those who don't like to see blood.

Getting into the Halloween Spirit

The children are very excited for Halloween this year. They have their costumes all planned out and are just waiting for April to finish sewing them (more on costumes in a future post).

Tarantula

The other night, we had our pet tarantula out. She is the perfect Halloween spider, in our opinion. Here is Ian demonstrating how to carefully hold a tarantula. Erin threw a small fit because we didn't permit her to hold it--mainly for the safety of the tarantula since Erin isn't always as gentle as she should be.













North Logan Pumpkin Walk

Another family tradition we have is visiting the annual Pumpkin Walk in North Logan. It is held at Elk Ridge Park each year and consists of numerous displays using pumpkins and squash. This year's theme was "Those Were the Days" and featured many exhibits created by different families, school classes, scout troops, church groups, local businesses, etc. In fact, Elvis even made an appearance.





































Pumpkin Carving

We also recently got some pumpkins for the children to carve. Megan made up her own design featuring a cat in the moonlight. Ian chose to carve bats and ghosts on his. Erin chose to paint hers. First she said she was going to paint a cat, so she got out the black and covered the whole pumpkin. Then she said she was going to paint a white ghost and proceeded to paint most of it white. When she completed her painting, she refused to pose with the final result.

Afterwards, we roasted pumpkin seeds and ate them. Yum!

Fun at First Dam

Monday afternoon we joined the Bucherts for some outdoor time at First Dam. We brought along a loaf of bread to feed the ducks. Our experience was nearly as traumatic as the ostrich attack on our relatives when they visited a safari park in Montreal (make sure you have the sound on in order to hear all the children's comments):

Fortunately for us, once the bread was gone, the ducks retreated into the water until other unsuspecting victims came along with new fodder.


Erin and Daffodil found the remedy to their emotional trauma by lying down in the volleyball pit and dumping sand onto each other's bellies.






Ian and Soren sought possible revenge by constructing a duck trap with sticks and twist ties they found lying around. We aren't quite sure how the mechanism worked exactly, but Ian had to check it before we left (an hour later) to see if they had caught any ducks. We sadly report that none were trapped.






Imagine our surprise when Kevin appeared after work with some fishing gear! (Megan had left a note informing him of the family's whereabouts.) We attempted fishing, and saw numerous fish swimming around. However, no one was able to successfully catch any. We had to go home and eat leftovers for dinner.

2007 Annual Cider Party

The big finale to our canning efforts of the harvest season is the Crook's annual cider party. We have participated in this event for 8 years or so (we forget the exact number), and it is one of our family traditions that everyone eagerly awaits each year. We met last Saturday morning and spent about 12 hours making and bottling delicious apple cider. The rain lightly drizzled on us during the morning, but by afternoon the sun was shining again.

Pictured here are Emily and Megan busily washing and cutting at the outdoor sink, and Roger squeezing the juice using Jim Crook's homemade press:

Since we are so high-tech now, we can show you the actual process in this video filmed by Kevin, edited by April, and starring Jim Crook and assorted neighbors and friends.

Happy Birthday, Erin!

Our little baby turned THREE years old today! And she's not so little anymore. Look at her hold up 3 fingers on each hand to emphasize her "three-ness".

The only thing she requested for her birthday was a Nemo cake. So Mom did her best to comply with that and was rewarded with huge smiles and exclamations of excitement on Erin's part.

Grandma & Grandpa Young and Grandma Tsukamoto joined us for her little party, and Erin was so happy to see and play with them. She loves all the nice presents. Thank you!

As a birthday tribute to our 3-year-old sweetie, Mom and Dad made a little celebratory video.

BIG and small

BIG

Introducing "Attila the Tongue"

Meet the newest member of our family, saved from a possible vehicular squashing by none other than Kevin, the inveterate critter catcher. He proudly arrived home Wednesday evening carrying his prize catch for the day. Although originally intended for dinner (Kevin is trying to find redemption from his unsuccessful elk hunt), it has been claimed by Ian as his new pet. The logic: "If Megan can have a pet hamster, I can have a pet bullfrog." End of discussion.

small

Grandpa Tsukamoto sent the children a new supply of Origami paper this week. While looking at some Origami pictures on Flickr, Megan found inspiration from this photo. She folded a small crane, looked back at the Flickr photo, and saw it wasn't small enough. So she persisted until she was satisfied that this third attempt was indeed smaller. Megan's crane is posing on Kevin's thumb.

Stay tuned for Megan's next Flickr-inspired photo project: "Attila the Tongue Meets Mr. Fly"

15-Year Anniversary Surprise

Everyone likes a surprise, right?

Well, have we got a BIG SURPRISE to announce!!!

No, we are NOT announcing a pregnancy--why would you get that idea? Aren't you content with our three nearly-perfect children?






Let's see...we'd better start with some background information...


On the 8th of August this year we celebrated our 15-year anniversary. We have never been very good at celebrating our anniversary, partly because for the first 6 years of our marriage we were usually out doing field work in August. One of our more successful anniversary celebrations was when we were trapping bears in the Book Cliffs and went for an evening 4-wheeler ride. Kevin caught a porcupine that night, which was very flattering. Another particularly romantic getaway was when April was 6 weeks pregnant (with Megan) in the hot Yuma desert--she felt like puking while we hiked around a desert nature preserve in >100-degree heat. Anyway, this year it fell on a Wednesday, and we hardly got to see each other between Kevin's work and meetings, so it was, once again, largely uneventful (Kevin's attempt to save the evening was to buy 15 candy bars on his way home from work--and that was about the extent of our celebrations).



However, Kevin was scheming of some way to truly celebrate 15 years together. Knowing April's frugal nature, he could hardly get away with planning an extravagant vacation that involved more than a trip to Salt Lake, but he came across an interesting opportunity on a wiki website that he was working on with his students.



Bottom line: For the second time in his life, Kevin has WON A TRIP TO AUSTRALIA!!! (Chris--can you help calculate the odds of such an occurrence??) In 2000 he won a drawing for a travel gift certificate and we took the family to Perth. However, this time he can only take one person, much to the dismay of his adorable offspring. And that person is his devoted wife and companion of 15 years.


For your amusement, here is Kevin's entry for the contest. Yes, it is legitimate (or so he claims--April will believe it when she boards the plane). You can see videos from past winning entries here as well as enter the newest contest yourself at aussieweek.com. It is "only" a week-long trip, and we have to promote the idea that you can go to Australia and have a really good time even if you only have a week to visit. Kevin's choice was to go to Brisbane but "due to availability" we "only" get to go to Sydney. So, we have to fly all the way to Sydney, stay in the hotels of their choosing, be a part of some fun activities every day, take pictures and video to share with others, and then fly all the way back home--all before Nov 30th. Sounds tough, doesn't it?



We will keep you posted when we know more specifics. We are aiming to leave in early November. In the meantime, there is a new contest for our readers to enter:


ENTER NOW TO WIN FREE PARENTING EXPERIENCE!

No purchase necessary to win. Simply write a short essay explaining why you would be the perfect person(s) to care for 3 nearly perfect children for ONE WHOLE WEEK. The winner will have the opportunity to: cook meals that will not be eaten, settle squabbles between siblings, shuttle children to and from piano and karate lessons, entertain, teach eager minds, change diapers or potty train (your choice), read stories, assist with pet care, wrestle, receive good-night hugs, and stay up late with a nocturnal three-year old. Successful applicants must be willing to submit to an extensive background check. In the case of a tie between applicants, the week of parenting experience will be divided among winners.

Plums & Grapes

What does one do with beautiful, ripe, plums?

EAT THEM!





DRY THEM INTO FRUIT LEATHER AND PRUNES!





JUICE THEM!





What does one do with baskets of white and purple Concord grapes?

MAKE LOTS AND LOTS OF YUMMY JUICE!