Rachel's first band concert

Rachel loves her band teacher and loves the flute. Here she is playing, "Up on the Housetop."

Crafty Rachel

Rachel saw the recipe for Peppermint Pals in an American Girl magazine: powdered sugar, mint extract, corn syrup. Yum!

Eliza (the penguin expert) had to try her hand at making cute penguins, too.

Rachel always has projects in the works. Grandma Linna had fun coming to Rachel's store (in the garage) to buy bookmarks and cards. Rachel loved Grandma's generous tips!

We are thankful for...

... a grandma to read our favorite Thanksgiving books with us.

Joshie on wheels

Joshie loves roller blading to school (one mile away). One of the perks of living in warm CA! (though we wish we could go sledding)

Yes on 8!

Wow. What a challenge we had in California defending the definition of marriage. But it was wonderful to see all the good people doing hard things: going door to door, speaking calmly when being yelled at by those who cry for tolerance (yet those same people won't tolerate any opinion different than their own), putting signs up in their yards even after the signs were repeatedly stolen and nasty notes were left on their porch, making phone calls, and waving signs at busy intersections. It was a heartening experience to wave signs and see all the thumbs-up signals from supporters of Prop 8 who drove by. But it was discouraging to be yelled at and to have my children sworn at. A few drivers yelled at me that it was shameful to have my children out on the street when they're not even old enough to vote and it doesn't affect them. But, ma'am, you're wrong, I wanted to shout back. It DOES affect them. A boy on our street already had a gay appreciation week at his school, and parents are not allowed by law to pull their children out of such "tolerance programs". We were fighting not just to define marriage as between one man and one woman, but also to protect our religious freedom (so churches will not be penalized if they refuse to perform same-sex marriages) and to protect my children from learning about sexual perversions and immorality at school from their teachers.

Eliza and Isaac, proudly waving their signs despite the drivers yelling at them and the drivers holding up a middle finger to "show their IQ."

Rachel LOVED everything about this campaign: going door-to-door, holding signs on the street corner in the rain, addressing envelopes for mailers, and she even put a "Yes on 8" bumper sticker on her backpack for all the teachers at her school to see. She's about the only person I know who looked forward to going door to door; the rest of us dreaded it but did it because we knew how important it was.

Joshie and Lyrad are holding signs (above), next to a bunch of "NO on 8" people yelling "Don't hate cuz I'm not straight." We spread out and tried to cover all four corners of the intersection. All of the "yes on 8" people waving signs with us were smiling and friendly, so I didn't understand why the "No on 8" people were screaming at us about hating them. We don't hate them, we just don't want to change the definition of marriage. The gays already have civil unions and legal rights and protections. They can call their partnership what they want ("garriage?") but it's NOT marriage.

YES on freedom of speech! NO to tearing up "Yes on 8" signs (above). YES on accepting the will of the people in a fair election. NO to vandalizing churches, boycotting businesses, staging violent protests, and filing law suits just because an election outcome is not how you want it!

Joshua the Astronaut

Joshua loves to wear his astronaut pajamas, but he wanted more to his spacesuit. So Lyrad helped him paper mache a helmet...

...then they painted it and drew a flag on it...

... and made a "jet pack" backpack (out of oatmeal containers covered with tin foil). He's as proud as Spaceman Spiff!

Astronaut, soccer player, and Pippi Longstocking ready for candy at the trunk-or-treat!

Thanksgiving Time

Lyrad's brass band is in demand! They were asked to play at the stake Singles Thanksgiving Dinner and soon they will play at our ward Christmas party. Shown here are Evan, Taylor, Madi, Lyrad, Casey, Juliana, and Eliza. (Isaac was watching a high school football game that night.) Though you can't see Eliza and Madi behind their music stands in this video, you can HEAR Madi playing the descant on her trumpet. We enjoy their almost-weekly practices at our house. Never a dull (or quiet) moment around here!

Trombone Time

"Trombone is da bomb" (according to Eliza)

Soccer is over

No one gets past Eliza!

Go #7! Eliza has been #7 for her past 4 soccer seasons. It's her lucky number.

Eliza loved her soccer season. She made some beautiful goals this season but I could never manage to capture them with my camera. Here are a few very short videos of Eliza in action: in the first she's trying to assist with a goal, in the second she's shooting a goal.

Talent Show

Our family sang "America" in the annual Travis AFB Family and Teen Talent Show. Here's a link to it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jFhoyBi6qQ

Also in the talent show, Madi and Isaac played "Toreador" (trumpet and piano), Rachel sang a solo, Eliza won $50 for first place playing a violin concerto, and Isaac won $25 for a second place for playing "Maple Leaf Rag" on the piano. All the kiddos earned money from our family song, so everyone was happy. I'm glad it's over and now we can concentrate even more this week on campaigning for Prop 8 here in CA. We'll be standing on a busy street corner waving signs this week and going door to door some more and making more phone calls. We're trying to protect marriage and protect our children from what is happening in Massachusetts (teachers read books to children about having "2 daddies", and 2nd graders were read a book about a king marrying a king when he couldn't find a princess). This is a heated issue here! Our sign on our front lawn has only been stolen once... some people who live on busier streets constantly have signs stolen and/or mutilated. Wait a minute... these people yelling vulgarities at the smiling families waving "yes on 8" signs (even mooning them), and stealing signs from people's front yards are the same people who are demanding "equality and fairness"? Go figure!

I love America. I love free speech.

Yes on Prop 8!

Girls love purple shirts !?!?

Isaac was so excited to get a purple shirt to wear to church dances. We have a great ward for him: the girl:boy ration is about 5:1.

Corn Maze

Joshie and Rachel thought the $25 jumbo pumpkins were great, but I talked them into these 50-cent cute ones instead.

Joshie felt like a pirate looking for gold!

A scarecrow?

A few years ago we tried to enjoy some of the tourist attractions around us: castles, cathedrals, 500-year-old village churches, battle fields, World War 2 cemeteries... the list never ended and we never saw 1/100 of the great things to see in Europe.

Now, however, we have officially seen both of the tourist attractions in our area. The first is the Jelly Belly Factory, the second is the World's Longest Corn Maze, in the nearby farming town of Dixon. This maze is in the Guinness Book of World Records and it's over a mile long (if you follow the map correctly). I have no idea how long it would take if you constantly took wrong turns; we hadn't the patience to find out. We cut through several parts of the maze to shorten it to less than 2 hours. I went with the YW/YM and took Rachel and Joshie along with me. They loved it, especially hiding in the corn, jumping on the cornstalk piles, and finding cobs of corn and husking them. Hooray for autumntime!

Pippi Longstocking

Rachel (who reminds us of Pippi Longstocking anyway) was so excited to get this costume together for a friend's costume-birthday-party. She spent the week sewing patches on her shirt, deliberating over which monkey was the perfect Mr. Nilsson, and trying on Dad's boots. The best thing about the party is that it caused Rachel to do all her chores more quickly and cheerfully than I've ever seen her do them, so she wouldn't have to miss the party.

Family photo attempt (and failure)

Because it was a sunny day yesterday and we had a nice elderly man over for the day (to watch General Conference with us) who could be the photographer, we tried to get a decent family photo. But it seemed like every photo had someone closing his eyes or someone making a face or else someone's head is cut off. Oh well. Maybe next year.

Cousin Time

Our cousins Brittany and Kyle came over Saturday and stayed late while my sister and her husband went to her 20th high school reunion. The cousins had a great time together, especially when we went late-night shopping. Brittany is 7 weeks older than my twins, and she is a twin herself! (Her twin, Spencer, was at my parents' house that day.) So when the 3 13-year-old girls are together, it's like having triplets!

Joshie and Kyle built with legos for hours (Kyle has a Lego Museum in his bedroom), played Dead Man on the trampoline, watched movies, made little pizzas with nearly a whole pack of pepperoni piled on them, and went "sledding" down the wood hallway on slippery blankets.

After school...

Rachel loves to play Littlest Pet Shop after school, especially now that Eliza and Madi's friend, Aishlyn, recently gave Rachel boxes and boxes of LPS animals and houses that she had outgrown.
Eliza and Madi love to have fruit bars after a long day at school.

Madi and Eliza love to take photos of each other...
more and more and more photos...


Madi's practicing "Fur Elise". She doesn't love piano, but she loves to finish practicing so she can get on to better things... like taking pictures, improvising jazz on her trumpet, doing tricks on the trampoline, going to the park, making fruit smoothies, and relaxing on her bed.

Soccer Season

We're enjoying lots of soccer games around here! Eliza loves dribbling around defenders to score, Isaac loves having 2 wins this year so far (after having no wins all last year), and Joshie loves eating the snack at the end of the game. I love cheering them on (though the boys wish I would be a little quieter at their games).

Little Red Hen

We had a disappointing corn crop this year, but we found one way to make some use of the small shriveled, dried-up ears of corn: we husked them, took the corn kernels off of the cobs (Joshie's job, since he loves playing Indians and he has all the time in the world to do it!), put the kernels through the wheat grinder, then made corn bread from the corn flour. We had fun playing Indians and saved a few dollars on corn meal.

Jazzy Isaac

Isaac (on trumpet in the back row) performed at a Jazz Festival with his high school jazz band. Afterwards, I took him to Fenton's for a big ice-cream sundae. I'm usually a "let's have ice-cream cones or fruit smoothies at home to celebrate"-type mom, but I realized that in 3 short years, Isaac will be away at college. I don't want him sitting sadly on his college dorm bed one day wondering why his mother NEVER EVER took him out for a big ice-cream sundae at an ice-cream parlour. And now he won't have to go through that ordeal. My conscience is clear.