Happy Fall

Yesterday was a pretty full and fun day for us. We had the Annual Lucas Family Reunion at Ken's Aunt Holly's house. It's always a good time with family and food! Uncle Ed, Ken's grandpa's brother organized the event and bought us all T-shirts to help us remember it. I also liked this banner that he had made. It shows on the top row all of the Lucas males from Ken's great grandfather, Isaac, all the way back to Jean Lucas born in 1630. He told stories of what he knew of their lives too.
On the bottom is all of Isaac Sampson Lucas' children. Rondal is Ken's grandfather. It was so exciting to learn some of the family history. I learned from Uncle Ed that Lucas is French. I didn't know that before.

It was a pretty good turnout. Don't we look good in our matching T-shirts??

Immediately following the reunion, we went to the apple orchard/pumpkin patch with mom and dad and Micah and his kids. I love autumn. I love everything about it...

Two of my favorite people in the world.

whose idea was it to have them all facing the sun??

Ruthie just fits in with her little bibs on.

Here's the kids with a little addition. I babysit for a little girl (Rosita). She is a cute little thing. Her parents are working in the corn fields all day and during the late afternoon, we have her, so she went along too.

This won't be the last trip we make to the apple orchard this fall. They didn't have their caramel apples out yesterday, so we will be back to try again. What a great day!

La Casa de Los Pollos

For the past couple of weeks we have been working on a family project. It has been really fun to make something so neat from scratch! (no pun intended). We spent evenings that Ken has off work building our own chicken coop. Is it coop or coup? I don't even know. Regardless, we're making a casa de los pollos. We have been discussing getting some laying hens for some time and decided we needed to build a coop for them. This is a picture of the boxes for the hens to lay their eggs. There are four of them.

This is the door on the rear of the coop where we will retrieve the eggs. We don't have any chickens yet, but when it is all finished we think we will start out with a couple. Next spring we hope to buy some baby chicks as well.

This picture shows the house pretty much finished. The only thing left is to paint it.

The kids were a big help...

but the most fun they had was playing in and on the little house before it was done. What is with Naomi and Ruthie's faces...sheeeesh :)

My New Favorite Picture

This is such a cute moment. Check out the expressions on their little faces! Ron or Shari, I don't know which, caught this moment at Ashlyn's 5th birthday party. I LOve It!! These two are so loving to eachother. If one of them accidentally hurts the other, there is sure to be lots of hugs and kisses of apology in just seconds, and I often hear them say, "Eli, I love you. I love you too, Ruthie." Those are the moments mom's live for!!

Our Day... in black and white

One of my friends is a photographer. She took a picture of a girl on the road like this and Lilli loved it so we tried to do it too. It of course looked better when my friend took the pic, but this was fun.

Come on everybody jump...

Eli, you forgot to jump...

That's it!

Lilli took this one

Nomi has her own fashion :)

This is my strange child.

Some Pictures from FIELD DAY...

Last Friday was Field Day at school. The kids started out the day at the high school track racing and long jumping and softball throwing. Ru and I drove over to the track to watch and spent all day with Emma, Lilli, Nomi, and Eli.


This is Emma and one of her best friends, Mariah.


Emma blew away the other girls in the softball throw.

Lilli also won the girls softball throw for the 4th grade by an inch or so, and finished 2nd in her 60yd dash. I am so mad that I missed that race! As I was walking from the parking lot, I had to turn around and go back to the car for the camera that I left there and missed it. Darn!

These are Naomi's friends. They are a cute group of giggly little girls :))

Naomi did 3 events in the park. She was first in the foot race and the egg on a spoon carry, and 2nd in the bean bag toss.

Here's Naomi and Ruth with Nomi's friend Faith. She is so tiny. She can't say her "r"s very well, so that makes her even cuter :)

Peyton, Naomi, and Skylyn

WHat goofy girls!

It was a great day. Eli was there too, but sadly they didn't have events for the Kindergarteners. Next year, Eli.

You Have to Check out this Blog

Need a good laugh?? Well, if you do, you have to check out http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/


I love surfing the net for food blogs, particularly baking blogs, and I came across this one. I really got a kick out of how horribly wrong things went with these cakes. I thought I had made some real doozies as far as cakes go, but this site helped me to see just how bad it can be and how screwed up a cake can get. (Oh and there are some amazing cakes on this blog as well)
This one is one of my favorites...
the girl who ordered this cake meant it to say "Happy Fatherhood, Shawn and Glenn" (they were 2 men she worked with whose wives were pregnant)
How the cake decorator came up with "Falker Satherhood" no one will ever know. It's a word journey... :)

Lilli's Pioneer Day

Last Friday was Lilli's 4th grade Pioneer Day. It was a beautiful day!!
The teachers had plenty of activities to keep the kids busy all day.

The first station Lilli's group went to was the patch quilt station. She already knew how to quilt from all the sewing she does at home, so it was breeze :)

The next station was a bracelet making station. The parent running that one was kind enough to allow Ruthie to make her own bracelet too.

Then the group made tin punch lids. They hammered little holes into tin lids in fun designs.



Next the kids made little purses out of pre-cut leather and plastic straps that they sewed the pieces together with.

Then they chopped veggies to go in the very very YUMMY vegetable stew.

Lilli is drying her candle that she dipped.

This is the big pot of stew. It really was awesome...vegetable beef!

The music teacher showed up at the park and the kids danced the Virginia Reel

Roo was so cute in Her little pionner dress.

Lilli looked great in the dress that Grandma Rita made too!

I was only able to stay till lunch, but Lilli told me that after lunch a man came dressed as a fur trapper, playing the part, and talked to them about what life was like over 100 years ago.

It was a fun day, but Lilli was exhausted when the day was done.

What does a BIRTHDAY, a GARDEN, a GIANT GUMBALL,and a TRAMPOLINE have in common????

Today is Eli's Birthday!! He's 6 years old! His teacher at school gave him a birthday crown to wear.

Here is his cake. Lilli helped decorate it with the fancy gel icing :)

Eli got a new bike for his birthday from dad. It says 2 FAST 4 U on the license plate. Lilli picked that one out. (she loves birthdays)

Here it is. It's sooo shiny and sooo cool!! :))
Happy Birthday, Eli!!

We have also started a garden. We have to wait a couple of weeks to put in most of the veggies, but taters and onions are in now.

Check out this huge gumball!!!