Santa Fun Run

The Tree Farm

5 Years have past since our last trip to the tree farm. It has not change but we sure have.
We are getting ready to board the hay ride and go find the prefect Christmas tree for this year.


Here we are all waiting to go.

I took the time to teach my little brother how to count the rings on the tree stump sample to see how old our Christmas tree was. We discovered it is 20 years old.

Does this picture remind you of a movie? How about "Seven Brides for Seven Brother." I can just hear the sound of those young boys singing in the musical as I watched this brotherly interaction. We are actually cutting off samples of our Christmas tree trunk so we can each have one.

Halloween

I decided I wanted to be Wolverine off of X-man evolution. This was of course after my Uncle Johnathan and Aunt Amanda give me this costume for my birthday. You can't make me say, "I go where I want to go", Wolverines famous words, because I don't want to have my costume taken away from me.
I decided to be the Joker for Halloween. I wanted to be scary. After all that is what Halloween is all about. I did not realize I would scare my little cousin as much as it did. It is a good thing I did not dress up in something any scarier.

I decided I wanted to dress up as Indiana Jones. My Dad let me borrow his real wip if I promised to not let it leave my side. I wanted to dress up as someone who is full of adventure.

Here we are clowning around while Mom is trying to take pictures. We did pretty well this year it only took two shots to get a good picture....

....and here it is. We are all in character. Now we can go trick or treating.

Dewali

The boys and I attended a Diwali festival at a former students home. They are here from India and invited us to experience their most celebrated holiday. The house was filled with incense burning and behind the boys you can see the candles, baskets of bounty and flower petals. Diwali is a time when people get together to celebrate the god and godest coming together and over coming the evil demon. We were open-minded to this new way of thinking. We also had a great discussion about tolerance and how some of our beliefs are similar yet different.
We tried coconut water, which is suppose to be the purest form of liquid on the earth. We each received a small spoonful on our hand to drink. This pure water is considered holy water and will rejuvenate our bodies.

We had the chance to try new foods. The women of the house fasts during this time of year for one month. Yes she can eat and drink after dark, but during the day it is her responsibility to cook and cleanse the home of all bad memories, feelings, and unclean things.
They cook a lot with spices that are different from which we are acustom.

Some of the foods included a sweet pumpkin flavored ball, rice, rice tortilla type thing, and several different sauces used for dipping. My older boys kept eating out of politness and the women of the house kept filling their dishes over and over. I finally explained to them to eat slower and leave just a little of each thing on there plate until she starts to serve dessert. This was a great opporitunity to talk about missionary edict and how we put on a happy face and show our appreciation even if we don't really care for the food.

At the end of the celebration the women of the house gave us a silver plate of bounty. This was to represent good well, good health and sharing of what they have. What a unique experience this evening was. We learned a lot about a different culture.