8 is great

Pumpkin Eaters

Last week Lance's parent's graciously invited us and our friends the Zellers to come by and pick the last of their pumpkins. The kids had a blast running around picking which pumpkin they wanted. Jaxon and Carter got to use the hand saw to cut the pumpkins from the vines. (No fingers were lost in the process!) Carolyn had made up some goody bags for each of the kids to find around the pumpkin patch. Missy and I had fun running around trying to get the kids to hold still long enough to get a picture or two. Asher was the fastest, consequently there aren't too many pictures of him! This week marked Lance starting his new church calling - Assistant Scout Master. I am excited for him - he is great with scout age boys (maybe is relates to them ? ;) Swine flu mania is in full force here in Utah County, as it is around the nation. Lance knows whether he will be working late or not based on if the County has flu vaccine in stock or not. And no, we still haven't gotten the shot yet - none of us fall in the category of people who can receive the shot yet. We are not looking forward to the lines but when they do open it up to the general public we will be braving them as soon as it is made available. The week we are also preparing for JJ's 8th birthday. I really can't believe that my baby boy is going to be 8 on Friday. I am preparing a special post dedicated just to him for later in the week. For those interested in attending - JJ's baptism will be Saturday, November 7th at 9 am. Mark your calendars! I will send out more information via email, facebook and phone calls next week sometime.

New Family Pictures

A couple of weeks ago we "won" a free 8x10 from Fotogenix. So we thought "what the heck we will give it a try". We set up the outdoor photo shoot, went and felt like it went well. We had to wait a whole week to view the pictures in the studio. Now a smart person would have taken the free 8x10 and headed out the door but NO we decided to purchase a 16 x20. We then learned that on top of the fee for getting the print we would have to pay extra for a collage style print, extra for switching the heads on the picture so that everyone was smiling etc. Both of those extra options are things I could do in a matter of minutes if I had the digital files. Oh yeah to get the images on CD would cost at least $500 dollars. Stupidly we went ahead and ordered the $250 print. We then left, talked about it and decided that we shouldn't have done it. Called back within 20 minutes to be told that they would not refund our money. Needless to say we are not very happy with ourselves or Fotogenix. A week later my friend Missy took family portraits of us. We are much happier with these images, by far! And guess what? They were free! Live and learn. Check out mine and Missy's photography blog here to see some of our recent photo shoots. Here is the slideshow of the family photos we took with Missy.

On another note - this past week and weekend we have all been sick with the flu. Some of us are still fighting it off while others are pretty much recovered. Not fun but we are getting through it.