Memory Lane: Installment #2 (November-December)

Ok, I'm catching up, slowly but surely. I can't leave my devoted readers (all 8 of them) hanging for the exciting conclusion of 2010 at the Halleys! So, here we go.



Riley being funny. We love our little frogman.


On our way to Grandma's house for Lara's Wedding, we stopped at Brian's old stomping grounds. The Jelly Belly Factory! The kids had a blast seeing how those delightful little morsels are made.


After studying ancient Egypt in homeschool, we "wrapped up" the unit with an amazing field trip to the Rosecrution Egyptian Museum in San Jose. The kids really enjoyed seeing REAL mummies! AHHHHH!

Grandpa teaching his grandson how to use his new mitt! I had to go inside after this picture because Riley was embarrassed that I was watching.

Oh, and Lara got married. That was pretty cool too.

October Fun

I was looking through my fall pictures today and I was so bummed that I didn't get to blog them, so I'm going to do it now :) So, sit back, relax, pop some popcorn if you'd like, as we take a stroll down memory lane. Does 3 months ago count as memory lane? I don't know. Anyways...

Here are my little cuties making Halloween sugar cookies. They were super yummy!


Summer and her friends decided to throw a little dance/musical concert in the backyard. They collected chairs from multiple garages, invited all the parents and siblings they could round up, and after we were all seated, they realized they had forgotten to decide what it was they were going to perform :)
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We go to the "spider web" park on warm Sunday afternoons. It's become our little tradition. Brian and I plan our week and sit by the lake while the kids play on the huge web-like structures (how it got it's nickname) and try to catch each other in tag.

We learned about ancient writing in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Our experiment was "What will last longer? Clay tablets or paper?" We left our documents outside for weeks in the sun and rain. Our hypothesis was that the clay would last longer. I thought that theory was sound, but we didn't take into consideration how tempting it would be to little neighbor boys to throw the clay tablet into the street. Oh well. I guess that stuff happened in ancient times as well.

We had lot of fun at the pumpkin patch this year! We picked out our pumpkins and then enjoyed fresh apple cider, freshly made cider donuts, and caramel apples (that we brought from home) while we watched "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" outside on a big screen.


Eeeeewww! Pumpkin guts!
We learned this Halloween that Megan is a very lucky girl. We went to the ward Halloween party where she entered her pumpkin in the carving contest and won first place. She won a gigantic jar of gumballs. Then, she entered a coloring contest at the grocery store and won that. She helped her grandma carve her pumpkin for a contest, which they won. At Aunt Michelle's Halloween party, Megan guessed the right amount of candy corn in the jar and won that too. 4 Contests in 1 week. Not too shabby. I'd bet on her.

Aunt Michelle threw a huge Halloween bash! We had tons of fun eating cupcakes and playing games.