The Armor of God

For Family Home Evening on Monday we talked about the Armor of God. Sydney got to be the model.

And yes, there on the side is a picture of half of my large belly. The other day Sydney looked at me and said, "Mommy, Santa is big like you!" Ahh, the honesty of children!

You Are So Beautiful...

Sydney loves to sing. She pretty much just walks around singing all day, it is fun to hear what her latest "favorite" is. Well, here is one of her latest for your listening pleasure...

What's New

Steve turned another year older last week and we had a great time celebrating. Steve loves cherry pie and has been talking about making one for months (since his dear wife won't do it because she doesn't like cherry pie... poor man, what kind of loser wife does he have?:)) Well, I decided it would be fun to surprise his with none other than cherry pie for his birthday. I had to get the 411 on cherry pie making from his sister, and you know what? It is actually a really easy pie to make, and it was actually pretty yummy. Most surprising of all? Spencer loved it!
Why four candles you ask? Well, since I didn't have 36 candles, I decided to use one candle per decade. Steve is the one who said it is time to round up...
Looks pretty yummy, huh? I think he was pretty happy with his pie. Most of the kids (barring Spencer as I said previously) were pretty disgruntled that we had pie and not cake, but they filled up on ice cream and were happy anyway.
Just a cute picture of my cute girl... she enjoyed helping me make the pie.
And, as for other news in the Gordon household, well just look for yourself...
We have been putting this off for a year and a half (doctors orders), but it was finally time to give the kid a break and let him actually see the world without a blur. Isn't he handsome? Look like anyone else you know?

Happy Halloween!

Well, I suppose it is time for a Halloween post on the blog. We had a lot of fun Halloween festivities, and we now have way too much candy! Here are a few pre-Halloween photos. Here is our cute Sydney-cat...

And the real Tyler shines through...
Pumpkin-carving festivities...
Sydney's approach to scraping out the pumpkin guts, one seed at a time...


Here are the final products. I bought one of those pumpkin carving kits this year and it was a lot of fun (a bit more work, but the results were worth it). Sydney, Sam and Tyler all needed help carving theirs, but Spencer was quite pleased that he was able to do his all by himself. Pumpkins from left to right: Spencer, Sam, Tyler and Sydney.

After carving the pumpkins the kids chose caramel apples for a treat, something they haven't had very often...
I should have taken a picture of Sydney's apple after she was all done. I think she broke the skin of the apple in one tiny place, but of course the caramel was all gone!
And now, time for costumes!

Spencer looks a bit freaky for my taste (as an Alien Commander), Tyler was Optimus Prime (transformer, of course), Sam was our Star Wars representative and Sydney, a flower...
Inspecting the loot...
Oi! Way too much sugar!!!
I love watching the little ones at Halloween, "What a concept, I walk from door to door looking cute and people give me candy!!! Does it get any better!?"
On Sunday afternoon the boys dumped all their candy out again and counted and tallied it, Spencer taking scrupulous notes. About an hour later Spencer showed me what he had been creating on the computer: a pie graph with the distribution of all their candy and a Power Point presentation showing just how much the three boys managed to come away with. The grand total? 282 pieces of candy! (And this after they had already consumed plenty!!!!)