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!!!!)

When Little Boys Write Fairy Tales..

Tyler had an assignment at school, and these were the instructions...
"Think of a fairy tale that you know. Plan to tell your own version of it."
Well, here is Tyler's version of The Princess and the Pea...

"Once there was a prince and he found a castle and saw a Princess and she said, 'Come up here.'
(What prince is going to say no to that?)
So, he went up and she said, 'If you want to know if you're a true prince you have to sleep on 50 cushions and feel a pen. If you feel the pen you will be a true prince.'
So, at night he got 50 cushions and went to sleep and he didn't feel the pen.
So, he didn't fall in love, and the prince went to another place to find a different idea."

Having read that, I think I could safely say that the fairy tales we are familiar with were not written by little boys! I mean, hey, when you're nine years old who wants love and princesses anyway? I think they'd rather go and find a different idea... like Darth Vader and light sabers and cool stuff like that...

Sam's Rites of Passage

Sam has had quite a busy month, and has enjoyed a couple of "rites of passage".

First off was the first day of Kindergarten. Doesn't he look ready to face the world? Because we live right down the sidewalk from the school, the boys get to walk home and I can watch them the whole way, very convenient. Well, on the first day of Kindergarten, I walked down to the door of the school thinking that Sam would want to see me there as he came out the door on his first big day. I was obviously wrong about that assumption and was corrected the next day on the way to school. He informed me that he did not want me to walk down and meet them after school, he wanted to walk just with Tyler. I said to him, "I thought you might like me to walk home with you on your first few days of school." To which he replied, "No, I can see you when I get home. I want to walk with Tyler, then I can talk to him alone." I am not sure what great secrets they are sharing on the way home from school, but it is fun to see him so independent, Sam was definitely ready to start school.

Next came Sam's birthday! Six years old! He was looking forward to this for weeks! (of course, what kid doesn't?)

Sam decided to decorate his own birthday cake this year. Seeing as my boys are extremely engrossed in Lego's these days, it was no surprise that he wanted a Lego cake. First I was to bake a cake that was round and frost it with red frosting so it would look like Mars. (Red frosting is really hard to do, ours ended up more pink, but oh well.) Then Sam designed the scene on top! Here are the good guys capturing the aliens on Mars. If you look carefully you will see one little alien is in his containment unit...

And then, to top it all off, two days ago Sam lost his first tooth! He has been wiggling it for weeks now, and has been very excited about his first loose tooth. I feel like we are a little tooth factory right now, with all three boys wiggling and losing teeth in the last couple of weeks. Well, Sydney could not be left out and has been randomly proclaiming, "I have a loose tooth, see?"
So, here's our little toothless boy and his tiny little tooth...

Tyler helped him set up a little table in his room and then they wrote this note for the Tooth Fairy. It says, (in case you need help deciphering) "What cand (kind) of tooth did I lose?" And, as you can see, we now have proof that the Tooth Fairy is real, as she actually answered...
The little smiley face was Sydney's addition.

Warning! View at your own risk...

Well, the suspense is over! Today was the big day, the Ultrasound! And here are the pictures of our darling baby! After viewing this picture we thought we might name the baby "Skeletor"...
The cute little profile...
And, well, this is self-explanatory!
I guess Sydney need not worry about being de-throned! She can go on with her reign as Gordon Princess!

My Favorite Alaska Things...Part 3

Hubbard Glacier must have been one of our favorite things, because we took about a hundred pictures of it. And so, I share them with you... okay, not all one hundred, but here's a little sampling...



Once we got up by the glacier it got a little bit colder, as you can imagine. We enjoyed looking at the Glacier from my Mom and Dad's stateroom balcony (there was a much better view there than from our room, seeing as we didn't have a window).
We did go up to the front of the ship for a few minutes as well, but watched most of the show from Mom and Dad's.

Once the captain got the ship up as close as he could to the glacier, he turned the boat, luckily to Mom and Dad's side (the captain probably called it starboard or something like that) and then turned off the engines. My favorite part was being able to listen to the glacier, it kind of sounded like thunder, and then we got to see a little calving too...
At first the calving seemed pretty insignificant, until we noticed the kind of waves it was making...

This was really, pretty amazing!





A little iceberg in the ocean (I forget the name of the baby icebergs, Bergies maybe?)
And then, on our way out of the bay came the grand event, the Polar Bear Plunge! Jim was the only one in our group brave enough to join in, I preferred to stay in Mom and Dad's warm stateroom. Steve went to document the event. Here is Jim, psyching up for his big plunge...
Waiting for his turn...
This is Michelle, the cruise director, I am glad that I am not a cruise director! You have to be chipper and full of energy all the time, I got tired just watching her...

The moment of truth! The grand belly-flop plunge into the frozen waters of the Lido Pool (actually it is heated)...Hooray for Jim!

So there you have part 3, the Hubbard Glacier. If you are feeling the urge to see the other 90 pictures, just let me know...