Halloween

Happy Halloween! We love Halloween at our house. Except this year, Scott was still out of town for work. He just barely missed it, he should be home in a few days. He's in Louisiana, which in and of itself is a long trip home....but they have a detour to Phoenix on the way back. So Spencer and I missed him this year. Fortunately, I live with, and have family close. Spencer, Natalie, and Alex are all about Mickey Mouse right now. Natalie's absolute favorite is Donald Duck; it's her alter ego. Every time we talk to her, we refer to her as Natalie Donald. And when she's pretending to be something else, like a vampire, it's Donald pretending...so she is then Natalie Donald vampire. So of course Natty was Donald. Originally Alex was going to be Mickey, and Spencer was going to be Pluto. I really liked the Mickey costume, and turns out Alex was terrified of the thing, and would not put it on. So Spencer was Mickey, and Alex wore a sweat suit with a skeleton on it. I was Minnie, to compliment Spencer. Our Halloween route is becoming a tradition. We always start out by going to our neighbors house; they give out cans of Pepsi every year. They are probably some of the most generous people I know (When Spencer was born they gave him $25 in Sacajawea dollars...because every kid needs a piggy bank:)) I got my Pepsi, and Spence couldn't leave without his. We then went to my stakes "Trunk-or-Treat". We love the trunk-or-treat, lots of candy very fast:). Plus it was fun to say hi to all the people who use to be in my ward (I've said it before, new stake boundaries, 5 wards instead of 6, and of course my ward, which was the first ward organized in Boise, established in 1936, was the main one to get dissolved). So that was fun. Our stake had a chili/hot dog feed along with the trunck-or-treat, so we had dinner. After that, we made a stop over to our good friends the Matagi's (Sefa, Fanua, and Naki). After the Matagi's we made our stop to my Grandparent's house in Meridian. Natalie, Alex, and Spencer love going to Grandma & Grandpa Mortensen's house. They have a cow (not right now), a creek with a rope swing going through their back yard, trampoline, a big tree house/jungle gym type area, lots of room to run, and lots of fun toys. Out of all the toys, Spencer is drawn to the Halloween, and everyday, decorations. My grandma has an awesome wooden Noah's Ark, with all the animals in it, Spencer can't get enough of what he can't touch. So we always stay and visit for awhile. After that stop we always go over to my grandparent's neighbors. Ever since I can remember, (the neighbors) they have always had a teacup poodle. Teacup is the smallest breed of poodle, just under toy. I remember one named Monique, and one named Sadie, and the one they have now is named Tina Marie. Spencer loves Tina. After that we stopped at our Aunt/Uncle's house down the road, then called it a night. Every stop we make, is a visit, not just a trick or treat and good bye. At our last two stops my 2 year old Nephew Alex would stand at the door, after we rang the doorbell, and say, "Come on in, come on in, come on in"....he knew that's what whoever answered the door would say. That's why we love truck-or-treat, it lets us get lots of candy, because we don't go to very many houses. It's fun with kids this age, because once they get older it turns into a "hang out with friends" holiday, more so than a family holiday. We aren't too exciting around Halloween....but then again we aren't too excited ever.....but we had fun. Probably not as much fun as Scottie though. He spent Halloween on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, the crapper.

Too much fun?

Loves to Bounce!

Howdy Western Folk!!!!

Hi guys - this will be my first post. I figured since I was away from home so long, I'll go ahead and post some pictures for my wife to see. So here it is! We'll see how I do. I'm very amature still :P We'll start by the drive through Texas. It's nuts! We were located in a City called Kilgore. Major towns around it would be Overton and it was about 60 miles from the East Texas border. The trees were INSANE around here. Everywhere you drove, they were thick; I mean THICK!!! Thickest treed area I think I have ever seen in my life. I've been to Victoria, Canada - I thought that place had trees.... hahaha nothin compared to this!

This is what it looks like when you are looking in on it.. it doesnt quite do it justice, but it is really think. (I was using my phone so none of these are excellent..)


When you get to a new state, you have to take the appropriate schooling/testing for that state. Since we already had Texas, we didnt need to go for that one this time, but we did have to take Louisiana's, because well you guessed it, that's where we were headed next. We got in around 1 o'clock in the p.m. so we couldnt take the classes today; so we went and had fun! We took off down I-10 to New Orleans and toured the big city! I dont really have any pictures of the city (yet) but I will soon enough! I do, however, have one of the mighty Mississippi River! That is really somethin else! It's HUGE! The Colorado River is plenty big, but this river has been a part of alot of U.S. trade for good reason - it can handle it! I want to go gator wrastlin' but some local warned me that it wasn't safe, but stay tuned anyway incase I get a chance!

Since we are so closed to the ocean, and the fact that in some places, New Orleans reaches 14 feet below sea level, all of the cemetaries are above ground in this area in crypts. Bob (my boss, and one of the owners of the company) made the comment it would be EXCELLENT paintballin terf - his words, not mine ;) I tried catfish for the first time.... not recommended. I like fish but there's something about catfish that just doesnt do it for me. yuk! Anyway, that's all I have as of current. but I will keep y'all posted as soon as I get more fun stuff together!

Future events/jobs: Traveling to Phoenix on the way home to check out a job that we have to do a week or so after Thanksgiving, so you know where I'm gonna be staying ;) There has also been wind of a job in Detroit,Michigan, and another one in Spokane, Washington sometime in the near future. Im pretty sure I can take Carly and Spencer with me on those! Love all of you and Ill keep ya posted! Sendin love from the Deeeep South, Scott :)

Marching Band

After babysitting my niece and nephew for a while, we all went down to District III marching band competition at BSU's stadium. My little sister, Katie, plays the snare drum on Borah's drumline. Bands from all around the area compete. All the way from Marshing to Cambridge, Weiser, Payette, Fruitland....way out there....everyone comes. It's a pretty big deal:) Like everything there are different classes. The 148 piece band from Caldwell had nothing on the 12 piece band from Marshing. And if you Nampa/Caldwell people are interested....Canyon County takes the cake in marching bands. Nampa has one the last 5 or 6 years in a row. Caldwell, Vallivue, and Nampa did awesome. When I was there Borah had 100, give or take, piece band which has now dwindled to 60ish. The entire Boise/Meridian has been bumped down to class 5a small division, while all of Canyon County has been bumped up to 5a big division. Like I said before Caldwell had 148 people! Maybe the "band geek" stereotype is changing.....maybe not. At the end of all the performances, while the results are being tallied, the Keith Stein Blue Thunder Marching Band (BSU) performs. My little sister and I would go the past few years just to watch BSU perform....that's what we call fun:) Borah did awesome, however they get docked points because they don't have a color guard (people who dance around with the flags). They had one but they quit. Yes......the entire color guard quit. However even with those docked points Borah still managed second place (in their division)! The picture at the top, is a picture of the drum line. Katie is the snare on the left end.


Spencer had a blast. I was worried about him sitting for too long, and wanting to get up and walk around. And if you've ever been at the top of the the top level of a stadium....it's high. So I put a harness on him, he still falls a lot, and that would be quite the fall. If you look really closely, there is a piano in the middle of the field. As of this year, BSU is one of the only schools, where all of the pianos in their music department are Steinways. There are pianos in every room, and every practise room (50 or so practise rooms). It's a pretty big deal, especially since Steinways are over $20,000 easy, closer to $50,000. As a piano player, thats why it's upsetting to see people who have these nice pianos in their homes that never get played....because I'll probably never have one. So BSU became part of some Steinway organization deal....so for BSU's show they brought out a sparkly bronco blue Steinway.



I know it looks like we are by ourselves....we were sitting on the top corner of the crowd. (Scott knows I don't like people sitting right behind me:))

Just watching the show.


Hot Stuff!!! For those of you wondering, those jackets are short and stiff. They make the pants like that, so when you hold your arms up to play an instrument, your stomach wont show.
Even though he had fun, he was defiantly ready to go!

Error

I forgot to title the last post, and move everything up. But when I went edit it, I can't get any of it to come up. It's just blank. So ignore the huge space and between the date and the post.

Scott did end up going out of town. When he left, he told me that he was going to be gone a week to a week and a half. Then I talked to his boss, our elders quorum president, and he said any where from one to four weeks. So I am uncertain at the moment when he will be back. Since he is gone, I am posting more, so he can see what we are up too.

Today we went and played in an open gym. There is a community center in Boise that does an open gym twice a week for toddler/preschool age kids. It costs $1.00, cheap fun! They bring in mats, balls, "Little Tikes" brand slides, and those "Little Tikes" brand red and yellow cars, hula hoops, and a lot of toys. Spencer had a blast, he loved watching the other kids. He would just stand there and say, "WEEEEEEEEEEE" as they went down the slide, or did something fun. He loves being around other kids.

If you have followed my blog...remember the picture I posted of him laying on this stomach, on those mattresses? He can't resist anything soft. If there is anything on the floor that is soft, he has to lay his face down on it.

That was tons of fun!

Yes! I got the shot right before cousin Alex ran in front of the camera.

Ouch!

In the zone

Feeding the Ducks

My older sister likes to take her two kids down to Ann Morrison Park, to feed the ducks. I rarely go with her, due to my fear of birds; they're frightening. I had a terrifying incident with a dumb bird, named Petey....long story...and now I hate birds. My sister decided to take her kids to feed the ducks today, before it gets too cold. I knew that Spencer would love it, so we decided to go. I borrowed one of those kid harnesses, and lease, to put on Spencer; I knew that he would want to get closer than I would. Like I figured, Spencer loved it. He loved running into a big flock of birds, and watching them fly away. He also kept getting uncomfortably close to the geese, I defiantly don't trust the geese. Everything was going fine, until Spencer spotted a seagull. This seagull was walking right on the edge of the bank, right where the pond started. Spencer was a few feet behind it, and just followed it. I figured the seagull would just fly away, or jump in the water...but it just kept walking. It was going fast enough so Spencer couldn't catch it....but not terribly fast, it didn't seem to be too scared. I decided to pull the camera out and video tape him. As I fumble it out of my pocket and try to turn it into recorder mode, I notice that Spencer had walked into a huge mud pile. It was bizarre because this mud pile was only a few feet long. There was sand around the entire pond, but no mud...except for this one spot. He, of course, fell down. As I came to grab him, I realized that it wasn't mud....it was a huge pile of bird crap. I don't have the slightest clue as to how so much bird crap could end up in one big messy, mud-like, pile...but it did. Luckily I was only a few feet away, so I could grab him before his hands could get anywhere near his mouth. I had to run him over to my sister, who held his hands while I ran to the car to get wipes. And of course, there were no wipes! You would think that two people, with three kids who all wear diapers, would have some wipes. Luckily I had a thing of Kleenex and a first aid kit. This kit had a whole sleeve full of sanitary wipes, soap towelettes, and alcohol wipes. So with those, and a whole bottle of hand sanitizer we cleaned him up. Then he got stripped down, and we went home. We were only there about ten minutes or so. Can't have much more fun than that!

Pied Piper

For those of you who don't know, I am a music major at BSU. I originally began in 2002 as a performance major, which trains you to play in professional orchestras. It is the hardest and most intense music major there is. I attended BSU on a flute scholarship, auditioned, and was accepted into the performance program. My first semester was awesome, I made every audition that I tried out for, and loved my teacher. However the professional musician life style isn't necessarily the best if you want a family (I had always just planned on teaching private lessons, then later in life when all the kids are grown I could try out for the Boise Philharmonic or something). After my first semester everything went down hill. My teacher moved to Arkansas. Her husband lives down there, and plays in the Arkansas symphony....Don't ask me why you would take a job across the United States from your spouse. I really enjoyed her as a teacher, but...who would have thought....she wanted to live with her husband. My next flute teacher did not go over well, to put it nicely. She wasn't the nicest, wasn't very helpful, and I didn't really feel like I was learning anything. I got to the point where I didn't want to go, and didn't like playing, didn't want to touch my flute. Since I had 3-4 hrs of music stuff a day, It was miserable. Plus performance majors were required to practice 3 hrs a day on top of that. She was an awesome player, has played all over the world...but again her life style is...not married (she's probably in her 40's), and has lived in apartments her whole life. She moves around enough playing in orchestras, that she can't be settled. So I took a break for awhile. After a few years I decided to come back. I love my flute teacher. She has taught me more in the last 2 months than I think I have ever learned. When she found out that I took from the other teacher, she immediately asked me if it was the teacher that lead me away...She said that she has quite the mess to clean up from that teacher. There were a few others who stopped playing altogether, or were really behind. So I'm glad that I wasn't the only one. I'm glad that I took those few years off, because now I can really see how much I love playing, and practising. I think I love it more than even when I initially started BSU. Right now I am just going to go for a general music degree, I'm getting sort of close to finishing, I have 90 some odd credits and you have to have 128. On the down side I guess. Only going part time really drags it out. Then eventually when we are done having kids, and they are all in school I want to go back and get a masters in music education. I would love to teach elementary music, or elementary band...I know, not too many people aspire to be a band teacher.
Last night I was in a piece with the BSU orchestra called the Pied Piper. If you don't know the story, the pied piper was hired to get rid of rats, that infested the city of Hameln. He would play his fife..pipe..tin whistle..whatever you want to call it, which would attract the rats, and from there he would lead them all to the river to drown. After doing so the government didn't pay him what they owed him for the job. So as revenge he returned to the city, while everyone was in church. He played a song that only the children could hear. Like the rats, it lured the children to him. I've heard two different endings....one he lures them into a cave, to never be seen again, and the other he lures them into the river like the rats. Kinds of gruesome, I know. This piece was a concerto. We've all heard a soloist with a piano accompaniment. A concerto is a soloist with a full orchestra accompaniment. My flute professor was the soloist...the pied piper. I played one of the children. All of the children sat in the audience (of the big Morrison Center Hall). When she played the tune which lured the children to her, we, one by one started playing our flutes, arose from the audience and walked up to the stage, to the pied piper. We then played a little on stage, then as we played the tune again, we all followed her off stage (still playing) and out of the hall. It was a cool piece. I wish that I could have heard it form the audiences stand point, after we followed the pied piper out in the hall....we still played our tune out in the foyer....so the audience had a sense of the piper leading us away. If anyone is into that sort of music, it's called Pied Piper Fantasy by Corigliano. I didn't get a picture, but my flute teacher got a few, so I'll have her email me one so I can post it.

This movie is hilarious!

Salt Lake City

Spencer and I, with my older sister Lindsey, and her two kids (Natalie and Alex), went down to Salt Lake for our best friend's wedding (Melina Vaughn, now Melina Pugsley). We (Melina, Lindsey and I) grew up together, same ward, and have known each other since nursery. Melina then went to BYU-Idaho, received an English education degree, and now teaches 9th grade english in Salt Lake. The ride down was an adventure....It took us an hour or so to get going. Stop for gas, stop at Fred Meyer for tie downs, tie down stuff on top, bathroom, diapers, stopping to tuck in buckles that were flapping on top, more diapers, couldn't figure out where the freeway entrance was going east by the outlet mall...yeah it was fun. Then let the screaming begin. The kids did fine for a while, then about 30 mins before we got to Burley, everyone was upset about something. We had to stop and play in the McDonald's playland area for a while before we dared to put them back in the car.

Most of Lindsey's husband's extended family lives in Utah, so we were able to stay with them. They had a full basement, with a kitchen for us to use. We stayed in Layton, about 25-30 minutes before Salt Lake. Lindsey had a babysitter in Layton lined up for when we went to the sealing, but I wasn't able to find one. So while Lindsey went into the sealing, Spencer and I took a tour of the Conference Center. We were there when she walked out...looking gorgeous of course. Melina is skinny minnie, so she had a "mermaid" type dress. It wasn't completely mermaid style, it wasn't quite as tight on her legs as mermaid dresses are, but it flared out a little lower than your average dress. It's hard to explain but it was really pretty. Lindsey and I decided to not leave the kids with the sitter all day, so we missed the luncheon. I was told by Melina's sister (Mckenzie), that she made a slide show which was shown at the luncheon. Mckenzie said that she had a really hard time finding pictures of Melina without Lindsey and I in them. What do you call people who are in all your family pictures, but aren't actually family? So I'm sad that I missed the slide show. After the kids napped we drove back to Salt Lake...luckily there was a gas station in Layton that had gas for $3.09 a gallon! We then walked around, went to the museums, and then went to the reception. The reception was beautiful, it was in an art museum. So during the reception, you could go through the museum if you wanted too. We couldn't stay at the reception as long as I would have liked, Spencer had had it by then, very long day, and he was completely ornery. Good thing his screaming was drowned out by talking and music. We left the next morning, for another fun car ride.
This was that 30 mins before we got to Burley. Spencer is freaking, Natalie was freaking because her book was being naughty (It wouldn't stop falling off of her lap, and the pages wouldn't stay down), and Alex freaking because everyone else is freaking.
This is Spencer and I on our Conference Center tour.
Spencer and I at the visitors center. And two handsome boys at the temple.

Spinning

We've discovered spinning!

First Snowfall

I'm sure that the McCall relatives are seeing the same thing out their windows, but we had our first snowfall today....a lot earlier than usual. Scott is in Portland right now, with work, so these pictures are for him. I tried to take some with my phone to send him, but you could hardly see the snow. Even these pictures don't give this storm any justice, the flakes are HUGE. I don't think I've really seen flakes this large.

This would be the sky, obviously a lot cooler in person.

Who loves sunglasses?

I usually leave my sunglasses sitting around for Spencer to play with. I'm not a huge fan of sunglasses, I can only wear them for ten minutes or so, before they start to irritate me. I only wear them because I have sensitive eyes. Spencer can't get enough of them. He comes and puts them on me, then I put them back on him, and he actually leaves them on for a while.

Does anyone remember my "Who loves hats?" post? Well, here are some more pictures that I need to add to that post.

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Pannell!

Thank you again for Spencer's present, he loves it!

Helping Dad put it together

Loves the buttons