THANKSGIVING

WOW! This Thanksgiving our family is thankful for many things. We are grateful for the awesome experiences that we are having here and for our wonderful family. This Thanksgiving was very different from any other we've ever had. Not only are our families on the other side of the Earth, we are trying to jump aboard a plane. This Thanksgiving is also different in the fact that there were no pilgrams, only INDIANS! :)

Best Buds

For Alan's birthday this year he got a year membership to a golf club. He took Ethan on Saturday, and I'm pretty sure Ethan was in heaven. I think he liked the golfing, but I know he loved spending time with Alan (with no sisters). They started out to play 9 holes, but Ethan was still going strong so they went for the whole 18. At about hole 12 Ethan finally got tired. I asked him how golfing was and his reply was. "There was A LOT of courses, and it makes you thirsty." Before they left Alan told him to get a hat on so he wouldn't get too burned and so he ran and was so excited that he had a hat just like Alan's.

This is Ethan with his Caddy.
I asked him if he wanted to go again sometime, and he told me he is planning on going next Saturday. I told him maybe next Saturday he'd have to go Skiing instead. :) 4 More days!!

An official walker

Annie is an official walker!!

She went from crawling and not even trying to walk to this:

in 1 day!!

We went over to our friends home for dinner and they had a rug in their living room. We were all sitting around talking and the next thing we knew she was walking all over the place. I'm pretty sure she realized that the rug was softer than the marble floors at our house.

Primary Program

Our branch had it's annual Primary Program on Sunday. The kids did a really GREAT job. We don't have a primary chorister so all of the senior primary children took turns leading a song. Ellie got to lead "I Lived in Heaven", she also had to give a talk. Maddie and Ethan both memorized scriptures. Ellie and Maddie also got to sing in a small group. The following video is from the practice the night before. The kids really wanted to show their grandmas their parts.

He actually didn't do it this goofy during the program. He did it perfect and I was so proud of him. Although he did goof off some during the songs. The Primary President came to me after the program and said how proud she was of Ethan. She also told me she was praying for him all the night before that he would be able to handle being up on the stand.

You have to turn up your volume all the way to hear Maddie's they hadn't pulled out the microphone yet.

Maddie had her part memorized the very first out of our family. She was so excited to give it, but the morning of the program she started telling me that her tummy hurt. Her tummy is always hurts when she doesn't want to do something so I thought she was just getting nervous to do her part. She got dressed and I combed her hair and we headed to church. Right before church started Maddie started throwing up and Alan had to take her home. Ellie ended up giving her part.

This is the song that Ellie got to lead. Doesn't this pass off something for Achievement Days?

It also shows how big our primary is, and a little bit why the primary president would be worried about Ethan.

Flood Relief Pictures

Our church district here did a service project to take food to a village that was destroyed by the floods here last month. We just got pictures of the service project. Alan and I weren't able to go, but I thought people might like to see some of what our branch did. They had the members (men and women) put together hygiene kits and food packets, and then the men delivered them to the village. Not only did the floods destroy their homes, but it also wiped out all of their rice fields so they had no food.

PREPARATIONS:

TRAVELING THERE:

They rode buses for 13 hours each way.

They also found this church that they helped to fix up and paint.

THE VILLAGE:

Annie's Hair

Annie's Hair is getting so long. I actually put it in pigtails today. I tried and tried to get a good picture, but...I guess I need Amy to come and take one of her. She would not hold still, and all she wanted to do was crawl on the stairs. These are a few that I snapped.

Sumo Cyclist in India?

Our driver came to me the other day and told me that "The day after the 'treat day' (Halloween)" he saw an article in his newspaper that he reads. He showed it to his wife because it was of some people dressed up for Halloween. Then he noticed that the people were from Salt Lake. "The village you're from" as he put it. I told him I'd like to see the article, although I couldn't read it, this is the picture they had.

I couldn't believe that Darrin and the "sumo cyclist" made the Indian Newspapers!!

Halloween

Indians don't celebrate Halloween, but our neighborhood has alot of Indian-Americans in it, so we had our own (not so little) Halloween celebrations. We haven't had any Halloween season, or even a fall feeling for that matter, so Halloween happened all in one day. This post has A LOT of pictures of our Halloween. After seeing my sisters blog with the pictures of her kids Halloween activities, our kids kept saying "Take a picture of this and put it on our blog, so everyone can see we did it."

This past week I've been trying to pull together costumes for our kids. I went to a fabric store to buy some "Cheap" material so that I could sew a pumpkin, and shread up some white strips for a mummy. When I went into the store I asked the man for the cheapest material they had. (I didn't want to spend much money on it) He went over into the corner and asked what color I needed. I told him Orange, Green, and White. (I had found some Superman Pajamas for Ethan to wear) He pulled out the cheapest material they had. 100% pure silk!!! I have to admit, I really didn't spend that much money on it, but it killed me everytime I shreaded a white strip of silk. The costumes came out great, and I think I'll end up packing them away for another year.

Our Halloween day started out as every Saturday starts...Alan was off golfing, and I was helping the kids finish up some homework. When Alan came home, he had 3 pumpkins. I hadn't even thought about carving pumpkins because all the pumpkins I've seen here have been about the size of a large grapefruit. He found a few larger ones, except they weren't too orange. More of a tan color. The kids were excited to carve them, and Alan asked our driver if he wanted to help. He was kind of excited, and our maid watched on with a "what in the world are you doing to those pumpkins" look on her face.

CARVING PUMPKINS:

Ellie of course wanted a Kitty pumpkin
Maddie wanted hers with scary fangs

Ethan's is a scary alien pumpkin.

When we got finished carving pumpkins, we got our costumes on and headed over to the Clubhouse for a Halloween Party. Ellie had invited one of her friends from school to come with her and to go Trick or Treating. Her mom also works with Alan so they came over and had pizza and Homemade Rootbeer (yep I searched High and Low and found some Dry Ice) that night too.

I tried with Annie's costume to make her a Princess, but she more turned out to be a big ball of Tulle. Everyone at the Clubhouse thought she was dressed up as cotton candy.

PARTY AT THE CLUBHOUSE:
They had Pin the Broom on the Witch, Trick or Treat bag decorating, Make a Mummy game, and they also had an Indian version of Snowcones. They are called Golas. They make a snowcone in a cup but instead of just putting the syrup on it, they squish it into the cup to make it solid again, then they put a stick in it and make it into a popcicle type thing. They then put the syrup over that.

Tanesha (neighbor), Ellie, and Hannah (Ellie's friend from school)

Notice in the picture Ellie in shorts. We've traded Trick or Treating in Coats for Trick or Treating with Bug Spray. It was about 80 degrees when they headed out that evening.

TRICK OR TREATING:

Alan invited our driver to bring his 2 1/2 year old daughter to come Trick or Treating with us. She was so excited, and he was too. We had an old costume that had happened to make it's way over here.

Laura McGrath, Alan's co-worker and Hannah's mom. They were headed to a costume party after they left our house. She was dressed as "The bride of Death"

Teeth Teeth Teeth

Ethan is losing them, and Annie is growing them!

Ethan was so excited yesterday because as he was brushing his teeth, his tooth that was just hanging on by a thread, finally popped out! OK so it had a little help from Alan, but it's finally gone! He was so excited to get to church that morning and show his friend Rachel that he had lost a tooth. On Monday he couldn't wait to go to school because he knew his teacher would see that his tooth was missing. Unfortunately, I think the tooth fairy forgot we moved to India.

Annie is on the otherhand growing them. She has had the bottom 2 front teeth for a while now and her 2 cousins that are the same age have 6 and 8 teeth. Finally we are starting to see some of the top ones poking through!! They are coming in kind of funny though. She is getting one of the front top teeth, and then the other side the "fang" tooth is coming in. Hopefully the others will follow quickly so she doesn't have too goofy of a smile!