Happy Halloween!!

Here are the Somers' family "punkins." Left to right: Brice's, Ryker's, Morgan's, and Raelin's. Raelin carved hers all by herself. It's a ghost and it's really good (though you can't really tell from the picture) for a four year old!

I tried a new kind of pumpkin carving this year. I found a book at the library that taught how to carve faces so I gave it a shot. It turned out pretty well. Not as good as the guy's in the book, but not bad for my first try. Here we are at our ward's trunk-or-treat. (Ooh, that reminds me, I'd better get the candy we brought out of the trunk before morning so it doesn't melt!) Momma the nurse, Daddy the M&M, Raelin the punkin, and Ryker the baseball.

This year's costumes were so easy! I bought an orange sweatshirt a few sizes too big, turned it inside out so the picture wouldn't show and sewed on a jack-o-lantern face cut from black fleece.
For Ryker's baseball, I got a white sweatshirt that was too big and used puffy paint to paint the stitches on the baseball. Stuff the sweatshirts, add matching sweat pants (black for Ryker and Raelin wanted orange) to complete the outfits and viola! Halloween is DONE!
We had an entourage of adults again this year and it was lots of fun! Grammy, Granddad, Uncle Jordan, Uncle Wee-yum, Uncle Wee-yum #2 (AKA Angel--Ryker sometimes calls her Uncle Wee-yum even though he knows she's Angel. It's hilarious!), Tia, and Uncle Toby all joined us for various parts of our Halloween festivities. Liam was the cutest cowboy you've ever seen and I don't have pictures of him (well, I do from my parent's house a few days ago--they're part of the previous post), but when I get them, I'll post them (It was dark by the time he joined us and my camera doesn't do so well in the dark). His costume morphed, as Angel cut away the fabric, from a baseball bat to a sting ray to a football to a monkey to a cowboy!

Pumpkin Patch at Grammy's

We went to Grammy and Granddad's house to pick pumpkins from their garden and carve them. We saddled up one of the horses and rode around a bit, and what is a trip to Granddad's without riding the tractor!
The kids had fun picking out the pumpkins they wanted to carve...

And trying to pick up the REALLY HUGE ones!

Grammy's garden is on steroids and it grew a couple of hunormous ones.


Here are the kids in their costumes: Raelin the pumpkin, Ryker the baseball, and Liam the cowboy. Trying to get three kids to all look at the camera and smile at the same time seemed to be impossible that day!
But here's a cute one of the boys...And Kira

Raelin was missing in this picture, unfortunately, but other than that, it's one of the best ones we've gotten in a while.
And here is a group picture of most of those that came and played with us that day (not pictured: Stephanie and Angel--went to do a party for Stephanie's work, and Granddad--someone's got to be behind the camera) and our pumpkins.

What's left...

Check this out! This is where Brice and I lived when we first got married. Actually, our apartment is (was) just outside the left side of the frame.


Fires are devastating a good portion of the town (Running Springs--"Slide Fire"). It's a town of about 5000 people and over 200 homes burned to the ground. So far, I don't know anyone personally that lost their house, but no one is allowed up yet, so the info comes from people that didn't evacuate and that are driving around and posting what they see on the internet. Addresses are hard to come by when there isn't a house to post it on.
Also, our phone has been down for almost two weeks, so I have only been in contact via e-mail. My father in law is still up there. He was in the safest part of the mountain, but in the beginning when things were pretty uncertain, he still insisted he was going to stay up there and ride it out.

This last picture is of my good friend Sue. She and her husband stayed up there and saved their house! The house behind her isn't hers, but rather the house her kids grew up in. They live in a little community of about 100 houses and more than 30 of them burned. Jack and Sue have spent the last few years building a new house in the same community and Brice has helped on several of their projects. Jack even did his own cabinetry and it's a work of art. I'm SO glad they didn't lose their home!

The fires are on day 4 in the mountains and one of them (yup, there's two) is 70% contained (the one that's between my parent's old house in Lake Arrowhead and my in law's house in Crestline--"Grass Valley Fire") and the Running Springs/Slide fire (where Brice and I lived) is only 15% contained which the firefighters did overnight last night--yesterday it was still 0% contained.

Pretty crazy huh!

Smarty Pants and Girly Man

So, this little almost four-year-old girl says the most amazing things! The way that she puts words together is beyond her hears. Unfortunately for her, hearing those sorts of things coming from such a little mouth makes us grown ups laugh and she thinks she's being laughed at. I know because I still remember when I was a kid and grown ups would laugh at me and didn't know why--I thought I had said something clever or intelligent and they thought I was funny. Now I get it, but then back then I was really hurt. Poor kids. Anyway, since she won't hear anyone's laughter, I'll tell you some stories about her grown up way of talking. The other day Angel and I were in the car talking and Raelin asked a question. Angel and I found my answer amusing and Raelin said, "I see nothing funny here!" to which Angel and I just laughed harder. Poor Raelin looked so forlorn! But she is just so CUTE!


This morning we were eating breakfast and Raelin was talking about some lions from a story and she said, "He wasn't nice to him when he was a little kid. A cub, I should say." What three-year-old says that!?! I love it! In this picture, she's a mommy with a baby in her tummy. She loves to play house with Ryker and she always wants a baby in her belly, even if she's the daddy.

Ryker is such a boy. Throwing, hitting, trucks, mud, all that good stuff. Until it comes to shoes... He loves to put on shoes. He tends to find girl ones more often than boy ones. So in this picture, my little girly-man is vacuuming like a good little housewife in his high heels with his tractor purse. That's a backhoe hanging from a camera strap slung over his shoulder. He cracks me up!

And he loves to have his hair done. Usually I just put a pony tail on top, but this time he brought me two hair ties so we did pig tails. What perfect little bangs! Hilarious!

As Promised

Well, here are the pictures of Raelin and me that are pretty similar. Not as similar as I pictured in my head, but still pretty cute. Raelin looks more like her Daddy and her Mimi I think. Still, a couple of cute kids. Raelin is usually covered in Band-Aids as well--if Brice hasn't already used them all... And Raelin's fond of showing off her panties just like I appear to have been. Though, I remember very much disliking dresses and Raelin likes them, so that's a bit backwards in this pair of photots.