This year at our halloween party we had quite a few people show up. We also had a really good menu for dinner. There was Howling wings, funeral potatoes, red slimy goop salad, cheesey ghosts, melted witch puddles, donuts, and for drink we had Harry Potter Butter Beer and Gummy Worm Punch. All very good I might add. We also had skeleton finger carrots for vegies. As people showed up, we began to notice the different costumes they were wearing. 
Even the Woodhouses got into having fun. Here is sis. Jones (our chinese girl) dressing Bro. Woodhouse as hop along Sally.
We had people dressed as cows and fairy tale creature things.
We also had Indians, Elton John, a missionary, a European bar maid, Politicians John McCain and Sara Palin even stopped by. 
We also had a wood sprite, cowgirl, and a few more really good costumes. I however, went as the unsuspected elf or maybe I was also a Canadian just like my friend Mindy. Maybe I was just dressed as an elf, like the elves in The Santa Clause 3 eh.I should have said "Welcome to Canada, eh." 
Sister Hobson and I went through a lot of work putting this really cool party together and I especially had fun coming up with a design and model a costume game. It was a blast. My favorite two were of Jason and Josh modeling their made up costumes. 
Don't these boys look really cute...cute enough to date?
The summer of 2008 for me started out with a bang. Our summer activities for my church start by going up to Melcher Mine and having a BBQ and 4-wheeling up to the mines or down to the creek, which I thought was fun until one year when I ended up on the back of a 4-wheeler that my brother was driving. I hate being on the back of 4-wheelers because I have no control of what will happen or where I want to go. Any way to finish the short story that ended in disaster a few times in the summer of 2007, it all began enjoying a ride down to the creek with my brother driving and me on the back were cruising down the hill with some friends when Abram noticed the fence to the creek wasn't open and had almost hit it so we waited until he opened it and proceeded down the path to the creek. When we got to the creek we turned around and headed back up the path then we came to the fence again and this time our friend Liza and her friend were tangled in it because they didn't see it and hit it head on. Abram decided to help the get untangled and Wes and I decided to head back up to the Mansion. On our way back up we hit the trail (that was already uneven and at about a 30 degree slant) wrong and lost control of the ATV and flipped it. Lucky thing there was a seat on the ATV that prevented it from flipping any more or it would have been more serious. I was holding the ATV up with my feet and Wes was trying to push it back up onto the trail with no luck. I suffered a dislocated shoulder and some scratches due to falling in some sage brush. Wes, well he was the lucky one with no injuries. We waited for about 10 minutes before any one showed up and I walked the 50 feet or so back to the Mansion with Sis. Hobson. That little incedent scared me pretty good. So when I learned that we were going to start our 4-wheeling activities again this summer I was pretty nervous.
Here is Sis. Jones and Jessica preparing for our BBQ dinner on the front porch of the mansion.
Some of the people opted to go 4-wheeling before dinner and missed out on the nice hot hamburgers that had just come off the grill and the other delicious food we had. Thanks to our wonderful feed the flock committee. I think Crystal had had wonderful time eating.
Here is Brother Barker taking the opportunity to teach some of the newbies on how to play some pool down in the basement of the mansion. Brother Barker could play pool for hours down there. We actually had to force him out of there for dinner.
Awe the Mansion itself, notice the smoke? No the mansion is not on fire. Pres. Jones thought it would be nice and BBQ just outside of the basement door and it filled the front side of the house with smoke. That was just wonderful because people had to get their food and suffer watery eyes (due to the smoke) at the same time.
After eating a really good dinner, my brother Wes, my friend Mindy and I thought it would be nice to take a hike and see how close we could get to the last remaining patch of snow before the summer heat melted it away.
However, we quickly discovered it was farther up than we had anticipated, plus, the remaining mountain was way too steep to climb. We did have a wonderful hike though.
Then one day Mindy found out that she will be co-hosting a dance group from Siberia for our annual International Dance Festival. Boy was she in for the long haul. She did things she only dreamed of doing. She even let them smack her with a horses tail during a prayer before dinner one night. In the pic below they were teaching the kids on of the traditional dances. I decided to take 2 of my neighbors kids to it so they could get a feel for the different cultures around the world. Aren't their costumes pretty?
This next picture is the Russian Cussacks. We learned that they start dancing at the age of 3 and they are very talented. Just watching them spin around the room made me dizzy. I have to admit these Russian boys were actually kind of cute.
In the picture below is Johnny see how much fun he had with the Cossacks? Oh, we can't for get Jacob, he is the one sitting by the Cossack with the blue shirt on. They learned so much form these guys.
Before luch we kind of missed the performance by the Chinese, but we did mangae to sneak in and get some autographs and pictures of them. They have really pretty costumes and some even speak really good English. I was surprised to see that they were even promoting the Summer Olympics by hanging up some Olympic flags next to their Chinese flags.
Before we saw the Chinese we were so busy learning how to dance the Dutch way Johnny and Jacob stayed in the back and had trouble learning the steps to this dance. I think the reason why Johnny had trouble learning it was because he was watching one of the Dutch girls (who is not in the pic.) Later he said she was not bad looking. I told him that she was probably at least 5 years older than he is.
Jake and Johnny really enjoyed learning how to be on the Dutch flag team and leaning how to fly the flags and spin them in the air.
We also got to see the French. This picture is Johnny wipping is face at the end of one of the dances they learned. At the end the girls kissed the boys on the cheek. Johnny just happened to be dancing with a really old French women who looked scary beyond all reason. Lets just say he wasn't too impressed with the French.
The picture below is Johnny dancing with the lady mentioned above...before the kiss.
This is the French teaching the kids a song about a duck, I think.
Ah, India. They were a really fun group to see. In the picture below, they are doing the camel dance. ( I think that is what it is called) In order to make the camel they took 2 boys and put them back to back then layed another boy on top of them using his feet as the head and neck.
Aren't the girls costumes pretty?
Seeing India, gave me a more clear background of the culture of my friend Tarjani who is originally from India. (well at least her parents are)
Finally, to wrap up our summer FHE activities we had one last boating extraviganza at the Hobson's dock. Here is bro. Hobson doing what he does best pulling the water weinnie and trying to put people in the water.
HOLD ON!
Poor Josh. he now has to swim back to the weinnie.
Climbing back on for another go at it.
Ready to go for a wild ride on the weinnie
This picture below is a very rare one. It is Brother Barker Water Skiing. He has really good moves for an old guy.
One last run on the weinnie. This time it was Sam, Jordan, and Tom's turn for a wild ride.
Here we go. Hold on.
Here is the branches most eligible bachlor Josh and Sister Barker going for a boat ride with Brother Barker. Bye. Have fun. Don't get wet.
Climbing back on.
This was our last summer activity. The branches annual campout at Steadman's in Raft River. Wes and I din't get to stay the night and enjoy the other activities, so we got in as much as we could before leaving. This is Allison, Jessica, and Kendra going down on the tube. Hold on.
Here is Mindy enjoying a jump on the trampoline and getting some excercise in before she embarked on the long ride to Utah to see her sister.
Sister Barker and her grandaughter trying to pull the tube up a slightly steep hill after enjoying a wild ride down the slip and slide. See the wet grass? That wasn't from the water off of the slide. Earlier we had a rain storm move through the area and I really thought that our campout was going to be canceled, but it wasn't.
Here is Wes daring to go head first down on the tube. Hold on and don't get hurt.
Mindy was so conviently conned into attempting something she would never do to get hurt, but Allison and Jessica got her to go any way. Have Fun.
Later, when brother Hobson got there, they pulled out the all popular Potato Gun and let everyone take turns shooting potatoes over everyone who was on the slip and slide.
Here is the mighty Lacie getting ready to shoot her potato and trying to convince Timbri that it is her turn next.
Here is Kendra, Allison, and Jessica daring to go double tube down the slip and slide
Here is our ever brave Pres. Jones getting ready to go down on something you will never catch me on.
How high did it go Krystal?
Here is sis. Jones and Lacie riding double on a tube. Hold on.
Awe. How cute. Pres. Jones and Sis. Jones taking a ride together.
Hold of Sis. Hobson. Have Fun.
We did so many things this summer that I only chose the best ones to post. Hope you enjoyed looking through the pictures.
Normally we don't get this much snow in October, but this year mother nature thought we needed about 15 inches before Halloween. We were supposed to get some snow on Oct. 10, but some how the custodian at BJHS and I thought it blew passed us like most weather does here in our small town in Idaho. The custodian told me that she and her husband were going to Boise the following morning to go to a coin collector's convention and she was going to spend time with her daughter and son-in-law. But mother nature had other plans. My mom got up for work the next morning and when she went to take my dog outside, she came running back in and was yelling something like "Oh my gosh we have about 1 inch outside!" It just so happens that I had some friends up at Melcher Mansion having a sleepover the night before, which I was supposed to be at by the way. The first thing that came to my mind is, "I wonder if they got as much snow up there as we did down here?" I on the other hand, decided to go to the annual Fireman's breakfast that morning and this is where my bad snow driving abity had to kick in. First i had to take my dad out to NORCO to get something, so we started out for our day. When we got to the main road, we noticed that there weren't any snow plows out and come to think of it they weren't out for the entire day! As it turns out, NORCO changed their store hours and didn't open until 9:00 a.m. So we had to drive back across our snow covered bridge with semis coming up behind us going a little bit faster than I would have liked, but we made it to our next destination in one piece. When we got to the fire station, we saw one of our finest shoveling snow off the side walk and he greeted us with a friendly "Merry Christmas." After having a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon, hashbrowns and pancakes made by our local heros, our firefighters, we proceeded to go back to NORCO to get what we went for the first time. However, we got stuck trying to get out of where we parked, so my brother Wes had to push us out of our parking spot. Later that evening I decided to go take pics of the snow for a really good blog on our first snow fall of the season. These pics were taken in our front yard.
in the above pic those aren't stars those are snow flakes!
In this pic you can see what looks like a street light, which it is. Isn't it beautiful?
Here are more snow flakes.
Here I am trying to see how much snow we have in our yard with a yard stick.
Pretty little snow flakes.
This is one of our kittens trying to make its way out of a snow pile. When they went to bed the night before there wasn't any of this strange wet stuff. They didn't even know what to do in it. Some of them wouldn't even go near it and found the driest way to our front door.
This is one of the other kittens standing by our side gate. See how little he is compared to the snow pile.
This is when the snow flakes started to get bigger.
My poor little bunny was nice and warm thanks to me destributing straw the night before, so every one would be nice and warm.That is a lot of snow on his house.
This is one of the branches the snow brought down earlier in the day because of the weight of it on the leaves. It was a really big branch.
If you look closely at the pic above, you can see where the really big branch broke off from. It just so happens that there was another branch in this tree that also got broken due to the weight of the snow.
See how much snow was in this poor tree that had gone through enough lately. Our neighbor was cutting down a branch in his yard and had stopped when another branch they didn't touch came down in our poor tree and wiped out this branch and our fence and our tomatoes. It was a ginormous branch and it took a few days to remove. It came down due to having tree rot.
This pic was taken shortly after having to drive my brother C.J. to the high school to join up with some friends to go to the movies. Oh if you read my last post, it is official C.J. is dating his date he took to homecoming.
This is how much snow we had in our front yard before we went to bed that night. My mom told me to measure the back yard in the morning to see how much we actually got throughout the night.
The next morning, I went out to the back yard and took these pics of how much snow was in the back yard. I guess it depended on where I put the yard stick because I got 2 different measures.
It was so beautiful with the green trees and the white snow. Plus, it had also started snowing again. What a birthday for my brother Wes. He finally got to have a white birthday.
This pic is one of our apple trees. See how much snow was on it? Poor little tree.
This little apple tree keeps getting entangled with Wes' pumpkins, so it always looks like it is growning pumpkins. Our raspberries are also here....somewhere.
Wes' pumpkins are under the snow still in this pic along with our raspberries.
This is our poor cherry tree which only produces one cherry once every maybe 2 years.
Don't mind my pjs please. This is my leg in the snow and the snow was actually pretty deep in our back yard. It was up past my knee. And I am only 5 foot 3 or 5 foot 4.
No this is not all snow. This is my brother C.J.'s little Hyndai it is under all that snow.
See how much snow we had on our roof. This is normal for the residents of Hailey or SunValley, but not where I live! I even called my cousin who lives in Hailey and they didn't get any snow at all....not fair!
This was taken on Monday, 2 days after our big snowfall. This is the house across the street from mine. That Poor bush has to hold up all that snow that is trying to slide off the roof.
Here is a better view of where that big branch came from.
This is the big branch the fell from the spot in the last pic.
These last 2 pics are my beautiful petunias...or was is left of them. Before the snow started melting you couldn't even see them. Luckily I still have a few true survivors of our fist snow storm of the Year 2008!
