Halloween Party 2017

Friday we had our annual Halloween Party.  It's our 28th year!  We were missing a few.  Ken and Rob because of health.  DeeAnn and Darrell because of their temple assignment and Hal and Janis because of a new grand baby being born.  While we missed them we still had a nice time.  

Here is our group photo!  (Darla is not in because she was taking the picture.)

Brad and Ruth always come as themselves:)

Rick and I dressed up in 50's garb.

He got off pretty easy with this one.....which he was happy about:)

Trent and Kath as Santa and his little admirer.

Karen and Dennis as tourists.

Larry and Darla as Mr. Clean and Rosie the Riveter.

Our parties seem to get more laid back with each year.  This year we had a wonderful spread of food. In fact we had so much that we took home more than half of what was brought.  

I need to think things differently for the food next year.

We had two kinds of chili and two kinds of soup with a relish tray and other appetizers including pot stickers, taquitos, and chicken firecrackers.  Those from Idaho brought a plethora of desserts as well.  I personally loved Karen's apple cake with caramel sauce as well as her butterscotch dessert:)

We played a couple of small games but mostly enjoyed talking and visiting.

This has been a fun tradition for so many years!

Fall Festival

Last week was our ward fall festival.  The ward mission wanted to come up with an activity that would maybe interest some of our ward members that we don't see very often.  We thought that a fall carnival would be fun.  As a ward mission we received approval from the Bishop to go forward with it.  We then talked with each of the ward auxiliary leaders and got them involved in helping with our booths.  

A few weeks before our big activity we planned a linger longer fireside with a speaker giving a missionary message and to let our ward members know that the carnival was coming and to think of who they could invite out.  Flyers were made and passed out and personal visits were made to encourage people to join us.  It ended up being a wonderful activity with many people coming to support it.

In one of our meetings a suggestion was made to have "Minute to Win It" type games to earn tickets to then spend on "prize winning games" and fun carnival foods to eat.  The Minute games were inexpensive to put together and easy to play.  We had games like stacking pennies, building a pyramid with solo cups, balloon blow over, dropping pennies into a jar......and more.  

Some of the prize games were donuts on a string, fish pond, balloon darts, and ring toss.  Some of the yummy foods were cotton candy, popcorn, hot dogs, shaved ice, and hot cocoa.  Our activity was held inside the church because it is now too cold to do activities outside.  Our festival was a grand success with many people participating in helping with the booths and others coming just to enjoy!

There is more than one way to do missionary work!

Skylar playing donuts on a string.

            Rafe enjoying a hot dog!

Rick manning the cotton candy machine outside because it was making too much of a mess on the inside:(  I felt bad that he was outside most of the time.  He said he didn't mind, though.  

He's such a good sport.  I love this guy!!

Bishop and little T getting the hot dogs ready:)

          Haivyn, Kylah, Isaiah, and Naomi enjoying some treats.

Katie, Amari, Halle, Naomi and Havelah posing for a picture.

                    Darrell Allen and John Beckett manning the fish pond.

               Tracy Beckett at the fish pond!

Kelby and Jessie taking care of the penny stack booth.

Carter Ence trying the "Suck it Up" game.

Halle Bartley and her friend give me a smile.

Mike and Jen Shepherd enjoying some cotton candy.

     Alejandra Hainey holding baby Tom Harrington.

Scout and Rafe showing me their yummy shaved ice.

       Henry sporting a batboy mask!

Henry "fishing" for a prize while Rafe and Scout wait for their turn.

Sarah's turn at the "Donut on a String" Booth.

Brother Carter is giving Seth a little help with the push of the head:)

Tammy Sheffield in the background.

My sweet granddaughters got a crown painted on by Aunt Sarah.

A last picture with my littles.  Charlie has not quite learned to like me yet and usually cries whenever I pick him up but I am happy to say that all of the others REALLY like me:-)

A fun night and a successful missionary activity!

Birthday Time

Look who had birthdays this month!!

Miss Scout turned three on the 14th and Mr. Rafe turned five on the 19th.  

These two make our hearts sing!  We love them so much!!

Kendra made Scout a little doll cake.  Scoutie got a lot of gifts including play dishes and a play mixer, a new Belle doll, a rupunzel costume, and lots and lots of new clothes.

Rafe's party was held at Grandma and Grandpa Bomans.   Brach decorated a cute ninja cake for Rafe and we had a nice lunch of pizza and veggies.  Rafie got a new football book, a remote control dinosaur, a rocket, some legos, and lots of warm winter clothes.  

Grand Cayman Part 2

Now that we have been home from Grand Cayman for over a week I think it's high time I posted the second half of our trip!

Tuesday we woke up to a beautiful day!  What made it even more beautiful is the fact that it was Rick's BIRTHDAY!!  We got the day started off right with some exercise in the gym and then a little breakfast in our room.  After breakfast I cuddled up to Rick with his birthday present!  I surprised him with a new wedding ring!  For years his wedding band has looked terrible.  It is horribly misshapen and I thought it was time to upgrade.  Well, I had no idea how much wedding bands cost.  Really??  I just wanted a nice gold band with some small diamonds.   Kind of like his first wedding band that we bought at the pawn shop for $75.  (Which he lost out in our backyard about five years into our marriage.)  Well,  the prices have gone up since then but I found one at The Shane Company that looked a little like that first wedding band and I thought he would appreciate it.  He did!  He put it on and hasn't taken it off since:)  

The one thing that Rick wanted to do for his birthday was to get a dive light since he gave his old one to Skylar.  We made the plan to drive into Georgetown to purchase one and see the sights along the way.  We first stopped at the small blowhole at the Southern part of the island.

Here is the birthday boy posing in front of it! 

So as we were in Georgetown looking for the Dive shop we were enjoying watching all of the people on the streets.  There were three cruise ships in the harbor so there were LOTS of people milling about.  Rick was in a turning lane next to a big truck.  When the light turned green the big truck mosied right into our lane and scraped clear down the side of our car!  We were like....What the heck????

 We turned right and the big truck just kept on going straight.  Well,  happy birthday, right?  We ended up finding a policeman who instructed us to go back to the sight and pull off onto the sidewalk and call 911.  Police officers came and took down information and luckily Rick had purchased insurance for the car so we were able to trade out our little Mercedes in for a mini cooper with out too much trouble.  The mini cooper was a bit newer and was fun to drive around in.  It was a good trade:)  But, we did feel bad about the accident.

After finding the dive shop we purchased a new light for Rick plus a swim shirt.  He loves them both.  

Right close to the dive shop I saw a sign that said "Chicken Chicken" and I remembered that a lady in church had told Sarah that it was a good place to get some food.  I knew we shouldn't eat much because we were meeting the kids for Rick's birthday dinner just a few hours from that point.  I couldn't help myself though.  We hadn't had lunch and it was 3:00.  I ordered a platter for us to share.  It was super yummy.  

The chicken is baked over a hot flame on skewers.

I nice rainbow for the birthday boy:)

We tried two different places for dinner that night at Rick's suggestion but both places were closed.  Skylar and Sarah suggested the restaurant at the Windhym Hotel.  It was really nice!  The food looked and tasted so delicious.  I could have kicked myself at this point because I was still full from our chicken lunch!  While I had a salad everyone else had full on dinners.  Sarah's looked the best because it was parmesan chicken and pasta.  She was nice and let me have a taste!

We even ordered dessert!  Rick's molten lava cake had a nice message on it:)

The next day the kids wanted to have another beach day so Rick and I took off to do some more exploring.  We stopped off to see the "Wreck of the Ten Sails" just off the south eastern point of the island.  It was a short hike to the water where a monument was laid.  From there we could see the wreck on the sand bar about a half mile off the shore.  On our way back we found this little creature on a flowering tree.  We had never seen such a colorful caterpillar before.  I wonder what the look like when the turn into butterflies??

Our mini coop...

While I'm showing a picture of our car I'll throw in the kids' too. 

Both kids had jeeps for the week.

Skylar and Sarah's was red....

....and Brach and Kendra's was white

After our hike to the wreck we stopped to get a shot on "Lover's Wall".  It is a beautiful view of the ocean on the South part of the island.

Next we stopped at Pedro St. James Castle.  Built in 1780.  Not really a castle but a beautiful home to tour and learn about it's history.

After the castle we stopped for lunch overlooking the water.  I had a fresh lemonade with some delicious chicken tacos.  And the fries......WOW!

Later that evening we met with the kids (minus Brach who had schoolwork to do) and went to the Crystal Caves.  There are three caves that are open for tours.  We had a really fun guide who is an old native of the island.  His accent sounded Scottish and was really fun to listen to but he assured me he is definitely a Caymander through and through.  His name was Chester and he grew up around the caves.  He was very knowledgeable and explained a lot to us:)

After the caves we stopped at a place close to the caves on the North end for dinner.  

The next day was our last full day and the kids wanted to enjoy the beach again.

So we did.  Rick and I took a wave running excursion to do some snorkeling out on the reef.  It was so fun to ride on those wave runners.  Very wet with a lot of water in our faces:)

For lunch we went next door to the Windhym and got some fun nachos.  They were so delish!!

That night we all had dinner out at Kai Bo restaurant on the Rum Point.  After we got seated and had a few appetizers we could see the clouds rolling in and decided we better take cover because when it rains it POURS.  So glad we did because not to long after our move it did just that!  It rained and rained with lots of lightening.  We were a little nervous because we had planned an excursion to go kayaking to see the bioluminescence in the bay.  We thought we would go on over to where the excursion was to take place.  I really did not want to go at this point and I could tell none of us really wanted to but as we waited....the storm dissipated (but the lightening did not)  The director told us that the excursion was still going to happen but if anyone felt uncomfortable that we could back out.  Brach and Kendra opted out but the rest of decided, why not?  The lightening was pretty far away at this point and we thought it would be neat to see the bioluminescence.

The kayak trip took about twenty minutes to get to the bay and we did get to see the lighting up of the creatures in the water.  I wouldn't say it was wow factor but it was interesting and was something that we had never done before.  It was a good way to end our trip:)

The next morning we enjoyed a little time out at the infinity pool before our flight out.  We sure made some fun memories on such a beautiful island:)