The Andersons Dressed up as.....

THE WIZARD OF OZ

Dorothy

Scarecrow
Tinman
Lion

Happy Halloween!

Here is our family picture. Jason designed the Cornwall Zoo logo. I thought it was fantastic! We sure love our cute little zoo animals!

We hope you all have a happy and safe Halloween night!!

WILDCATS KEEP WINNING

Here is a little taste of exciting Wildcat Football. It's not from yesterday's game (to which Sarah went to see Monrovia beat South Pas 35-7) . The vid shows Monrovia's gridiron greats of 2009 in one their toughest pre-season match-ups. So for you alum's, take a trip back to the MHS stands - enjoy Monroooviaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Wiiildcaaaaaaaattts!!!

Click the above banner to go to Star News Prep Sports section for real time game scores, articles and other game of the week videos.

Cute Seminary Class

We had a little seminary Halloween party this morning mixed with some scripture mastery. Everyone looked really cute (especially Sarah) - just wanted to share.

Paisley's birthday and our fun week

Okay get ready for a long post. This week has been very fun but very busy. We first start out with Jarom being as cute as can be!Monday night we carved our pumpkin for FHE. It was a lot of fun. We went with a simple design this year since we had a couple nights of frost and made our pumpkin a little bit squishy.

On Tuesday the kids were able to wear their costumes to dance if they wanted, so Paisley decided she wanted too. She makes for a cute leopard!

Wednesday night was our ward party. We all got dressed up for the occassion but we unfortunately didn't think to take a picture since Jason and I were in charge of the activity we were a little busy doing other things. We are going to put on the costumes again so we can get a family shot. (SPOILER ALERT: since you have seen the kids costumes, this years theme was the zoo. Jason and I were zoo keepers, Paisley was a leopard and Jarom a giraffe.)

This is Paisley with her best friend Maisie at the ward halloween party.

Today Paisley had a great birthday. She loved all the letters and phone calls and especially all the sing to her. She was very happy to turn 4 and now considers herself to be "big". Here she is with her pile of presents.

She was much more than thrilled to get a lot of princess things for her birthday including a lot of dress up things! She especially loves her two new incredibly made princess dresses. We can't thank Grandma enough for taking the time to make such beautiful dress up clothes!

Later in the evening our town had the annual trick or treat on main street and town carnival at the community building. Before heading to the festivities we went to Papa's favorite place (Braums) for ice cream!

Despite the rain this town party's hard for Halloween. We went trick or treating to all the stores even in the rain.

The carnival was a blast! Paisley loved all the games.

Paisley got some cute new jammies for her birthday and decided to wear them to bed tonight!

After a long day of celebration we came home to sing "Happy Birthday" and eat her princess cake. After the huge amounts of ice cream we had consumed earlier we all had very tiny pieces.

And I just wanted to show off how cute Jarom is in his "I love my mummy" outfit!

We've had a great week, with lots of fun. We are so happy to have Nana and Papa here to help us celebrate Paisley's birthday. Paisley had a fabulous birthday, and we are excited to see how year 4 goes!

paisley i think you're so great . . .

i think i'll give you this:

But give me a few weeks for delivery.

TO PAISLEY DEAR...

Even tho' Dad posted, Sarah deserves most of the credit for the video.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR PAISLEY!!

Right side of the Road

Here is my video art piece. My intent is to show the feeling of journeying to a destination. In my case, it was the cabin, but I generalized it for everyone. So when you watch it, don't let the context of "going to the cabin" distract you from other messages it might be telling. Think about your personal journey through life while you watch it. (P.S. go to the You Tube sight so you can watch it bigger)

It's Beginning to feel a lot like Halloween

Last night we decided to make homemade Halloween doughnuts. They were so yummy but my favorite part of Halloween is going to be revealed tonight. I can't wait!!!!

IRELAND!!!! I love IRELAND . . . A lot.

Just to start out, this is the group that went (starting from the top left): Kirsten - roomie, Caitlyn - don't know her too well, Cami - so so cool with a beautiful camera, then Emma - she's been to Ireland before, and planned a lot of the trip, Camille - i.love.her, so cool

This is what we bought at the salon du chocolate, it's a brioche with pistachio and little candy bits. We ate it at the airport, it was sooo good. Fortunately we all made it safely to the airport even though Emma and Cami arrived 10 minutes before the gate closed. We were worried.

We got to Ireland (wahoo) and found out that we couldn't make it all the way to our final destination of Dingle (you'll hear more about that later) so we stayed in Tralee. We got off the bus and asked the bus driver where to stay and he told us to go down the land, turn right and there's a bar/lodge. So we went there. It was so cool to walk into a bar and ask for a room. Legit!

Here's Dowdies. I took the picture below the next morning . . . yup, it's a bar.

The owner told us they were usually pretty busy this time of year, but the economy had slowed things down a lot.The bar didn't have food, so we went to another pub for this amazing "the ploughman"sandwich: cheese, tomatoes, onions and farmer's pickles (they were really really really delicious.)
Hooray for Tralee!!! On to DINGLE!

Friday friday in old Ireland

We waltzed around Tralee for awhile. We found a beautiful garden and went into this church and actually sat in for a little bit of a mass. Favorite parts: shaking hands and saying "peace be with you" to members of the congregation, and - the fact that the priest was wearing a bright green robe. Typical.

Finally, we got on the bus for Dingle and bid farewell to the nice little Tralee.

My photos are insignificant. They are pathetic attempts at trying to capture the spacious grandeur and greenness that is Ireland. My vocabulary failed me in Ireland. Abysmally. In my head there are different hierarchies regarding how expressive certain adjectives are. Words like nice, and great are the bottom tier. Moving up we've got lovely and beautiful, next tier we find marvelous and gorgeous. Going a little higher we find ourselves with exquisite and phenomenal or absolutely unbelievable. And then there's Ireland . . . No words.

Once we got to Dingle (hooray hooray hooray for this tiny town full of love and Irish pleasures) we checked into the Hideout Hostel, put down our bags and went to Paddy's bike shop to rent bikes. Emma had taken this bike ride when she was there earlier, and we were all excited to go. We didn't really know what we'd gotten ourselves into.
We rode up and down and I felt liberated.
I had dressed a little too heavily so I straped my coat sweater and scarf to the back of my bicycle.
Isn't it just . . . fill in the blank - I have no words.
There were a few hills. I was very very grateful that a.) I even knew how to ride a blasted bicycle and b.) that I'd had ample experience, because I needed it.
HHere are two pictures of pretty much the same thing for your enjoying pleasure.

We biked down to the coast.
So to break it down, the bicycle ride ended up lasting about 5 hours, and we tracked it to be about 50 km, which is a little over 30 miles of Irish countryside. But frankly, when you're staring at sights like these, who can really complain.
We did a little hiking on our breaks. So lovely.
We.were.exhausted. We went back to the hostel and just sat in the Common Room. We bought organic hot cocoa and read books and relaxed. We were so sore.

Then we got some food because we were so starving. Then we went and listened to some pub music. There were people singing along to Irish tunes. I loved it. We fell asleep really happy, and really really exhausted.