Rylan's Army Crawl

Boo at the "U"

This was Boo at the "U" put on by the equine program at UNL. We went to the Animal Science building and visited all the horses they had dressed up for Halloween. This one was my favorite. I've never seen a horse dressed up as a cheerleader before. They also had one painted as a zebra, there was a tiger horse, an M&M horse, and several other fun ideas. The kids thought it was great. You can see Isaac is a little distracted. The horses made him a little nervous, but we were proud of him just for being brave enough to stand by it. THAT'S PROGRESS!!!

Maleah decided this is going to be her major when she goes to college. SURPRIZE!!

Jess thought the place was stinky. Also a surprize!!

Rylan was just funny. He giggled whenever we would let him pet the horses. He was adorable as always.

Anyway, we loved it. It made Cody even more anxious to move out of town and have animals and involve the kids in 4-H.

On Monday October 20th we went to Paul and Trio's for FHE to carve pumpkins. Our friends from our ward, Doug, Mary, Ali, and Eliza were there too. We had a great time.

Here is the end result.



If this isn't typical Jessica I don't know what is!

Here's Isaac and Jess elbow-deep in pumpkin guts. Isaac is so proud of himself as he should be. He has come a long way since his first Halloween when he didn't even want to touch the stuff.

Here's Maleah getting us started poking the pattern into the pumpkin. She's getting so big I can't believe it!

My kids are hilarious!

I just thought this was funny. The kids were playing with the costumes the day we were decorating for Halloween and they were flying around the house like this. I'm not sure how Maleah kept Rylan on that broom, but I was impressed with her talent. I also thought Isaac's random sock is quite dapper!

On October 11th I ran in my first relay race.  It was so much fun!  It was an 86-mile run from the old market in Omaha to the Haymarket in Lincoln. I was on a team of 8 women.  We started at 6:30 am and took turns running different distances throughout the day.  I was runner #7 and I ran 3 different legs of the race.  My first leg was 3 miles, the second was just over 5 1/2 miles, and the last leg was around 3 1/2 miles.  I ran the final leg into Lincoln and my family was there to meet me.  Here I am with my big supporters.  It was so fun to have them there!

Here is my team.  From left to right:  Kristen, Charmaine, Ashley, Becky, Katie, Me, Sonia, and Jessy.  There were some fun things about our team.  It was Charmaine, Ashley, Katie, Sonia, and Jessy's first race.  Five of the eight of us were breastfeeding so if anyone had been paying attention to our team vehicle they would have seen more bags of breastmilk coming out of it than any other vehicle in the race.  It was quite entertaining!  We had a really fun group and we had a great time together!

In August Cody went back to Brazil for research and he was able to visit Gabriel, Isaac's best friend for the whole time that he spent in the shelter.  Both of them were adopted and left the shelter within 2 weeks of each other.  I have no doubt that the Lord had a hand in that. Anyway, Gabriel went to a family in Porto Alegre, where Isaac is from, and they have been very good to keep in touch with us and send pictures and letters.  We are so grateful for their being willing to keep in touch with us.  Gabriel was an important person to Isaac while he was waiting for us to find him and there continues to be a special bond between the two of them.  Here is Cody with Gabriel in his home.  He's so cute!

Here is Isaac proudly displaying the gifts that Gabriel sent home with Cody.  He gave him some cars and a photo album where Isaac can put the pictures that Gabriel sends to him.  

This is very old news, but I wanted to have something written about it.  This is Maleah and Jessica with their friend, Maren, and their piano teacher, Stephanie at their first piano recital the first week in August.  It was the first recital for all of the girls and it was Stephanie's first recital as teacher.  She gave them each a flower at the end and here they are taking a bow.  They were adorable!  They did such a good job and it was so fun to watch the way they each performed.