Halloween Picts

For the first time in about 6 years we had a halloween night where the temperature was above freezing for trick or treating. It was great. We decided to go with the Harry Potter theme (once again). Josh was real excited about dying his hair black. He really wanted us to use the stuff that takes 6 weeks to fade out but we decided to go with the wash-once-and-its-gone version. Matthew was a perfect Ron (but with glasses), Aaron really wanted to be a dementor, Gracie was just a cute little witch, Noah was a bat, and Jenny was a Hogwarts teacher. I decided to go with the Lucius Malfoy/Deatheater look (it got some great reactions at the door every time I answered to door for trick-or-treaters. here are some picts.

Aaron's Close Call

Aaron had a close call two days ago. While he was riding his bike to school he was hit by a slow-moving car. The boys came up to the intersection and stopped on the corner because they noticed a car approaching the intersection on their left. The driver stopped the car and looked to left to see if any cars were coming (looking straight into the morning sun). The boys thought he was stopping for them to cross in front of him so they started to ride across. The driver started forward (momentarily blinded from looking into the sun) and broadsided Aaron knocking him off completely off his bike onto the road. Luckily he was wearing his helmet because he hit the ground pretty hard. Hard enough to crack his helmet significantly and he had a very hard time standing up again.
The amazing thing was what happened right afterwards. Because everyone was taking their kids to school at the same time and they were still in our ward boundaries, at least 1 member of our ward saw the accident, another 4 mothers arrived immediately after recognizing Matthew and Aaron, Jenny's brother Jared was driving to work and arrived right after it happened, one of the mothers quick went and got Jenny while someone else called 911. By the time Jenny arrived the Police, Fire, and Ambulance were already there (talk about a gut-wrenching sight to see!) Once Jenny arrived there were some more ward members met her to watch the babies in the car so Jenny could go see Aaron. In a way, I feel sorry for the guy that hit him because there were probably 10 people there that knew Aaron personally and were surrounding him. We love living here. There is so much love and support that we receive all the time from our ward, we feel truly blessed. The paramedics checked him out thoroughly and gave him the all-clear to go home highlighting the fact that if he were not wearing his helmet, he would most likely be going to the hospital instead.
He was very shaken and spent most of the day on the couch. He is now back to his funny, hi-energy self with a very deep testimony of praying for safety and of wearing helmets. Thank you for all your prayers to watch over family members. As we can see, it works!

Trip to NYC

Well, we finally did it. Jenny and I took a trip longer than two days completely "kid-free" for the first time since we have had kids. I had some meetings that I had to attend in NYC and with my AMEX card I can have a companion fly free so Jenny decided to come along. At first we were going to take Noah with us but at the very last minute we decided to leave him with Jenny's mom with the rest of the kids. We decided to travel a few days early so that we could spend some time with Jeff (Jenny's brother) and his family up in New Canaan, Connecticut. If anyone gets a chance to visit the north-east in the fall, TAKE IT! It was amazing. All the colors of the changing leaves narrow roads, stone walls and colonial houses is really a sight to behold. I posted a bunch of pictures on our Picasa Web Site for everyone to look at. The next day two of Jenny's brothers and their wives (Seth & Mandi, and Jared & Kelly) and her dad (Ken & Terri) flew in to join us for the rest of the week. From then on is was tourist central! We spent the next three days doing stuff in the Big Apple while I split off every now and then to attend meetings. Every day we would take the train from New Canaan to Grand Central Station (about an hour train ride) then walked, rode the subways, took busses, but mostly walked all over the city. It rained the entire trip but that didn't even stop us from taking the open-top double-decker bus tour all over the city. It was great to see in person all of the places that are always in TV shows or movies, or on the news. We spent time in Times Square, Rockerfeller Plaza, Groud Zero (where they have now started construction on the "Freedom Tower" an memorial reflecting pool), we went to the top of the Rockerfeller center that gave us a great view of the entire city, Jenny and her family went to see "Wicked" on broadway, which was amazing according to what she told me (I had to work - sniff!), we saw where many TV and movie stars have multi-million dollar apartments, and we even saw the "Soup Kitchen" from Jerry Seinfeld's famous "No soup for you! episodes). In fact, the only thing that we didn't see that we really wanted to was the Statue of Liberty. The ferry service that we planned on taking there was out of service for the season. Over all we have a spectacular trip. We did have a few mishaps to the tune of Ken getting on a Subway train without the rest of us. It was an interesting feeling seeing him on the other side of the glass being swept off into a dark tunnel not knowing how we were going to meet up again or if he knew which stop to get off of! Or the night that Jenny and I decided to stay in the city in a $250/night hotel room that was about 10'x12', dirty sheets and a shared bathroom. It felt more like a youth hostel than a hotel room, but it was the best price I could find anywhere is the city. Overall the trip was great and when we came home we found all to be well with the kids. It was so much fun we may just have to do it again.