BYU-Utah Game 11-24-07

Alas, the football season has come and gone. We sure had a lot of fun though. The BYU-Utah game was crazy and exciting. We had knots in our stomach, we laughed, we cried, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, we screamed our lungs out. In the end, BYU prevailed, which was totally awesome. We definitely got our money's worth out of that one game!

Here we are in our cougar Blue!

We'll have to bring Sammy along next year if we still do tickets.

Greg, Adam, Me.

Hall throws for the two point conversion that sealed the deal.

Final score: 17-10

The boys wanted so badly to rush the field with everyone, but the ladies in the group protested. Instead we were forced to try and contain our excitement by doing something reserved and mature.

Thanksgiving 2007

Happy Thanksgiving! Can you believe Thanksgiving has come and gone? Most Thanksgivings, Michelle's extended family (the DaBell's) does some sort of vacation. Well this year the vacation was to stay over at the Pond's home. A lot of the extended family stayed over night a couple days. We decided to stay over Thursday night, which was a lot of fun.

Another fun thing was my family did their first "Church Thanksgiving." You know, the family is getting too big to do the get-togethering at the house, so they reserve a church? Yeah, the Lynn Droge family is blossoming I guess, so we got a church. I think the main reason was so we could get together and play basketball/football and race our X-Mods. Most of the boys in the family have an X-Mod (a small and upgradeable radio-controlled car). So we played games and raced cars, played some Elimination (aka Lightning or speed -- basketball where you play with two balls and shoot from the same spot to get each other out). It was a lot of fun. We should have taken pictures!

Then around lunch time we went up to the Ponds for the feast. There was plenty of food and fun. Here we are one of the nights playing some games.

Well hello!
Here I am.
The game is killer bunnies -- crazy, nutty, and random.
Ralph -- If it's not risk or liars dice, there's probably something better on tv!
Heather -- Right, mmhhmm, sure, okay, yeah!.
(She's trying to get me to go away -- for clarification see Strongbad's emails -- Office Dullard)
Spencer in deep thought...
Hooray! People are visiting which means my favorite grandson must be close by!
Brandon (and Kimberly) -- Bwahahaha! I got them to play Killer Bunnies!

We Also Sing! 11-21-07

Last year, we were invited to watch a choir performance that Michelle's aunt Jean DaBell was singing in. It turns out this choir was "We also Sing" directed by Merilee Webb, whom we know from her days as Bountiful High's choir director for years. Jean talked about what a wonderful experience it was and so she invited Michelle and anyone else who wanted, to join.

This year, Kimberly Baum and Michelle sang with Jean (and 350 others). "It was the most amazing experience I've had in a long time," Michelle has been heard saying. Each practice was like a fireside, and the spirit was there and the music was incredible and they worked hard and just had a great time! The choir sang in the Tabernacle, which is incredibly rare--nigh unto impossible. (I really just wanted to use the word nigh). The performance was the night before Thanksgiving, November 21st. Here is a picture of our singers, taken in between the two performances.

It was amazing, and they will be doing it again for the re-dedication of the capitol building.

There is a men's choir "Because we sing" that is starting in the spring. If you are interested, check out the blog Merilee runs for the two choirs (WE ALSO SING BLOG).

Another one down -- Month 5

As of 11-21-07, Samuel is 5 months old. Here are some pictures taken of him this month. During month 5 he rolled over for the first time (we think), is doing great at sitting up, and has decided that pears taste excellent, peaches and bananas are good, carrots are weird and squash is interesting. Throw in some rice cereal and he is really getting used to the idea of goopy foods.

Enjoy!

Got some shots today, so he was super cuddly.

Swallow! Oh you did, you just have chipmunk cheeks.

Best friend Buzz.

BYU Football 11-3-07

This year we again got football tickets for the BYU games. Instead of being with Michelle's family though, we got tickets with mine. Greg and Wendy, Adam, and Jogie had seats with us, as well as some of Greg's friends. We never actually took Sammy to one of the games. We figure there will be plenty of time for him to come with us, and with him being so young, we didn't want him to be upset and scared half the game because of the crowd. So Annie and Mike watched him most of the time, and Brandon's sister watched him for a game also. Thanks guys!

The youth in our ward went to the Colorado St. game and before the game took a tour of the Student Athlete building. It was interesting. Sammy really wanted a picture in front of the award he was going to win one day -- the Heisman.

Here we are buddy. You could be the second player to bring home this tropy for BYU!
I know, he truly looked inspired and excited. :-)

Mommy and Sammy in their cougar blue!

Halloween!

Happy Halloween! We were at Walmart a few weeks ago and saw some absolutely cute costumes just Sammy's size. The options were a little devil, a lion, and a pumpkin. We thought that the little devil was the cutest, but thought that it might not go over well with the birth parents, because Sammy really isn't a little devil, in fact quite the opposite -- it was just a cute costume! Anyway we decided against it. The lion just looked cheap so we went with the pumpkin eventhough it seems everyone does a pumpkin for the first couple years.

At our ward halloween party, or harvest festival, we all put on our Incredible t-shirts because Sammy's pumpkin outfit is quite warm and we didn't want an ornery little squash! So the incredible onesie was an easy alternative, and it allowed Michelle and I to also "dress up" and look fun. We should have taken a picture but didn't, so you'll just have to take our word for it that we looked incredible!

So this isn't exactly halloween but it was at gardner village during the halloween season. Michelle, her mom, and a couple sisters went out to enjoy the dining and shopping.

Sammy's first halloween started with me dropping him off at grandma Droge's house for the late morning and early afternoon as I went to school. Mom had a good time with him, and took a bunch of pictures. Then we went up to visit grandma Pond for a little while for dinner and before we left we put Sam in his pumpkin costume and took some photos outside on the porch.

He was such a good sport, even though it was cold, hard, and he kept nearly falling over.

Guys, I'm gonna need a spotter here!

By the time we finally got to our house, Sammy was ready for the night to be over. We still wanted pictures of all our little pumpkins together, but Sammy refused to happily participate!

Jack-O-Lantern carving 10-29-07

We invited some friends to come and carve up some pumpkins for family night, the monday before Halloween. The Harpers came and we talked and carved and had a great time. I was inspired by the pumpkin walk and wanted to try some intricate designs. I decided to try the superman symbol on one side and transformer on the other. It ended up taking a whole ton of time, but I think they turned out pretty good.

Michelle of course went with a "cute" look.

We were going to carve a small little pumpkin and mimic Sammy's smile, but we ran out of time.

Syracuse Pumpkin Walk

Every year, Syracuse puts on a pumpkin walk. Well over 1200 pumpkins are carved, some extremely intricate, and they are all set up on display. It was free, freezing, and fun.

Sammy mostly slept.
Michelle liked the cutesy ones
I like the cool ones
We got a kick out of the Cars presentation.

This is the tractor tipping scene. Mater and McQueen up front

Frank on the top, and an assortment of tipped and non-tipped tractors.

There were a ton of religious ones like these with temples, prophets, the savior and all.