Happy Halloween & Happy Halloween

Sam got to go trick or treating twice this year. We went to Savannah to have Halloween with his grandparents and cousins and the county where they live declared that all trick or treating was to be done on Saturday night. It just so happened that Augusta, where we live didn't do this so he got to get twice the halloween booty that he normally would because his mom has a soft spot for trick or treating (as long as she gets a few almond joys tossed into the bargain)and was willing to take him out both nights. His costume was a big hit and we had at least a hundred people shout out "It's Mario Time" and "Hi, Mario". I think kids must play too many video games because I had no idea who Mario was until Sam got a Nintendo DS. Carl wore his Grim Reaper costume and he and his dad sat out on the front porch, alternating on passing out candy to the little kids and scaring the teenager trick or treaters. He would sit still on the porch swing until they were facing away from them and then he'd sneak up from behind and give them a fright. I think he may be a little sadisitic by the amount of pleasure this gave him. :) It was a good time had by all and since he got so much candy, we're going to go give half of it to the Ronald McDonald house for Family Home Evening. Plus, I threw in a couple of new Hot Wheel cars to sweeten the deal to help him to be willing to give up so much caloric goodness. It's better for everyone involved if we don't have candy laying around the house for weeks and weeks.

Our "Were"-Crow

We volunteered to do Sam's class scarecrow for the scarecrow contest this year. Sam's teacher had the clever idea of making the scarecrow into a crow so we went with that idea. Carl's engineering kung fu paid off big time when he was ble to construct a serious pvc pipe skeleton for the crow and I filled in the rest with a home-made crow head and various goodwill clothes. We like the end result but can't decide what to title it...

Here are a few of our ideas

1. Were-Crow
2. Crow-Man the Librarian
3. Crow-Magnun

Let us know if you can think of any other clever ideas. :)

Sam's missing facial hair!

I picked Sam up from school and hadn't really paid attention to his face until we pulled up into our driveway and he got out of his seatbelt and came and sat by me in the passenter seat. All of a sudden I noticed he had some rather large bald spots in his eyebrows. I thought, "hmmmmm..." I then asked Sam, "did you guys do some cutting with scissors in class today?" He then answered yes, they did use scissors in class. I then asked him, "Did you cut your eyebrows with your scissors?" He looked like he wanted to say no but thought better of it and said, "yes, I did cut my eyebrows with my scissors a little bit." Then I said, look at yourself in the mirror and so he opened up the mirror in the visor and after looking at himself he yelled, "ahhhhh!" I then asked him if he was going to cut his eyebrows again and he immediately answered that he would not do it again. Here are some pictures for your viewing entertainment and so I can torture him with them someday when he starts dating.

Sharp dressed man!

I got Sam a suit from a church consignment sale last weekend that was a size 8 thinking it would be perfect for when he got baptized next year but when I got it home and had him try it on, it fit him perfectly right now so he's looking pretty sharp these days at church! I thought this deserved a post so you can all get some eye-candy. :)

Our trip to the Zoo

My parents in law drove up from Savannah on Saturday and we drove together to Columbia, South Carolina to see the temple and go to the zoo. We had a lot of fun with them and are so glad we did it. It was fun to show Sammy the temple and Annie got to see it for the first time as well. We took some good pics and had fun.

Next, we went to the zoo and the Columbia zoo is really fun! We got to see some seriously cool animals and other wild things (Sammy included). We got there right at feeding time so we got to see the penguins, galapagos tortoises, elephants, and others during feeding time. Luckily we didn't have to watch any bears or cougars slaughtering their kills! That would have been a little traumatic. :) Hee Hee. We just saw the vegetarians getting fed. The tortoises were the coolest creatures we saw. There were 3 huge ones and one medium size tortoise and they were fed huge bowls of carrots, apples, zucchini and oranges and they are so cute when they're eating. Rebecca, I totally thought of you and little Melvin Dwight during this!

We also loved watching the penguins getting fed. They are some might fine specimens as well. We saw some really scary snakes, and other reptiles as well but thankfully, Sam didn't think they were as scarey as I did.

Happy Birthday Sam!!!

I'm two days late for Sam's birthday but I figured this would be better late than never. My beautiful boy Sam turned 7 years old on Friday. He continues to be the apple of both his mom's and dad's eye and we think he's pretty fabulous.

When I was putting him to bed on his birthday at night, I told him, "Can you believe that next year on this day you'll turn 8 years old and you'll get baptized!" He couldn't believe it. He then proceeded to ask me "How cold is the water going to be in the font?" I thought that was pretty funny that that was his only question or concern about getting baptized next year.

Sam we love you a lot and are so lucky to have you as our boy! By the way, if you'll notice, Sam got a birthday cake at his grandparents house in Savannah and a cake at home so he did a lot of wishing and candle blowing. The picture of him with the back pack is a picture of his first day of 2nd Grade.

Welcome to Walt Disney World...

Two days after returning from our trip to Albuquerque and Nauvoo, Carl, Sam and I got to drive down to Orlando, Florida with the Stingel bunch and go to Disney World. We had such a great time there too. This was both Sam and my first time to go to either of the Disney parks and so we were both equally excited to go. Carl's parents bought us all three day passes to any of the different parks we wanted to visit. The first day we went to Hollywood Studio (I think that's what it was called) and we got to see Darth Vader and a couple of storm troupers up close and personal. As you can guess, this was one of Carl's favorite rides. We also descended several floors into the very bowels of hell on the Tower of Terror ride and I wasn't sure Sam would get on another ride again after that. It scared my pants off so I can't imagine how much it scared Sam. Carl just thought it was way cool to be able to feel his stomach ascend into his throat. The second day we went to Magic kingdom and that was very fun and more what I was expecting. We got to ride on splash mountain and space mountain which were both really fun roller coaster rides. We bought a picture of us going down the 50 foot fall on splash mountain and it was quite funny so I'll have to scan it and put it onto the blog for everyone's viewing entertainment. The third day, we split up and Carl, our nephew Devon and his mom went to Epcot center and Holly and I took Ashley and Sam to animal kingdom. I'm so glad Sam and I went to animal kingdom because it was my favorite of all the parks. We got to ride a river rapids ride three times and got successfully soaked to our underwear between the three rides. This wasn't that bad because the heat index the whole time we were in Florida was about 103 so being wet was not a bad thing. Then, Sam and I road the big roller coaster there while Ashley and Holly chose a milder dinosaur spin. I think my son is an adrenaline junky. We also got to take an African Safari bus where we got to see lions, giraffes, rhinos, some hippopotamus, ostriches, wart hogs and just about any other african animal you can imagine running wild through the park. It was so amazing. That was one of my absolute favorite things we did. Carl, and his bunch took some space ride to simulate what it feels like to be an astronaut and thought it was way cool at Epcot too. We had so much fun and hope we'll get to go back there again some time.

Summer Fun!!!

We had a fabulously fun summer. Sam and I braved the drive out to New Mexico to visit my mom, sisters and brother and all the cool cousins. It was a great trip other than the serious case of crazy legs from all the sitting in the car while traveling. After staying in Albuquerque for a week and a half, we car pooled with my mom, sister Emily, and sister Julie and family to Nauvoo to see all the cool church history sites and feed the local mosquito and chigger populations. It was amazing to see all the plays, home tours, pageants, fairs and horse and carriage tours. We seriously benefitted from Julie's experience of past vacations there. She was able to lead us to the must see attractions. Every since we went there, I've been reading the Doctrine and Covenants now because I'm dying to learn more about the church's history there.

As an added bonus, we got to travel with Chad and Aaron from Hannibal, Missouri to Nauvoo so Sam and I are all brushed up on the cool teenage scene (or at least way more than before). We loved driving with you two cool cats and Sam hasn't stopped talking about how fabulous you both are. I think you guys have a little fan.

On a side note, Sam took swimming lessons for the first time earlier this summer for two weeks at the YMCA and his swimming hadn't been noticeably improved until we went swimming with his cousins in Albuquerque who were all professionals. As soon as Sam saw Collin, Miranda, Bethany and Aaron all swimming with their heads under water and floating on their backs, all of a sudden his competitive streak came out. Thus, he learned more swimming techniques in two weeks swimming with his cousins than he did during his whole swimming lessons at the Y. I should have just saved my 80 bucks!

We're so glad we got to see you all this summer and hope we can move closer so it's not such an ordeal to come visit have you come visit us. If Carl gets a job in Dallas, we're totally going to host a six flags over texas event next summer and expect to see you all there.

I've Had Conplaints That There Are No Pictures Of Our Mutts...

My sister informed me that Oscar and Emmy are both listed as members of our family but yet have no representation on the blog so I'll rectify that and include a picture or two of our fine four legged friends so they don't feel neglected.

It's The End Of The World As We Know It!

Yes, it is true. We received four inches of snow yesterday evening here in Georgia. In preperation for the snow(and before it even started snowing), Sam got out of school at 12:15 because school was closed early. That would never have happened in Utah or New Mexico! :) Now we just wish we had cousins here to play in the snow with. Sam has been making snow angels and snow balls and unfortunately for me, I'm his only living target for practice right now so I'm scared to venture forth into the winter wonderland. But it is awfully beautiful seeing all the trees covered in a dusting of snow. It wasn't quite so nice last night when we kept hearing branches being broken off of the trees in our yard and falling onto the roof of the house. Luckily none of them were big enough to do major damage except tap dance on our nerves a little. A couple of years back before we started renting this home, a huge branch from one of the pine trees broke off in an ice storm and crashed through the roof, ceiling and right into the master bedroom floor where I sleep. Not very reassuring, I'm telling you. And by the way, that is a magnolia tree covered in snow in the background of the first picture. I bet that doesn't happen very often!

I found this picture from our Christmas travels and Liked it

While we were out west we visited a friend outside of St. George and while we were there we went to the St. George Temple visitor's center. One of the missionaries there took this picture and I liked it and decided to post it.

I need Help!

Sam's doing his first science fair project and I can't think of a clever title for it. If any of you have any great ideas, let me know. His project is to pour a drop of food coloring into both hot and cold water and see how long it takes for the entire glass to be evenly colored. We've done the experiment and as you'd guess, the hot water got colored way more quickly than the cold water. I was thinking of "Some like it hot..." but remembered that this is elementary school we're talking about.

Carl, Sam, and I traveled to New Mexico for Christmas this year with our two dogs in tow and other than traveling time it was really fun. Sam got to experience some of the traditions I grew up with like going to a mexican food restaurant named Gardunos which is famous for hosting Salsa Claus and a mariachi band each Christmas eve. The kids all got up and danced to the mariachi band's fabulous offerings and it was truly a sight to behold. Sam also got to play in the snow which he doesn't find here in Georgia (although his school was delayed for an hour this morning because there had been a "chance" of snow last night. However, there wasn't a flake or frost anywhere to be seen this morning so he had to settle for frosted flakes for breakfast.) We made it back to Georgia safe and sound and are slowly getting back into the routine of our lives. Sam had to start school on Monday but Carl doesn't have to get back to the grind stone until this monday so he's had a leisurely few days to recover from the drive. I'll attempt to post a video of the kids dancing at the Gardunos for your viewing pleasure if I'm technically savvy enough to get it onto the blog.

School Pictures

Is this the cutest 1st grade boy you've ever seen or what?

Our New Blog

Hi everyone. Here at last is our official blog to update you on all things Stingel. We're still getting organized after our Christmas trip but I'll be blogging soon about our fabulous adventures. Stay tuned!