Gingerbread Festival, they will take anything…

The Mormon Trail Center in Omaha has a Gingerbread festival each year. Anyone can add anything.  Each ward is asked to do one so I volunteered to make the house and the ladies decorated it.  they wanted a Cinderella Castle.  Most of my work was figuring out how to make round gingerbread shapes as it is cookie dough and kind of melts off round items.  I ended up using soda cans and leaving the gingerbread on the can and some paper towel  holders.     

The Chappell Children have decorated a gingerbread house I designed and made.  This one had a house decorated by Ethan (10) The roof by Sean (9) Play house by Jenna (7) and Dog house by Aaron (5) then Kay had me make little squares and triangles for his 11 year old scouts to make a camp and they came up with this: Quote from Kay  when he got home with it

“it is what it is” unsupervised 11 year old boy scouts

Halloween 2013

trick or treating: Kay stayed home and handed out about 100 candies (Russell Stover) to the awaiting local kids (Wayne said he heard how excited they were to get our candy) and the missionaries told us their sob  story about how they had to stay in so I got some pizza for them all. they got to visit with Kay for 2 hours.  They actually like listening to his apostasy lecture and his take on scriptures.  fancy that!

I went to the Sudanese family (whose mother Leila Kuku works from 2-10pm) and took them 15 min away to Village Greene, a condo place where most of our ward lives because they are going to school      Nyawitch (16) Julye (6) and Rose (3) were  coming with me.  It turned out another YW  (Hapgu) called and asked if she and her 5yo brother could come.  Yes, they all live in bad areas.... no trick or treaters there!

And, Nya's sister, Rose's mother wanted to come and the two older boys Deng (14) and Wal (10)- Dad baptized Wal.  2 car loads.

I brought a pizza, dropped it off and did 2 trips to the condos. went around till 8 with them... mostly with cute 3yo Rose and her mom who isn't a member, and then we all (9) piled in my car to get home.  They were all very happy about the loot and it was fun going to the neighborhood where we knew almost everyone.

PS I go to the Kuku house on Wednesdays and read to Julye and Rose so the older kids can go to Cubs, YM and YW.

Alice and Claire Mississippi girls now~

First project

We are in Mississippi at Frances's house doing some projects.  First one complete: adding upper kitchen cabinets. There were none and not a drawer in  the kitchen.  We added 2 banks of drawers.   All cabinets from IKEA.

Zoo

I took some kids to the zoo before school started.  Cheyanne and Dravin’s mom is a nurse and dad is a stay at home dad  who wasn’t feeling well so I took them. Mom and dad are getting baptized on Saturday. Some lions were unusually close to the fence.  I growled at the one on the far right and he gave me a huge growl back.  We screamed and jumped! 

Watermelon

We drove to and  from Oxford Mississippi helping Frances and Marc get settled in their home.  On the way home we stopped for gas and found a huge watermelon stand. $5 each.  We took a screw driver and chiseled a hole on top  and used spoons to spoon out the deliciousness.  We bought 3, ate 1/2 of the big one in the truck, gave one away to the O’Connors, and weighed the smaller one at 48lbs we shared with our workers.

Help?

 Rachael's one day old baby.  #6.  5th boy! 9lbs 11 oz. No name yet.