HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Bednobs and harry potter broomsticks...

Here's us hand crafting our own brooms with our friends Debbie and Eric. Brett looks terrified because Eric just named his broom Avada Kadavra!!!! AHHHHHH!!!!!!


Good for flying and for sweeping too!

Chesley plays Keeper...

Mandy and David play seeker - WHERE'S THAT DANG SNITCH! (we hid a penny in the grass, mwa ha ha)

The Quidditch crew! Hufflepuff and ... nobody decided the other team.
Lookin good with our sweet homemade brooms.
Jake zooms by on his . . . Christmas tree?

Brett goes in for the kill...

Brett's sixth grade class. They got to dress up for halloween! Somebody needs to spread the word to Georgia.

HALLOWEEN PARTY!!!

Rafael and April O'neil!
Where would the Ninja Turtles be without PIZZA?!

HALLOWEEN PARTY!! My friend Shea (my roommate in Ecuador) and her new husband Kurt were otter pops - they win most creative.

As there were a significant amount of Wards in attendance, we HAD to have a dance party :) From the left we have Kurt, Mandy, Shea, Ashley, Mandy's friend, Cynthia and Jake.
This was just before a kind of scary donut eating contest. The guy who one basically scarfed his donut in a single bite.My gremlin pumpkin.
Cutest little pea in a pod.
The Masterpieces. We got together at Chesley's and all made pumpkins together. My gremlin on the left, then Dave's witch (I still think it looks like a Seminole Indian chief), then Jake's monster, Blake's scary minion, Jake's headless frankenstein, and Emily's skull. Brett's is the top right.

Viva las Vegas!

We recently took a trip to Vegas to hang out with some good comrades of ours. Rich, he was my old room mate as you might recall, and his wife, Maria. We had a most excellent time, and here's a taste of our adventures:


We started our little excursion with a flat tire. Yea - good thing Rich brought his HUGE jack.

Here we stopped in the shade for a tasty picnic - complements to Maria on the delectable sandwhiches and snacks.

This picture looks pretty cool - unfortunately, we didn't actually find anywhere to snowboard, so we pretended. Had to get something out of hauling that thing across the desert rocks.

As always, Beth shows me up by being slightly more hardcore.

This is taken at the first little cave we ofund at the Valley of Fire

Same cave - different angles - nice

Beth's mermaid pose on a random red cliff

A desert tortoise made his way slowly across the road in front of us. We went back to document. Good thing we didn't scare him - apparently, if you scare them too bad, they pee their little tortuise pants, get dehydrated and croak

That petroglyph looks familiar...

Here's the couple we hung out with for our stay in Vegas - they were kind enough to let us bunk with them - thanks guys

I'm open! (That's a blue frisbee comin at me)

Nice

Another shot of the fabulous duo - Marich - ro Richia (doesn't have quite the same ring as Breth, but still cool)

So, I thought maybe I could make an imprint in the sand of my face - you know like a Han Solo Carbonite kind of thing. In the end the sweate and very dry sand made for a nice face plaster

Remember that little blue frisbee, well I went to great lengths to retrieve it. It got stuck in a little pool. We had a time getting it out

A nice little taranchula - this thing was pretty narly - hairy, eye-looking things on its back.

Apparently this type of thing is quite tipical for Rich to encounter

Also, on our little trip through this place, which was called... we realized we left our bag somehwere. We didn't think we hadn anything super valuable in it, so we left it and decided we'd pick it up on the way out. Then we realized that we'd left my phone in it. But on our way back, it was nowhere to be seen. Later that night we also realized our keys were in there - so now we would be stranded in Vegas, and I had no phone. However, thanks to prayer, and a kindly ranger, we now have the bag, our keys and my phone, and we're safely and promptly back in Provo.

This is part of the Valley of Fire's "scenic route" - scenic indeed

And now for the Vegas pics - this is a really cool lookin ceiling in the Bellagio

If you read up close, the label says that beast is over 700 lbs. ! And a little further away, there was one over 800

Look, it's Beth's mission

That's looking down the strip from an overpass

A random large Golden Lion at the MGM Grand - reminds me of a story in the book of Exodus

Here's the infamous fountain shows at the Bellagio - they are pretty sweet

This is a very neat looking ceiling in Caesar's palace

Some other random important ancient people

Oh no Beth, a pegasus!

This is part of the Forum Shops that run through Caesar's Palace. The vaulted ceilings are painted like the sky. I think they do this in hopes to keep their customers in here forever. "We don't need a real sky, we've got one right here in the casino - sure we don't get the vitamin D we need the ultra-violet rays, but hey, you can get that from milk right?"

And finally the trip home.