Well THAT was unexpected

I was nearly killed by an exploding Pyrex dish tonight:

I turned the stove on to heat some water for tea and went in the office while it heated.

A few minutes later, I heard an explosion in the kitchen.

I had turned on the wrong burner and apparently a hot stove + a glass baking dish = a bomb in your kitchen.  

The worst part is that there were brownies in that dish  :-(

Boise Trip

We made a quick trip recently to Boise.

This is (what's left of) the farm that I lived on as  a kid:

Most of what was the farm is now large homes:

Mary McPherson Elementary looks exactly as it did in 1988:

Boise farmer's market:

The kids got balloon animals. Wesley's sword was ruined in about 5 minutes.  Rachel carefully guarded her unicorn until we finally threw it away the other day:

Wes was fascinated by the construction of a highrise building and wanted to spend the morning watching the crane move things about:

Nature Center:

We went to the open house of the remodeled Boise Temple:

Halloween

Each year as the kids get older, we get worse and worse at taking pictures of them.

With that, here is the Lloyd's Halloween 2012, as depicted in literally the only two pictures we took this of the kids in their costumes this year:

The first with our Russian neighbor Lyudmila:

And the second of them running around with some of the neighbors:

Rachel's Birthday / 1st Tooth

Rachel lost her first tooth last month.  It took the tooth fairy three days to remember to come.  :-(

She also turned 6!  $6 for our 6-year-old girl:

Opening presents with help from the cousins and Wes:

We caved and bought her a Dream Lite, a pillow pet with an LED in its back that shines stars on the ceiling and costs $29:

Nobody in the family likes cake, so she blew out candles on a cupcake: