Gmail always pops up related ads to what you are writing about and this one about cakes came up.  They are quite creative and very fancy. 

Halloween Hauntings

Unwillingly posing in front of Albertson's.  No pumpkin patches nearby here:(  Miss other places we've lived where we visited fun ones.  

The Young Men and Young Women hosted a Carnival for the youngers children at the ward's Halloween party.  Here is the YW Presidency.  Scary!

FHE treats one Monday before Halloween. Andrew gave me these molds last year for my birthday.  

And the FHE activity was carving apples to make shrunken heads.  We put them in the oven at 200 degrees Farenheit overnight, which greatly accelerated the process.

Governor Sarah Palin made a visit to MMSchool today and won a costume prize.  Last year an ipod won -- both years it was Katriina.

Retired Quarterback (Matthew wore a quarter on his back) Steve Young 

We bought an assortment of unusual to us pumpkins to carve.

Ever creative, David  made a jack-o-lantern and we ate pumpkin pancakes, muffins, cake, seeds, etc. all month!

At MMS they were twin cell phones.  These costumes were hard to trick or treat (run) in, so they ditched the cell phones sometime during the evening:)

We spent over an hour finding our way out of this fun straw mazed.  We'll go back again next year!!

Huckleberrying

It's huckleberry picking time here. We went "Huckleberrying" in the woods with some friends.   We had bear spray with us, but didn't see any bears thankfully.  It's probably because we made enough noise to keep them away. We did buy some Huckleberry Gummy Bears at the local grocery store however to taste. As for real huckleberries, the rule was you could eat one for every 10 you picked. She was caught eating them! This guy was determined to fill his bucket with huckleberries before he left, but after 4 hours of picking, each family had just a gallon. Don't tell any huckleberry purists, but we broke off a limb full of huckleberries to take to Mummo, so could see, smell pick and taste them fresh from the woods:) And you can see , we had a nice break to eat our sandwiches in the woods too. It was so beautiful there.

My husband has been carefully sorting washing, drying and freezing our huckleberries.  He's been reminiscing about picking blueberries in Labrador Canada and I remember picking them in Finland this time of year as well.

Picking raspberries is a whole lot easier than picking  huckleberries is.   One neighbor's raspberries have grown under our fence and they've also given us permission to reach over the fence and pick some as well. Another neighbor has also invited to pick at their house.  After picking huckleberries all afternoon our kids picked raspberries at the neighbors house.  We've enjoyed huckleberries and raspberries alone, on waffles, in syrup and so forth today.  We could substitute them for the blueberries in the Cardamom Cake I posted earlier or in anything else which uses blueberries, but huckleberries are used sparingly, since they are so hard to get.  Maybe we'll make a cheesecake to sprinkle some on.  We'll freeze almost all of our huckleberries and bring them out on special occasions, like the first day of winter to remind us of our enjoyable outdoor summer adventure.  

Here is a link to some huckleberry recipes I found online. http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/uma/hucklebe.htm

As for the raspberries, I think I'll try what our neighbor served the recipe exchange the other night.  It's much like the strawberry rhubarb soup (kisseli) I've posted the recipe for before, but it made with berries, this time of the year, raspberries.  Yummy!

Maria's Swedish Berry Cream Dessert Soup

1 quart berries (straw, rasp, goose, blackberries or currants)
3 cups water
3/4 cup sugar
2 TBSP potato flour or corn starch

Clean berries. Bring water to a boil, add berries and sugar and boil several
minutes. Mix potato flour with small amount cold water, stir in and bring
again to boiling point. Cool covered and serve with cream or milk.

Fresh raspberry topped white cupcakes

Our son is the baker now and I asked him to make a quick dessert for Sunday dinner.  Although he has his own cookie recipe, it needed to be quick, so he choose a white cake mix and wanted to make frosting so I googled "butter powdered sugar frosting" 

and left him to make 
Creamy butter frosting recipe

http://southernfood.about.com/od/icingrecipes/r/bl30108o.htm

Ingredients:
1/3 cup butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pound (3 1/2 cups) sifted confectioners sugar
3 to 4 tablespoons milk

Preparation:
Cream butter, salt, and vanilla, beating until light and fluffy. Add sugar gradually, beating after each addition. Add 3 tablespoons milk, beating until smooth. Beat in more milk until desired spreading consistency is reached. Makes about 2 1/3 cups of frosting, enough to frost tops and sides of of an 8-inch 2-layer cake or a 10-inch tube or bundt cake, or about 1 dozen cupcakes.

He made it with very little assistance before church.  His 2nd cousin who was visiting helped him while I made lunch.  He then frosted the cupcakes after church. He just came running  in from the back yard where he picked fresh raspberries to decorate them with. Here's a picture!

Rock wall climbing

Family fun downtown during the International Dance Festival

Thumbs up we may begin the ascent!

Going up!

Posing for a photo op by our friend Caryn!

Steady! 

Hosting International Folk Dancers

We chose to host 2 teenaged girls from the Belgian Dance and Flag
team in this year's International Dance Festival, an annual event
here. We chose teenagers, to give Katriina a feel of what it'd be
like to have sisters. We were to feed them and get them to their
performances and show them around the area in their free time. We
also hosted their entire team of dancers and flag throwers and
their host families in our backyard. I was too busy to take
pictures however. Although not pictured below, we also took them
to Mesa Falls and Jackson Hole. We introduced them to many foods,
but they ate hardly anything anytime of anyday.

Sitting on Uncle Bruce's orange tractor. They loved the 4 wheeler rides too.

Boating at Packer's cabin. Neither Laura nor Katriina has a sister, but they each had 2 from Belgium for a week.

Screaming while riding the 3 seater tube!

.

Waiting their turn, Matthew, David and Andrew.

Soetkin turned 16 while with us. She celebrated all day and night long.

Our boys made them this Belgian flag. We gave her the black cowboy hat she is wearing.

At Smith Park teaching children to throw the flag. They said our kids were naturals.

Vredon performing at BYU-Idaho.

Posing with our own American dancers, "Culture Shock".

The girls also wanted their picture with them.

Throwing flags down main street in Rexburg.

Soetkin and Lien are flag throwers.

A French boy asked Katriina to join him in the street dance.

Andrew, David and Matthew got in on the dancing too. We really enjoyed our week, even though it was a lot of work, it was a lot of fun as well.

Mew Mew Mew Mew Mew

Mama Cat "Shelly Belly" had 5 kittens on Friday, March 28, 2008.  Here they are on April 1st. We weren't here for the birth and didn't see them until they were 2 days old and took no photos until April 1st.

We told the kids they may not name them because last time they got too attached and they are still upset that we gave 2 of the 4 away.  One of the 4 is the Mother here.  Here Mother "Kitka" was run over just before Christmas.  We'd hoped for an all black one, but there are 3 dark grey with stripes and 2 sandy colored ones.  We've had lots of neighborhood kids visiting us to see the kittens. Our kids are trying to find neighborhood friends who want a kitten.

The neighbor who took care of the dogs peeked in on Mama cat for us.  She had 2 kittens Friday night and by the time he was back from walking the dogs, she'd had the 3rd. We came home to 5 though, as it seems to be even an hour or two delay between some of the births. We'd hoped she'd give birth before we left, but no such luck this time.