Halloween 2012!

What can we say? It was another sweet hit!  We had a lot of fun Trick-or-Treating around the Best Avenue.

Our Halloween festivities started with a yummy dinner, group shot, and off we went.
Everyone had some great costumes, including princesses, dust bunnies, cave people, "birthday suits," monsters, and not scare, but nice clowns.
And when we got back, the kids assessed their recently acquired goodies.

Pre-Halloween Festivities and thoughts

Life went by quickly.  We had cousin get togethers and all kinds of fun things to do.

Our city has a Halloween party and the kids get to play all sorts of fun games, dress up, and pick out a Halloween.  For this party Arden chose to be a construction guy.  I love his mustache.

Maya had a blast getting her face painted.


Helen invited us to a Latin Dance Festival at the Conference Center.  It was awesome.  All of the performances were great. We loved it.

The following entry is a reflective/venting section.  Life is not always about trips and fun things all of the time.  Sometimes things happen that we don't like.  Choices are made by others that affect us.  You can skip the rest of this post and go towards the bottom of the page or to the next post that has fun things in it.  However, this was the reality of life for us, alongside the fun things.  
So here's the Reader's Digest: Around the beginning of October, Eileen and Hebron's divorce had gone through.  Hebron was living in Florida and Eileen in Utah.  
This was a difficult year for Newel's family, beginning in February. They were seeing their family fall apart, by their parents getting divorced.  It was not a pretty time, with crazy emails from both parents and waiting and seeing what would happen.  On a positive side, they got divorced when their children were adults and the "children" have their own families to worry about and care for. Nevertheless, it was/is a sad thing to see families fall apart.  I know some of the "kids" feel like they are without real parents to count on, since both parents are so dysfunctional. However, I think we "kids" have become closer to each other.
I personally felt that they were both nuts and hypocrites since they had always talked about families being together for eternity, however, they were getting divorced after 40 years of marriage.  They did not seek professional counseling or in my opinion, true counseling with the Lord. They had needed help for years, but would always talk themselves out of it, saying they were fine. My mother-in-law said it was revelation to get a divorce.  How could the Lord reveal to someone to decompose a family, if families are central to His plan?
I just hope when I get older, I don't go too crazy and decide to leave Newel, instead trying to make it work.  I hope I don't throw away all of these wonderful years we've had together, for something stupid and illogical.  
Anyways, since I'm writing this a year after these events, (it has taken me this long to get back to writing on our blog) I can summarize what's happened so far.  
Hebron is still living in FL, he invested his inheritance in a restaurant that just recently failed.  He also had a girlfriend named Luz from TX, but she dumped him.  Then, he was at some singles websites, and found this other lady named Lucia from Brazil.  They were living together, but she left him, after the restaurant business collapsed.  I don't think he's doing well.  I know the divorce affected him a lot.  He didn't want to get divorced.  Sadly, he has become more worldly and has pushed his children aside, claiming they are judgmental, etc.  We all love him, but it is hard to be around someone who is irrational and acts like a spoiled child. I try to be patient and say to myself..."it was the head injury, for both of them."
Eileen decided she didn't like to be single and went into a dating frenzy around this time last year.  She took one of her dates (who seemed like a pretty normal guy) to the Latin Dance event with us.  It was kind of strange for us to see her holding hands and being cuddly with someone else, but whatever.  Then, four days after Halloween, she posted on FB that she got engaged to a guy named Dan, whom she had just met online the week before.  Then, on Thanksgiving day or the day before Thanksgiving they got married, without any of their children being present/invited.  
This was the start of another major roller coaster.  Eileen was wife number six or seven for Dan.  Yeah, he's been divorced/widow that many times.  The guy is a lot like Hebron, crazy, as in bipolar and who knows what else. He has bankrupt businesses, lots of kids, except he is thinner than Hebron.  About 2 weeks after being married, Newel gets a call from Eileen to pick her up from Idaho (that's where she was living with him) and she goes to live with Mary.  Then, she gets an apartment.  Kristen gives her some of Eileen's money back to pay for the apartment for the remainder of the year lease.  Eileen gets back with Dan and says she overreacted and shouldn't have left him because they are soul mates and he is perfect.  She gives the money to Dan or uses it to pay for the trailer being rented in Idaho. She's also paying for her apartment.  Anyways, she's out of money and cant' get a job.  Then, she breaches contract with the leasing office, and eventually files for divorce.  Well, I really don't think she filed for divorce, but claimed to have done it, to appease her children.  Even though we're all grown up.  She eventually gets a new place to live, gets a job and recently left a message on the phone stating she remarried Dan.   
So that's life.  On we go to the fun things in life. 


This year, we made our traditional pumpkin pizza.  It was so yummy.

And you can't have Halloween without carving pumpkins.

Maya was so silly.  She didn't want to get her hands dirty, but Arden was in the zone.  It was a fun night.

Fishing and More

On Sunday we took it easy. We tried going to church, but the Stake nearby was having Stake Conference.  We had a relaxing day.


That morning we went fishing at a park near the Carters neighborhood.

The kids had so much fun catching and releasing the fishes.  At one point, Arden had a crowd of kids around him, totally interested in his narration and what he was doing.

They had so much fun playing and fishing together.

That night, Newel grilled some meats and we had a feast.  Chris had gotten a grill for his birthday and it was put to work.  Most of the days we had eaten out, since the Carter's gas line had a leak and we were unable to cook or take warm showers at home...however, their neighbor was super nice and let us shower at her house.  

I forgot to mention that the previous night, Abbey and I went over to an Asian massage place and it was dreamy.  After our fabulous massages we were so relaxed, we were giddy.   We laughed at the dumbest things.   It was the best massage I've ever had.

We tricked Maya into a sleepover with Kevin

The following day, (Newel had already gone back to UT) was our final day and we headed over to Fort Worth, to an Old Western town.  It was pretty fun.  It was our last morning there and we enjoyed what little time we had left.  Kevin and Ellie went back to school that morning, so we hung out with cute Matthew and Leah.   What a grand time we had.

The Texas Fair

There's only one word to describe the Texas Fair...HUGE!

Yes, it was.

And it was loads of fun.  We practically spent the entire day at the fair and we didn't see and do everything there.

Kevin not happy about the ride. 

At the Ferris wheel

We limited the amount of rides the kids went on, but it was loads of fun for them.  Unfortunately, the adults had to go on some of the rides with the children.  Some of the rides were okay.  Others were not so great, specially the Vortex...that crazy spinning thing.  Wow, talk about wanting to throw up...I guess that's a clear sign that we're getting old, when we can't hack it on these spinning rides anymore.

Of course, you cannot attend the fair without checking out the animals...and so we did. We petted them and fed them.



We also ate a lot of unhealthy and greasy food, including fried Oreo cookies...YUM!  The Texas State Fair is infamous for its fried foods...they fry pretty much anything that's edible and each year they have a specialty fried dish.

At the fair, we also hit a couple of shows...The puppet show, where Kevin was picked out from the audience.  Then, we went to the dog show, but that show wasn't as good.




GAME TIME!

The following morning we got dressed in our Longhorn gear and headed back to the Fair grounds to watch the Texas and OK game.  We had a lot of fun.  I also learned that BYU vs UT fans are weak sauce, compared to these football fans.

Sadly, Texas lost.  Nevertheless, it was a great game.  It was a lot of fun for just the adults to hang out.  The kids stayed back home with babysitters.

The game

Enjoying fried food

Texas Here We Come!

It was our turn this year to visit the Carter family.  The previous year we had met in Florida for our annual reunion and the year before, they visited us in Utah.  So it was our turn to visit their home town, Dallas, Texas.


This was our first time in Dallas.  What a big city!


The Carters live in a cute, way cute neighborhood.  It's a city, within the city of Dallas and it kind of has a small town feel to it with really cute houses.   It's so cute and lovely, I could imagine us living a couple houses away from the Carters and hanging out with them all the time and doing all kind of fun things, like we used to do when we lived in California...

Well, that would happen in my dream world.

Back to reality.

Reality is also great.  We had so much fun hanging out with them.

Our first day, we hit the zoo.  It was a blast.  It's always fun when hanging out with friends that are like family.  


Well, I'm not going to say more...the photos speak for themselves.



Okay, may be I'll write this.  The zoo has a trading post where the children can bring things from nature, like leaves, rocks, dead insects, etc.  Then, they take those items to the trading post and earn points for the things they bring.  The gentleman on the photos gives them points, but also talks with the children about what they brought in.  Later, with the points they've earned the kids get to select and bring home other items from the Trading post.  If Arden and Ellie could have spent hours there, they would have.  They actually spent about an hour talking to the trader and in selecting their goods.  They were in heaven!

The zoo was tons of fun!