Wow...two Sundays in a row...

I am writing in the blog.........

Tosha sent me this photo of their Halloween costumes.  Niki didn't not want to be a photo that night.  They will be packing up their home on Tuesday and then flying to Seattle on the 18th.  It is a bitter- sweet time to leave Okinawa, but they (and us) are excited to have them so much closer to us.

We facetimed last Sunday and I took this screen shot of Cooper showing off his sitting up skills.  Thank heavens for facetime.

Scott had his tonsils out and also his deviated septum in his nose repaired on Tuesday.  Chantel had her tonsils removed a few months ago, so he knew a bit what to expect, but it has not been fun.  He said today he is slightly better but still miserable. (No pictures of Scott.)

Jessica and Elessia had some early 1-year old pictures of Zander taken and already are making arrangements for their Christmas pictures they want to take with the boys.

Elessia figured out how to make the balloon from a photo.  Those two are very crafty and clever.

Ben remains at the State Hospital.  This has been a good week as far as we know.  Communication hasn't been good for the last month with his team.  We visit each Monday when we drop off Jena and her friends at their apartment.  The last few months, Ben calls us with his request for dinner food and we grab it and eat dinner together.  Choices are somewhat limited around the area after so many weeks.  But he is getting very tired of hospital food which I can totally understand.

Jena is loving her life, both at home and in Provo.  This past week, she was able to attend a service project and dance on campus on Tuesday night and then on Wednesday they headed to the Provo Rec Center and did racquetball and rock climbing.

They were making blankets out of plastic bags.

Here are Hannah, Sara and Emily in their court....

 Amy and her aide and Jena were in the other court.  Jena said that it was fun.

 This was a free climbing wall that the girls got to try their skills on.

And that is the Hall update.  Gary and I are still marveling that we have adult children and six grandchildren.  We are not sure how that happened at all.

We share the following pictures with our Primary class and asked if they could guess who they were.  We had started the lesson talking about parents and children in a family so we thought they would get the idea and guess fairly quickly (we teach the 5 year olds.)  They guess that they were grandparents and then they guessed aunts and uncles....then great grandparents...which they are to different people.  Finally I asked, "How do you think they are related to us?"  Again grandparents was a guess, but they then figured out that they were our parents and then quickly connected the right set to each of us.

Eileen and Richard Giberson

Wayne and Holly Hall

The lesson was that we can show love to our parents by obeying them.  I think that obeying our parents has been good advice for both Gary and I.  We are so lucky to have good parents to teach and love us on this earth.

We also showed them our engagement picture (they first thought it was a picture of me with my brother--Gary had a lot of brown hair back then.)  And then we showed them a family picture and they immediately picked out Jena--she looks just the same just bigger and older, they said.  They didn't know about our older kids and asked us to tell them the names a couple of times.  Funny that none of them commented about you kids looking different from us.

Reviewing this post, I see that Jena (again) has more photos about her life.  I guess you other kids need to send me more photos!  :)

Saturday night at our house.....

Stacks for the upcoming activities---above our Primary stuff with a CD player is ready for Sunday morning.  Below from the opposite direction is Jena's clothes for Provo, more blankets and food. The plastic bag is filled with a snack I am taking to work as we have a two day training on Monday and Tuesday.

It looks like a loading dock............but at least it was ready to go.

Ready for another week!!

Halloween Chili and Scones

After all of our partying and fun times, we had one more gathering--the annual Hall Chili and Scones at our house.  This year, Jena decided to stay in Provo and be at college and I missed having her around.  She really is growing up.

Luckily, Jessica and Scott aren't too old to spend Halloween with us, so we got to get in some trick-n-treating before eating dinner with the family.  Since I was working, Gary assembled the chili for the family, using his sister Valerie's yummy recipe.  It turned out great!

We passed out candy and Halloween bookmarks which were left from being in the library for the past week or so.

Waiting for their parents and younger brothers to be ready for trick-n-treating.

Waiting for the Frances to open the door.....

My attempt to get all four of them in the same picture.

Jessica did a little better...

(Family pictures will be fun with six age 3 and under.)

And the annual picture started three Halloweens ago--


And as the evening was winding down, Liam and Scarlett (minus their costumes) were just winding up by sliding down the stairs on their bottoms or completely laying flat and flying down the stairs.  I bet they can't wait to show Niki what fun the stairs are.

Happy Halloween 2017!

That's a wrap.

Museum of Natural Curiosity

My original idea was that we would head to a corn maze for Monday afternoon, but none of them opened early enough to match our time frame so we headed to Thanksgiving Point in Lehi and went to the Museum of Natural Curiosity. It turned out to be a perfect place for four little people and the 7 big people chasing them around.  If you are looking for something to do with young grandchildren in Utah County, I would suggest it.  It was too cold to enjoy the Discovery Gardens but we had fun at the inside activities.

 Scott jumping to see how high he could jump at "Leap Frog."  I think it was about 18 inches,

Jena trying on some of the fabrics from the jungles.....

Scott squeezing to see if he could squeeze as hard as a python.  The answer is NO, but he did better than anyone else in our group.

 This is a water table with built-in seats.  Liam and Zander thought that was fun.....

 as did James.

Here Gary, Jena and I are standing in the hurricane tunnel with winds of over 85 miles per hour.  (Those weathermen who stand in those windy weather shots are nuts.  It is not comfortable when the wind is that hard.  Of course, the 34-40 miles per hour winds felt like the daily breezes I grew up with in Richland, Washington, and Amarillo, Texas.)

The Health clinic inside the "Kidotopolis" area.

Jena and Scott did a puppet show for us inside the theatre.

 Doing a line dance with Chantel, Jena, Scarlett, Liam with James and Zander crawling around.

The huge bubble machine.  Scarlett loved pulling it up and down and popping the bubbles.  Here she let Jena blow on it to make weird patterns.

When the y stepped on the round buttons with animal pictures on them, it made a loud noise like the animal.  They thought that was quite fun and spend some time running from spot to spot to ehar the noises.

One last look at the grandchildren enjoying their day at Thanksgiving Point---

James  (8 1/2 months)

 Liam (2 1/2 years old)

 Zander (almost 11 months)

Scarlett  (3 years and 3 months)

On the way out, we noticed the child-size door so Scarlett exited out that door.  Jena was just a bit too tall so we made her go out the regular door.

We all headed in different directions and our outing was done.  They all headed home and Jena, Gary and I headed to Provo to visit Ben and to drop Jena off at her apartment in time for her Halloween party.

One last fall picture from the parking lot at Thanksgiving Point.   Notice the colors of this tree--yellow, orange and red with a little bit of green still at the bottom.  It was quite beautiful to see.  The picture doesn't do it justice. Isn't nature amazing?