Halloween

We made a little extra effort to have a fun Halloween this year with family in town. We had some nice carved pumpkins, went to a party at my work, and decorated the porch a bit more than usual.

The balloon maker at the Microsoft party made Bryson a balloon dinosaur that looked like him.


Jarom's costume got a lot of attention (think wire cutters and glue stick), but the face painter added a whole dimension of realism.


Mr. Bones came home with us after the party to decorate our porch.


The local grandkids ready to hit the streets in Highlands Ranch.


I used an XBox game console design for my pumpkin so I could use it at a campus event to recruit high school students that was held the morning of October 31st in Fort Collins near where James works. It was a big hit with the kids at the event and the kids on the block. Quite a few took pictures with their camera phones.



This is our porch scene. Note the glow-in-the-dark window paint illuminated with ultrviolet lights. Pumkins from left to right: James' skull in a jail pumpkin. Jarom's mummy and haunted house, and Randy's XBox pumpkins. We also had cool Halloween sound effects music and a fog machine. Mr. Bones and his pet rat were borrowed from my work office party.


Here you get the live action porch. Jarom's music was very effective as you can see:

The Church is True In Colorado

We got a new sign to help drive the missionary effort, and you can see the first advertised Sacrament meeting below. I KNOW I was inspired to move to Colorado!



We've been playing with this fun web site in my group for a couple of days. If you want to create your own sign, go to http://www.churchsigngenerator.com/

Seth's Final Cross Country Meet

October 10th was the league finals for Seth's high school cross country team. The meet was held at Larkspur, about 45 minutes south of Highlands Ranch down Interstate 25. The location was at a Renaissance Fair grounds. It isn't really in the mountains, but the location is relatively alpine in nature. We have enjoyed an amazingly warm autumn, but the weather all of a sudden turned chilly in the past couple of days, and the outdoor temperature at the meet was in the high 40's - low 50's. Seth has raced at this location before, and it always helps when you are familiar with the course.

This is the team's location. As you can tell it is a bit cold. I'm not sure that lowering the canopy helped all that much, but maybe it did cut the wind a bit.

Here Seth is getting his race number. They are all bar-coded and he'll tear off the bottom and turn it into race officials at the end.

This is Seth and his church friend Chris Chambers all wrapped up in a warm blanket


Seth at the start of the race. The first 100 yards is up a pretty steep hill as you'll see from the video below

This is Seth about half-way through the course

Seth approaching the finish

This video montage shows the start, mid-race and Seth's finish