Halloween

Addison as Harry Potter.

Andrew as Mickey Mouse Fireman - he refused to
trick-or-treat and came home with an empty bucket.

Jenna and her friend Paige. They were "dark fairies".

Sarah as Wednesday Adamms (but she wouldn't wear the wig),
her friend, and Anna as a purple witch.

Sleepy Boys

Andrew wanted to go to his friend's house to play. He walked across the street to play with Adam. I called to make sure it was ok and Adam's mom told me Adam had fallen asleep, but that they were trying to wake him up. Adam didn't want to wake up so Andrew sat down on the floor to watch him sleep. I continued to talk with Wendy while Andrew kept watching Adam. After talking for awhile, Wendy started laughing and said Andrew had fallen asleep on the floor. Silly boys.

Yellowstone

We had a great vacation to Yellowstone last week. We went with MeLynda and her two boys. We originally planned on camping in the park, but when I heard the low at night would get down to 27 degrees, I quickly found a townhouse to rent in West Yellowstone. I don't like camping in the best weather conditions so there was no way I was going to camp with little kids when it was freezing at night. I know, I'm a wimp.

We had a marvelous time and saw lots of animals and beautiful formations. The highlight of the trip was when Sarah said she saw a bear across the river. We flipped a u-turn, parked the car and sure enough there was a bear. It was far away, but we took some pictures. The next thing we knew it got in the river and swam across towards us. It ended up getting out of the river 6 feet from our van. By this point there were 30 cars that stopped every which way and people jumping out of their cars to get a pictures. A ranger stopped and told us it was a grizzly bear and for everyone to get back in their cars. It was pretty exciting. We took a picture of the traffic jam Sarah caused.

I'm going to do another post with the back to school photos in a day or two. I hope you are all well and enjoying the kids going back to school.

Happy Birthday!

Tonight we had Sarah's 13th birthday party. She invited 4 friends to go swimming and then come back here for pizza and a movie. Grandma Jo brought a candle from China that's pretty amazing. It's a flower that is supposed to open as soon as it's lit and start playing the "happy birthday" song. Sometimes it doesn't work out exactly as planned...

Where's Jenna?

We went to 4-H camp this past week up at Jordan Pines. We had a great time camping up there for two nights. On the second night, we had a nice dinner and a magic show. The magician called Jenna up out of the audience for his last trick - his "time out" box where he sends naughty children. Addison and Anna were pretty upset when he started sticking knives and metal sheets into the box and I must admit I was a little nervous myself.

Brandon Hicken on the right side. He was hollering, "No" and "I can't watch!"

Participating in the Pandemic

Yep - I got it. You may hear oinking if you come to our home this week! So far I'm the only one sick, but I imagine it's only a matter of time until the kids get H1N1 influenza. Now doesn't that sound better than Swine Flu? The doctor told me it's everywhere now. Since I don't know anyone else that has had it, I'm blaming it on work. My guess is I got it from a customer at the pharmacy. In case you are wondering about the symptoms - for me it started out with difficulty breathing. I had about 3 days of feeling like there was a stitch in my lungs and I just couldn't get a good breath. Yesterday I started getting achy and a mild cough. By this morning I had a high fever, achy muscles, very tired and still having a hard time breathing. The doctor put me on the same breathing treatments we do for Andrew when he gets wheezy - Albuterol. It really helped. I guess I just get to lie around the house for a while and try not to infect everyone else around me.

Jenna's Gymnastics

I'm embarrassed to admit how long it's taken me to finally sit down and figure out how to upload a video clip to my blog. I decided that tonight I would figure it out no matter how long it took. It took literally less than 30 seconds to figure out. I can't believe it! It's been on my to do list for months now. Anyway, now that I have finally figured it out, I'll probably be posting a bunch of videos I've been saving up to put on this blog.

The first ones will be from Jenna's gymnastic routine tonight. She started practicing gymnastics on her own in second grade. We had her in a community rec class for a few months, but I didn't like how the teachers failed to teach the kids how to fall or be safe. It seemed like she was falling and getting hurt at every practice. I pulled her out after one session. But even after a year or two without classes, she was still interested in gymnastics so we decided to try The Little Gym in January. She'd gone there when she was 4 and I remembered that they focused on safety. She's had a great time and her two friends from our neighborhood signed up with her. Here are her routines:


(Please ignore the screaming 6 year old in the back ground. She was a little nervous about doing her beam routine.)







It may have only taken a few seconds for me to figure out how to post these, but it's taking nearly an hour to upload them to blogger. Any suggestions from those of you out there who have more experience in the blogging world? I just transferred them from my camera to my computer and then clicked the little video link button and selected the video from the "my pictures" folder. Thanks!

Baptism

I know it's been forever since I wrote. I've been struggling with trying to decide whether to make my blog private or not. I decided not to add anything new to my blog until I knew what I wanted to do. I am going to make my blog private, so just send me an e-mail if you want me to add you to the list. I'll be keying in all the addresses from our lists, so if you've emailed me recently, you'll be on the "approved" list. I'm just a little uncomfortable with how much information is so readily available to anyone in the world.

On to happier topics. We have another 8 year old at the Hicken house! Addison turned 8 last month, but with conference, his baptism was scheduled for the second Saturday in April. We had planned a vacation to Durango for spring break, but Bret injured his ankle pretty severely and we decided hiking at Mesa Verde wasn't a great idea when he was having a hard time walking. Once we canceled the trip, we decided to go ahead with the stake baptism day. The stake primary presidency planned and did the entire first half of the baptism and then let us go by wards to the font. There was one other girl from a different ward getting baptized, and then Addison and his friend Sammie from our ward. Here are a few pictures from the baptism and Easter. We had a great weekend.

Addison with our Bishop and his first counselor.

My sister-in-law, Melissa, took some great pictures of Addison. She put a few on her blog if you want to check them out.

I think I'll do Easter pictures in a separate post. It's time to go and get the kids from school.