Family Dinner/October 2017

At Sunday's family dinner for the month of October, we celebrated five family birthdays in the month: yours truly's, Kira's, Jana's, Steve's, and Ben's.

Several of the kids also came dressed up in their Halloween costumes so that Grandma (as well as the rest of us) could see what they are planning on wearing when they go out trick-or-treating (Kira as Dorothy Gale and Danny as the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz; Graham as Buzz Lightyear; Christian as Super Mario; Jackson as Super Luigi; Kira as Minnie Mouse; and Jake as a ninja):

It was, apparently, merely a coincidence that Christian and Jackson wore their Mario and Luigi costumes, respectively:

Pears

Mom's pear trees produced some delicious fruit this summer.

When we finally got to eat them recently, all that was missing was a partridge (rim shot).

My Dinner with Kira 2017

My wonderful, very cute, never-a-dull-moment niece Kira turned nine years old last week. Naturally, that led to last Saturday's birthday dinner outing with her very own Fun Uncle Paco and JB joining us, as well.

She chose Chuck-a-Rama for dinner, where we enjoyed a lovely meal together. After that, we headed to Build-a-Bear to pick up some accessories for her new favorite toy, Vampirina.

42

What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?

That's one theory.

Another one is that the best is yet to come.

Tanner Brent

Nibling #13, my nephew Tanner Brent, was born September 27. A few days later, I got to meet him for the first time.

Both mom and baby are doing well, and we're very grateful.

Family Dinner/September 2017

At September family dinner, we also celebrated our September birthdays. (Like you do.) In this case, the cake was for Biz and her alone. Hooray to another year on this planet!

Our family parties often include karaoke, and let's be honest: Karaoke makes everything that much better. Even the kids get in on it, and they have a great time.

Steve and Danny had a little father-son bonding time with the TV:

And everyone had a great time, all told.

Weekend at Bear Lake

JB invited Mom and the Centerville Plowmans (and also me! yay!) to spend the weekend up at her family's cabin in Laketown, on the shores of beautiful Bear Lake in northern Utah. And so, away we went for a few enjoyable days, also passing through a few booming metropolises (metropoli?) in Idaho and Wyoming in our travels.

The weather up there was several degrees cooler than it is currently in Davis County. In other words, it was quite nice.

Of course, you can't go up to Bear Lake without stopping by LaBeau's for raspberry shakes. And who are we to buck the consensus on such an important issue?

They were delicious. Also, it's my understanding that there was some sort of college football game played Saturday that involved two of our local teams. The colors of both teams were well represented among our motley crew. I guess there was a winner and a loser, but we couldn't tell because we had no access to the game on TV or on the radio.

Oh well. There will be other games with other teams in the future. All told, we had a very nice weekend and then lived to tell the tale. And, fortunately, a large dragon did not emerge from the mountains and come down to Laketown to lay waste to the place. It appears movies and TV have lied to me yet again.