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Emily turned 14 this month. It’s interesting how you approach birthday parties as you get older. Where Emily used to want presents like Barbie dolls, she now wants presents like gift cards and money and cellphones. Gift cards are in the realm of possibilities but cellphones are not. I know, I know – I’m a mean Dad and behind the times and everyone her age has a cell phone now. Well, all those things may be true but I simply don’t see any reason for a 14 year old to have a cell phone and engage in incessant insipid texting.

14 years old

Emily is beyond the age of getting “friend” parties so she got a small family party. Although being 14 is an awkward age, it’s still always fun to blow out candles and open presents. At least it is until you hit age 40. At that age, it’s not quite so fun to blow out candles.

Happy Birthday Emily!

I finished up the semester in early December. What better way to enjoy the elation of starting winter break than to take your family on the annual trip downtown to view the Christmas lights on Temple Square?

On the train

Of course, we have to ride the train – even though it’s much more cost-effective to drive our family downtown rather than pay the Trax fee for 7 people – because Dad, it’s tradition!

Annie and Luppin on the train

We took our usual stroll around temple square: short and sweet, hit the major displays, don’t stop and read every single statue or sign because we only have 20 minutes until we’re all frozen through.

Dad, why are those guys kneeling?

This time the statues commemorating the restoration of the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthood caught Sam’s eye. He wanted to get a picture in front of them and Luppin wanted in on the action as well.

Not a bad looking family

In breaking with tradition, we decided not to eat downtown. We didn’t want to walk several blocks to a restaurant we all liked and we didn’t want to wait around between trains in order to go to find a restaurant on 4th south. Thus, we all hopped on the first train out of town and agreed to just find a restaurant in closer to home.

Shouldn't have stayed up so late

I was hoping that because the kids conked out on the train ride home they would forget about dinner and we could just go home, get ready for bed, and call it a night. Unfortunately, the kids weren’t having any of that and quickly woke up and forced a discussion on where we should eat. Nancy and I decided that we felt like Texas Road House. We were immediately met with a chorus of whines, moans, and groans from the kids. They HATED Texas Roadhouse. Had they ever been there before? Of course not. Nonetheless they just KNEW they HATED it. Nancy and I knew they would like it once they got there and we didn’t really care for the places the kids were suggesting. Being the parent does have its privileges so we told them they had two options: quit whining and go to Texas Roadhouse or keep whining and go home with no dinner. They quit whining.

Usually Texas Roadhouse is jam-packed but on this night we were able to just walk right in and be seated. After a few minutes of looking at the menu, eating peanuts, and sampling the hot rolls, the kids had an amazing turn-around. They LOVED Texas Roadhouse now. What? Them complain? No way – they weren’t complaining. They really wanted to to go here all along! Of course, Nancy and I took every opportunity to rub it in and to let them know that they should trust us when it comes to picking good places to eat. A few weeks later when it was time to select our Christmas Eve restaurant where did the kids want to go? You guessed it: Texas Roadhouse.

This year I asked Anne to draw me a picture I could put on our Family Christmas letter. She asked me, “what should I draw mom?” and I told her to come up with something that made you think of the Christmas season. This is what she came up with.

In our Christmas letter there are seven copies of Anne’s picture on the top and bottom of the page. They are quite small, but I think it turned out really cute.

What age is he at? The age where teeth fall out on a seemingly weekly basis. In Sam’s case, he lost three teeth inside of two weeks.

Prep work...

Over the years, the kids have become used to concept of me pulling their teeth out. I’ve talked to a few kids Buddy’s age and they all recoil in horror at the idea of their dad pulling out their teeth. Of course, I recoil in disgust at the idea of kids wiggling their tooth for weeks on end until the tooth is finally just hanging by a thread just begging to be yanked out.

Ready, Aim, Fire!

We don’t use fancy methods at our house – no string and hot coal, no string tied to the door – just plain old dental floss tied around the tooth and Dad gives it a firm yank. I would estimate that our success rate is above 90% and only very rarely do we have to use the method of last resort: needle nose pliers.

Success!

Fortunately for Buddy, we were successful this night and he is now the proud owner of a gap-toothed smile. About a week or so later we pulled out two of his bottom teeth within two days. He’s got another one that’s loose on top so we could really turn him into a hillbilly if we wanted to but I think we’ll give that one a few more days of wiggling before we yank it out.

It was Caroline’s turn to have a fancy costume this Halloween. Nancy sewed and sewed and ended up with the most amazing Dorothy costume ever. The ruby slippers were found on sale at Target. The only problem was we didn’t have a dog for the basket but I fished around in the closet and came up with a dog-like stuffed animal. Caroline makes a really cute Dorothy!

How do you like that zombie look?

Sam was a zombie and in the photo above is doing his best zombie impression. Diana was a ballerina and Anne, who was on her last year of trick-or-treating, was a renaissance woman (I think). Anne is at that awkward age where you’re really too old to go trick-or-treating but you just don’t want to forgo all that candy. I put a little pressure on her to not go out this year but she wanted to go with her friends and promised it would be her last year.

This year's pumpkin efforts

Unfortunately, our garden didn’t produce any pumpkins this year so we ended up with a couple of store-bought pumpkins. I decided to do another fancy pumpkin for the company pumkin-carving contest and produced the spider pumpkin in the middle. Amazingly enough, I won the Grand Prize – a gift certificate to TGI Fridays. I was excited about it but Nancy was pretty ho-hum. Fortunately, the kids were impressed with the fact that I won a prize. That’s the good thing about kids – it’s fun when they are in awe of your pumpkin carving prowess. In a couple of years I won’t be an amazing pumpkin carver – I’ll just be the dorky dad of a couple of a bunch of teenagers – but for now I will revel in pumpkin carving glory.

This year we were low-key for Nancy’s birthday. She really doesn’t like the fact that she is getting older so we don’t do too much in the way of celebration (except she gets to go out shopping and get herself a present).

Happy Birthday Nancy!

Nancy made herself a cake and we sang Happy Birthday. Notice how when Nancy does the candles on her own cake the actual number of candles doesn’t match her birthday. I think the 3 candles on the cake were supposed to represent that she is “somewhere in her 30s”.

Anne painted this a while back and I thought she did a good job. She has been bugging me to post it on our website so she could get your opinion on her work. Lately Anne also has enjoyed sketching cats and has done some cute drawings maybe I can convince her to show them off as well.

Ready for their first conference

I lived most of my life in Utah without ever attending General Conference. The past few years; however, I’ve been able to attend a session each conference and have come to enjoy going down to the Conference Center. This year a number of our family members were able to get tickets to the October conference’s Saturday afternoon session. I decided to take Emily, Anne, and Caroline to the session while Nancy stayed home with Sam and Diana. I typically struggle to sit still during a 2-hour session so there was no way Sam and Diana were going to sit still.

The family at Conference

We were lucky to get really good seats down close and enjoyed listening to the session. All the speakers did a great job. Afterwards, we took the opportunity to take a family photo. I think the girls enjoyed going downtown and had fun seeing their cousins. It was a fun and rewarding way to spend an October Saturday.

I took these pictures a long time ago but am barely writing about them. This year my youngest started kindergarten. She has been excitedly looking forward to the day when she could get on the school bus with her older siblings and finally the day was here. Usually on the first day I like to take my kindergartener to school myself and take pictures there, but Diana wouldn’t have it she wanted to take the bus. So here are the pictures of my three little elementary school kids on their first day of school.