Duet Festival

As we prepare this week for Saturday's solo piano festival I thought I'd better get November's duet festival pictures and videos posted.  I have taught my 3 girls piano for a few years but last summer decided to take on a few more.  I have LOVED having 7 extra people in my home every week.  My kids are usually pretty good to know that they need to take care of things downstairs and quietly out of our way while I teach.  

Only a few participated in the duet festival, but they did amazing! 

I go back and forth with how to post videos, so this time we are trying the youtube thing!  Hope it works.

Each pair did 2 songs, but I'll just post one of each of my girls.  Kaylee and Taylor got to be together and Emily was paired up with our neighbor!  They did great!  And I look forward to seeing what they'll do this Saturday!  :)

Click here for Kaylee and Taylor

Click here for Emily

Family Pictures

 In October our good friend Nicole Stoker took our family pictures!  I still have yet to figure out the best way to add a 6th kid to our wall, but I have LOVED having these pictures in our home!  Usually for us the behind the scenes of days like this are crazy with lots of tears (mostly momma's tears!), but this really was a perfect day!    LOVE my beautiful family!  Thanks Nicole for capturing such perfect moments!  :)

 

 

 

 

 

Halloween 2012

Happy Halloween!

Halloween has never been one of my favorite holidays, but each year I start to like it more and more!  I especially love it when I can buy things on clearance the year before.  That way looking for costumes is just a matter of "go downstairs to the costume box and come up with something".  That sure makes it more enjoyable for me!

We really do have fun though!  And check out my pumpkin above!  It looked pretty cool from far away!  Well...my neighbors probably didn't think so, but we sure enjoyed it!  :)

Our family has kinda started a tradition of handing out ghost suckers to the trick-or-treaters!  It seems like a lot of the kids in the neighborhood remember us for it so that might be a tradition that sticks!  I think the girls did 300 suckers this year.

Pumpkin carving the Monday before Halloween is always a fun tradition too!  The perfect Family Home Evening activity!

 

 Then Halloween day the 3 littles and I went to the school to watch the 3 older girls in the Halloween parade!

 

Isaac (2 months old) was obviously entertained!  :)

Truthfully though...I was glad that he slept so great so I could enjoy watching the girls and hanging out with Thomas and Kierra! Kierra had such a great time seeing some of her friends!  She sure can't wait to be in school next year!

 We had some fun visitors on and around Halloween! 

Thomas' nursery leaders are the best!  I think that he recognized them!  :)

And then when half of the stake young women's presidency has newborns...the other 2 are lucky enough to be chaperones for the stake dance!  :)  What good sports they are!  I sure LOVE these girls!

 And there you have it!  Halloween at the Gardner home!

 

These are some pretty cute mug shots I think!  :)

 I should've taken pictures of all the candy!  Ugh!  Way too much candy!  The weather was too beautiful so the kids just kept going!  Our neighbors spoil us all pretty good!  It was definitely a Happy Halloween!