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Anthony’s 9th “Friend” Birthday Party

Anthony really wanted to have a friend birthday party this year since last year he only had a family party. LaReita planned a fun bike ride from our home to the Spanish Fork North Park down a newly paved bike path that practically runs from our street right down to the park. Yes it is “down” as in “down-hill”. One party-goer (Bethany) did have a minor bike accident but was able to continue on and get to the park. We all told our bike crashes to make her feel better. (Hopefully it did.)

And after the cake (brownies) LaReita went with a few boys to see where the bike path ended. On a bumpy dirt part, Samuel crashed right in front of LaReita’s tire. LaReita couldn’t stop fast enough to keep from rolling over Samuel. So she ditched her bike, and twisted her ankle. There was some pretty good swelling, and will be for quite a few more days. It was quite the adventure! (Before she left the house, she kept having the prompting to find her bike backpack that had a camelbak of water, and her emergency oils. She couldn’t find it, but at least grabbed a small first aid kit, which certainly did come in handy. Another lesson learned in following promptings! And wearing bike helmets!)

The kids played for about 30 minutes once they got to the park.

The party did have its ups and downs:

Carlos, Sam & Anthony — Cesar, Sam & Anthony

Then Dad arrived with the Pizza, Pop and Puffs (Cheetos)!

Next it was time for CAKE!

Anthony and his "cake" (frosted brownies).

Next: PRESENTS!

Jacob, Matt, Kooper, Anthony, Bethany, Benjamin, Sam

Anthony, Kooper, Carlos, Benjamin, Garett

And more presents!

Jacob, Kooper, Anthony, James, Bethany, Benjamin, Sam

And more bike riding:

Sam tried nearly all the "big boy bikes".

More fun:

Winding up and heading home: David had to bike home because of LaReita’s swollen ankle. (She took the van back.) First time Dave has biked up a hill since last summer. He came home and said, “I’m going to go die now,” and crashed on the downstairs couch for 2 hours. Carlos, Cesar and Kooper stayed at our house for another hour or so to play with the new toys. One of our kids asked, “Where’s dad?” Kooper said, “Oh, don’t bother him right now. He’s busy dying.” Oh the funny things kids say!

What fun! Happy 9th birthday Anthony!

2010 School Concert for UVS

The Utah Valley Symphony had their annual School Concert today. LaReita having injured one of her fingers with a knife was unable to play. So instead, she took James and Anthony out of school to attend the concert with her. After years of playing in the concerts she finally go to sit next to her boys during this one. Although cutting her finger so severely that she couldn’t play wasn’t the plan.

Some pictures from the concert: (not only was it for children but there were also children performing!)

School children arriving at the Provo Tabernacle building.

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Halloween 2010

Traditional Halloween didn’t really happen this year for lots of reasons. It was celebrated on Sat the 30th. It started hailing at prime trick-or-treating time, so there weren’t many that came. It was just plain miserable outside. We didn’t even get our traditional fire set up out front. AND we forgot to get a picture in all their costumes. Oh well.

One notable thing was that James bought his costume this year with his own money! It was $21.34 and was a Star Wars character – like Jango Fett, but something else. This year Samuel wore a different costume each day of the week. Ben finally settled on wearing the orange jumpsuit prisioner costume and a blue wizard-looking hat. So he was the “Prisoner from Azkaban”. Yeah. Nobody realized it until we told them, then they smiled. Pretty ingenious for a 6 1/2 year old (who just finished having the book read to him). Anthony was himself, which made costuming easy. And Jacob just stayed inside with mom while she made homemade tomato soup, grilled cheese and fresh apple cider. LaReita’s cousin (well, 1st cousin, once removed) Jonathan Mitchell* was the door handler. Dave drove in the car being the back-up for the boys and friends Carlos and Cesar as they ran through the cold drizzling rain.

*Jonathan works for Dave and LaMont in the Find-A-Code business. He and his wife moved to Washington this summer. He came back here this week to do some conferencing with Dave.

Who's that toddler in the funny blue hat?

Jacob gets some hat-wearing tips from Benjamin

Anthony’s 9th Birthday

Anthony has to write a 5 sentence journal entry each day. His birthday (and party) was on Monday the 25th. On Wednesday the journal question was, “What is the nicest things that someone has done for you?” He wrote: “The nicest thing someone has done for me is my mom. She made me a cake for my birthday. It was chocolate and had a new transformer on top of it.” Not quite 5 sentences, but it was the nicest 3 sentences he has written!

Lynette of course asked if this was a ‘normal’ cake. And it was… for the most part. 🙂 Brynn even had 2 helpings and she usually doesn’t like chocolate cake at all! So that was fun to see. I also made a applesauce spice cake for those that didn’t want to have so much chocolate. Since it was snowing that day I refused to buy ice cream, but made hot cocoa instead. Which was why I had to have the applesauce spice cake – to dip into the hot cocoa. The hot cocoa was also made from 50% powdered milk from Grandma’s Country Kitchen. That is the BEST powdered milk I’ve tried thus far. (Having grown up with a lot of powdered milk, I’ve developed a kind of ‘taste’ for the stuff. And I’ve had some pretty awful stuff.) My boys will even get excited when I get Grandma’s Country powdered milk.

Grandma Leavitt was there and even gave the traditional recycle card! (A long-standing family joke and tradition. Grandpa was there and I’m sure was smiling.)

It was a wonderful party and family council afterward.

Boys in Caves & Chickens in Trees

James and Kooper (neighbor boy) were working on their Tracking merit badge and needed to take some pictures of animals in the wild. On the walk in the canyon they came upon a cave. Anthony took these pictures of Benjamin and Sam in the cave.

James also took some pictures of our chickens “nesting” in the tree in the back yard at night. Every night, one-by-one, the chicks fly up into the tree to roost for the night. Chickens in trees, who would’ve thought.

... and some chickens in a tree. On the eighth day of Christmas...

Lagoon in the Fall

We’d been promising the boys that we would go to the Lagoon amusement park all summer long and we finally found a free weekend. Mom took Jacob and Sam on the kid rides while dad had to endure the roller-coasters with James, Anthony and Benjamin.

Sam and Jacob on the car ride (like they didn't get enough of the car on the hour long drive to get there!)

Anthony, James (how cute) and Benjamin posing.

Conference

Sam’s Eyes

Sam is trying to learn how to make his eyes all white like his dad can:

World’s Longest Pinewood Derby Track

Just a few weeks before attending the World’s Longest Pinewood Derby Track event, our local Cub Scout Pack had their Pinewood Derby race.

We made 4 pinewood derby cars with the help of a neighbor and his jig saw. The boys had their cards painted with spray paint and then they painted their own designs on them. Although none of the cars were super-fast, they were not the slowest cars either and all the boys got to race their cars after the official race was over. Anthony, the only Berky boy eligible for the official race did well with his car – once they got it going the right direction.

Then several weeks later we attended the World’s Longest Pinewood Derby event in Sandy, UT. Grandpa Berky was with us as well. The event was held at the Rio Tinto Soccer stadium in Sandy. There were not as many people there as we had thought there would be so the boys got to race their cars down the track a lot of times. And since it was not an official race, we were allowed to put all kinds of extra things on the cars to weigh them down so they would go faster and longer on the track. We used batteries, screw-drivers, even the bottle of wood glue we had brought along.