Quick Note: Our computer died over the weekend. My brother in law gathered it up and fixed it in about two hours and we were back in business. Thanks Ken!

Landon had an awesome game this last week. The score was 14 to 6. Grandma and Grandpa Wray were able to come and watch with us. We don't get to see them very often and enjoyed having them here and spending time together. Jordon enjoyed having grandma and grandpa time. Thanks for coming.

Madison made a great dinner of meatloaf mashed potatoes, and green beans, for Sunday night.

This meatloaf recipe is great if anyone is looking for a great recipe.

Easy Pleasing Meatloaves:

2 lb. ground beef

1 pkg. (6oz.) Stove Top Stuffing Mix, any variety

1 cup water

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 cup bbq sauce (we love Famous Daves), divided

Mix all ingredients except 1/4 cup of bbq sauce.

Shape meat mixture into two oval loaves, side by side, in 13x9 inch baking dish. Top with remaing 1/4 cup bbq sauce.

Bake at 375 degrees for 35 min. or until center is no longer pink. Makes 6-8 servings

Enjoy!

Another recipe-Christians Famous Cinnamon Rolls

bread machine recipe:

Dough:

1 cup milk

2 eggs

1 tsp. salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup butter, room temp.

4 cups all purpose flour

2 1/2 tsp. yeast

Filling:

1/3 cup butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

1 Tbsp. cinnamon

3/4 cup raisins

Icing:

3-ounces cream cheese, room temp.

3 Tbsp. butter, room temp.

1 cup confectioners sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

pinch salt

Make dough and let rise until double. Roll dough out on floured counter into a large rectangle. Spread filling mixture evenly on dough. Roll up dough from the longest side. Cut into rolls about 1/2 inch thick. Place in a greased 10x14 baking pan. Cover and let rise until double, about 1 hour. Bake at 375 for 20 to 25 min. or until done. Let cool slightly, then ice. Enjoy!

Conference Weekend!

Conference weekend is a great time to spend together as family. It is one of our family traditions.

It is a great time to feast upon the words of the Prophet and others speaking. We also enjoy feasting on Christians famous cinnamon rolls for saturday morning breakfast. Yum!


Another tradition we have for conference weekend is a packet for each day filled with "conference bingo, how many times do you hear a certain word (scripture, Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon, etc.), Speaker name/message etc... -here the kids are busy at work listening and writing. Sometimes there are prizes.

Sunday we had a breakfast casserole. Eggs, sausage, cheese, etc... Yum again!

Treat bags were a big hit. Maybe they upstaged conference a little.

During the break we went on a family walk and had a simple scavenger hunt to find things like:

A bird. A red, yellow, and green leaf. A welcome sign. A flower. A red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, white and black car. A stop sign. A Motorcycle. A car with a bumper sticker. A halloween decoration. A windmill. An American Flag. A BYU flag. A wind chime. A mailbox with their names on it. An animal. Etc.....

We then came home and had some good tickle time. What could be better.

Is he not just the cutest baby! Everyone enjoys conference weekend, Young and Younger. We hope you all were able to enjoy conference and fill uplifted, renewed, and maybe a little more committed. - If you have any fun conference traditions or just traditions that you love and would love to share, we would love to hear them. Our family LOVES traditions. And we love to hear all of your nice comments. Thanks! Love the Wrays

Today we learned about farm animals.

Fun huge pop up book about farm animals.

We glued cotton balls to our sheep pattern. We painted our clean pigs with mud (chocolate pudding).

And we taste tested the mud (pudding) Good thing it's pudding! We also visited some farms and saw tractors, horses, and a giant elk.
We emerged from the garage today all dressed up. We love Halloween the whole month of October.

This week in our preschool we talked about weather and made wind socks.
We put out a blanket and sang popcorn popping on the apricot tree while popcorn popped.
This was exciting and fun.


We are proud of our wind socks can you tell?

This has been a crazy week for our family. We are ready for a new week.


Jenson gave the closing prayer in primary today. I wish I had a picture of how sweet he looked up there in front waiting to say the prayer. We talked about it last night on some things we could say in our prayers. He was so excited. He stood up all by himself and said "Dear Heavenly Father, I'm thankful for teachers, Amen. We are proud of him for having the courage to get up and for doing a great job. -- Brooklon did a great family home evening lesson today on gratitude. M&M's What am I grateful for? Draw one M&M at a time and depending on what color you choose tell what you are grateful for centered on the topics below.
Brown-material blessings
Blue-Family
Green-Friends
Red-Gospel
Orange-teachers
Yellow-Christ

We are grateful for our family and the time we are able to spend together, the scriptures, Christians job, our home, our health, our teachers, etc... What are you and your family grateful for?
(Landon made a yummy fruit pizza. I would have taken a picture but it went way too fast.)

Christian and I took Trenton to lunch this last week to a Thai restaurant were we enjoyed time spent with Trenton and some yummy Yellow Curry and some Pad Thai. We decided we liked it so much that we would try our hand at some Thai food at home. Here is a recipe if you would like to try some of what we tried.

Thai Green Curry

In a large saucepan simmer one 14 fl. oz. can Thai Kitchen Premium Coconut Milk with 1 to 2 Tbsp. Thai Kitchen Green Curry Paste (I suggest 2 or more Tbsp.) over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add two skinned boneless chicken breasts cut in bite-sized chunks, 1 to 2 Tbsp Thai Kitchen Premium Fish Sauce (sound kind of gross but it tastes good) 2 Tbsp. brown sugar, 1/4 cup bamboo shoots, 1/2 cup frozen peas, and 1/3 cup chicken stock. Simmer 10 minutes, stirring occassionally. Serve with hot Jasmine (sticky) rice. Enjoy!

We hope all women were able to watch the Relief Society Conference. I Tivoed it and have yet to watch. We look forward to hear from President Monson this next weekend and Christians awesome cinnamon rolls.

American Fork against Pleasant Grove. American Fork won 24 to 2. Go A.F.!

Handsome!
I think these guys come for the snack bar treats......and Landon. (Licorice ropes)

Landon yelling "HUDDLE"

Handsome!
We Love Watching Landon Play Football.

It's autumn time. It's autumn time. The leaves are falling down. It's autumn time. It's autumn time. It's all around the town. It's autumn time. It's autumn time. There's yellow, red, and brown. It's autumn time. It's autumn time. Bright colors can be found.

This week at our preschool time we have been talking, singing, and reading stories about leaves and autumn time. Jenson and Jordon had fun making leaf rubbings as you can see.

This weeks happenings

After an all day back and forth several times of negotiating, Christian got the job (Thanks for your help Andrew)
Soccer for both Trenton and Brooklon are over until next year. They played great!
Christian was gone the whole week and I'm so glad he is home. Did I say I was glad? I'm sooo glad.

Just a funny thing that happened the other day: The three little boys and I went to the library the other day right after we dropped off the older kids at school. We were there quite early, so there were'nt a whole lot if any people there. Jenson and Jordon got a book and I asked them to sit by me and read there books while I looked. It was very quiet when all of a sudden someone was right behind me. Right behind me, and scared me. It turned out that there was a mentally handicap school visiting the library at the same time and one of the teenage boys had snuck away and when the teacher had realized that he was gone she came and found him and showed him back to the group.

Shortly after finding our books we needed we went outside to play at the ajoining park. The boys were having a fun time playing when the group of handicap kids were shown to the park to play as well. I was a little nervous to see how the boys would react. I felt that this was a good experience for them. I wanted them to treat them as they do others and not be scared. I decided to just sit back and watch and be prepared to teach if needed.

After a little while I noticed the boy who scared me approach Jenson and Jordon under the slide. I started to get a little nervous again but decided to just watch and wait when all of a sudden Jenson, Jordon and this teenage boy were in a group hug. I felt happy inside. There was'nt any glance at mom to see if this was o.k., there was'nt any hesitation at all. I was smiling/laughing inside. A littlel while later Jenson and Jordon just said "We hugged that boy" "Yes you did". I wanted to say that that was o.k. but we don't just hug anyone but decided to wait for a different time. They ended up teaching me what it means to be as a child and to have that perfect love.
The rest of the happenings are below with pictures.

On friday night Madison had a dance at the Junior High, Landon and Trenton went to a fireside put on by the BYU football team, and Me, Brooklon, Maron, Jenson, Jordon, and Gavon went to the Maceys tailgate party. (We got face painted by some girls that could really face paint) HeeHaws had their giant pig there and Jordon could'nt take his eyes off of it. We really had a fun time together. After everyones festivities were done Christian got home from being gone the whole week and we ate out at Panda Express. We are glad to have him home.