The Latest Trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

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Trunk or Treat

Our ward had a Fall Festival and Trunk or Treat on Saturday night. Julene organized a lot of it because she helped turn it into a fundraiser for our insolvent Cub Scouts. She and the Cub Scouts provided a cheap hot dog dinner, desserts and a silent cake auction. In total, the Cubs were able to raise about $800. Way to go, Julene!

The following are the Ballards' costumes for the Trunk or Treat.

Allyse as Hannah Montana.

Benjamin in the kitty costume that is older than me.
Brad as a tourist (camera case hidden by kitty).

Angelina as Dora the Explorer (she would not wear the wig).
Julene as a witch (she did wear the wig).

Joseph as Harry Potter.
Josh was a Dementor from Harry Potter (but they cannot be photographed).

The kitty exploring his surroundings.

A very happy little girl after getting lots of candy.

Boulder Camping

On October 17th and 18th, Josh and I went camping with his Scout leaders, the other 11-year-old scout and his father. We went to an area about 20 miles south of Boulder City that had lots of boulders. Pictured above is our tent, next to some of the rocks.

When we arrived, it was already dark. We ate chili dogs and s'mores, and then we started exploring the rocks nearby. As Josh and I were coming down from the rocks, my flashlight caught something on the ground, just before I jumped down next to it. It was a full-sized tarantula, and it did not appear to appreciate our presence. It arched up, and looked ready to spring, so I didn't want to get too close to the tarantula, even though I needed to get close to get a picture. I didn't have my camera, so I had to use my cell phone to take this (grainy) picture.

This was the main part of our campsite, where we had our campfire and cooked. Josh is in the white shirt.

Here is another view of the campsite.

The first order of business in the morning was to rebuild the fire from the previous night. After the coals got going, we prepared a Dutch oven farmer's omelet, with bacon, sausage, eggs and hash browns.

After we ate and cleaned up breakfast, we did some scrambling on the boulders. Josh started low . . .

and finished high.

After some practice, we set our sights on some larger rocks. Our tent is in the foreground. You can see another party's tent at the base of the large rocks, which gives some sense of scale.

Here is a zoomed picture of the same rocks. From where we stood, it looked like an easy walk up to the top.

However, it turned out to be much more complex, as many of the boulders were just too large to climb without jamming. Since we were not comfortable with making 11-year-olds learn jamming into wedges without more safety gear, we had to search for ways up that they could do, or that we could help them get over.

Eventually, Josh and I made it to the top with one of his Scout leaders.

I tried to get Josh to jump high, to make it look like he was flying. I can't quite understand why he wasn't very enthused about leaving the ground.

Above is the view of our campsite (we took down the tents before climbing).

Behind Josh and to the left is the next set boulders that we climbed. It is actually much further away than it appears in the picture.

On top on those boulders were large tubs that had been hollowed out by rain water.

Josh was hiding in his tub.

Even though our second climb was much easier, it still proved to be a bit sticky in places. However, we had a lot of fun and nobody got hurt -- my definition of a successful campout.

Allyse, the Photographer

All of the following were taken by Allyse with our old digital camera. She took it to school on a field trip last week, and then continued taking pictures when she got out of school. I have cropped and cleaned up some of the photos, but she was the one who engaged the subjects and framed the shots. This appears to be just a typical afternoon with the Ballards (and especially with Benjamin).

Happy Birthday, Julene!

Julene's endured yet another birthday this week. It seemed that there were a lot of things that were in the way of preparing a birthday celebration for Julene: I was attending a seminar on health law at the Palazzo Hotel, I was trying to finish my rehabilitation of the yard at our old house, I needed to put together a talk for Sunday, the kids had tons of homework, Josh had scouts, etc. In other words, just a normal week at the Ballards.

On Julene's birthday, I was able to go shopping for a present for her during a break at the seminar. After the seminar I had to return to the office to get a few things in the out box. When I left the office, I made my way to a few stores to round up a some cards for the kids to give to Julene, candles, an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins, and some flowers.

One of the true pleasures was seeing how excited the kids were to write on birthday cards for Mommy. They were sneaking around, trying not to let her know that they were working on cards for her. As is evident from the picture above, Angelina was especially thrilled to be able to give Mommy a card.

The payoff came as Julene was brought to tears with the surprise of her little birthday party. Julene, who had been somewhat miffed with me all day, was completely caught off guard by this celebration, which made it so satisfying to know that she was truly touched.

Conference Sunday

On General Conference Sunday, we started with a bit of a lazy Sunday morning attitude. The kids were playing in their pajamas in the family room, with Allyse introducing Benjamin to the joys of plastic containers.

As usual, Benjamin started his posing and smiling as soon as he recognized the camera.

Not to be outdone, Angelina put on a cheesy smile.

Joseph worked on his General Conference packet while Brad whipped up the healthy breakfast of poached eggs with Hollandaise sauce over Canadian bacon and English muffins. Wow, that sounds kind of international!

Josh was also working on his General Conference packet. He was also plowing through the books to his side.

Later in the day we went to Grandma Kathleen and Grandpa Wendell's home. Allyse got to practice her songs on Grandma's beautiful Yamaha grand piano.

She's Got Style

"Fashions fade; style is eternal."

Yves Saint Laurent