Lil' Dean Fam

We drove down to San Diego for Thanksgiving this year.  Mom rode with us and Jess and Cole took their car.  Dad flew down and Justin and Jenessa stayed home for work.  We had a really great time sharing this beautiful celebration of thanks with our extended family.  Grandpa really had a rough year with his broken back and it was so great to see him feeling so well.  He didn't think he'd make it to see 86 but he did and he's feeling good!  We're so grateful for our family.  Linda hosted this year and we all brought way too much food.  We did a pinata and had a great time visiting with everyone. Road trip to San Diego for Thanksgiving Cousin sleep over in the living room at Grandma's house Meal prep Emry helping make Mac n Cheese Grandma and Jess making rolls Jess making Mac n Cheese Donna making potatoes Jen making rolls Jax helping Evan Colin Cole My boys with their great grandpa Ed...

This year for Halloween Evan went as  Ghost.  Ryan went as the Grim Reaper.  We didn't intend for it to be a theme but I guess it kind of was!   We had lots of Halloween festitivites to participate in this year.  It was also Red Ribbon Week and Ryan had a major field trip.  Whew!  I'm so glad this week is over.  And hooray for the end of daylight savings time!    The kids are strictly not allowed to wear masks to school and both boys chose a costume with a mask.  So.. before we purchased the costumes, we had to find a way that they'd work without the costumes as well as with them.  For Evan, we decided face paint would be best.  Halloween Carnival at Church.  Getting ready for school on Friday.  For Ryan, we bought a Grim Reaper whose mask could be removed.  Then, to protect his costume from the self-eating velcro, we put a piece of fuzzy velcro down- it seemed to work okay. ...

 Our school participates in the Junior Achievement program.  This is a financial literacy program taught by volunteers, except in fifth grade where the teachers do the instruction and then the volunteers run the field trip.  Fifth grade is a special year for Junior Achievement because the kids get to apply for jobs and then take a field trip to the Children's Museum at the Gateway and run the city for a day.  The city, or Biz Town, is located on the fourth floor and is only open to field trippers for this exact purpose.  I really enjoyed this experience as a teacher so I was really excited when Ryan got to participate as a student.  And this year I volunteered so I also got to see Biz Town from that perspective for the first time.  Ryan was hired as CFO of Merit Medical for the day.  He ran all of the finances for the company.  He printed and delivered bills to all of the other companies in Biz Town and ran deposits to the ban...