First, you have to round up a lot of cardboard and cut it into rectangular shapes and cover it with aluminum foil. Then you need to cut basic house shapes from graham crackers with an electric knife. This is definitely Michael's area of expertise.
If there are a lot of small children involved, glue the houses together in advance so they can start decorating ASAP and they don't have to wait for frosting to dry and their house to take shape.
Next, put out a ridiculous amount of candy. If you have little to no will power, buy items that look great, but taste bad. Hint, Necco candies are great for roof tiles, but taste pretty bad. This way you don't gain 5 pounds just from participating in the event. The kids will find the M&M and Skittles and all of the mainstream candy anyway and will eat until they are sick, but oh well, it is only once a year.
Finally, let the fun begin. While people decorate, keep making huge quantitites of frosting. The stiffer you make Royal Icing, the better. We have blown out hand held mixers in the past making icing, but this only adds to the legendary event, besides, it makes a great story! 
This year Hayden tried something new and signed up for the sixth grade chorus. He had hoped to join band or orchestra, but couldn't because he did not play in fourth or fifth grade in New York which is required to play at the middle school level. He did not know if he would like it, but it has been something positive.
In December, the chorus performed and it was a packed house. Even though we were at the high school auditorium, it still was not large enough. Eventually, the decision was made to divide the concert into two parts. They made all of the family members of the 7th and 8th graders leave the auditorium. Then they sat everyone who was there to watch a sixth grader and they performed. Then we cleared out, the family members for the older kids filed in and the concert resumed. It was a hectic night, but in the end, Hayden performed and did very well.
The next night, we had the chance to watch Sydney perform at her school. Each of the third graders was asked to wear a costume that reflected another country or culture. Sydney decided to pull out the massive sombrero from the basement costume box. Hey, at least, we could spot her easily!
Sydney's class sang a lot of songs, and they did a a lot of hand actions for too many verses. Little did we know that she nearly passed out because she had a heavy, wool blanket draped on top of her in addition to that huge sombrero, and was packed in like a sardine next to a bunch of other sweaty kids. She was adorable up there, but needed a shower when we got home! Nothing says, "Merry Christmas" like a sweaty eight year old singing Hava Nagela (sp?) in a sombrero. Happy Holidays! 
It started out like any Saturday morning, until the phone rang and a friend in Utah played the BYU fight song over the receiver. Then the mood changed. Although our new neighbors probably did not understand what Michael was up to, he added this "U" to the lights in the front yard before the kickoff. We all wore red and geared up for a great football game.
Michael threw a great party. There were 20 or more people in the house, all cheering for red or blue. We had red 7-Up, blue Kool-Aid and plenty of red and blue food items.
Despite our spirited efforts, the University of Utah lost in overtime to our rivals, the Brigham Young University Cougars. "Rise and shout" all you cougars, it was your year. 
My mom is famous for giving me recipes. Almost every time that I have seen my mother in the past 20 years, she hands me a stack of recipes. This year I decided to put one to use and make these turkey favors for our Thanksgiving table.
Sydney actually assembled them while I fought the hot spots in our crappy microwave trying to melt the caramel enough to make them stick together. She gets the credit for pulling this project together, and thanks to Michael for cooking his best turkey and stuffing yet so that I had time to mess with favors and table decorating!
In the end, we fed 23 of us this year. We are truly grateful for new friends who have lovingly befriended our family and who continue to make us feel welcome here. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving despite being far away from the immediate family. 
I think that all children love Halloween, and ours are no different. This year we dressed up for school, at three different schools and on two different days. We dressed up for dance classes. We dressed up for a church trunk-or-treat party and we dressed up on Halloween night. In the end, it was exhausting, but the kids got what they wanted all along- candy, candy and more candy!
This is Sydney with another source of sugar- a donut, at the ward Halloween party. The kids scored a lot of candy quickly at the trunk-or-treat.
Carving pumpkins is a necessary and traditional part of Halloween. This year we got our pumpkins from a cute couple that has a farm around the corner from us. They grew a lot of pumpkins, although I don't know how they kept the deer from eating them! We want to get a garden going next summer, but have heard that it is awfully difficult to keep the deer and rabbits from destroying your crop.
Our jack-o-lanterns really lit it up this year. Hayden was intrigued by the light colored pumpkin that he found. I think the variety is really meant for pies, but it was unique for his jack-o-lantern. The girls were happy with the more traditional orange ones.
This is the group that we trick-or-treated with on Halloween night. We had a great time with new friends. We met early for chili, cornbread, pizza, salad and more. Then we bundled up and set out in a couple of different groups based on age. Hayden and his friends covered a lot more ground than the little ones and he ended up with a lot more candy, but the cold wind discouraged the girls from staying out too long. I loved the fact that Halloween fell on a Saturday night this year and that trick-or-treating was only allowed from six until eight p.m. in our area. The only bad thing was that although I had bought a lot of candy, we never handed any out at our door since we trick-or-treated in a different neighborhood than our own.
We had a very welcome visitor at the end of October, Michael's brother. He had business in Toronto, so he flew into Buffalo and stayed with us for the weekend and then we drove him up to Toronto in time for his Monday morning meetings. Since we can literally cross over into Canada in five turns or less from our driveway, it was a very easy request. We decided to take the scenic way up and stopped at Niagara Falls along the way.
Once we arrived in Toronto, we drove through China town and then left our Tahoe at the hotel. We took a 20 minute walk to the CN Tower which is currently the tallest building in the world. After a very quick elevator ride up to the observation deck, we were rewarded with a spectacular view of the area at sunset.
Part of the observation level has glass paneled floors. Even though you know that you are completely safe, stepping onto the glass panels is truly a leap of faith. My sense of balance was thrown off when I looked around my shoe and could not "see" anything holding me up! Still, it was an awesome way to look at the city below.
Here are the five of us, with some weird lighting because the tower is lit up with purple and pink hues. It looks neat from the street level, but a little bizarre when you are in it.
So I think that Toronto is the largest city that our children have been to. They are experiencing things in their childhood that Michael and I are just getting to in our thirties! I love that they were brave enough to go up that high and do something totally new and unique. They each have their own passport and I am thrilled that we can explore new cities and places with them. We miss Utah tremendously, but it is truly fun to live in a new part of the country and have new adventures.
At night we can hear the frogs and toads. I used to think that there was one particular toad that lived in our yard. I saw it several nights and saw it inside of a small hole in our driveway many times too, but then it disappered for a bit. I saw this toad by our garage one evening when I went to get milk, but it has different marking than the other one and is much bigger than the first. Maura likes to chase them. One night a toad got into the garage and Michael and I had to chase it out.
There are several more animals in our yard too. The last two times that I have mowed the lawn I have stepped in deer droppings. I know that they come through the yard but I have not seen them yet, we have seen multiple deer around town though. We also get voles, mice, squirrels, and fox. I feel like I have moved into Snow Whites' enchanted forest, so I say, bring on the dwarves!
Maura was so excited for her first day and I took pity on her and bought her a new backpack even though there are several hand me downs in the house.
Sydney was nervous about riding the bus, but happy about her new dress and shoes that she chose for the first day of school.
On Saturday, we decided to try to get to Colonial Williamsburg in time to see a fife and drums performance. But it was a busy day with students returning to William and Mary University and it took a while to park and track down the performance. We heard a lot of it, but it was breaking up when we got close to it. It was still fun to see the children in their costumes though. It was very hot and humid that afternoon, and it discouraged us from covering too much ground, but we did go through one of the original churches, and the candy shoppe, the Christmas shoppe and the toy shoppe. Another time we will have to pay the big money, like $50 per person, to go through the shops where there are costumed performers that tell you all of the history, the kids just weren't going to go to the colonial wig shoppe this time!!
Hayden
Sydney
Maura
Michael and I forcing Hayden into a picture of cannon used at the battle of Yorktown.
The Victory Monument, erected along the shore of the York River by Congress to commemorate the victory by the Americans and French over the British forces.
The cousins tried to take in the history, but honestly, they could only handle it for so long, then the silliness returned.
One of many structures in the historic area of York. During the day you can visit the various buildings and experience a little of colonial life in the 1700's. Most of the shops were closed for the day, so we settled for dipping our toes in the river and then running for Ben and Jerry's in the rain and eating ice cream until we were beyond full.
The children were more interested in finding the multiple deer that were roaming through the village area. There were too many to count really. But Maura tried to count them up and eagerly pointed out each one she saw to me, begging me to take pictures. At another time, Michael and I will have to return and take in more of the historical stuff. 
This is the main clock tower in the lobby. The children gather there for story time twice daily and for magic shows and other events.
This is a picture that we took of the main structure in the water park. It is massive and if you climb to the top there are two different slides to try. There is also a wave pool, a flowrider area, a space for toddlers, mulitple tube and raft slides, some accomodating four people at a time, a lazy river, basketball hoops in pools, and an outdoor pool along with mini golf.
About every five minutes, this huge bucket dumps water down on the structure. Maura would squeal and run away when she heard the warning bell.
Maura tried most of the slides with her daddy. She thought that she was a great swimmer with her life vest on, but we had to watch her carefully. We don't have may pictures of the older kids because they teamed up with cousins and did the slides. Sydney and her cousin Mary rode the Tornado, pictured below,over 30 times in the two days! I tried it once and decided that it wasn't worth climbing the multiple flights of stairs to be terrified and wet, but the kids loved it and after swimming from 9 am until 9 pm the second day, they slept better than exhausted newborns. It was the easiest bedtime ever and we knew that we had done it, we had found the perfect vacation spot for three busy children! The best part of the water park is no sun block needed.
The Tornado. It looks inviting from the outside, but you start at the very top of the building and enter a tube slide, then plummet down a steep slope into the funnel and slosh back and forth until you plunge into a pool below that is back inside of the building. Fortunately, the kids loved it and climbing all of those stairs was a great workout for them.