Backwards Day at School!

Vienna was so excited to dress up backwards for school today! She loves kindergarten and loves all of her new friends! This is our next door neighbor Lindsay. They are thick as theives!

Pictures from my previous blog!

I couldn't get the picture icon to work with my last blog so here are some pictures of our last spooky outing!

Halloween is the BEST!

I LOVE THIS TIME OF YEAR!!
Halloween is probably my favorite holiday of the year! I love the weather, the smells, and most of all scaring the #$@* out of my kids! O.K. I know it sounds a little mean, but I love the spookiness of the season! We took the kids to Hee Haws, a corn maze and pumpkin patch near our house. It has some great things for the kids. Tractor rides, farm animals, a spook alley, hay jumps, and best of all, a haunted hayride! We took the whole family on it and let me tell you, I have never laughed so hard in my life!! Vienna found some friends to ride with so she didn't want to ride sitting next to mom and dad. The hayride began and so did the screams! Of course there were lots of monsters, creepy animals, and chainsaw guys dancing around our wagon. The girls turned one way and screamed, turned the other way and screamed, looked behind them and screamed, they even screamed when someone in the back of the wagon screamed! Everyone else on the wagon was so entertained by the screaming girls at the front of the wagon that the ride for them was anything but scary! Kael loved all the creepy stuff, and Saxon I'm sure was just trying to figure out what the heck was going on. They actually had a great time! At the end of the hayride portion of the event, everyone was unloaded from the wagon and escorted to the haunted corn maze. Vienna was all screamed out and Saxon wanted to go down the slide, but Kael was all ready to go. Kael and I headed into the dark maze and out came more bloody monsters and creepy things. Kael loved it. He told everyone around us to leave all the monsters to him, he was gonna take care of them. He single handedly scared off all of the gouls and I even heard a few chuckles from the chainsaw guy!! Wow I was so impressed. What a great night it was. Like I said, I LOVE this time of year!

CRY BABY WEEKEND!

Hey fam...
click here http://rococomocco.blogspot.com/ to read more. =)

"Don't let your kids play with sharp pointy things."

It must feel weird to hold a butter knife bigger than you.
But for most boys (and men) this is the coolest thing around here in Highland Mountains of California. You should see the hundreds of guys drooling over the long swords and even buying them. We saw lots of swords strapped on backs that day. Great for spreading jelly.... I hear.

Just had to share this picture of one happy guy. Hard to tell with that I'm cool look he is doing in the photo.

They did have some pretty cool looking swords.

A Timp Cave flash back. 7-4-2003

It seems like just yesterday we were climbing up to the caves and seeing the sites. The kids are growing up so very fast. To bad that the parents couldn't slow it down some. The kids want to speed it up... Go figure...

I think I will be checking into going out with the parents back East for a few days. Not sure how we will fit everyone in Mark's sports cars.
Scott

Beach-party

Fall nights are great for a beach parties with friends from school. Audrey likes her life here in the redwood mountains and couldn't imagine living anywhere else. She now has a Myspace account with all her friends. We are trying out this bold move and watching how it goes. So far she has been pretty good as long as we tone down some of her friends. The fall air feels so cool.

From Scott: Hi ya all!



Right: Bday
Left: Highlands




Great birthday fun at a friend's B-day party made for a great Saturday last week. Her friend's parents hope to move to Utah along with many other families that already have moved. We tell them they should stay but the grass is always greener on the other side so they hope.
Friends will surley be missed.


Highland games (Scots and Irish unit in our home town).

This is a dream come true for most of the kids around here. They look forward to going and battling it out with swords and sheilds. Hank worked on his shield and made sure his to swords were ready for the meet. The others saw all the activities, but most of dads' time was spent in the lower glenn watching 30 kids go at it with all kinds of wood swords.
By the end of the day, both swords were broken but the shield held out really well. We had lots of fun and there was lots to do.

Hank was amazing in the all out war with the locals. It was amazing. You had to be there.

Busy Week for the Higbees!

We have had a busy week out here! Raising kids is just a busy thing isn't it? Last weekend we went to the Utah State football game and it was great! The kids love going up to Logan and we have created some passionate Aggie Fans! Any mention of those other Utah schools really get them upset especially BYU!! It's Utah State all the way for these little ones! It is so fun to walk around campus and show the kids where mom and dad met, lived, and played! Vienna really eats it up! It won't be too long before she thinks all of that stuff is "dumb". They had a lot of fun!

We also got a chance to check out the new Children's museum in Salt Lake! It wasn't as good as the museum in Columbus, but it was pretty good. The kids had a blast! Vienna loved the climbing wall, Kael loved all the building stuff, and Saxon loved the gas pump and construction zone (We hope that is not indicative of his future!!) No really, it was great. They even had a real helicopter on the roof that the kids could get in and play around in. They all loved it! We have been having so much fun! Tomorrow were heading out to a pumpkin patch! I love this time of year!

Happy Birthday Vienna!

Vienna had her sixth birthday this week and what a great birthday it was. Last year we had a big party, so this year we opted for a smaller affair. With just a couple of her closest friends, we went to Build-a-Bear Workshop (her favorite place). It was so nice not to have to worry about games, decorations, party favors, and all that. It was great. Mom and Dad even came for the big outing. Dad was wondering why he didn't come up with the idea of stuffing bears, putting cute clothes on them, and charging a fortune. We all came back to the house for some yummy cake and that was all! Vie got all the things she was dreaming about. A new Build-a-Bear Monkey, a monkey shirt, a monkey blanket, and a monkey umbrella (notice the theme?). Not to mention the most important gift of all, a guitar. She is still dreaming about becoming a rock star and no real rocker can live without a guitar! Now all we have to do is teach her how to use it! It was a great day for her and we are so proud of her! She is a real sweetie and is so fun to have as a daughter! (most of the time J/K!)

Brian and Roxanne's early 20th anneversary.

Here we are on our 3rd honey moon in Cabo San Lucas, MX. We saw Roxanne's brother get married there and we had a really nice 11 days . There were very large waves (10 to 20 feet) to surf on the first part of the week we got there. I drank lots of salt water!

We also had a great summer watching and playing baseball. Here is Geoff on the mound going at it for his team.

Pics from our Trip!

Click here to see some of the pictures! http://rococomocco.blogspot.com/

Love,
Mark and Rachel

Indiana Halversen are on now.

We are really busy this fall with all the great fall activities. Geoffrey is really tearing it up on the football field, Stephanie has been promoted to the Varsity Volleyball team since she started spiking the ball down opposing teams throats. They are both over 5'-11 now and it is a race to 6' between them. I keep telling Steph to relax and that Geoff is only getting started. The Ward plays soccer every Friday night and Morgan really likes soccer now. Jessica was doing great in Florida but decided that she is ready to try something else and is back. It is so good to have her back home, it is like someone turned the sunshine up a notch around here.

The leaves are starting to fall now and we are doing some fall boating and wake boarding. I am in charge of the Elders Quorum campout this Saturday and were going to have a camp fire sing along. Our favorite fall family activity is call Fall 500. You all go in the back yard when the leaves are falling. For each leaf you catch before it hits the ground you get 100 points. First one to 500 wins. Try it. Big Family Fun. Be Good. Love Brian.

Indiana Halversens checking in!

Indiana Halversens checking in! Hi everyone. Are on now. Whaaa hooo. We are busy with fall activite. Stephanie did so well on the JV team that she moved her up to Varsity on the Volley ball team.

Our 10th Anniversary & 2nd honeymoon!

First of all, I have to say Congrats to Lori and Bryce on yours last week! It looks like you guys had a total blast! We are so happy for you! We just got back and I am excitedly getting our pictures posted for all to see!

Well, the way this all came about took a while. We SO wanted it to be a special one since it was out tenth. We had considered many options. Most of my ideas were much too expensive (i.e. french riviera, amalfi coast...) to be realistic, but anything else seemed boring. So I was at a loss as to what we should do for this special occasion. Last month as I was thumbing through my copy of Architectural Digest magazine, I saw this travel article about Macinac (pronounced Mack-in-aw) Island, where we went on our Honeymoon. They advertised an Antique and Design Fall festival put on by a famous Interior Designer named Carlton Varney. He owns a Design firm in NYC that was once owned by Dorothy Draper, who in the first half of this past century was as famous or more than Martha Stewart is today. Anyway, he is the one who has decorated the Famous Grand Hotel which is on Macinac Island and we had dreamt of staying there on our FIRST honeymoon- but being the college students we were-- well...it really was not in the BUDGET! SOOOOO, as you all know that was like a sign from above when I saw the article. I knew that would be the perfect Anniversary/2nd Honeymoon trip for us! And in a reachable budget for us too! So that's how it came about.

We took a ferry over, and you can see how pretty the sun was as it sparkled on the water. The island has a no motorized vehicles rule, so once you get there you have the choices of walking, biking, riding a horse, or getting a horse and carriage ride, which is what we did to get to the hotel. The horses went so slow we could have walked faster though! I have no idea why but I am having trouble posting my pictures so I will have to do the rest in the morning.

The Grand Hotel really is just as amazing as it looks in the pictures. If you have seen the movie "Somewhere In Time" it's all in that movie. But it's not just the grandiose nature of the structure, which is both astounding and beautiful, it is the amazing way they take care of you when you are there! We felt like we had virtually no reason to ever leave the hotel! They had AMAZING food- like 5 star! We ate TOO much, and then after 6pm they require the "ladies"to be wearing skirts or dresses, and the "gentlemen"to have suits and ties on! It's so old-fashioned and fun! The dining room was amazingly huge and formal, with a live orchestra that played every night during dinner, followed by a harpist after dinner in the parlor, which was finished off by a big band that played in the ballroom and we danced every night until 11:30 pm! It was my dream! We heard Mr. Varney speak one day, and we also went to a talk on Art and antique restoration which was really interesting. There was some really pretty estate jewelry and crystal I was just drooling over! We were papmpered the entire time and felt like celebrities, partly because we were like the youngest couple in the entire hotel and the older people were so amused by the fact that we knew some ballroom dance that some who recognized us the next morning clapped for us when we were coming down into the parlor for breakfast. They liked our dancing apparently! =) The views from the hotel were just amazing, because it is perched atop a hill, so from the front porch you can see this enormous panorama of the Macinac Bridge, a couple of lighthouses and tons of water and sky.

We stayed in the Hotel more than we got out... but we did go down to see the shops, buy FUDGE (which is a famous treat there), and take a few long walks around the island. We also bought a few prints of watercolors by a popular local artist in his gallery, as a souvenier. It was a trip we will never forget, and now we want to go there EVERY YEAR! Anyway.. I will try to get the pictures up tommorow!