Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

Love, The DuFour Family

The Pumpkins

This is what became of the ugly pumpkin. Kind creepy yet creative. The weird part, the ugly pumpkin was growing new sprout (aka. spawn pumpkins) inside itself. Look below, isn't that odd looking. Needless to say we did roast those pumpkin seeds.


Ethan got in on the pumpkin carving action. He helped dad carve his and Auntie Sam carved his pumpkin. He was a little standoffish with the pumpkin guts at first, but then warmed up after a bit.


Us with our pumpkins. Chris making the same face as his pumpkin. Silly guy!

E holding his pumpkin!!
Hope you had a nice Halloween.

God's Beautiful Creation in Fall

Living in the city can make it hard to see God's beautiful creation. Everywhere you look there are cars, buildings, lots of cement, you get the idea. Every now an again you need to stop and look around at all the beautiful things he created, here on this earth. This weekend, we decided to get out of the city. We went out to the mountainous area of San Diego, met up with some close family friends and go to a real pumpkin patch. It was so fun, the kids loved running around the pumpkins, checking out all the farm animals and riding in the wagon. It was such a pretty day and everyone had a great time playing with pumpkins and picking out their favorite ones.








These are our pumpkins from left to right: Chris, Ethan and Amanda. Yes Chris's pumpkin is "interesting" looking; every year he has to pick out the ugliest one and make some crazy carving out of it. I'll post the carved pumpkins at a later date.
All the kids; I was unsuccessful at getting a photo where everyone looked at the camera. Although I bet we looked pretty crazy, with about 9 adults trying to get five kids attention.










After picking pumpkins, we went to lunch where Ethan proceeded to eat ketchup. He really enjoyed that!!

It is always a pleasure to get out of the city and enjoy God's beauty.

Baseball Game

We had been wanting to go to a Padre game with Ethan all season long, and it never seemed to work out. Until last Sunday, the very last home game of the season. We went to the ball park with some friends who have two little boys. Ethan and N are only a month apart and get along great. It is so much fun to watch them both play together and interact.
Petco Park (home of the Padres) has this section called park in the park and it is a little park with a mini ball-field, grassy knoll, and playground for kids to play on. Petco also has a section called the bleachers where you sit out in the outfield, but there is a giant sand box that the kids can play in while you watch the game. It is a very kid friendly park. We sat in the bleachers, and really enjoyed ourselves (although there was this annoying Park worker who was playing these games with some of the older kids, who kept screaming in our ears. We could have done without his yelling).

This was Ethan's very first baseball game so we had to buy him a Padre ball cap (don't tell him, but mom and dad really bought it at the sports store right outside the park for about half the price of the ones inside the park).



We were a little bummed the Padre's lost the game in overtime, but as you can see there was plenty of things to distract us. Better luck next year, Padres!

Madison's Dedication

Last weekend, our baby niece Madison was dedicated to Jesus. For those who are not familiar with this practice, let me explain. Dedicating a young child to God is something that parents do in the Christian community. The parents stand before God and their church family indicating that they understand that this child is a gift from God and they plan to raise the child in His ways, ways that would be pleasing to Him. It was so wonderful to be a part of that with my sister Emili, her husband Walt and Madison.



After church we went out to lunch and then to a park to take pictures. Of course we went to take pictures, we all have a sort of obsession with photography.

Grandpa, Emili, Madi, Walt and Grandma
All of us kids: the sisters, the husbands and grandkids
Madi and Ethan; so cute.
Auntie Sam with Ethan (he was SOOO tired) and Madison

It was a wonderful day, all about Madison. Lord we pray for little Madison that she will grow up to be a strong woman with Godly characteristics, give her parents wisdom and patience and be with they as raise Madi. She is such a precious baby girl!!

Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day weekend our friend Spencer was in town from Texas. Spencer was here on one of the many vacations (Spencer is a big fan of vacation). Spencer being in town was cause for a whole bunch of friends around town to get together. And when Spencer is in town what do we do you ask? Well we do the same thing we always do (we are all creatures of habit). We go to Pat & Oscars for a big group dinner, where, as always, we ordered way too much food. We played FRIENDS Scene-it a couple times (most of the group has a big obsession with FRIENDS, I may be the worst). We went to the Wild Animal Park (this is not something we always do when Spencer comes out) and then had a nice BBQ.

Here are some fun pictures from our trip to the Wild Animal Park.

They were all really excited some sort of animal way over there.

This is Spencer and his "lady friend," Laura. This was the first time we had chance to meet Laura. We liked her, great sense of humor!!

Ethan enjoyed checking out all the animals with Dad.

The WAP group.

Some of the animals we saw on our little trip.

Ethan had a blast sitting on my shoulders while looking at animals.

Labor day was a really good weekend. Those of that live here still really need to get together more than just when Spencer is in town. It was a fun weekend!