El Pumpkin Carving Contest!!!

Tonight was the annual college group pumpkin carving contest, one of the things that I look forward to every year. The smoke from the fires was not very thick tonight so it was fun to enjoy an evening in the Smith's backyard making some serious art.

But hey, it's not just about art, it's a contest! We need YOUR help to delcare a winner!!!

Below we have pictures of all the entries and we would like for you to post a comment and vote for which one you think is best! You don't have to be in the college group to vote, so please, show love to the one you love the most! We will hope to announce the winners soon, so I am thinking we need to have all votes in by Saturday by next Wednesday night (ummm Reformation Day). Hopefully we will get at least 95 votes...

We were really bummed that two of the fiercest competitors, Ken and Beth Flower weren't able to join us. We heard that they had to drive to Santa Clarita to visit their mom who was in the hospital. We are not sure of the details so please pray for them.

All of the entries minus those who had to go home earlier to study for midterms.

"M-I-C, K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E"

"The Elephant"

"The Mask"

"Northpoint"

"AHHHHH, SIDABANYA"

The look that inspired the pumpkin

"The Jay"

These two ladies with their submissions.

"The Picture within the Picture"

Angle 1

Angle 2

"Carving in Trees"

Please leave a comment and vote for your favorite!!!

Fight On

Yesterday, was a great day. It started being great on Thursday. On Thursday I received a call from John Kooker (the man of the house of the awesome family that I was blessed to live with between my junior and my senior year). "Kooker," as he is affectionately called by my dad, said that he had tickets to the USC Stanford game that he wanted to give to my wife Cory and I. We jumped at the chance and were super excited. Cory had never been to a college game before and I had never been to a game at SC.

After fighting some crazy downtown LA driving conditions we found a parking spot and made our way to the campus.

Cory and I didn't exaclty have a plethora of Cardinal and Gold in our wardrobe, so we tried to match as good as we could.

The Campus is QUITE the happening place before a game. We walked down University Avenue and felt like we were swimming in a sea of Cardinal and Gold. I was also struck at how the architecture at SC stuck out a little bit more than North Campus at TMC.

After hiking up some stairs, we finally got up to see the field. It is an amazing thing to enter the Coliseum and to behold the field in all of its glory. Some might say "this is the most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen." I don't, Cory is pretty beautiful.

I was pretty stoked when we found our seats.

You gotta love the intensity of college athletics.
The SC marching band played the halftime show and did a good job of making fun of Stanford. However, I don't think they are laughing now.

This was on one of SC's touchdown drives.

Cory and I had a blast during the game. However, USC was upset by Stanford. Stanford scored with under a minute to play and the entire Coliseum was silent. John David Booty threw four interceptions, one of them ending any chance for a last minute comeback. The fans used his last name to the fullest.

Although we thoroughly enjoyed going, we were sad for the Kookers and for my folks. USC's national championship hopes may be shot for the rest of the year. We'll see if LSU can get upset.

Just a word to the Kookers.

THANK YOU!

I am thinking that the purpose of our blog would not be accurately stated as informing you on what is going on currently in our lives, but rather telling you about what we did a few weeks ago. Because when we are currently doing something, we don't have time to stop and blog about it (although we could if we had an IPhone).

A few weeks ago it was my birthday and Cory and I met up with Bobby, Christa, Tyler and Mom and Dad for another Disneyland adventure.

Who looks more excited, Tyler or Bobby?

We can now officially say where I get the goofiness from. I think Dad got it from the original Goofy.

This is a good picture of my parents. They are in San Antonio. We are really excited for them but miss them as well.

He's growing up to be quite a young lad! Noggin dude!!!

I was officially higher than Cory on the Merry Go Round. It was my birthday, after all!!!!Hopefully we will have quite a few more posts coming soon so check back often to see more blogs about things that happened a while ago! (and one very recent event...)

B & C