Happy Halloween

Hope you all enjoy a fun filled day - in other words, I hope we all survive the day. I've set myself up for complete frustration. I am crazily planning on taking Jared and Kamryn to Kiddie Kandids to get their pictures taken in their Halloween costumes. Since that is my plan they of course woke up way too early today (I could hear them mumbling at 7:00 am. It's now 8:30 and they are still in bed but awake) and will probably be very ornery by 10:00 when I want to be at the mall ready. Why do I do this to myself? Why?

Made my Night

Thoughts from Thursday:
**The day started out great with a luncheon with great friends. It was so good to visit with everyone and see the kids having fun playing together.
**I spent two hours at the church with my Beehives for volleyball. We got there early to practice and they asked us if we wanted to play a practice game against one of their wards who's opponent ward didn't show up. So we said sure. Most of the girls didn't hear that we were playing just for fun and were kind of stressed out because we lost both games. When we told them it was just for practice they felt much better. Then the ward we were supposed to play at 5:45 didn't show up so we played another practice game with whatever girls were there. Then we hung around for a 1/2 hour waiting for our 6:30 game. We had fun and got in some good practice. Finally at 6:45 our opponent ward shows up (15 min late), with only 5 girls and a leader. There has been a lot of controversy in our stake this season about leaders playing (long story but basically last year they started out with leaders playing and decided it didn't work out so this year they said no leaders but every week there have been leaders playing). So our girls feel like it's not fair and that the other teams are cheating. I try to keep them positive and say it's just for fun anyway and let's be good sports but they're getting tired of it. I can't blame them. When we were finally done playing we went to Arctic Circle for ice cream. It helped us all feel better.
**The world series is messing up our tv schedule. We were all excited to watch a new Survivor episode and it was a recap night.
**But, what made my night (again due to the world series being on) was that ER was a rerun. Not just any rerun, the season premiere from just a month ago. I'd missed it and was rather bummed about it. So I was so excited it was on. I know, how shallow of me but it made my night.

Winter weather

For most people they may welcome the first snow but for me it is so depressing. I am not a winter lover at all. And this year will probably be worse than most because Jared and Kamryn love to play outside. They are happiest outside playing in their very little sandbox on the patio or going for a walk in their cars. I guess we could still bundle up and do both of those things but I'm really not into being cold.

Birthdays

Birthdays are good things. A guy in our ward said " you only have one birthday, the rest are anniversaries."
I had a good birthday yesterday. For the most part a pretty normal day with a couple of exceptions - went out to lunch with my sisters and parents and then went out to dinner with my family. Applebee's for lunch and Burger King with my family. When you have 2 17 month olds with you it dictates where you go.
Before dinner we went to Brooke and Justin's volleyball game. It was their first game in a co-ed county rec team. It was so much fun to watch their team play. They have a good team and a diversity of players.

Dinner groups

In our ward one of the activities we have quartely is dinner groups. Everyone who is interested signs up and those that are willing put down if they can host. I figured I could handle hosting this time around. Long story short, I hosted at my mom's house. We had 3 other couples join us and we had a great time. I made vegetable lasagna (I was remined why I very rarely make lasagna) and had fun setting a pretty table.

Nice note

This great note is what I found this morning on my bathroom mirror when I get back from exercising. It was so nice and it feels so good to have someone call me his.

The Dash

I'd heard this story before but it's told very nicely here www.thedashmovie.com

Update on RS Lesson

My lesson went very well. I was happy with how the discussions went and it was a fun change. To explain why I was teaching RS - a while ago our RS president had to teach on short notice because the teacher for that week had to go out of town very unexpectedly. I asked the pres why she was teaching and she said she didn't dare call anybody on Thur to teach that Sunday. I told her she could call me (I'd rather have short notice than too much notice). So, recently she asked me if I'd be willing to come in and teach sometime and bring in the YW with me and I said sure. The Laurel class occasionally goes in with RS so this would work out fine. Since it was UEA weekend and we had several girls out of town we had all of the YW go in. They seemed to enjoy being in there although one of my Beehives came up to me after the lesson and said "great lesson but boy was that long."

Get Away

We had a short get away over the UEA weekend. After church on Sunday we went up to our cabin at Brighton. My parents joined us overnight and Paul's parents came up for dinner. It was beautiful up there, even though a lot of the trees are already bare. It was nice to spend some good quality time together, especially with our parents. We enjoyed a nice dinner and played some games. Monday morning we woke up to snow. It snowed on and off most of the day. Kamryn and Jared even went out on the deck to have their first real snow experience. It was cute watching them in their little hooded jackets.

Relief Society

I get to teach in Relief Society today. The subject is service. I've thought about it a lot over the last 10 days or so. Hopefully it will go as planned. What is your most memorable act of service that you have received?

Quote

I've been playing around with my blog this morning. They've changed to a BETA format (whatever that means) and it is much more user friendly. Yeah!!
Anyway, check out the quote I added - it's at the bottom. It's from the movie "Akeela and The Bee"

Post Cleanout

Yesterday I helped my 12 year old daughter clean out her room. You wouldn't think it would have been to bad since we've only been back living in this house for a little over a year and before we moved from Phoenix her grandma had helped her clean out her room there.
You would be amazed at how much STUFF was in her room. We started with under the bed first - dolls and all the STUFF that go with them. Old rollerblades, several beach bags, old shoes, easy bake oven, socks, pencils, etc. She also had her American Girl doll (Molly) and all her stuff in their original boxes. We debated about what to do with Molly and ended up deciding to keep her for Kamryn to play with in several years (sorry Paige).
Next we moved to her desk - papers, papers, papers. Almost every drawer is empty now.
Then her dresser. Unbelieveable what was still in those drawers.
Lastly was the closet. I have one very picky daughter when it comes to what she wears. We filled up several kitchen garbage bags with clothes - some with the tags still on. We boxed up two boxes for my sister's daughter and are taking the rest to the D.I.
My daughter was a very good sport about this. She really is not sentimental so she has no problem with purging. I asked her if it felt good to get rid of all that stuff and she said "Yeah." Today she just has to finish - dusting and cleaning. I told her dad that we spent the day in her room and he looked in and said "it doesn't look any different."

UEA

Breaks from school are a great thing. I think I look forward to them more than my kids do :)
I know I would like year round school if all of my kids were in the same school but it wouldn't be as great now that I have kids in middle school and elementary.
We have some big cleanout plans for the long weekend. Brooke's room is full of old toys, dolls and clothes and we've got to go through that. And Taylor's room is a big mess which will take a while to straighten out. We've got regular chores and then we get to put up the basketball standard on Sat and finally try out the new court.
Of course, we'll have to fit in some fun times too.

So MAD

You know what makes me so MAD? I'll tell you.
We have been having some work done in our backyard, specifically a basketball court. Luckily we know someone who used to be in our ward that does awesome concrete work. He did our side driveway last year and now he's had a free week so he could do this court for us. He was supposed to pour the concrete last Thur and Fri but the weather didn't cooperate so he postponed to Mon and Tues of this week. (It's been very stressful watching the weather and having them say chance of rain, the worst thing for pouring concrete). Well, the weather ended up cooperating and they poured half the court on Monday. It's amazing to watch these guys work. It's like a work of art getting that concrete smooth and level. Our yard backs onto a park area and I've been worried about kids getting in the yard with the wet cement pad out there. We put the yellow caution tape up across the fence opening and hoped that would deter most people.
Well, yesterday we had an incident. They poured concrete in the morning and were pretty finished with the job by about 2:30. I was heading out there to kind of guard the area while kids were walking home from school. I got out there too late. Some kids had a thrown a long handled piece of reber on the just finished side. There was a big scrape where it landed and some divots. I was so mad. All that beautiful work defaced by some stupid kids. What are they thinking? They are lucky I didn't see them or they would be in jail today (or worse). I was so MAD!!
Thank goodness I saw it right after it happened and was able to call our friend and he came right back and fixed it. Any later and he wouldn't have been able to fix it.
Why do kids do stupid things like that?

A walk

Our family frequently goes for a walk on Sunday evenings. We all enjoy this and it's a great activity that our whole family can participate in. One of the things I like the most about it is that Justin, my 14 year old son, is the one who usually asks when we're going to go on our walk.
Tonight was great - sunny, beautiful fall evening with a slight chill in the air. We usually see a few friends on the way around the neighborhood. Jared and Kamryn love it as well. We'll all be sad to see our walks come to an end for a season.

Nightmares

I can't remember the last real nightmare I had (I know it had something to do with Paul leaving me in some way, that's how most of my nightmares go).
Well, Friday morning at 5:00 am we thought Jared was having a terrible nightmare. He is almost 17 months old and too young to be soooo scared. Paul went in and got him and he was sitting up in his crib screaming/yelling/growling combination at something. Paul brought him in our room while I got Kamryn who woke up from all that noise (luckily Paul got her back to bed pretty quickly). Jared went on with his terror for about a half hour. It was very scary and I felt so bad for him. He did have a pretty high fever so I'm sure that had something to do with it. It almost felt like an evil spirit was trying to possess him. Even though Paul or I were holding him he was staring at something and trying to scare it away. My friend later suggested that maybe he was hallucinating due to the fever. That seemed to fit. Boy, did I feel bad for my little boy.