All Hallows Eve

our ghostbuster, Medusa, and a pirate

We spent the weekend dressing up for parties and trunk-or-treating.  We had a fabulous time.

We planned on not accepting trick-or-treaters this year, with today being Sunday and all, but because of a hot cocoa spill that kept Brian and I pretty busy at the ward Halloween party, we didn't hand out any of our candy.  So we are accepting tricksters.  I think my favorite part of the whole weekend is that our kids haven't complained at all about not being able to trick-or-treat on Sunday.  They understood when we told them why, and they've just been having a blast answering the door and giving out candy.  We haven't heard a single, "Why can't we go trick-or-treating?" and I love it!

Cousin Preschool Halloween Party

 Participants:  Eliza as Belle, Ethan as a dinosaur, Asher as Mario, Marcus as a ghostbuster, Derek as a knight, and Cecily as a knight

 We traced our hands on black paper and made bats our of them and put letter pumpkins in alphabetical order.

 We ate Halloween cookies at 10:00 in the morning.

We danced to the Monster Mash, played Pin the nose on the jack-o-lantern, and watched Disney's Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  It was a great time!

Tombstone Tales Weekend

Life is slowing down just a tad.  This weekend was insane, and we're still recovering and trying to keep up with the things that are still coming our way.  Friday I had Tombstone Tales in the morning and evening, and just after that Brian and I raced over to the stake adult Halloween party.  We used our Queen of Hearts and Mad Hatter costumes, and we danced and ate yummy brownies.

On Saturday I ran the Halloween Scream and Scram 5K.  I don't know how I did time-wise.  I had Runkeeper going the whole time, and according to that the race was a little bit longer than a 5K, plus I forgot to stop the timer for a minute after I stopped running.  Even if I might not have gotten a great time, I felt like I kept up a good pace.  I did 5 and 1 minute intervals, and I really tried to push myself while running.  My next race is on Thanksgiving morning, and I'm switching my training to try to run for at least 10 minute intervals.  I don't know - Logically, it feels like I need to try to get to where I run the whole thing without stopping, but I really enjoy the intervals.  I like running just a bit harder for a while, because I know I'll be able to rest soon, and I feel like I'm losing more weight this way than the times I would just run...and run and run and run.

While I was running on Saturday, Brian took the kids to the Primary Program Practice at the church, and then I raced over to join them as soon as I was done.  Our family sang "A Child's Prayer" in the program, and just before we got up to practice it, Brian's brother called and said that Great Grandpa Jacks had fallen and they were assessing whether or not to take him to the hospital.  He's in the hospital now, and we went to visit him last night for Family Home Evening.  He's a trooper!

I thought I would have time to shower before Tombstone Tales started, but with the phone calls and confusion of plans, I had just enough time to run home and grab my costume.  Megan and I were even late.  We arrived at the cemetery about three minutes before the first group was supposed to start.  I grabbed my costume and threw it on, grabbed the van key from the key ring to stuff in my boot, then ran across the street.  It was then I remembered that I had left my family's tickets in the car.  I ran back across the street, and pulled the van key out of my boot to unlock the car, only to realize that I was driving Brian's car, not the van.  So I ran back across the street, and in my stressful state botched the first round.  Then I gave myself a good talking to and did better the rest of the time.

This year for tombstone tales, I portrayed Eunice Freeman, who was a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.  She fought against alcohol and prostitution.  She rallied to get women the right to vote, which worked pretty well.  Women gained the right in Washington State ten years before the rest of the country, besides Wisconsin, I think.  Eunice ended up going to the prison system to help reform recently released convicts and help them ease back into society by finding them housing and jobs.  In 1919 she was visiting her home in Portland when Clarence Johnson, one of those recently released convicts, broke into her house to steal things and beat her to death with a lead gas pipe.  Quite sad, actually.  My station in the cemetery was right after a bootlegger, so we started things with me in his station just as the tour group was arriving, and I would yell at him for corrupting our community, and he would tell me to leave him alone and such, then I would stomp off, yelling, "You haven't heard the last of me, Mr. Clark!"  He would then have something incredibly witty to say about those crazy temperance ladies to start his spiel, and I kept waiting for him to say something like, "Yeah, she'll be back again in about twenty minutes."

So Tombstone Tales was very fun.  It wasn't nearly as cold as it was last year, and it only rained a little bit.  We did have the sprinklers turn on on us once, which was pretty exciting.  Brian forgot the camera when he came through, so I had my sister record me.  I'll put up a picture and the video when I get a hold of it.

Holy Cow, Life, Slow Down!

Wow.  We have been busy.  Busy, busy, busy.  We've been jumping from one activity to another, mostly with no time to catch our breath in between.  Starting with last week, when we went on a home school field trip to the West Pasco water plant, life is just tumbling together and making things, well, incredibly busy. 

Here's a couple of pictures from the field trip. 

This is the part of the plant that collects all the sludge after it's cleaned from the water.  Usually it's more watery than muddy, but things were temporarily shut down for maintenance while we were there, so all the extra water had drained out.  The tracks across the mud are from a frog that lives there that the workers call Fred.  Looking for Fred was one of the kids' favorite part.

While the kids and I had school and mowed the lawn and went on the field trip, Brian spent most of his Saturday at the bishop's house, cooking half a pig for the ward luau. 

 Brian and Bishop Christensen both agreed that they should have cooked the pig for longer, but they didn't have a huge amount of time to work with.  It was still yummy!

I don't remember what we did Saturday.  Oh, no, I remember.  Saturday was not a busy day.  Brian played something on the computer, I watched a couple episodes of "Castle" on the laptop, and the kids watched a whole ton of things on the TV downstairs.  A while back we went back to our rule of not watching TV on weekdays, and our kids just live it up on Saturdays.  That afternoon we went to Brian's grandma's birthday party at Granny's Buffet, then we went to her house to visit with everyone until way late that night.  Overall, it was a pretty laid back day.

But don't let that non-busy day fool you. We really have been busy.  Monday we had school, then hurried to have lunch in time to get Alyssa to P.E.  The boys and I went grocery shopping, then picked Alyssa up.  Just after getting home and putting the groceries away, we headed to the Empey's farm for Brian's brother's birthday party.  (Eric married Claire Empey, and her family has acres and acres of apple trees and other things, and they make Sheffield Cider, which is fabulous.)  We had a bonfire and barbecue out there, and the kids loved every minute of it.

Tuesday Alyssa went to MCP, the boys went to Cousin Preschool at my sister's house, and I went visiting teaching, and running.  I did some laundry after picking up the boys, then we picked up Alyssa, we all played in the front yard with the neighbor kids, then we had a quick dinner, and I went to Relief Society.

Today the kids and I spent the entire day cleaning the house.  Yes, it was that bad.  It took the entire day to clean it.  We've been focused on home school, and we've also been running to and fro and back and forth so much that the house has definitely suffered.  It feels so good to have everything clean!

So now that I've bored you all to death with the travel logue of our week (I didn't mean to, I promise) I'll try to sum things up pretty quick.  Maybe we haven't been as busy as it feels, but in between everything I've been working on memorizing my part for this year's Tombstone Tales.  This year I am playing a suffragette, and I get to shout things like, "Votes for women!" and "All alcohol created the same ill efffect.  It is from the devil!" 

Tombstone Tales starts bright and early tomorrow morning, and it will consume a huge chunk of my time until Saturday night.  We're also throwing in the Fall Ball, put on by the Pasco Stake, on Friday night, running a 5K race on Saturday morning, and then driving straight to a practice for the Primary program.  This is where life gets really busy.  I found a substitute to teach Gospel Doctrine on Sunday so I don't have to have that going through my head while I'm shouting in a cemetery. 

Even though it's going to be crazy, I'm looking forward to this weekend.  It's going to be great!

Check Me Out

No, seriously.  Check me out.

Hhhmm...

What is that from?  Is it Strongbad?  "Check me out.  No, seriously, check me out."  It's running through my head now in Strongbad's voice, and it seems to fit.  Ha!  We haven't watched Homestar Runner in years, and I'm still quoting it.

So this post was intended to give me an opportunity to brag about how proud I am of myself for keeping some goals I set while watching Conference last week, but now that I'm sitting at the computer, I can think of a whole bucket of things I'd like to brag about, so here I go:

1. Marcus's Ghostbuster Halloween costume is turning out to be so cool.  (And you have to say that the way he does, "Ztho Cool!!"  Notice the tiny little "L" at the end.  It doesn't get represented as much as it should.)  Brian found the perfect hand held vacuum attachment set at Value Village last week to fix to his backpack for a proton pack, and I'm having a blast hooking it all together.  Plus, the blue sweatsuit that Marcus picked out is way awesome now that it has the Ghostbuster symbol on the sleeve and "JACKS" on the front.

2.  On Sunday night I checked the race results from the Indian Summer Run.  I was just randomly checking and thinking, "Maybe I'll stop running for a while.  It's getting cold in the mornings.  I don't know if I want to do it anymore."  And then I saw the results.  I placed 19th out of 65 women, and 3rd out of 8 in my age group.  Pretty cool, huh?  That's enough to keep me running every morning.  I'm really working on improving my time, and it's fun to race against my previous times each day.

3.I have the coolest husband!  This morning when I got home from running, Brian was just getting out of the shower, and he told me to set out two plates and two cups of milk on the table.  So I went downstairs and got everything out, being careful not to wake the kids while doing so.  It took him longer to get dressed than for me to set the table, so I went back upstairs and he said that there were two brownies on the top of the fridge for our breakfast.  They were not just brownies, though.  They were yummy caramel brownies.  When Brian came downstairs he even played our song on my phone to serenade our unhealthy breakfast.  It was fun!

4. So the whole point of this post was to talk about how proud I am of myself for keeping the goals I set while watching General Conference last week.  I was only able to watch a couple of sessions, and Brian was only able to listen to parts of sessions on his phone during some of his boring classes, and we both felt sad that we weren't able to watch it together as a family, so we're watching it bit by bit with the kids before bedtime to catch up.  But last weekend, even though there weren't any talks that I listened to that were directly about this, I really felt that I need to clean up my TV watching.  For the past couple of years I've faithfully watched Grey's Anatomy, and last year I joined the world in watching Glee when it came out.  These are both shows that I should not be watching.  I finally realized how bad it really was when someone posted something about Glee on Facebook, and I thought, "She watches Glee?!?  But she's such a good person!"  And then it dawned on me, that I'm trying to be a good person, and I was watching Glee.  Then during Conference, I knew that it was time to shape up.  I made a promise to myself that I was done, and I told Brian so I could be held responsible.

So here I am, over a week later, and I didn't give in.  Honestly, I wasn't even really tempted to watch either show.  I think the draw for me in Glee was the music, and I can listen to that on Pandora, and really the draw for me with Grey's Anatomy was the cool medical stories that would tie in with the trials the characters were facing at the time.  It was quite clever, and the writers really aren't doing that anymore, so it's not as fun to watch.  I think I need to find a new medical show to watch, though, because I think they're fun.   Maybe I'll watch Reuben's "Which Doctor TV Shows Are Fake" again for a recommendation.

Anyway, I think I'm done.  I can't brag about my kitchen floor, which badly needs to be mopped, and I can't brag about my bed, which needs to be made, and I can't brag about our school room, which looks like a tornado hit it.  Oh, wait, it did - Tornado Marcus. So I'm going to go clean now.  Just know that today I am feeling pretty darn good.

One Last Hurrah

 My original plan was to celebrate Brian's birthday with the kids for Family Home Evening on Monday night, but with Brian and I eating so much crazy food last weekend, we decided to wait a few days until the party.  Yesterday afternoon the boys and I baked and decorated a red velvet cake and hid it in the fridge, and I called a few people to set up a surprise party for Brian.  We didn't decide to invite others or to have the party be a surprise until after the cake was done, so I told Alyssa of the plan, hoping that she would keep it a secret.  I didn't tell the boys anything, because I hoped they wouldn't have the time to let the secret slip.  My plan was to send Brian to ballet with Alyssa and have everyone show up while they were gone.  We just invited Brian's side of the family, because I figured that having ten thousand cousins running around wouldn't be as relaxing for him. 

So Brian walked in the door a little earlier than usual, when I was just  putting the cake pans in the dishwasher, and Marcus said, "Happy birthday!"  Then a few minutes later Ethan said, "We made a cake for you."  Luckily, these didn't tip him off to the party, because Brian knew we were going to have cake eventually.

Brian and Alyssa went to ballet, and Brian's parents, Grandma Orton, and Eric showed up at 7:00, just as Alyssa's ballet class was ending.  Everyone parked down the street, and we waited excitedly in the family room, because he would be there, "any minute."

That minute came and went, and then some.  Eric and I kept sneaking to the quiet room (which is what we call our living room) to peak out the front window.  7:20, no car coming up the driveway.  7:25, still no sign of them.

It was just after 7:30 that they finally pulled in to the garage, and we turned out the lights and yelled "Surprise!" as they came in.

Apparently, Alyssa told Brian that they needed to drive around for a little while to give time for everyone to show up.  Show up for what?  "Nothing," she answered.  They ended up stopping at FroYo to get a small serving of frozen yogurt with  - wait for it - red velvet cake.

Here's all the party attendees, watching Brian open a present from his parents,

which was a beautiful German something that I can't remember the name of.  It's a wooden nativity scene with an arch above it to hold candles.  Brian's mom found it locally, but was thrilled that it was authentic, complete with the box and certificate of authenticity.  When Brian was reading the certificate to find out where it was made, she said, "Remember going there?"  Well, it's going to fit in nicely with the other German decorations Brian brought home from his mission.  It's beautiful!

This is Brian pretending to blow out the candle that he just extinguished, because the picture of the actual event was incredibly blurry.  With the cake, we sacrificed beauty for taste quality, because we substituted the crisco for butter.  The frosting slid down the sides of the cake and lumped at the bottom, spreading the brown trim.  It not might have looked like much, but it was sooooo yummy.

Getting Back Into The Swing Of Things

Seriously, we only missed one official day of school, and our vacation only lasted Friday plus the weekend, but yesterday I had such a hard time wanting to clean and home school.  One problem was that we needed to stick our hotel key into the thermostat for it to work and it kept timing out every two hours and letting the room get hot, so I didn't get any better sleep than I do at home.  So I was very tired yesterday morning. The other problem was that we had so much fun having celebratory birthday meals for Brian and his dad that I felt like a huge loaf from eating too much.  The birthday meals were fun, though.  Every where we went they were sung to and brought dessert.  Plus, we had to get cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory, (because how can you not?) and the huge slice of chocolate cake to share at Claim Jumpers, and after all that I didn't want to eat anything yesterday.

But let me just say that we had a super-ly terrifically wonderful weekend.  Brian and I actually talked on the drive over to Portland.  We talked without kids interrupting us or us interrupting ourselves to talk to the kids.  It was fabulous!  We checked into the hotel, then went immediately to the Ringside Steakhouse for an office doctors meeting, where everyone was in love with their meat of choice, and I had the absolute best asparagus in my entire life.

On Friday Brian went to classes pretty early, and I slept in a bit, then met up with Brian's mom to explore Portland.  Then we had lunch at Red Robin and headed to the conference center for the exposition fair.  I walked around with Brian while he talked with equipment companies, pharmaceutical reps, software people, etc.  We saw Justin Heintz (He's married now!  Yea!) and Trent Cluny (They finally invited me to their exclusive private blog!  Yea!) and it was fun talking to them.  After that we went to ToDai's for the official office birthday party for Brian's dad, Brian, and Amy.  ToDai's is sushi and sea food, so that was one meal that I didn't eat very much of, but what I did eat (chicken) was yummy.  Friday night we stayed up late in Brian's parents room playing Pedro. Brian and I won the first and second hands, and lost the third.  Right?  Am I remembering correctly?  We were way tired, but it was fun.

Saturday I watched the morning session of General Conference with Brian's mom, did some shopping at Ikea (That place is amazing!), then met up with Brian and his dad at Cheesecake Factory.  Then on Sunday morning Diane and I watched Sunday's morning session of Conference while Brian and his dad went to their last class, then we went to Claim Jumpers for that amazing chocolate cake, and headed home.

I guess this is a "just documenting" post.  It doesn't sound nearly as exciting as it was to experience it.  I think the best parts for me were not having to count little blond and brunette heads every time we went somewhere, and not having to tell people not to climb or run in buildings, and not having to tell people to sit down at dinner.  It was great!

The kids had their own fun with cousins while we were away.  They didn't miss us a bit.