(Parenthetically Speaking)

Another busy week. Friday night it was just nice to be all home together, just hanging out, no place to go nothing to do except carve pumpkins. A little slice of heaven there.

The rest of the week was busy, busy, busy.

Or at least that's how I'm remembering it.

Yesterday, we cleaned house (oh, how it needed it), while Megan went to Ark City with the marching band for the Arkalala (which is so much fun to say) band festival and Russell went to his book group. Then I took Caitlyn shopping for last-minute costume supplies (I shopped on Monday for last-minute costume supplies for Kristen as well. Nothing like putting it off to the last-minute...) and then we headed over to the Dumlers for their annual fall party. We chose that over the ward Trunk-or-Treat (the girls did, anyway), and so (of course) they came home complaining that they would have rather gotten candy instead of running around outside screaming like banshees. *sigh* You just can't win sometimes.

Friday (in addition to pumpkin-carving night), was the Halloween parties and parade at the elementary school. (I really don't know why they couldn't do this on Monday, except that maybe Fridays are better party days than Mondays...) I really really wanted to go, but I couldn't: I had to work. I actually was just going to show up for work late, but then they threw at me a book talk for a group of preschool teachers, and I very well couldn't skip that. So, we arranged for rides and schedules and Russell got to go to the parade. He had fun (even though the parade started late and he was late to class), but didn't get any pictures (mostly because he hasn't quite figured out our new (point and shoot) camera), and the girls were tickled that he was there. (Oh, you want to know what a book talk is? I talk about it here.)

Wednesday night, we had the missionaries for dinner (they were yummy), and then shooed them out in less than a half hour (it's a record!) because Russell had to go to Cub Scout Pack meeting. The younger girls went with him, while I went visiting teaching (and was back by 7, another record!) and the older girls went to Wednesday night church. They came home talking about this really fun game they played that we HAVE to play, but alas since I was tired and they were talking at once, I now can't remember a single thing about it. (Age. Isn't it wonderful?) (We also completely forgot about Caitlyn's piano lesson. In fact, I didn't even remember until Thursday morning. *sigh*)

Tuesday and Monday are so far back that they're a blur by now. Sorry. I'm sure something happened. Perhaps even something good. But not good enough as to be memorable. Unfortunately. (The problem with life is that it's so daily.)

Today's been good as well. It was my first day as Primary chorister, and I think it went well. Well, at least, most kids sang and I had a fun time doing it. (Enthusiasm. Really. That's all it takes.) Perhaps I can even see myself doing this for a good, long while. I hope. Since I've been released from being the organist, I get to sit with the family again during Sacrament meeting. The girls told me today that it feels weird with me sitting down there. One (I won't name names) even said it felt "wrong". Hmmmm... perhaps 2 1/2 years is a really long time in kid years.

Happy Halloween! Personally, I’m looking forward to walking around in the semi-cold just so I can pilfer my kids' candy hauls. It's lovely having picky kids sometimes.

Band-O-Rama

Monday was Band-o-Rama, the local marching band exhibition show. Since Russell was at work and Caitlyn wanted to go to the book group we usually go to together, I took Alison and Kristen out to watch Megan (and all the other schools) march. Alison and Kristen were a bit wiggly waiting, and they wanted to dance, which annoyed everyone around us (how is it that we always seem to end up with about a three foot buffer around us when we go to things like this?), but in the end they said they had a good time. Their favorite band wasn't Megan's -- the bad, for whatever it was worth, was incredibly good and the patterns complex and difficult, but it wasn't terribly crowd friendly. But I'm glad we went.

Anyway, here's one of Northwest's three songs. I try to follow Megan around the field, but I lose her near the end. And sorry for the jiggliness of it all; I had two kids climbing on me at the time.

Enjoy!

Jack-o-Lantern Time

Because our lives have been so busy this fall, we had to do some juggling and hoping in order to find a day this week in which we were all home and we could carve pumpkins. We gave up on going to a pumpkin patch -- there really wasn't that many pumpkins grown around here this year with the heat and all -- but on Friday, Russell swung by (gasp) Wal-Mart and picked up some so we could carve pumpkins after dinner. Since it was the one day this week that everyone was home...

Alison had her friend over (for a sleepover! Alison was so excited since it was her First One!), and she was really into the whole scooping pumpkin goop thing, and even wanted to help with the carving. Alison said, "I came up with the ideas, and she did the work."


Eventually, I took over while they watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Megan did the whole thing by herself,


As did Caitlyn. (Hmmmm... what am I going to do when all of them get old enough to do the whole pumpkin carving thing by themselves?)

Kristen was very cute: she insisted upon scooping all the goop out by herself, even though she was a bit grossed out by it. She flat-out refused to let anyone help her until it was time to carve.


And Russell dug into the "parents" pumpkin.


And the final product:
By day

And by night (from left to right: Megan, Alison, Caitlyn, and Kristen, with Russell's below)



Happy Halloween!

Dancin' Fools

Just a bit of silliness here:



(Honestly? The best part is that Megan is sitting at the computer, studiously ignoring her siblings.)

You Know It's Fall When...

The leaves go phoosh and end up all over the lawn.

The low this week was 34 degrees. Can you say frost on the pumpkin?

You have cool mornings and lovely sunny days mixed in with a couple of cloudy, drizzly days.

You are packed to the gills (am I mixing my metaphors there?) with Halloween things. Like making houses and Haunted Strolls (with the Girl Scouts -- Caitlyn was a Spookmaster and Alison went on the stroll with her troop).

You have last-minute costume changes by the 5-year-old who has fallen in love with a new book. *sigh*

You have a 20 pound turkey cooking in the oven for Sunday dinner. (So, we were given an extra turkey by a family who moved out this summer. We didn't want to use it for Thanksgiving, since we really like getting our free range turkey. So, we cooked it because it's gotten cool enough...)

I think that's it for the fall-related news. (It's supposed to be nearly 90 for the next two days, though. Don't count summer out yet.)

In other news....

Work is going well. I got tossed storytime on Tuesday (fun! Seriously. I was more than happy to do it, and had a grand time) and wrote a review on Thursday. Have I mentioned that I really like my job?

Alison and Kristen had their parent-teacher conferences this week. Yes, they're both doing fine. And the teachers love having them in class. I did have a new experience: Alison has the same teacher that Caitlyn had, and it was interesting listening to her talk about the differences between the two girls. Kind of fun. Caitlyn's first middle school report card came back as well: she got all A's, except in... Spanish. Which figures, since that was the class she complained the most about.

Aside from that, it was really pretty normal this week. Russell's been going with Megan to seminary (he's "the priesthood" in the building in the mornings for the next two weeks), which has kind of thrown off our morning schedule, but it's only temporary, thank heavens. For him, anyway.

I'm really scraping here... The girls were actually sad to see North Shore go home this week on the Sing Off. They'd really liked the "old guys" (okay, they were only 64....). But, Vocal Point is still in the competition, so we're still happy.

I think that's about it. Have a grand week! Enjoy fall!

Haunted Houses

So, another one of our Halloween traditions is making gingerbread graham cracker houses. (I don't make gingerbread. Period. Can't stand the stuff.) Anyway, both Russell and Megan were gone for the annual making o' the houses, so we decided to make individual ones instead of one big one.





It was actually a really great idea (WHY haven't I thought of this before??): everyone got to do their own thing, and no one was fighting for position over the house, and everyone loved the way their each, unique house turned out.





And all three on the fireplace mantel.

The only problem was when they asked, "Mom, which do you like best?"

Leaf Jumping!

Yesterday, Russell, Alison and Kristen raked up the leaves that have fallen in the yard. Of course, they had to jump in the piles...

Of Busy-ness, Accidents and Other Sundries

I'm still getting adjusted to this new level of busy-ness: there's a lot less time for just being lazy. At least for me. That said, things are going well at work: I finally feel like I'm getting the hang of things, and if I don't know everything yet, I have hope that I will be able to learn. Interestingly enough, my biggest problem is remembering what all the books are about... I'm just not that into adult fiction, and we sell a LOT of adult fiction. That said, they gave me "homework": I was given a trilogy to read and write up a review before this Wednesday; the author is coming on November 2, and they want to get some publicity going for it. Nothing like pressure, there. As for the library: they were all smiles and congratulations and we'll miss yous and come in whenever you cans. I've made an arrangement with the manager at the bookstore to have one day a week in which I can go to the library; I don't want to give them up. It's too much up my alley.

Aside from that...

On Monday, the girls and I put Jack together. It's a silly tradition to keep doing, but the girls seem to like him up. It's been commented that he seems "buff" this year, as opposed to other years.

Tuesday, we took the car in. Again. It was for some extra work that needed to be done; we had gotten the timing belt changed, and they broke a bolt in the engine doing it. Thankfully, they're honest enough mechanics to eat the cost of their mistakes rather than foisting them off on to us.

Wednesday was fake Friday, since the teachers had work release days on both Thursday and Friday. Caitlyn got to go see Contagion with the sixth grade; the science classes are studying viruses and Contagion is about just that: what happens when viruses go, well, viral. She said it was interesting and pretty good, and there was only one part that was gross enough for her to go "ew" and hide her face.

Thursday, we'd arranged for the kids to hang out at friends houses (except for Megan), and Russell and I headed to Oklahoma City to go to the temple. It was lovely to get out and go to the temple. The girls all had good days at friends houses. Megan hung out at home and did homework, and then went to the pumpkin patch with some friends. She said she had a good time. I got some pictures today from one of the moms who went, and it looks like a good time. Thursday night, since all day in the car wasn't enough time together, Russell and I went out to the Mosely Street Melodrama with some Girl Scout friends. What is the Mosely Street Melodrama, you ask? It was, well, a very silly, very punny, very hammy, very corny short play followed by a very silly, very hammy, very corny musical revue combined with a bit of audience-participation improv. It was some good laughs and worth the half-price tickets we paid for it.

Friday, I spent running girls around to various appointments. Megan had an eye appointment in which we learned she needs bifocals to help her eyes focus when she reads. And that her optic nerve is doing funky things: the tube the nerve is in is bigger than it should be, or something like that. "Early stages of glaucoma" is all I got out of it. Perhaps I should have sat in on the appointment? Caitlyn, I took to a Girl Scout meeting so they could make t-shirts for their "spookmaster" roles in the Haunted Stroll next weekend for the younger girl scouts. I don't quite know what their jobs as "spookmasters" will be, but I do hope Caitlyn likes it... Alison I took to the doctor with the hope of getting her cast off. Unfortunately, the bone's not quite healed enough. Which made Alison very sad. And that's an understatement. Did you know that the level of sadness she was is very draining on the person who is not sad, but rather trying to keep it together because we're in a doctor's office and they'd actually like to tell me WHY the cast can't come off today? *sheesh* Friday night, Megan had a football game, and there was a church adult bonfire thingy, so we tried having Caitlyn as the babysitter. It went okay, but I do have to say that the younger two don't have the same level of respect for Caitlyn that they do for Megan as a babysitter. Perhaps we need to work on that.

Saturday, Russell spent the day taking down our wooden playset. It was basically falling apart, and the girls were basically done playing with it, so it needed to come down. Kristen found the whole process fascinating, and was actually quite the helper. I took Megan and Caitlyn shopping for costume items; Megan because the church dance last night was a costume dance, and Caitlyn because she was looking for boots to go with her costume... Megan had the dance last night. Until about 10 or so, when we get a call that she'd broken her toe dancing. Actually, it turns out that one of her friends, Seth, was tossing her in the air, and she landed on her toe wrong. Or something like that. (Seth's mom says, "Well, when a linebacker tosses a little girl around, someone's bound to end up with a busted toe.") I have honestly never seen a toe look like that. Ever. (We should have gotten a picture, but Megan was a bit, well, hysterical, so I didn't suggest it, even though I thought of it.) Russell took her to the emergency room, where x-rays were taken to determine that it was only dislocated, and a doctor came back and popped it into place. Now it's back where it belongs and a lovely color of purple. Maybe we should take a picture of that.

You've noticed that Kristen doesn't show up much in all this. Well, she noticed too, and last night complained that she NEVER gets to do ANYTHING fun. So Russell (since I had a migraine by this point) took her to the park and to get ice cream. She was much happier. Sort of. (Have I mentioned that our weather is all sorts of lovely right now? Because it's been absolutely delightful lately.)

And that leaves us to today. I got a new calling: Primary chorister. Whee. I guess. At least I won't be playing organ anymore. Not that I minded. But, Primary chorister is going to be a lot of fun.

A Tour of the Basement

by Alison

Random Stuff

With the return of a simple hand-held camera, we get the return of random pictures taken by the girls, like:

Kristen's self portrait


The mansion they built:


Messing around with food coloring to make "potions"


And being silly (we have a fish-eye setting on the camera)

Whiz Bang!

That was the sound of our week flying by!

In order, we:

put up our Halloween decorations! (First Monday, they come out, no exceptions. Or at least so my kids thing. And make sure happen.)

had book group at our house! (Dracula, which more people liked than I figured, and engendered a great discussion)

went to a Constitution day thing! (Russell did, anyway)

had school!

had many projects due!

volunteered at the library!

had an interview with the library! (It was sooo weird; I sat in a room with three people, they read questions off a sheet, and then took notes. I didn't get any feedback from them at all.)

went shopping for shirts (all mine have holes!) late at night at Wal-Mart! (Yes, I AM the cutting edge of fashion)

started work at Watermark books! (Overwhelmed. So overwhelmed right now.)

went to a Girl Scout Sleepover/training! (So Caitlyn can be a spookmaster at the haunted stroll in two weeks)

marched in the Homecoming parade! (Well, Alison and Kristen got to ride in the back of a truck.)

went to the Homecoming game! (The first quarter, at least. I didn't mind going home early: the marching band did their show for pre-game, and we got in free....)

ran a service project for the Primary kids! (for four hours on Saturday morning; Megan was in charge.)

got the car fixed!

enjoyed the rain! (FINALLY!!!! All day Saturday, and all day today. Heaven.)

ate too many snickerdoodles!

practiced for the Primary program! (And I get to play the piano, since the pianist moved last-minute.)

used too many exclamation points!

That's about it for us. We're going to have a few bumpy weeks as we try to adjust to me working 15-20 hours a week. But I think we'll be able to figure it out. Fingers crossed, anyway. It's going to be different. Good, though. I hope.

What a Week!

September was incredibly busy. I don't know how this happened, but it was. And, here it is, the first week of October, and I'm not sure I can remember the blur that was last week.

So, highlights:

Russell's still working. Lots and lots. Teaching six classes is a pretty huge load, and on top of everything else, we're starting to wonder if he's just moved into his office. On top of that, Megan's schedule isn't as predictable as it was last year, and so he doesn't make breakfast much any more. I'm actually quite sad about this. I like his breakfasts.

Megan is doing the whole school-is-time-consuming thing this year. She has time to read (when she can, though she's currently stuck in the mire of David McCullough's John Adams for a report for history), and play on Pottermore, which is her, Alison's, and Caitlyn's new time-waster. If you're interested, they've been sorted into Ravenclaw (Megan), Slytherin (Caitlyn) and Hufflepuff (Alison). They're having a grand time with it, and can't wait until the rest of the books are live on the site. She also went with me to Austin this past weekend, and was a good egg about being dragged around with all my friends. She played with the Peck's daughter, Tiana, well; laughed with (and at) me and my friends; and made me her chauffeur in our fancy Volvo that we rented (seriously: I've never driven a car with an on button before. Took me a while to find it.).

Caitlyn stepped up into the role of oldest sister and blew Russell away. She played with, organized, helped discipline and motivate the younger two girls, and basically acted like the mature 11 year old she is. She also spent the week working on her science project on fanconi anemia. (No, most people haven't heard of it either.) She came up with a fine-looking trifold poster using the information she's gathered; hopefully, she'll get a good grade on it. She's quite proud of her effort.

Alison had girl scouts, in which she was "inducted" into Brownies (she was practicing the Girl Scout promise all week), and working on practicing piano with only one hand. Unfortunately, her deciding to actually go to Girl Scouts this week threw a loop in an anticipated event: Friends University had put together a Muggle Quidditch match, and the girls wanted to go. We couldn't make it work, much to Kristen's disappointment (yes there were tears over missing it). We did hear that Slytherin won, by cheating, which was to be expected. (Though maybe I should be nicer to Slytherin since I have a daughter in that house...)

Kristen got dragged along to everything, it seemed. She, however, happily volunteers to go grocery shopping with daddy; she likes the farmer's market and the grocery store. She and Alison managed to talk Daddy into going to a Karate demonstration on Saturday, which they thoroughly enjoyed. Of course it was a pitch for karate lessons, and they were both a bit disappointed that Dad said no to lessons. ("But we're white belts already!") Also: she got to see her bestest friend Sarah, so she had a good week.

As for me? I was up and down. I had a grand time in Austin, though a 9 hour drive each way by myself (and Megan) is much too long. I've decided I'm going to need a really good reason to drive THAT FAR into Texas. Again. Sheesh. However, I managed to get into a car accident (how many does this make for my life? Are we up to a dozen or more yet? I swear. And to think I'm going to teach Megan how to drive...) on Thursday, right before we left. *sigh* Thankfully, no one was hurt, the car wasn't even that dinged up (though the front struts and roters and wimdingies needed to be replaced), and Russell worked his phone magic and managed to get the insurance company to pay for all but $400 of it. (Yay for phone magic!) The car was back in good time by Friday afternoon, so he didn't even have to go that long without it.

And we've moved on to another busy week. I'm assuming that at some point, I'll be able to sit down and catch my breath, but it may not happen until January, which has its own set of problems...

In Which Mom and Megan Went to Austin

And saw:

Awesome shoes...



(Can you tell how happy she is that she's taller than me?)

Authors

Places to get yummy ice cream


Lots and lots of MiniCoopers


Lots and lots of ugly orange shirts (but not all in one place)

(Megan says that while she liked the U-T Austin campus, she may have to choose where she goes to school based on school colors because that orange is just UGLY.)

An enormous football stadium

(Seats 100,119. It's not a competition, but Michigan wins with 109,901. I still get a kick out of the 1 at the end...)

A weird replica of the Eiffel Tower


Giant pumpkins


But most of all: friends!


It was a grand trip.