Scary Stuff

Sarah texted me asking if I wanted to be a makeup model for her theater class!  She figured Halloween was the perfect time to teach her students how to do wound makeup.  I was so glad I had time, because this was super fun.  Sarah started teaching part-time at Craig's school this year, so when I arrived, he got to escort me to her classroom and introduce me to the students.  You could see the kids' heads nearly explode as they tried to contemplate their principal having a life outside the school.  My two favorite moments of the class were 1) after Sarah showed her class a picture of the black eye she'd given Craig the day before and began applying makeup to me, one of the boys shouted, "Wait-- that was makeup???" which begs the question: did he really think she had punched her boss in the eye???  And was now showing off pictures of it??????  Middle schoolers are hilarious.

And then 2) After Sarah had finished applying my bruise, she told the students to come closer so they could see it better and one of the girls commented, "Even with the black eye, she's still pretty!"  That girl is now my favorite person.  Thank you, random middle schooler, for the lovely compliment!

Isn't that horrifyingly realistic???  I think mine turned out better than Craig's.  Also...  is it weird that I sort of think I look kind of awesome with a black eye?  A good shrink would have a heyday with that statement...  

She also did this creepy wound on my arm.  Gross!

Then we got lunch with Adam at Brazos Tacos!  I left the black eye on just to show him, and quickly cleaned it off before we went inside so Adam wouldn't be getting the stinkeye from the entire wait staff!  😂

The next day was our ward Trunk or Treat, which everyone was excited about!

Colton was Luigi

I love him sitting here looking so serious with that mustache!  😂😂😂

Ryder was a scientist who accidentally unleashed Covid on the world turned himself into a zombie

The young women were in charge of face painting, and I LOVE doing this, so I was totally excited to get to work after dinner.  And then the YW actually showed up and wanted to do the face painting and they did a totally fantastic job and what is wrong with me that I was just a tiny bit disappointed not to get to do any of it.  This is not something I can actually complain about.  I know that.  Adam had a bunch of flashy glow stick things that you can wave around left over from a wedding, so I passed those out instead and they were a big hit!  Maybe I can paint faces next year...

Look at these awesome teenagers ready to help the younger kids look even cuter

Colton lost his mustache (well, it stopped sticking and rather than letting us try and fix it, he just threw it away, the punk), so the girls gave him and his buddy Gideon new, matching 'staches!

We carved our pumpkins on Monday!

Notice Kendra photobombing in the back!

These were both fun until Kendra had the idea to put them together and then suddenly...

It was an owl!!!  That would have been super impressive if we'd planned it, but it was just a fun accident!

And also on Monday, and in a very different, but still scary note, Bentley turned in his application to BYU!  Fingers crossed for Bentley!!!!  (He also applied to UVA, GMU, and JMU.  In case you were curious.  But we're really hoping for BYU!)

The whole thing was actually a huge pain.  Most colleges just let you apply through the Common App, so you can fill out all the forms once and apply to lots of colleges.  But BYU doesn't use that, so you have to do it all through their website.  And then they required you to write seven essays.  SEVEN.  Seven essays!!!  That is so many!!!!  They were all very short, but that almost made it harder because you had to be really concise!  Anyway, we've spent the last several weeks going over them all together and trying to make them awesome.  It's been a pain.  Bentley better get in after all that!  And then!  As if that wasn't enough, their website was glitchy for the ecclesiastical endorsement!  With Craig being bishop, that should have been the easiest part!  But every time Bentley clicked on it, it would tell him to try again in 15 minutes!  For two weeks!  Anyway, after a couple phone calls, their IT services finally got it fixed.  Phew.  It's all finally done and turned in.  Now we just wait to hear back in January or something...

And then Tuesday was Halloween finally!  The temperature dropped 30 degrees, going straight from still-summer to oh-this-is-winter-now-isn't-it.  Gotta love the extreme temperature shifts of the east coast!  But Camille's costume was very warm, so it was probably for the best...

Colton had planned his costume with his buddy Walker

Kendra is a lady pirate here, and Adele is pretending to be her parrot.  (A very fat parrot, I guess.)

I just couldn't decide which picture I liked better

And here's the whole gang!  Bentley, in the back, is an axolotl.  In case you were curious.  Yes, they're real!

My kids were scattered all over the place for Halloween.  Bentley went to a party.  Kendra went to our neighbor's house to watch a movie.  Ryder met up with a bunch of friends and trick-or-treated with them.  Colton and Walker went off on their own, and Craig took Camille with a few of her friends.  And I sat in the driveway by our fire pit, reading The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch (which turned out to be both an excellent book and also a perfect read for Halloween night!) while I passed out candy to trick-or-treaters.  Everyone had a delightful evening!  Later on, once the little kids were in bed but we were still waiting up for the big kids to come home, Adam came over and hung out with us, too, which was fun.

And one last thing for my "scary" post-- I forgot to post about Bentley and Kendra going to homecoming!  I was working, but Craig got these pictures before the kids left:

Kendra and her friend Kayla

Kendra was kind enough to share a photo from the actual dance:

I don't know who these people with her are, but they look like they're having fun!

And Bentley also shared these pictures with me:

We need to find some shorter guys for Bentley to hang out with...

It's weird to me that I don't even know who most of these kids are.  But I'm glad Bentley has so many friends and they seem like a good group!

Love that face!

But let's end on a good picture!

It's so strange how my big kids know all these people and do all these things that I'm not really a part of.  I know that's a good thing and it's healthy and natural and I'm so proud of who my kids are growing up to be.  But that doesn't make it any less bizarre.

Octobery Things

It's been a month since my last blog post?  A month???  I don't even know where time is going any more.  I really don't.  We have been enjoying the most beautiful autumn!  But all good things must come to an end, and this week our highs plummeted from 85 degrees to 55, with us waking up this morning to 27 degrees outside!!!  How can that happen in just a few days???

So we're trying to readjust to cold weather.  Bring out the sweatshirts and gloves!

Anyway.  What have we been up to?  More of the same, mostly.  I'm still walking the kids to the bus stop and occasionally getting beautiful weather to take pictures of.  This week it finally got super dark at this time, so it will be good on Sunday when we turn our clocks back and get some daylight in the morning.  I hate the kids waiting for the bus in the dark-- it just feels so wrong!

I love a good mist on Carter Mountain!

My neighbor Ginna texted me one morning about a free tennis class for girls called Girls Rule the Court, so we signed our girls up for it!  Ginna's parents have been extremely generous about picking them up from school and getting them there, and then usually Craig can bring Camille home, so that's worked out well!  She'd played a couple times with Bentley, so Camille was her usual enthusiastic self over this!  I think that helped Sydney and Beth be more brave, too, since they tend to be a little more anxious than my kids.

Sydney, Beth, Camille

One week when I picked her up, all the girls had put leaves in their ponytails.  I'm not sure how that tied in with tennis, but I'm glad they were having fun outside!

I got to help with one of Adam's biggest weddings, both driving and then puttering around the venue doing whatever needed doing, including holding drinks for Adam's husband and sister-in-law, which Adam quickly documented:

I love this picture because I'm genuinely laughing and also because I'm holding the glass so stupidly-- I clearly know nothing about alcohol!

Here are some pictures of the actual wedding-- it was so pretty!!!

Table settings...  You can see the bride and groom in the background there!

This flower arch probably cost more than all my cars combined...

This tiny detail on the cake made me smile-- bad doggy!  (In actuality, that poor doggy is a rescue dog and spent the entire wedding huddled in people's arms terrified until the aunt of the bride took pity on it and asked if I would take her and the doggy back to the bride and groom's home, which is exactly the kind of thing they were paying me big money to do!)

A few days later, as I was leaving the house to pick up Kendra, I spotted this magnificent rainbow over Carter Mountain:

Isn't that spectacular?

And, I got artsy with Dolly's green eggs and decided to photograph them with the (only slightly wilted) flowers left over from that amazing wedding:

I promise not to post egg pictures... too often....

In the middle of all this wedding stuff, I was also trying to get ready for family pictures.  Trying to figure out what we should wear so that we're coordinated without being embarrassing is a real chore, let me tell you.  I like to start with me, because I figure I'm the one who cares the most about what I look like.  (Right?  That doesn't make me a terrible person, does it?)  So I choose whatever dress or outfit I feel cute in, and then pick colors for everyone else based on what they already have that will work, and then we figure out what we need still.  I lay everything out on my bed or on the floor and take pictures so I can get Rachael and Adam's opinions as I go.  It's a process, y'all!

So I'd been working on this, but with all the weddings on the weekends, I didn't actually have time to take the kids shopping.  So I explained to Craig what we still needed and asked him to take care of it and he nailed it!  I was so happy!  So, yes, the following weekend we went out and took pictures with Adam and they turned out so lovely!  I could not have been happier with how it all went.  I will post some of my favorites (and some of the hilarious goofs) soon!  I promise!

Another thing I've spent a lot of time doing this last month is going to see Taylor Swift's Eras Movie.  Yup, I went opening night.  And was super excited, too.  I dragged Craig, Kendra, and Adam along with me and I LOVED IT.  I can't believe how talented she is.  And the stamina it must take to be up there singing for over three hours!!!!  Even opera singers get more breaks than that!  My only problem was that she did a bunch of songs that aren't really my favorites, so every time she'd start singing one of those, I'd feel just a teensy bit disappointed because now there would be less time for the songs I truly love.  So that was weirdly stressful.  But I still absolutely loved getting to see the concert without having to shell out thousands of dollars for it.  I loved it so much that as soon as it was over, I texted my Mom, who was coming to visit the next week, if she wanted to see it with me so I could go again!  (She said Sure-- woot!). I did NOT sing along, because I just wanted to take in everything.  Afterwards, Craig mentioned that this was the first time he'd actually heard Taylor's voice without mine!  He was like, "Oh, is that what she sounds like?"  😂

A ton of people dressed up for the movie, but I like to be as comfortable as possible if I'm going to sit in a movie theater for over three hours, so dressed like a complete slob in my pajama pants and crocks.  We had reclining seats, so I even kicked off my shoes for the movie.  It was fantastic.  My only concession was wearing my All Too Well shirt.  So it was kind of a bummer that Adam decided we needed our picture taken with the movie poster (and I blinked, of course).  Ah, well.

Kendra looks cute, at least!

I've started doing interviews for my choir again, which is fun.  I like having an excuse to hang out with people and ask them questions and get to know them better!  (Now I just have to actually write up those interviews I've conducted!  Three so far, still two to go!)  This time around I'm just interviewing people on the board.  I don't know yet if we'll have soloists for our Christmas concert, but if they do, they're probably still figuring out who they're hiring.  In any case, one of the women I spoke with mentioned that she likes doing escape rooms, and her favorite was one I hadn't even heard of, History Unlocked!  So, naturally, I had to check it out!

We convinced our friends the Huffs to do it with us, and we had a great time puzzling out all the clues in a Thomas Jefferson themed room.  This is my kind of stuff!

Waiting for our room to be set up

Mission accomplished!  I love getting to do stuff like this with our friends!

The Huffs also hosted a fireside the next day (around an actual fire!), so all the little kids got to play in the basement while the rest of us were outside-- it looks like they had a great time!  (And Craig did the fireside and talked about pride and he did a great job, I was so proud!)

Clockwise, we have Camille, Maya, Gideon, Bram, Peter, and Colton

The next day I was doing my usual Costco shopping and I saw a goldfinch land in the tree in front of me!  So I HAD to take a picture of it, and it's really pretty terrible, but they're just so rare to see, it made me so happy!  

Can you find him in there?  He's dead center, upper third of the picture.  Such a happy looking little guy!

For Young Womens the next night, we were at the Sorenson's home, where they have goats and chickens and had a built a lovely fire for us.  (Two fires in one week-- what a great autumn!)  Near the end of the night, the girls retreated to the covered porch to play jenga and I had to snap a picture:

We were also busy ordering costumes for the kids.  Camille originally wanted to be a plague doctor, which is pretty creepy for a little girl, but I hated to tell her no.  But since we can't wear masks at the church party, I did finally talk her out of that idea.  (Honestly, wearing a mask while you're walking around in the dark trick-or-treating doesn't work very well, either!). So instead, she decided to go as a flying squirrel, which was appropriately adorable!

And, my mom came to visit!!!  We, of course, took very few pictures because I never manage to take pictures when I have company.  Seriously, I don't know why I'm so bad at that.  But we had the best time, really!  We hiked the Monticello Trails and saw this really cool snake that had threaded itself through this fence to catch some sun:

I think it was about 6 feet long!

Once we got to the visitor's center for Monticello we meandered around looking at the gallery that explained all the different design work that went into Jefferson's home and the renovations he did on it after the Revolutionary War.  It was really interesting, until I got a phone call that a service guy would be arriving earlier than I'd expected (in all fairness, we'd also completely lost track of the time and it was much later than I thought; but still, the guy was early!) so then we booked it out of there and back down the hill as fast as we could!  I was very impressed-- my Mom's old knees could NEVER have hurried downhill for a couple miles that way!  Go, Mom!!!

AND,  we DID get to watch the Taylor Swift movie together (and Adam came along, too!) And I had the best time, again!  Poor Mom had to endure me leaning over to explain some of the significance of each song.  Sorry, Mom!  I think I enjoyed it even more the second time because I could stop worrying about which songs Taylor wasn't singing and just really enjoy everything she did sing.  Which was a lot!  There was so much to love about it all!  So, yes, I'm a big dork.  But I'm a big dork WHO KNOWS WHAT SHE LIKES!

On another day, Mom and I visited Petite MarieBette for quiche and hot chocolate and then Gearhart's Fine Chocolates.  Then we drove to Carter Mountain and just stood around enjoying the view and chatting.  We had gorgeous weather the entire time Mom was here.  

One without sunglasses, too!

We also ate out a lot and got plenty of ice cream (including one night when we went to Chaps and nearly died laughing at all the ways we were managing to spill everything!).  And on the nights when we stayed in, I made vegetarian meals for my quasi-vegetarian mother!

I'd hoped to go to a corn maze, something we've managed to do the last couple falls with my Mom, but the timing never really worked out.  We were constantly running around taking my kids to all their various activities, and by the time we could have gotten to one of the mazes, it would have been pretty late and dark.  Doing a maze in the dark sounds less fun to me.  So that didn't happen.  Which was fine. 

And then before I knew it it was time to take Mom back to the airport, which is always sad.  But I was glad we got to have so much fun together.  And there was not time to sit around feeling blue anyway, because all the Halloween stuff was about to get underway...

Whew.

It's been a while.  Things have been so busy around here.  I really need something to stop, but I don't know how to make that happen just yet.  My life feels very stressful right now and I don't love that.  Last week, the law firm I work at asked me to fill in as much as I could while their receptionist was on vacation, so I went from working approximately 8 hours in a week, to 30.  Now, the work itself was great-- I'd do whatever they asked me to do, scanning and photocopying stuff, sending out mail, walking to the post office to check their box; easy stuff like that.  And if they didn't have anything for me to do, I could sit and read my book (while getting paid to do it!!!)!  So that was pretty sweet, honestly!  But it was still all my time when I couldn't be doing all the other things I usually do at home: cleaning and cooking and taking kids to all their various appointments.  So any time I was home, I was frantically running around trying to do all the stuff in the 20 or 30 minutes I had.  And we did not eat very healthy meals, either, let me tell you!  But we survived it, and I'm looking forward to the paycheck I'll get for that week!

I'm also still doing the occasional wedding for Adam!  This last one was fairly easy-- Adam told me I was basically there to keep running things on the off-chance he collapsed and had to go to the hospital (not a likely scenario, thank goodness!).   But that meant we got to hang out a lot and even managed to sneak away and watch Veep for a few minutes, so that was pretty fun!

This waterfall of flowers cascading off the head table is all the rage right now.  It will probably be passé before very long, but for now I think it's fun!

Pippin Hill continues to be absolutely gorgeous!

{Happy sigh.}

A family in our ward brought sourdough bread in for the sacrament a few months ago.  Camille asked why I never made sourdough, and as I was explaining that I don't even have a starter or really have a clue how to make any of it, the woman piped up that she was happy to give me some of her starter!  A few weeks later, my sister Tracy spent the weekend Facetiming with me every few hours to walk me through the entire process.  It's a funny thing, because (as Tracy had told me!) none of it is very hard or time-consuming, but it does take several days of very easy, 30-second steps that you have to keep track of.  But when I finally got to try it fresh out of the oven-- oh, my!  So delicious!!!

I was almost hoping the bread wouldn't be very good so I could just never bother doing all that work again!  But it was.  It was that good.  And I've already made another batch since then.  And I will probably keep making it now that I know how and have that starter!  Sourdough bread for the very delicious win!

One of our chickens, Dolly, finally started laying eggs!  Dolly is our Easter Egger, so we didn't know what color her eggs would be.  Surprise-- they're this lovely shade of green!!!

Kendra pointed out-- they actually match our new kitchen walls perfectly!  How fun is that???  She's since laid several more, while the other chickens still have given us nothing.  Lazy birds!

The other morning as I walked Colton & Camille to the bus stop, the light was so pretty and golden!  I do love a great sunrise...!

Craig took the girls camping, which he'd been meaning to do for over a year now.  They were super excited.  Camille took this selfie which-- it's not just me, right?-- reminds me of The Blair Witch Project.  😂😂😂

And she was never seen again...

Just kidding!  They had a great time!

The KOA had a very dilapidated jumpy thing that Camille enjoyed

And who doesn't enjoy waving a flaming stick around?

That same weekend was a stake relief society activity which I was singing at (I asked my friends Megan and Stephanie to join me, since I get so nervous singing solo) AND I got to hang out with Sarah!  Fun night!

The following Friday, Craig and I took Kendra to the temple to do baptisms.  When we left, it was raining AND there was an amazing sunset!!!

I mean-- this looks like Disney produced it, right???

If you look really closely, you can see a rainbow to the left of the temple!

On Saturday, we didn't have much going on, so Craig suggested we finally clean Colton and Camille's room, which had turned into The Pit of Despair.  It had gotten so bad I didn't even know where to begin and would walk in, take a look around, shake my head and find something else to do instead.  It was too overwhelming for the very small chunks of time I have at home these days.  Craig ended up doing most of the cleaning, since I kept slipping away to a) make sourdough bread b) clean the house because Camille had a new friend coming over c) meet the mom of this new friend, who sat chatting with me for well over an hour (I don't blame her-- she needed to make sure I wasn't crazy!  But I felt bad gabbing away while Craig was still hard at work!) and d) do more cleaning because Grandma and Grandpa were coming over.  Craig was just working on that room the entire day.  It went from this:

So cringey and embarrassing...

To this...

I love Camille's legs sticking out from under the bed as she drags out all the junk garbage stuff that had accumulated under there!

I had the kids get rid of the clothes they don't wear, which in turn meant we could get rid of all these:

And by the time we were done, it looked like this:

As Colton and Camille both said-- It's like a whole new room!!!  They were so excited and happy.  I made them get everything off their beds (and took that opportunity to wash their sheets) and told them from now on they could have one (1) squishmallow and one (1!) small blanket along with their regular bedding.  NO MORE.  They tried to fuss about it, but then Camille climbed into bed and said, "Oh, I have so much room now!"  No kidding!

We threw away 8 or 9 bags of trash.  We took out a ton of books, which I still need to sort through and donate to Goodwill.  (I hate getting rid of books, but a lot of these were given to them for free from the school and no one has ever read them and I don't care about them, so they need to go!)  Craig slapped some paint on the ceiling where it was particularly gross (they like to tape their artwork and put stickers above the bunk bed and it just looked terrible after a few years of that).  We got rid of two bins full of clothes...  It's amazing how we can accumulate so much STUFF and how hard it is to let go of it, but once you start...  You wonder why you were holding on to it for so long!

Since one of the biggest contributors to all the mess were Colton's Legos, Craig found this thing to store them in:

It's really big, so they can spread the Legos out to look for the right one without throwing them all over the floor.  But then it folds up to a carrying case when you're done.  Hopefully that will make it easier to keep the room clean going forward...

And THEN, it was also Bentley's birthday!!!  He got cash from Grandma and Grandpa, but it was all hidden within a pair of ankle weights, so that was exciting as he searched for each bill wrapped around a weight...

He requested red velvet s'more brownies for his birthday-- always a great choice!-- and spaghetti with meatballs for dinner.  Done and done!  (He's pulling kind of a weird face because he doesn't enjoy us singing to him, but he actually was very happy, I promise!)

Our present to him arrived a couple days late:

I'm so proud of my 17-year-old fellow Buffy fan! 

I'm sure I'm forgetting something important.  I guess it will have to wait until my next post...!