Halloween Marathon

So, for some reason, Halloween seemed to be a massive event this year. It started with a costume birthday party the Saturday before, followed by our ward Halloween party Tuesday night. I think it wouldn't have stressed me out as much if I'd just been smart and purchased both kids' costumes, but I couldn't find a skeleton costume I liked -- they were either too creepy or too poorly made. So, several hours before the ward party I was still glue-gunning felt to a sweatsuit. It took forever, but I think it turned out great!

The ward members all hosted different classrooms in the building for a trick-or-treat, and the kids had their first candy binge of the week! Thursday night we carved the pumpkins we had picked out for Family Home Evening. We wussed out again, by the way, and had gone to the grocery store rather than a pumpkin patch. Hopefully next year we'll be more inventive, but at least we had fun carving them. Connor actually designed and drew the face on his, then Ryan cut it out for him. For Elise's, we asked her to choose between happy, scared, angry, and surprised faces, and she appropriately chose scared.
We learned from Halloweens past down here, and waited to carve the pumpkins until a day or two before the event. It took exactly three days for mold to appear in the 85 degree weather, and one week before they were liquifying all over the porch.
Friday morning we had our Joy School party, which was fairly elaborate this year. We had pumpkin-shaped cake, mummy pizzas, eyeball doughnut holes, and witches brew, among other things. Oh, and of course, they trick-or-treated inside the house and ate candy. Saturday night we trick-or-treated around our neighborhood, which was surprisingly deserted. As a result, everyone we visited was just shoveling candy into their bags to try to get rid of it. Connor and Elise thought this was awesome, of course. That night was the major sugar-gorging. Elise ate a full-size Three Musketeer bar, at least 4-5 smaller candies, then an entire doughnut (Sister Callister hands these out every year), and still climbed out of the car at the end of the night saying "I'm uungweee!" I think they ran around in circles in the living room until 11pm, and I was truly surprised not to find any vomit the next morning. Good old Halloween, the celebration of lousy parenting!

On an unrelated note, here is one of the cool roses growing in our front yard. Plus, the kids decided to share a story in the dog cage. How else to pass the time while Mom and Dad are out partying?

Visit from the Palmers!

A few days after we moved, we had a great visit from some of our friends from NoCal: Justin and Tiffany, and their 4 kids! They have a timeshare in Arizona, and since we're at about the halfway point, we've been able to host them a few times. They were very gracious about sleeping surrounded by cardboard boxes -- we obviously scheduled all this before we knew we were moving! I'm also very impressed by their commitment to vacationing - they have 3 month old twins, a 2 year old, and a 13 year old, and they managed to pull together a two-week-long trip anyway. They actually scheduled an extra day to spend down here, so Ryan took a day off, and we all went down to the Aquarium of the Pacific. I'm not sure why I have no pictures of the fish. I'm equally confused that I took no pictures of the Palmers. Hmmm. Anyway, we do have a bunch of pictures of the lorikeet exhibit, where you buy a little cup of nectar to feed the birds, then wander around desperately trying to convince one that they should indulge you by drinking it. Despite the birds playing hard-to-get, Connor loved it. He did finally get several to drink the nectar, then begged me for my cup so he could do it all again.


The lady in this picture is about to get after us (again) for letting the kids climb on the fence.
After the aquarium, we went on a 45 minute harbor tour, which was a lot of fun (though windy).


Elise was heartbroken that we had to say goodbye to these sea lions. They were advertised as being "in their natural environment". I guess they evolved on buoys and abandoned barges. Luckily, we saw some more on the way back.
It was silly, but being on a boat for even 45 minutes was really fun and exciting for everybody. We need to find a kid-friendly cruise or something. Maybe someday we'll be brave like the Palmers, and actually go on a family vacation!

The Lobster Festival, and Soapbox Races

Here are some pictures from two activities we did just before we moved. Ryan heard about a "lobster festival" down at Long Beach, and since he loves nothing more than dismembering crustaceans, we went to take a look. It was more like a fleamarket/farmers market with cheap lobster plates for sale on one end, but it was fun. We watched a dog costume contest (pretty weird), and the kids went down yet another giant inflatable slide. Actually, I think this was Elise's first time doing that. The slide worker lady quickly saw that Elise had no idea what to do, so she helped her to the top. After that, you can see that her brother lent a helping hand, it was cute.
The next weekend or so, Ryan took Connor downtown to watch the Red Bull Soapbox Races. Elise and I were invited, but I was stressed trying to pack stuff up, and the fact that it was about a million degrees outside didn't make me want to go stand around downtown with two crabby kids and smell other people's sweat. I stayed home and packed. I guess the boys had a lot of fun, though. The races went right past Ryan's building, so they were able to go inside and enjoy the view and air conditioning for awhile.

We Moved!

Well, it finally happened. We're in our new place, and love it! So, if anyone needs our new address, just send me an email and I'll oblige you. Our phone numbers should stay the same, but the landline still isn't up, so be patient with us on that one.

Basically, our friend from the ward mentioned to us a couple months ago that the lady across the street was planning on renting out her place. It had all the things we needed (3-ish bedrooms, fenced yard, A/C, and pet friendly), and was rumored to be extremely inexpensive, so I made a mental note to look into it. Then I forgot. A couple weeks later I was giving a ride to our friend after a fire-inspired beach trip when I remembered, and he took me past the place and gave me the landlord's phone number. Three days later, we were all signed up to move in on October 1st! Big thanks to the Elder's Quorum for the awesome and speedy 3-hour move!

I'll try to get some pictures up once it's picture-worthy, but we're still living in Boxopolis. It's only a few minutes away from the old place, and we're still in the same ward, so that's nice.

Summer Recap

You know how, the farther behind you get on a project, the less inclined you are to want to work on it? Yeah, that's what's been going on here. So . . .I've decided to do one huge blog post covering What We Did on our Summer Vacation!

1. Connor had swimming lessons! Holly, a girl in our ward, was offering private swimming lessons this summer, so we signed Connor up for two weeks worth - his first lessons ever! I think he did really well, considering. He was pretty fearless and cheerful, which was fun to watch. By the end of the two weeks, Holly could walk him around the pool and "accidentally" push him in, and he could turn around and swim to the edge, then get out of the pool. That had basically been our goal for this year (pool safety), so I'm really happy with how it went. He never could figure out how to do an effective swimming stroke (his swimming looked a little like running in place underwater), but I figure he has plenty of time for that!

2. Utah Trip! Ryan took a week off work, and we all drove up for a visit to Utah. We spent the night in Vegas, and discovered (almost next door to our motel) the Old Mormon Fort. Apparently, Las Vegas was originally founded by Mormons sent down by Brigham Young! There was a museum and huge replica (plus part of the original walls) of the fort they had built, and it was really interesting. Unfortunately, it was also about 110 degrees, so the kids didn't have much patience for the outdoor part. The park ranger in the museum took pity on us, and let us bring the dogs with us into the museum, since we obviously couldn't leave them in the car. Our week in Utah was pretty awesome. We went to the Thanksgiving Point dinosaur museum for the first time (including a 3-D movie). Grandma made everybody fancy breakfasts, including Mickey Mouse pancakes, which traumatized Elise. She kept saying, "No eat Mimmie Mouz!" She never would eat him, despite eating the plain ones with gusto. Ryan and I got to go on a belated anniversary trip! It was our first no-kids overnighter since Connor was born, and it was great. We were able to go to the Mount Timpanogos temple, then saw Cirque du Soleil in Salt Lake, then spent the night at Snowbird, where we rode the lifts up the mountain and hiked around the next morning. Thanks to Mom and Chuck for that one! Grandma Cloe broke her leg! We were about to go out to dinner with everyone when I went out to meet Grandma Cloe, who was slowly coming up the driveway. She smiled sheepishly and reached out to take my hand for help up the porch steps, and I, dummy that I am, casually went to help her. My mom came out, immediately saw that something was wrong, and demanded, "What happened to you?!" I guess poor Grandma Cloe was gimping around on a leg she had freshly broken at JC Penney 20 minutes earlier. We rushed her to the urgent care place down the street where they discovered a spiral fracture and wrapped it in a temporary cast until the swelling went down. Grandma Cloe spent the next few days at my mom's house, until a real cast could be put on, and she could learn how to get around on crutches and a knee walker. I love Grandma Cloe. Throughout this whole thing, she was as cheerful as a lark! Currently, I'm told she has a walking cast and is doing physical therapy, and should be fine soon. The day we left for home, we went to Payson Pool with Kyle and Kelli. It was bizarrely cold, so we only stayed a couple hours, but had alot of fun. Elise was terrified of even the 6-inch part of the pool, but when I found an area that sloped up to 1-inch, she thought that was just great. That afternoon, on the way home, we stopped at Kolob Canyons and walked around a little. The kids were really impressed with the redrock, but equally so with these spray-painted blue ones. I hope to take them on more visits to the Southern Utah I grew up with, but this will have to do for now.

3. Disneyland, again! We did two more Disneyland days throughout the summer, but I'll combine the pictures for brevity. Highlights included Elise "driving" the autopia cars, tasting cotton candy for the first time, the Tiki Room (Elise's absolute favorite), meeting Mickey Mouse (Connor's favorite, not Elise's), finding pirate treasure, and a million other rides and attractions. Connor ended up riding every major roller coaster on which he was allowed, and loved them all, brave kid!

4. Fire! The Station Fire (largest wildfire in LA county history) started just above our town, and continued burning everything in sight for about a week (this was just locally - it spread elsewhere and continued after that). We had some amazing views from our driveway. In fact, all the neighbors would congregate there to get photos and talk about it. At night, you could see huge plumes of flame lighting up the entire horizon, it was surreal. During the day, the smoke and ash falling down made it impossible to go outside, and they cancelled most of the first week of school. From a distance, it looked like a mushroom cloud hovering over our little neighborhood. Anybody who could get out of town, did. A bunch of our friends were even evacuated from our homes, since the flames burned right down into the residential areas. We were lucky to be at a safe distance. Oh, and the Connor/Elise picture in bed was what the kids did when we were outside gawking and chatting with neighbors one night. They stole my ipod and "secretly" watched Wonderpets and Blue's Clues together.

5. Random Pictures! The kids spent half an hour playing with the dust motes in a beam of light one morning. Connor made a bed for Portia, and insisted on a picture of how comfy she was. And, finally, Elise had one last round of playing on the Learning Tower that we recently sold on Craigslist. It's supposed to allow kids to help you in the kitchen, and I fell for their advertising, paying $200 for the goofy thing. Then we discovered that a ten dollar stepstool works just as well, and takes up alot less space, so we passed it on. So, that was our summer! I'll see if I can get back to a more regular approach to maintaining the blog - wish me luck!