Christmas goal

OK. I know...I'm talking about Christmas before Thanksgiving. And normally, I would kick whoever was talking about Holidays out of order...but it's me. And it's a bit difficult to kick yourself. AND this post probably isn't what you might think it will be.
I have a goal to be back in my size 8 lucky jeans by Christmas. Do you think I can make it? I really hope so. I've already lost a few pounds by going to the gym 2-3 times a week with two of my coworkers. And then doing Wii Fit Plus on some of the other days. Now that I think about it...the size 8 might be a bit of a stretch. So maybe I should aim for my size 10 jeans...that might be a more acheiveable goal. But I'm still going to try for the 8...and if I can wear the 10, I'll still be happy. :)
Just thought I'd share that with you all.

Primary Sunday

Well, another Sunday and another day assisting in Primary :) This time it was because they had an all Relief Society meeting with the Bishop and the men helped; I don't think there was even an Elder's Quorum meeting. I know that because I had to leave class three times to get Sister Hardman to help with "going to the potty".

I am cooking up a tasty turkey roast for dinner today. We have also started a tradition of listening to some past General conference talks; they have all the way back to 2003 on lds.org in mp3 format (or you can watch the video). It is very nice; we are listening to Saturday Morning 2003 right now.

Rewrite of the old "V" story

ABC just started a new series, "V", which is a re-imaginering of the "V" mini-series and series of the early 80's that I loved. Emily and I watched it tonight and I was highly impressed.

Since I know that the whole family loves Lost...hang on, never mind. Still, it is an excellent science fiction show. It is on Tuesdays at 7:00 on ABC.

I wish I had others in the family to talk about Lost, Survivor, and now this with. :)

Look at that face!

I just couldn't pass on sharing this picture. It had rained the day before and the sidewalk chalk had been left outside. When the boys went out to play on a Saturday morning, they started using the chalk. However he did it, Alex had chalk caked all over his face and he was pretty pleased with it and didn't want it removed! (Maybe it was just because he hates having his face washed - period.)

Pikmin

Quint already commented on our Halloween, but here are some pictures of the boys dressed as Pikmin (Nintendo GameCube game). Christa did a great job designing and making the hats!

I also want to say that I read the comments and look at the Blog almost daily. I had it on my list to post Halloween pictures today, even before reading your request :-) This was a great idea and I'm glad you got it going!

Halloween photos

I was going to post this in a comment, but I suspect that Julie, Mom and I are the only ones who read those.  Actually, I don't know how many of you read the blog on a regular basis...  Moving on, I just wanted to send out a soliciation for Halloween pictures.  Julie posted one from her phone on Facebook, but I couldn't really tell what Luke and Corwin were dressed as.  I'm hoping that you all aren't as terrible at taking pictures as I am.

Halloween and stuff

We went to a ward trunk or treat on Friday, our first that we have ever been to. It was pretty fun and amusing; they boys got a large amount of candy, a good portion which boils down to me, as they don't like it. The same deal with trick or treating yesterday.

I got thinking about this as I did last year. The more I think about it, the more it doesn't bother me who goes trick or treating, as long as they are in costume and are polite. I was thinking today that I would dress up and bring my own bag, but then I thought that I don't need to be greedy, as I get plenty from the boys anyway. I hope that carry's on as they get older; as it is now, they are very good to share. Not only that, but I get the 3 boy multiplier. :)

We went basically the same route, which includes part of the path that I take to walk to the bus. This is down a back street and along a nice trail between two houses, out to 35th south. There are a few good friends out there that we visited.

I taught primary again today, this time to CTR 6. I have recently been given a second calling on top of 11 year old scoutmaster: I am now also scout committee chair, which means in part that I have had the unenviable task of coordinating rechartering and friends of scouting. I have been really torn about friends of scouting, bothered somewhat by what I see as some corruption with the national level (for instance, it bothers me that one of the numbers for a uniform costs $1).

Anyway, just a bunch of somewhat cohesive thoughts going on for me.

Halloween

We had a pretty low-key Halloween.  We worked on the bathroom all day, went to the church for trunk-or-treat, then strolled around our neighborhood and looked at the Halloween decorations and throngs of trick-or-treaters.  Have I ever mentioned how crazy Halloween is on the next street over from ours?  No?  Well, every year the street one block north of our house goes all out for Halloween.  Most houses are really decked out with lights, coffins, tombstones, skeletons, spiders, bats, you name it.  And we're talking almost every house on the block.  Then the owners sit out on their porches to hand out candy.  No ringing doorbells around here.  People drive in from all around town to trick-or-treat on this street.  It gets so busy that they barricade the road from cars and people overflow from the sidewalks onto the streets.  There were lines at each house to get candy.  Lines!  But at our house?  Our doorbell rang twice.  *Shrug*  Wyatt barely tolerated the trunk-or-treat so we didn't make him beg for candy around the neighborhood.  He just got a good walk.

We didn't take any pictures last night, but Jake dressed up in some fatigues, Wyatt wore the same spider outfit he had last year and I dressed as a spider web (all in black with white string wrapped around me).  Here are a couple of pictures from Boo at the Zoo when our friends the Howsleys visited us last week:

The boots are back!

Remember when Wyatt and I were home for Christmas and Brenda gave Wyatt those boots that he loved so much? Remember how he loved them so much that he wore them to bed at night? Remember how he cried and cried when I took them off for a bath? Remember how I had to hide them under Mom's bed so his feet would get a rest and not prune up and fall off? Remember them? They're back!

I had them hidden under my bed so we could get Wyatt to wear summer shoes.  And I forgot that they even existed.  Well, we had to move the bed so our new windows could be installed (yay!) and there they were.   I put them in Wyatt's room and not long after, they were discovered.  Wyatt took off the shoes he was wearing and put on the boots.  I was impressed that 1) they still fit and 2) that Wyatt could put them on himself (even if they were on the wrong feet).

They are so stinking cute!

Jake's Vacation (?)

As I mentioned in a previous post, we have been kind of forced into redoing our master bathroom.  We've been without our shower (meaning baths only) for about a month.  I'm ready to have the shower back.  Unfortunately, this past month Jake has been very busy at the hospital and very little progress has been made on the remodel.  But this week, oh this week we have been hard at work!  You see, Jake had a vacation week and we really dove in to get things done.  We accomplished a lot, but there is still more to be done.  It will be waiting for us next weekend.  Sigh.

We were going along great and thinking we were pretty hot stuff:

Then, disaster!  We realized that the drain hadn't been installed beneath the shower pan and it was immobilized by tiles.  Wah, wah.  What to do?  Rip out the bottom row :(

Actually Jake doesn't look too upset (but trust me he was).

But we didn't let that get us down.  We kept working and finished a good deal of the tile work before trick-or-treating yesterday.

We just need to add a few more tiles...

and clean up.

Oh yeah, then there's that...