Sadness

You know it's a rough morning when your two-year-old says, "I'm just a little girl, Mom. That's why I cry."

Applesauce

This last weekend I went up to Idaho to make applesauce. And get canned apples because I hear you can make apple crisp with them and I love apple crisp. I headed up to Pamela's house on Thursday night. I didn't leave until about six because I wanted to get the house all clean before I left. I failed miserably, but at least I tried, right? The only thing keeping me awake while I was driving was sugar. Lots and lots of sugar. I hung out with Pamela all day Friday. Apparently we were pretty boring because the girl who Pamela was watching said she was really, really bored. I had fun though. We put Cordelia's car seat between Benton and Brita's and painted the town. Or at least went to the bread store. And Zamzo's to look at the animals.All three kids.
Brita with her free animal crackers.

Saturday we got an early start and got to Greg and Kelly's about 11:00. Okay, we meant to get an early start and failed miserably, but at least the intent was there. And we beat Mom and Katrina. That has to be worth something. I burned some jam for them. And then burned some apples. That was pretty much my contribution. Especially since I didn't even remember to bring bottles. Who forgets bottles when going to a canning party? I did remember to take pictures though. Granted it was about three minutes before I left so the house was totally empty (not something that happens all that often during a gathering of 24 people). I was fun getting to see everyone though. I haven't braved the drive to Caldwell for about two years I think. It was worth it. Fun times.Bottled applesauce. And where I burned everything.
Some of the extra applesauce we made.
Look--there really are people around!

I dropped Pamela and Cordelia off at their house and got to Mom and Dad's about 10:00. I left there about eight. Thank goodness for daylight savings or I never would have made my lesson.

And thank goodness for food and cruise control or I never would have stayed awake while driving and made it anywhere. So tired.

Substituting

Substituting is the best. A couple weeks ago I substituted for Relief Society at the last minute and yesterday I got rewarded with a whole pile of chocolate. Oh the benefits of having a first counselor who is afraid of last minute teaching.

It was kind of funny because the next time we all met together it was a combined fifth Sunday lesson and it was on teaching by the Spirit. I kind of wondered if I failed.

Then I taught my regularly scheduled lesson and I hear rumors of people being offended. We have no idea if those rumors are substantiated, though.

I think I'll stop teaching. Or maybe I'll just wait four months and teach again. That'd be fun.

Lesson

I have a lesson to teach this Sunday. I don't know how that's going to work out because I haven't looked into anything at all and don't even really know what I'm going to teach about. I kind of have some broad idea of a topic, but nothing concrete. I should be preparing for it now, but I don't want to. I have visits tonight, probably something tomorrow night, a training meeting on Thursday, and hopefully I'm off to Idaho on Friday, assuming Peter doesn't need the car while he works all weekend. I should get back in time for church on Sunday.

...

So I got back an hour and a half before church--just enough time to find some quotes I was thinking about, shower, and get the kids ready. But the internet was down so I couldn't find the quotes. And the kids just kept sleeping until we were late for church. And I ended up planning my lesson during Sunday school.

I'm happy with how my lesson went though. I learned a lot while I was teaching it. I usually just block out what I teach, but yesterday I spent all night going over it (you know, instead of sleeping). Hopefully I gave everyone's comments due respect. They were good.

I'm kind of glad it's over. Kind of sad I don't get to teach again for a while.

Aww So Cute...

Check out how cute this little watermelon is that we grew in our garden. A while ago a little watermelon got broken off the vine and we figured it wasn't ripe yet. We thought we'd cut it open anyway, but we never got around to it. I finally did when we were all sick and it was ripe! So we ate it, but no one could really taste it so I don't know if it was good or not. But it's so cute. It was about the size of a grapefruit. Yeah garden!

Snow

A while ago it snowed. We woke up in the morning and it was white outside. I was a little shocked because it wasn't supposed to have frozen until that Tuesday and the day that it snowed as we all know was not Tuesday (but I can't remember what day it was--Monday, maybe?). Brita, and therefore of course Benton, wanted to play in the snow so they got dressed and went out. They really were thrilled to be outside for a bit, you just can't tell it from the pictures. You can kind of see the snow on the grass in the background. Benton didn't last very long outside because he was cold and so every time he would come in I would give his warm stuff to Brita. Then he would decide he had to be outside again so I hunt up some more things for him to wear and the cycle would repeat again.

Brita actually got dressed up all by herself the first time. I was impressed. And she found the rabbit she had been looking for for a while right as I took this picture.

A couple days later it snowed for real. Crazy.

I just kind of wish it had held off until I picked all my tomatoes and blew out the sprinklers (which I have no idea how to go about doing).

Halloween

So Halloween was pretty fun. We went down to Provo to drop off a couple things for a friend's costume and so that Brita could play with her friend Nicholette. Brita was rather insistent that we go down to play with Nicholette after she heard it mentioned that it was a possibility, actually. They had fun playing together--if you ignore the every-two-minute screams of "That's mine! I was playing with it!" We did ignore it and we had a great time with Todd and Dani. And Vivian. And Todd's gaming friends. Yeah for people who let us randomly show up at their house and play with us.

When we got back to our house we had dinner and then we colored our pumpkins (not to be confused with coloring eggs, that would just be weird.) Brita did an awesome job on her face, but then she got bored and drew lots more. Benton didn't quite get the face concept down. I did two faces and of course Peter's pumpkin actually looked good. There's got to be one in every family, right?



Brita was a giraffe and Benton was a duck. Benton probably should have been a penguin, but he was just a very stuffed duck instead. I wasn't too worried about it because I didn't think he was going to be going anywhere, but as Brita and Benton were watching the trick-or-treaters it was decided that he should go.



We all went trick-or-treating for a while. Benton went to two houses and then he was done. Brita and I went all over the neighborhood. She's still working on her candy. At the rate she's going she'll still be working on it next spring. Unless I start looking in her bag again--last time I did that I saw some Twix that needed eaten.

Benton and Peter and Monica passed out candy. Monica even passed out candy by herself for a while even though it's against her principles. I'm pretty sure they had fun, even though there's not photographic proof.

So, um, Happy Halloween.