Pre-Halloween insanity

This week felt like crazy sauce.

Monday, Steve celebrated his 42nd birthday. Cecily and I went to have lunch with him at his work, and then I had to turn around and run home because Mira was having a friend come home with us for a play date after school. Then I had to feed the kids before heading up to Orem to have FHE with Great Grandma Watts at 6pm. After FHE, we took Steve out for treat at a place called The Chocolate in Orem. We were underwhelmed even though they have amazing reviews on Google and they had two gluten-free selections for me.

I helped Julia for a while on Tuesday, then I volunteered at the school's book fair for an hour and a half, then I had to finish up the last touches on Halloween costumes because we had a ward Trunk-or-Treat on Wednesday. Before the Trunk-or-Treat, I had visiting teaching and Cecily had tumbling, plus I signed up to bring a dessert to the Chili Cook-off that they host right after.

Thursday, I signed up to bring soup for the teachers dinner during SEP (Student/Educator/Parent, I think) conferences. So since I was making soup for that, I decided to make extra for our family to eat that night too. I had a two-hour lunch with another lady I visit teach. Then I had to pick up kids, take Mira to a lady who said she'd take her to gymnastics, take the soup to the school and attend two teacher conferences, then head home to get Emilia ready for her Daddy Daughter Halloween Dinner Date and Dance for activity days. She and Steve had a ton of fun. But it wasn't until they were leaving that I realized that I'd made a ton of soup for me, Mira, and Cecily. *le sigh* Then I had to go pick up my pot from the school at 7 and I had at least as much of that left as I had at home. So we have a ton of leftover soup in our fridge that no one wants to eat because the noodles got soggy.

Friday, my visiting teachers were coming over. One of them asked if I would give her a tour of my house and show her all the things I'd repurposed, made, or found for almost nothing, so then I felt this driving need to CLEAN EVERYTHING. But at least by 2pm, my house was spotless. Emilia and Mira had another play date at a friend's house after school, so I took Cecily to feed the ducks and run around at the park for an hour and a half. I sure love hanging out with that kid. She makes being a mom fun. Then Steve took me on a date that night and actually went shopping with me. We were going to see a movie, but Steve always gets home like a 1/2 hour too late to make it to the early show and we're too cheap to pay for a movie and a babysitter for 5 hours (because we leave at 6:30 and if we go to a late show, we'd be out until 11:30). So we ended up watching Hidden Figures from Redbox after we got home. It was definitely an eye opening film. What amazing women!

Saturday, we had my family over for dinner, cleaned bathrooms and went and picked up Mira's glasses. Not in that order. Mira likes her glasses about as well as you might like stepping in dog poo and then walking around with it all day long. She makes that dog poo face the entire time she wears them anyway.  And I just realized I have not taken her picture. I need to do that. Steve got an expansion for his favorite game, Splendor that night, since we were celebrating his birthday with my family. He finally got to try it out tonight. We were invited to dinner with some ward friends, and then different ward friends came over after we got home to play the expansion with him. Phew! No wonder I'm exhausted. Kinda like Mystery:

These are from the duck pond park date with Cecily:

Catch-up after being sick

So last Sunday I told you we had people over for dinner and that it was delicious. What I didn't say was that the previous night I had felt a little nauseated, but by Sunday night was hungry and didn't feel any of that wooziness, so I ate my dinner. Well, about 2.5 hours after dinner, the wooziness came back. I felt bad that we'd had people over if I was sick, but I'd really thought I was fine. That night I was incredibly nauseated and didn't sleep much because of it. Steve stayed home from work Monday so I could rest, which was a huge boon. He even went grocery shopping! Tuesday, I still was sick, but I didn't want to keep him home again, so Cecily and I just had a quiet day together and the girls played by themselves after school. Wednesday, I was finally feeling like I was on the mend (four days later!), so we ran some errands and cleaned up the mess that 3 days of mom not feeling well will cause.

The rest of the week was pretty packed, but each day was good in its own way. I got to have a girls night with my friend, Camber on Wednesday night. Thursday and Friday were fall break for the kids, so they played with friends in the morning and Mira had an eye appointment in the afternoon. She will be the newest glasses-wearing member of our family as soon as they come in. I feel for her because she's scared to be a "glasses girl." So grandparents and anyone else sympathetic to her plight, if you'll pray for her I would appreciate it. I'm not sure how to make her feel better. The optometrist says that it's just an astigmatism (and not nearsightedness), but if she doesn't wear the glasses it will get worse faster. After the appointment, we picked up Camber's daughter, Cassie, for a sleepover, and Steve had D&D that night. Friday, we played in the morning, had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, and then after lunch, took Cassie home on our way to my parents' house. My mom had lots of fun activities planned for us.  Blinking monster eyes out of paper, cookie and kiss witch's hats, and we each got our own haunted house to decorate. I loved seeing how each of my girls made their house unique and creative. Saturday, Joe and Cindy and their kids came up to go to the tour of the Biblical Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant at BYU and to celebrate Steve's birthday. We played a lot of games and were taken out for dinner by Nick and Wilda. It was a fun day and we always love seeing cousins. Today, Steve and I were wiped out and so, after church, had a play computer games with the kids sort of night.

Mira and Emilia like dressing Cecily up. I love that they covered her entire head in bows for this outfit. I think she was the Queen of Cecilyland in this particular instance.

Playing with the pieces from Cootie...
Me: She looks like a cowgirl. Is she?
Cecily: Yeah. But she wears skates, cuz she likes to skate everywhere.
Me: Oh, okay.
Cecily: And she not from a farm. She's from a dance party.
. . .
Cecily: Now I'm making her dad. He has hands so he can grab things.
Me: Is he wearing a bow?
Cecily: (without any hint of humor) Yes.

While we were running errands, I took Cecily to a new donut place in Spanish Fork. I didn't have one, but she scarfed hers down, so I'll say it gets a thumbs up.

Cecily was very proud of this lego creation.

Our haunted houses from visiting Nana:

Cecily's:

Mine:

Emilia's:

Mira's:

From the Biblical Tabernacle tour:

Remember the b&w photo challenge I told you about? These are all photos I considered, but ended up not using:

These are the ones I picked to use:

And remember the leaf photos I told you about? Well here they are. I'm not sure what to do with them, but I think they turned out about how I wanted them to. A lot of these are Mira's designs. I am so impressed with her eye for composition. The ones that are her designs, I marked at the bottom.

The ones after this were all Mira's. She put the leaves where she wanted them and I took the picture.

Do you have any favorites? Any ideas what to do with them?