Category: Uncategorized (Page 44 of 118)

There are a lot of things that could be getting you down today–that nagging cold, your childrens’ grades, the mortgage payment, that PTA assignment, or the state of the economy. Well, all is not doom and gloom, my friends!

Sit back, relax, and enjoy this number from a ward talent show.

Doesn’t that just add a little sparkle to your day? I hope so.
I just wish that ALL ward parties were this entertaining.

Did you get your Albertson’s ad in the paper yesterday? Well, they’ve got some GREAT deals going on this week. If you buy $30 of the featured products, you’ll get $15 back to spend on your next purchase. Then you can use that $15 to turn around and get another $30 in food, and use the $15 on your next shopping trip.

(Just make sure you get EXACTLY the items it says in the ad, or else you’ll be like me wondering where your coupons are, after your carefully calculated groceries ring up for more than they were supposed to. Just saying.)

And then you can donate the extras to the Food Bank. The scouts are doing an emergency food drive on Saturday, because all of the Utah Food bank locations are dangerously low. When our youth did a food drive a few weeks ago, we learned some surprising facts about hunger in Utah.

# Currently 1 in 10 Utahns live in poverty. A family of four living in poverty makes just over $20,600 a year to cover health care expenses, shelter, food and other household expenses (U.S. Census Bureau, 2003).
# Utah is ranked 5th in the nation for the highest rate of food insecurity. More than 345,700 individuals are at risk of missing or skipping a meal due to a lack of resources (US. Department of Agriculture, Household Food Security in the United States, 2006).
# Over 134,000 Utahns receive food stamps, which are not even half of those who are eligible (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2005).
# In Utah, over 63,000 people a month eat dinner at a soup kitchen (Utahns Against Hunger, 2006).
# 1 in 8 children in Utah live in poverty (U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2005 Annual Social and Economic Supplement).

So, if you can stock up, save, and then give, it’s good for all of us.

I was all worried about how long the voting lines were going to be, and was arranging a kid swap so I wouldn’t have to take John with me. I had heard of people waiting two to three hours to vote early, so what would it be for the regular voting day? Then my friend called me right after our exercise class and said, “forget the shower, come and vote now.”

So, I went directly to the high school, where there were TONS of cars, but once inside, the line, especially for A-K, was SHORT. In minutes I had my little voting card and was waiting for a ballet box. It was quick, painless, and I exercised my right to vote. I guess 10:30 is the time to go. Even if you are in your scroungy work-out clothes with no makeup.

I hope you all do the same. Well, the voting part, not the scroungy no makeup part.

And then let me know. How long was your wait?

And, once you’ve voted, you can go and get your free chick-fil-a sandwich, your free Krispy Kreme donut, your free Starbucks coffee, and your free Ben and Jerry’s ice cream cone. Seriously.

To whomever picks up my neighbor at 6 am:

While I appreciate that you are carpooling, saving gas and resources and all that, must you honk? And while I can get over the initial honk-honk, if they don’t come out RIGHT AWAY, could you please NOT honk some more? Just get out your cell phone and call them and say, “Hey, dude, I’m outside”, then you are only disturbing their family and not the whole neighborhood. And this morning, when you had to do the whole HONK-honk-honk. Honk-HONK-HONK! That really is uncalled for at any hour of the day, but especially in the wee hours of the morning.

Don’t make me get out of bed and look out the window and SEE who you are honking for. That would Really be uncalled for. Let’s just get our honking under control, please. And remember–people are sleeping out there.

It’s been a busy and fun week here. Monday we had our own pumpkin festival.
We had soup in pumpkin bread bowl for dinner, ate pumpkin bars for dessert, and carved our pumpkins.

On Thursday, we had our church halloween party, where the young women and young men host the party for the primary kids. Here I am with Kristy, young lady in my class. Don’t we look “bewitching?”

There were games and prizes for all the kids, and it was fun, fun, fun.

Of course, it was the same night as the Junior High band concert, so Ryan took Cole and Megan to that, and he got to stay and listen to all their spooky band songs. It’s my favorite concert, since they all dress up in costumes, and play fun songs.

On Friday, we all dressed up again for school parties.

After school, we piled into the car and went to Ryan’s work for the office trick or treat. It’s fun to take the family to Dad’s work, and they get LOTS of candy in a short amount of time. So if you’re in it for the candy, this is the way to do it.

When we came home, we got to go out trick or treating around the neighborhood, and I can’t remember a more pleasant Halloween. There was no snow, no wind, no bitter cold. In fact, the kids went out in just their costumes, not even a jacket. Of course, it did start to rain on us, but even that wasn’t too cold. It was just fun to be walking around in the near darkness and seeing all of our neighbors also out walking around. My friend DaNae made homemade donuts, so her house was a gathering place for people to stop in and chat, and in the other end of the neighborhood, they were serving hot chocolate. Cole, who really is too old to trick or treat, stayed home and gave out candy, while Ryan and I took turns taking the kids out. It was really a fun evening.

Not one to let the holiday pass so quickly, we even had Halloween plans on Saturday. Actually, I won tickets to a murder mystery dinner theater, and the only night we could go was on Nov 1st, so it just stretched the festivities out a little longer. When I called to make the reservations, I was told that “most” of the people dress up either in costume ball attire or in Halloween costumes, since it is “Dracula’s ball”. Well, if it’s a “ball”, we were going to, I couldn’t just wear my same old witch outfit, could I? And what would Ryan wear? Have no fear, I consulted with my friend Lisa, who is the queen of all things spooky, and has enough Halloween costumes to outfit the entire neighborhood (I should know, we were using three of her costumes this year). “Lisa,” I said, “Ryan needs some kind of a costume for Saturday. Do you still have that warewolf costume?”
“Oh, my warewolf is already loaned out, but I do have this Dr. Dread costume RIGHT here,” she said, and she seriously opened a box right there and pulled out a costume, complete with a mask and hat that would fit Ryan. She’s amazing, I tell you.
For my costume, I called my friend Janene, who is an amazing seamstress and sews all these incredible costumes to wear every year. I knew that she was about my size, although shorter, and wondered if I could borrow a fancy ball dress from her. She had TWO for me to choose from. One was a Scarlet type dress, complete with hoop skirt. The other was a victorian type dress, with a bustle in the back. I chose the bustle dress, because it was red and beautiful, and I’m glad I did. The whole hoop skirt would have been a problem.

Here I am getting ready, with a side view of the whole bustle thing. And no, my butt really isn’t THAT big, thank goodness.
Here’s the full view.

Can you believe she made that? Amazing!
We had a great time at the Hunt Mystery Theater for Dracula’s Grand Ball. We met some very interesting people.

There were fun people at our table, too, but I guess we forgot to get their picture. We enjoyed the night out, and it was fun to dress up a bit, too.

So, that wraps up our festivities. I hope your fall fun was just as wonderful.

Thank you to all of you who played along with my little contest. I consulted the great and mystical random.org, and the magic number today is 12, and the twelfth comment was from:

# Stacy on 27 Oct 2008 at 3:16 pm edit this

My favorite Christmas song is….(it is so hard to choose just one) I think I would have to go with O Holy Night (and I must say I do love it when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings it…gives me the chills..the good kind).
Thanks

So, I’ll be emailing Stacy to let her know that she is the lucky winner, and is therefore contractually obligated to read and comment here frequently. Now maybe she’s re-thinking the whole entering my contest, but I promise, Stacy, it’s not so bad. You’ll learn to like it here. I hope.

To all the rest of you that didn’t win, you’re going to want to get this album anyway. Maybe get it for a loved one for Christmas and then borrow it and listen to it a lot. Because it’s a fabulous album. And don’t forget to register here for your chance to “win” tickets to this year’s Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert. It will surely be fabulous. And if you don’t live in Utah, register anyway. If you win and don’t know anyone to send the ticket to, I’m sure I can find people who want them. I always do.

I can’t wait to hear all about your Halloween festivities and share some pictures from mine.
Enjoy your extra hour of sleep, y’all.

My dear husband sent me this in the morning:

Love: A Timeline

So you meet someone. You date for a while, then you get engaged. You invite all your friends and family to the wedding. You rent an apartment together. Later, you buy a house. You have a kid.

Early on, your conversations are about your feelings. Over time, and out of necessity, they become more practical, though you still make time for heart-to-hearts.

Then there comes a moment — about ten years into the marriage — when you’re forced to say the following: “I’m sure I heard the cat throw up this morning, I just don’t know where.”

(from Minor Tweaks: http://www.minortweaks.com/)

Yep, that’s about the truth. Thanks, honey!

I’ll update on the Halloween festivities later, Happy Halloween, y’all!

For the past couple of hours, I’ve been outside working on the the flower beds, getting ready to “put them to bed”. It’s an exhausting process that involves cutting back the dead foliage, pulling out the weeds and overgrown plants, chopping, cutting, pulling, repeat. With the cold weather coming back soon, I don’t know how many nice days we’ll have to get these things done, so I was trying to take advantage of the nice afternoon.

Once I get started, I actually don’t mind working in the flower beds. It’s a pleasant temperature, I can hear one daughter practicing the piano in the house, and can keep an eye on two of the kids playing outside. There’s none of the whining or fighting that’s going on in the house, either, so it’s kind of quiet. Occasionally a neighbor drives by and waves.

While I was out there breaking my back with manual labor, I discovered a few things hidden in the plants.
-3 water bottles
-one bubble container
-sidewalk chalk
-one pair of gardening gloves
-three single gardening gloves
-one capri sun package
-ants. lots of ants that weren’t too happy with me when I moved the pot they were infesting
-my sweet potato vines actually grew potatoes!
-my husband threw away the canna lilies I had painstakingly dug up, cut off all the foliage and was going to save so that I could grow them again next year. Threw them away.
-if you put up a trelis for the baby clematis, the morning glory will think it’s for them and take it over
-just because you are wearing gloves, that doesn’t mean your fingernails won’t get all gross and broken.
-just because you’re wearing long sleeves, that doesn’t mean you won’t get scratches on your arms. Or dirt.
-iris is extremely hardy, and so gosh darn hard to dig up that it’s easier to just let it take over the flower bed
-when killing the wisteria, if you don’t kill and/or dig out EVERY. SINGLE. piece of it, it will start up again and attempt to take over the entire area again and again
-it’s much more fun to plant flowers in the spring than it is to dig them up and trim them all back in the fall.

It’s nearing dinner time, and I’ve got all these leftovers in the fridge, but I don’t want to HEAR the WHINING if I slap leftovers on the table one more time. I could…

a-tape their mouths shut so there will be no complaining. But then there would be no eating of the leftovers, either, so that’s probably not a good option.

b-just listen to the whining and picky eaters’ rambling ons, but that might just drive me over the edge of insanity, and I’m already teetering on the edge, so that doesn’t sound like a good idea, either.

c-use the leftovers to come up with a completely different dinner. Well, that would be great if I had any creativity. Hey, wait! I do have creativity! I’ll choose C!

Thus the sloppy joe pizza was born.

–I made pizza dough and spread it in the pan.
–Instead of sauce, I spread the leftover sloppy joe meat on the crust. It’s kind of saucy, itself, so I thought that would cover well. I needed to add one small can of tomato sauce and spread it over the sauce, because it looked too dry alone.
–A generous sprinkling of mozzarella cheese goes on the top.

That’s it. Sloppy joe pizza was born.

The kids really liked it. Of course that may have been that we ate on lunch trays and ate outside (probably our last dinner outside of the season) and pretended we were at school. But whatever it was, I think the dinner was a success.