Almost Halloween

This week feels like it's been a lot of gearing up towards Halloween.

On Wednesday, Dan went to hear a friend of ours lecture about zombies.

Thursday, Evelyn dressed up in her kitty-ballerina costume for her dance class. (She did all her own posing--she's quite the little model.)


On Friday, we were supposed to go to a Halloween party at Evelyn's dance class, or, barring that, to a Halloween carnival, but we opted instead to stay home (much less crowded) and make some bones. Ours didn't turn out nearly as pretty as the picture, but they are all gone now.

Saturday morning, while Dan helped the Elder's Quorum move a family in down the street, I took the kids to meet Bubby and Poppy while we took in the Livestock and Heritage Festival Parade. My mom would have loved it (maybe next year?)--lots of farmers riding horses and vintage tractors. The highlight of the parade was the sheep run--they actually run several hundred sheep down Main Street. And then the street sweeper comes.

In the evening, we went to a friend's house for their annual Halloween party. We were in charge of dessert, so we brought pumpkin cupcakes with the white chocolate bones on top of them, and some swamp juice. I'm not always very good about doing fun food things for holidays, so I was pretty proud of myself. The cupcakes were a big hit, and the swamp juice was mostly gone when we left (although the sour worms did add an odd flavor to the already sour lemonade). The grownups got to chat, the kids played, and everyone had a good time. (Especially our host, who threw several cups of gasoline on the fire to get it to go--and then the fire went "whoosh" when the match hit it).

We endured some snow midweek, but the last couple of days have been beautiful fall weather again. We *finally* got some gutters put up on our house. It was surprisingly inexpensive and easy--if we'd known that, we would have done it long ago.

Our final picture is of a tent we scored off the Woot a few weeks ago. Dan had the bright idea to set it up in our living room. You can see how well it fit. :)

Insert Title Here

I'm currently sitting in the Phoenix airport, waiting for my flight back home.

This has been a mostly good week--but busy. Andrew missed his primary program last week because of pink-eye. Finally, on Tuesday, we cleared him to go back to school.

I also forgot to record that last week, Dan and I had our first real date in some time (I mean, where I scheduled a babysitter and everything). We went bowling, which took all of 45 minutes. We'd told the babysitter two hours, so we still had an hour plus to kill. So, what did we do with our time alone? We went to a local drugstore. And to Walmart. I know, we live exciting lives.

Anyway, back to this week. Monday and Tuesday Dan and I had off school. Dan went in for a little on Monday, until he realized he couldn't get into the computer network and came home.

This--and Andrew's quarantine--turned out to be a good catalyst. While Evelyn napped, Dan took Andrew to a parking lot behind our house and Andrew learned to ride his bike!

Tuesday, flush with his new skills, Andrew wanted to ride again. So we went to a local park with a trail up the canyon, and Andrew rode his bike, I jogged (it was much easier to keep up with him on the uphill stretches, oddly enough), Evelyn rode her trike, and Andrew walked with Evelyn. It was a beautiful, crisp morning and we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit. Afterward, because we could, we had lunch at the Ninja.

I went to my second Young Women activity that evening--and we went door to door canvasing for money for Primary Children's hospital. It was just about as exciting as it sounds. Luckily, we had treats and games afterward.

Thursday, after class, I packed up and Dan and the kids dropped me off at the airport. A generous friend of mine, Catherine, picked me up on this end and I was able to spend the weekend with her and her lovely family. We went to the Western States Rhetoric and Literacy conference together--I presented on rhetorics of space and Catherine presented on online literacy practices. The conference was decent--some good speakers and ideas, and some mediocre speakers and ideas. Pretty typical. I enjoyed spending time with Catherine and her family much more. Catherine and I met through a mutual friend (thanks, Cristie!) several years ago at an academic conference and have managed to keep touch by meeting up at various conferences and reading each other's academic papers. But I particularly enjoy talking with Catherine because she understands my position so well: we're in the same field, trying to figure out the best way to live our shared faith, put family first, and still keep a toe in the field. Sometimes, it's really nice to have smart friends.

Sometime on Friday I realized that an old roommate from graduate school (Carey, for any PA people reading this) lived in the greater Phoenix area. After a strange conversation with her mother-in-law--"who is this?" "how do you know Carey?" "how did you get this number?"--I finally got Carey's number and was lucky enough to meet up with her yesterday and see her beautiful new baby boy. In the four + years since I've seen her, Carey has had three boys. I gather they keep her pretty busy. It's funny, sometimes, to see how much can change with people and yet they are still pretty recognizable as the same person you once knew.

Anyway, that's about it for now. I'm home now, glad to be with my husband and kids (although the kids are--I hope--asleep now).

A pinkish kind of week

Our week started and ended the same way: with two cases of pink-eye. Evelyn (as we mentioned last week) had it at the start of the week, but it must have been one of the most short-lived cases in the world, because when we took her in to the doctor on Monday, the doctor said she looked fine.

Several quiet days went by (aside from the usual school, teaching, meetings, etc.) I went to my first young women's activity still wearing the skirt I'd taught in. Only, the young men were in charge and they chose to play dodgeball--so, I did a lot of watching.

Then on Friday, Andrew started showing symptoms. This was particularly sad since Saturday was the rehearsal for the primary program--and a pumpkin festival that he'd been looking forward to all week. But, with pinkeye, anything public is pretty much out of the question. His didn't clear up as soon as his sister's--in fact, this morning, his left eye was infected too. Poor kid. So he missed out on the primary program, and he had his lines memorized and he was going to do a solo too. He cried when I told him he couldn't come, but I kept thinking of all the moms who would hate me if we brought him, and he stayed home.

Dan graciously let me go to a local writer's conference this weekend. I posted about it on my other blog, but it was awesome. Seriously. I love coming away inspired and motivated to keep doing something I love. I just wish I'd started doing this sooner. There was a girl there who's been going to writing conferences with her mom since she was 12, and she's an amazing writer. I wrote a lot as a kid, but I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn't help being a little jealous of her position--she probably won't stop writing for ten years like I did.

Today we went for a drive up a local canyon. The aspens were brilliant gold, the scrub oak was a dull gold, and everywhere we looked we saw flame in the pines. It was beautiful.

a morning of strange conversations

This is what we talked about on the way to preschool this morning.

Evelyn: I love you, mommy.
Me: I love you, too.
Evelyn: I will love you when I'm dead.
Me (thinking): why are we talking about death?
Evelyn: When I die, and then you die and Andrew dies, we will be together.
Me (thinking): yes, but, again--why are we talking about death?
Evelyn: And when Daddy dies, he can be with us too!

I didn't know three-year-olds could be so morbid.

A few minutes later . . .

Evelyn: I wish I could be water.
Andrew: You don't want to be water. People might throw sticks on you.

Learning How to Fail

I'm at Segullah today, looking for advice!

When winter comes early

we distract ourselves with thoughts of warmer times. (In other words, here are the promised reunion pictures!).


Some Lee and Maestri children:

Evelyn on the trail. (I didn't get many pictures of Andrew during the hike, since he was usually way ahead of me with his cousins).



This is what many parts of the "trail" looked like--trekking through water.

At the end, there was this nice little waterfall. The kids loved playing in the water.

Some of the bigger "kids" tried sliding down the waterfall. This is Dan's cousin Anna's husband, Sam.


This was Maggie, at the end of the hike. She had a pretty sweet ride, though.

Our life this past week has been much quieter. This was early week at the school, for parent-teacher conferences. Even though kindergartners didn't have officially scheduled conferences, I went to talk to Andrew's teacher anyway. I wasn't so much worried about his academic performance as I was his social one, but his teacher tells me he's making friends and is good about helping other children when he finishes his work early. (We also talked a little about the possibility of him joining the first-graders for math, since apparently both his reading and math abilities are well above average, but decided to keep him where he is since he seems happy).

Tuesday, we followed Evelyn's preschool class to the pumpkin patch, since Andrew had to miss this same field trip back when he was in preschool. We came home with two pumpkins and lots of prickers in our shoes from the patch.


Then we endured several days of cold weather. It snowed on Thursday and the city turned our power out for some maintenance work. We spent as much time away from the house as we could that morning, going to the library and to Evelyn's dance class and out to eat for lunch.

This weekend, we went north for a *very* short trip to see my parents and celebrate my dad's birthday. The cousins had fun playing together and they didn't make my dad *too* crazy, so I think that was a successful trip. We came down Saturday evening, since my parents were working in the temple and Sarah was entertaining Aaron's parents and so we didn't have anything else to do. For those we missed on our short trip (Jared, Sarah), we're sorry we missed you. You, however, are probably not so sorry to have missed us, since we think Evelyn now has pink-eye. Urgh. She woke up at 4 this morning crying because she couldn't open her eyes--they were stuck shut with the leakage from her eyes. (She'd woken up at 12 saying the same thing, but I was too tired then to realize she was speaking literally--I thought she just meant it was too early for her to open her eyes. Poor thing). Needless to say, she stayed home from church today and we're just hoping no one else gets it.

Dan stayed home with Evelyn today and Andrew and I went to church so that I could get my new calling: first counselor in the Young Women's presidency. I'm excited to work with the girls--the Mia Maids are all former students from when Dan and I were assigned to teach Sunday school. I'm also a little nervous--I haven't been in YW since I *was* a young woman.

In other news, this is one of my favorite things to see around our house recently: Andrew, tucked into the couch with a book. We went to the library twice last week because he read all three of his Magic Tree House books in two days. The bibliophile in me rejoices!


Finally, for the grandparents, here's Evelyn "reading" one of her new favorite books.

In case you can't quite understand her, here's what she's reading: Five little pumpkins, sitting on a gate. The first one said, "Oh my, it's getting late!" The second one said, "There are witches in the air!" The third one said "But we don't care!" The fourth one said, "Let's run and run and run." The fifth one said, "I'm ready for some fun!" Ooooh, went the wind, and out went the light, and the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

Hickory, Dickory, Dock

(Still no pictures--I'm sorry! Our camera is dead and we have every conceivable kind of battery except the ones I need. Will be fixed soon.)

Here's this week's excitement:

I was sitting at my computer working on some student papers when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something long, sleek, and dark whiz behind the computer desk. My heart stopped. I didn't know exactly what I'd seen, but I had a strong suspicion, and I didn't like it. It was too big to be an insect, and too fast.

I got down on the ground, moving a few things on the floor to see if I could see whatever "it" was again. Andrew came into the room and asked me what I was looking for. (Evelyn was napping). Just then, it burst from its hiding place, scampered past Andrew to the door of the computer room and high-tailed it around the corner into the TV room. A mouse.

Andrew freaked out and raced upstairs (and refused to come downstairs for the rest of the day). I freaked out too and called Dan three or four times (he wasn't in his office). When Evelyn woke up, we went to ACE, bought a mousetrap, and then waited for Dan to come home so he could help me a) clean up the downstairs so there were fewer hiding places and b) bait the traps. I didn't buy the classic wood traps because I had horrified visions of children with fingers in the traps, so I got traps that the kids couldn't easily stick their fingers in.

For a day or two, nothing happened. Then, finally, yes, we caught the mouse. Part of me feels bad for setting traps that kill mice; but a much larger part of me does NOT want to deal with a mouse in the house. Now, if we could just figure out how it got in . . .

In other pest related news, I opened up my conditioner in the shower the other day and dumped an earwig into my hand. I hate earwigs. Needless to say, this seriously disrupted my enjoyment of the hot water.

I suppose it says a lot for our week that finding a mouse was the biggest event of the week. Dan and I both spent the week playing catch-up from last week's vacation. The kids went to school. I taught a class on personal statements for senior English majors. We have been watching Conference this weekend, which has been lovely.

Next week, I'm hoping for just a little more excitement of the real variety (Evelyn gets to go on her first school field trip and Dan has a conference up north) and less of the animal variety.