Red Ribbon Week

This week was Red Ribbon Week at our kids' school. Among other things, this involved wearing lots of red, and also goofy outfits almost every day: pajama day, mismatched socks and shoes, sunglasses and the elementary t-shirts.

And of course, crazy hair day.

Dan helped Andrew with his hair. There's only so much you can do with boy hair, though next year I'm thinking we'll try dozens of tiny ponytails . . .

We went a little Pippy Longstocking with Evelyn's hair, with some help from pipe cleaners.

Of course, all the red hair spray did have a price. After dinner, Andrew was sitting (laying?) on the couch and ended up leaving a big red splotch all over our off-white couch. (Luckily, it cleaned off. Mostly. There's still a faint pink tinge if you look hard enough). After that, the kids were banned from the couches until they'd bathed.

This is what the bathtub looked like after they were out of it. And even now, after two additional hair washes, you can still see traces of red on Evelyn's scalp. The things we do for our kids!

I think this may be the first week with pictures where I don't have a new picture of Oliver. I did try--he was trying to help me mop my floor and I ran to grab the camera, but of course by the time I got back he'd moved on to something less interesting.

We tried to take advantage of some gorgeous "Indian Summer" weather this past week to get outside. The kids and I collected leaves for Andrew's school project on Friday; yesterday, after Andrew and I volunteered at Bountiful Baskets in the morning, we took the kids swimming. (And I just have to say here, for the record, that Andrew can be an amazingly had worker when he thinks he's being helpful. It made me very happy to watch him at the volunteer site. He was perky and enthusiastic and willing to help with everything.)

Andrew and Evelyn have always been big fans of the water. It's fun to see Oliver join them. Especially now that he can walk a bit, the aquatic center was much more exciting for him, since he could get around himself without submerging his face (crawling through shallow water doesn't seem to work as well). His big discovery this time? The slide in the toddler area. He could get himself up the stairs, wiggle his way around at the top, and slide down on his belly (feet first--usually. The one time I watched him go face first, he wound up completely submerged at the bottom of the slide. I grabbed him out of the water, and an older gentleman who'd been observing us commented that Oliver came out of the water with such a big grin, he couldn't have been much hurt or frightened by the submersion).

I don't know that we have much else to report. Aside from the break at the beginning of the week, it's been work as usual for everybody.

The kids are excited for Halloween. And, I have to admit, so am I. It's funny how having kids brings magic back to so many things.

Mini vacation

This weekend, we took advantage of the fact that our fall break from the university overlapped with our kid's fall break for *one* day and headed up north. Dan had a conference on Friday on being an educated person, so he gave his students a test that day and we left Thursday evening.

Friday, I took the kids in for pictures. And, of course, I carefully picked out coordinating outfits--and then left them hanging by the door at home. So we had to improvise at the last minute. Also, I'd forgotten how hard toddlers are for pictures. Oliver did *not* want to sit still for the pictures. In the few pictures, where he's smiling at the camera, Evelyn managed to look somewhere else, or give the world's goofiest grin. I suppose it's good for my pocketbook, but not so good for getting pictures that will look good on our Christmas card (eventually).

We spent the afternoon and evening hanging out with my brother, Jared, who spent the night at my parents' house with his family. Dan and I managed to beat Jared and Mitcee at hand and foot, so you know we enjoyed ourselves. We also ate all of my mom's stash of kettle corn.

Saturday morning we held a birthday party for my dad. Later that afternoon,when Bubby asked me how my dad liked his party, it occurred to me that the party was really just an excuse to get the whole family together. And for the first time in at least two years, we managed that. My parents, their four children, and all twelve grandchildren.

It was a little bit noisy. Just a little.

We took the kids outside partway through and played lots of running games: partner tag, sharks and minnows, freeze tag, etc. And it was officially confirmed to me that both of my brothers can be very goofy. The kids loved it, though. I particularly appreciated Dan's smooth moves: when I was "it" and chasing him, he very thoughtfully executed what was no doubt supposed to be a cool getaway maneuver (he dropped down to the grass and rolled), but it made it easy for me to catch him. Which, I suppose, was the point.

(Here's my evidence: ten of the twelve grandkids at the table eating ice cream sandwiches. Just missing the two babies.)

After this party wound down, we headed up north to Sarah's, where Bubby and Poppy were still hanging out. We took the kids to the park and played and ate sandwiches. I spent most of the time trying to keep Oliver from eating woodchips--one of the new perils of his increased mobility.

 Oliver did like the swings. And contrary to her expression above, Evelyn had fun running around with Lydia.

 Bubby put Oliver in a swing that was a little too big for him. He liked that one too, though he could hardly see out.

And finally, evidence of Oliver's increased mobility. (Also, my children's good taste in music.)

Telephone Traumas and other Tidbits

This has been the week of telephone trauma at our house.

Earlier this week, while inspecting our home phone bill, I noticed it was about $30 more than the previous month. I looked over the bill, but couldn't figure out why the charge had gone up, so I called CenturyLink. One of the operators told me that part of the charge was a one-time fee (we'd bundled our TV into our other package), and that another part of the fee was for an additional residential line--something we neither need nor requested. So I asked them to take the line off, and then they transferred me to the billing office to get a credit for the extra charge.

That was Tuesday.

On Wednesday, I realized we didn't have a dial tone. Our phone couldn't take or receive calls. (Unfortunately, I realized this pretty late in the day--it's not unusual to not get calls during the day on our home line). Thursday morning, I called CenturyLink. After talking to three different operators, each of whom offered to transfer me to a branch I'd already talked to, I finally spoke to someone who told me that instead of taking off the extra residential line, they'd cancelled our *entire* home phone package. She told me there was a backlog in their office, but they'd try to get us phone service as soon as they could.

On Friday, I sent them an email (my attempts on the phone hadn't gone over well; plus, I was reluctant to waste any more cell phone minutes on them). I got an email response again apologizing and promising to get our phone back within twenty-four hours. We still don't have phone service.

Also, apparently they changed our number when they reinstated it. If I want to change it back (!--of course we do, we've had this number for over four years), I have to call their office again on Monday during regular business hours . . .

Stay tuned for next week's exciting installment.

(Or not. That's okay, too.)

In other news, this week was the university Homecoming, which meant that yesterday we got to see both Dan and Poppy march in the parade with the college of science. The kids were signed up for an arts camp that started right after the parade, so we had to leave early (unfortunately)--but in the thirty-five minutes we watched the parade, both kids managed to fill an entire bag full of candy . . . Andrew's definitely a fan of this particular parade.

Dan wound up with a bunch of extra dry ice from the physical science float, so of course he had to make root beer with the kids.

Some Sunday pictures. I tried doing ringlets for the first time using my flat iron. I think it turned out okay, but Evelyn was pleased with it.

And then, of course, Andrew had to have his picture taken. He did his own hair.

 Oliver was more interested in crawling away from me than having his picture taken, but I managed a few anyway.

And last, a video of Oliver walking. My apologies for the sideways angle--I keep forgetting that videos (unlike pictures) can't be rotated once they're done.

October raptures

Okay, maybe we're not quite rapturous. We're rather earth-bound--that is, house-bound--at the moment, while we continue to wait for our car to get fixed. (The final cost is almost as much as the car is worth, so we're grateful our insurance is letting us get it fix rather than totalling it out. We do *not* want to look for a new car just yet . . . )

In other news, Andrew's class went to campus on Friday to visit the art museum and the natural history museum. Their visit also included a guest lecture from none-other than Poppy. The kids were super excited that he gave them each a sample of pyrite (fool's gold).

I spent a lot of time this week watching friends' kids. We regularly watch a neighbor boy three days a week during the hour his parents are both at class, and this week we watched one of Evelyn's friends in the mornings before kindergarten. They had a lot of fun together, but I have to admit I'm glad we don't do this every day. (As a case in point, one day this little girl wandered around the house in a ninja costume repeating, "I am the Master of the World!" I won't be surprised if someday she is: she's a very determined little girl. Kind of like this one.)

We've also been slowly getting ready for Halloween. Last Saturday, we walked to Jo-Ann's to pick up some Halloween decorations, including window stickers that Evelyn has rearranged almost every day this week. We also picked up some candy-melt Halloween molds and made marshmallow Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. (Not without some trauma. Andrew wanted to carry the bag back from Jo-Ann's, but didn't tell me he was having problems until things started to spill out of the bag. I took the bag from him, but it wasn't until Monday when we went to use one of the molds that we discovered it was missing. After back-tracking half-way through our route, we discovered the missing mold (still laying on someone's front yard) a good three or four houses before the point where Andrew told me he needed help with the bag. Let's just say I wasn't especially happy about having to go look for the mold.)

Pumpkins took over our garden this year, grown from scratch with seeds the kids got at a primary activity. (Seriously, I think we wound up with nearly a dozen pumpkins.) The kids decided we needed to decorate them, and I decided that paint was less messy than knives . . .

 

 The final works of "art." (Incidentally, the pumpkins and squash seen here were all grown in our garden. We still have a few pumpkins yet to pick.)

 

This has been a big week for Oliver. He's started walking! He's taken up to half a dozen steps at a time, though unfortunately, never for the camera. (Believe me, I've tried.)

He's also decided that he loves to sit on his rocking chair. And stand in it, which doesn't always end well.

  Sometimes he gets stuck, too.

In very random places. I was making dinner and heard him cry. This isn't terribly unusual because he tends to cry a lot when I'm doing something that doesn't involve him. But when I turned around, this is what I found: he'd managed to climb into the drawer and then couldn't get out.

He had his first oreo this week, too. I think he liked it, though he looks very introspective in these pictures. But there was nothing left of the cookie when we got him out of his chair, except for what was smeared all across his face and hands.

Now I'm off to enjoy the last session of General conference. So far, I think my favorite talks were Elder Holland's and Elder Uchtdorf's (yesterday) and President Monson's (today.) What about you?