Octobering

And we're back again!

This week has been busy. I had conferences with students in place of class, and I guest lectured for another class (we talked about reading recipes for cultural significance).

Evelyn is back in piano lessons, and Andrew was sick this week ( a stomach ache that we can't figure out--no vomiting, blood work was clean, no clear cause). And to make things exciting, I went down to Vegas Friday and Saturday for the Las Vegas book festival (and forgot my laptop!). It was fun, but pretty busy.

Dan and the kids went to the pizza factory with Bubby and Poppy while I was gone. Yesterday, they cleared out the garden and took a bunch of boxes to the dump.

Fall break is tomorrow, so we're hoping to play for a bit before getting back to the grind.

Catching up

It's been three months since my last post--I'm not quite sure how so much time got away from me, but we have been pretty busy.

Today was our primary program. It went well, but I'm glad to be done! Oliver has a hard time sitting still (especially on the stand), so it was hard to watch him twisting around to talk to the kids behind him and being too far away to do anything about it. Andrew was one of the main narrators, as he's graduating primary this year, and he did a great job. So did Evelyn, who wrote her own talk on fasting and prayer.

Other things we've been up to:

Evelyn got braces this week. She wanted a before and after shot.

 

We branched out into Halloween decorations, mostly this skeleton kitty for my two cat-obsessed children (the youngest two, in case there was any question).

 School pictures came back! Proof positive that my kids are getting older and bigger, no matter how hard I try to pretend they aren't.

In September, Oliver discovered a sharpie and drew all over our hardwood floor. 20 gazillion treatments later (virtually everything someone suggested) and the lines are fainter, but still there. Sand paper might be our only remaining option!

I also had a chance to go to SLC Comic Con. Jeni got to come with me as my plus one. I signed a few (very few) books, sat on panels, got to attend panels, saw my cousins Kendra and Michaelbrent and my aunt Judy and generally had a great time. (And spent more money than I'd planned on, between souvenirs for my kids and Dan and for me).

Labor day weekend, we went up to Provo and hung out with cousins. Evelyn had a girl cousins sleepover at Justin and Lia's house, while Andrew and Oliver got to hang out with Jeni's boys. Andrew wasn't very happy that we dragged him out of the house that Saturday (I had a book signing in Sandy), but he survived. Monday, we went to the Hogle Zoo with Sarah's family *and* Lia and the kids. 

Oliver had his "girlfriend" Madesin over to play. Sadly, she's been eclipsed by a girl in his kindergarten class, named Mailie (Maylie? not sure of the spelling). Oliver is pretty fickle though: there are at least three girls he's contemplated marrying this year alone. When we arrived for his parent-teacher conference last week, Oliver told me he was going to marry the girl who was sitting there with her mom and the teacher. When I asked him her name, he just shrugged (this was Mailie--he found out her name later). Notably, all of the girls are taller than he is.

At the end of August, Evelyn was in a performance of The Little Mermaid. She was a rainbow beta fish (I think??). She was in the chorus of a huge cast, but she loved it, mostly because she got to go to every practice with her friend Adele. (Also, she really likes Ursula, the eels, and the dark mermaids). For some reason, the night that I was a parent volunteer and could actually take pictures behind the scenes, she wouldn't smile after she got face makeup on. I think she likes the goth look.

Earlier in August, Dan and I were responsible for "hosting" an Eves family extended reunion. Mostly, this consisted of reserving the church cultural hall for two days, planning an itinerary, and then assigning other people to do stuff. It was a little stressful (particularly as neither of us is a natural party planner, unlike Sarah), but we had a good time. We had a potluck dinner, went hiking, had a photo scavenger hunt, shared stories about the Eves' grandparents, and had a picnic dinner in the middle of a rainstorm. (Thank goodness for the park pavilion and all the coats we had in our trunk).

Oh--and school started! For everyone!

There's our whirlwind three months. There's lots of minutiae I'm not including (like Andrew's recurrent insomnia), but these are the big things. With any luck, it won't take three months to post again.