One Happy Mamma=One Happy Halloween!

SHE WORE THE HAT!!!! I should've known that if I just left it to Dave it would get done. She fights ME on everything, but "Da-yay" (that's how she says Daddy) is the clear favorite. Sure enough, he wore it and let her play with it, and before we knew it, it was a fixture on her head for the night. No wig, but I'll take what I can get! And seeing how cute she was in that hat made ALL the sewing time worth it, 100 percent!

Here are a few of my favorite pictures of the night, then a slideshow of all the rest!

Emma and Elizabeth just love each other to pieces!


Checking out the loot

Two little buddies smooching!! HEHEHE! We sat Drew and Bree next to each other for some pictures (they're just a few weeks apart in age) and we just asked them to give each other a kiss. Boy, did they pull that one off!! This is probably my favorite picture of all!


Bree LOVES dogs, so every house that had one got an extra little conversation from Bree-a little high-pitched "hi doggie" and a cute little "teenk u" (thank you) and an exuberant wave good-bye. I just love the look of pure delight she had whenever she saw one.

This look is a little fanatical, if I say so myself. But Emma was so excited about trick-or-treating. It was all she could talk about all day. So this picture just sums up how she felt about it!


Here's the little Strawberry Shortcake crew-Lemon Meringue, Strawberry Shortcake, and Blueberry Muffin. We got a lot of comments from the people in front of their houses about how they were their favorite characters in the 80's! They looked so cute!

tagged

Aunt Marlys tagged me. She said that we have to use images from google to answer the tags. I'm not quite sure how to make this work right, but I'll try!

My age: 28Cool places I've been: Orlando, Jackson Hole, Zions National Park, Goblin Valley, Bryce Canyon, Moab, Grand Canyon, New York City, Hawaii (Oahu and Maui), North Carolina, Nauvoo, Palmyra, Niagara FallsWhere I would like to go: anywhere warm and beautiful with no loud noises where I can RELAX. And I'd like to tour English and Scottish castles. And go to France, Italy, and Spain. And do a Mediterranean cruise. I'd like to go to a lot of places :)

My hobbies: music, scrapbooking, sewing, cooking, blogging, hanging out with friends, eating :)

My favorite place: "HOME"-and that is any place where I feel safe and happy. It's ALWAYS where my family is, but it's also where my best friends are or sometimes it's a beautiful quiet park out in the country, or it's around a campfire while talking. It's lots of places.Weaknesses: Oh, I've got LOTS of those! Food, for the most part. Junk food. Anything that makes me want to eat more than I should. Brushing off my children when they're needing something, being too critical, thinking I'm always right, being too judgmental, procrastinating. All things that I'm trying to work on. And I have lots more, but let's not focus on those!Bad habits: It seems to me like a habit is something you consistently do, and I'm not sure there's something that I ALWAYS do wrong. There are MANY things I do wrong, but I'm not sure there's a specific thing that's wrong all the time. Oh wait, yes there is. I let my girls watch a LOT of tv. Kind of. We don't have TV service, so it's PBS. It's gotten better since I've started going to the gym every day. Then it's only a movie after school while I'm getting dinner ready. But if I don't make it to the gym, the TV goes on at 9am and sometimes doesn't go off until 11:30am. I know. BAD MOM. But I'm okay with it-I've made my peace. Other bad habits...If I don't eat breakfast then I don't brush my teeth in the morning-I just stick in a piece of gum and get out the door. Gross, I know. I only wash my hair every 3 days-BUT FOR THOSE OF YOU WITH THICK HAIR YOU UNDERSTAND! It takes me a good hour to blow dry and flat iron. I'm NOT doing that every day! It's gotten to the point now, though, where my hair has balanced itself out. It doesn't get oily or greasy. I'm sure my family could point out my other bad habits.Fun memories: Sliding down the stairs in slippery sleeping bags or blankets, teen cousins night and Hide and Go Seek in the dark at Grandma and Grandpa's house, cousin slumber parties on the trampoline, MANY moments with my roomies at BYU (too many to list!), trips to the lake with my family growing up, ward campout at Cherry Creek in utah-you ward members know who you are!!!, remodeling Mom & Dad's kitchen while they were gone-boy were we crazy, ANY time with my awesome hubby and sweet girls, staying at the huge house in Jackson, riding the Dragster at Cedar Point with Dave while the camera was rolling, making skydancers fly into the ceiling fans. I'll stop now.
And now I tag Kyla, Asialene, and Lindsey!

brown hair

People have been asking, so here it is. This is the pic I posted on facebook. I LOVE my brown hair...so much that I might just stick with it :) And yes, it's not the greatest shot-I was trying to take the picture myself-not so easy!

confession

I guess I've just gotta bite the bullet on this one. It's driving me crazy, but I'M NOT A GOOD PHOTOGRAPHER!!! No matter what I do, I can't take a good picture. I thought that if we got a better camera then things would be different. Nope. Why is it that if I look through the viewfinder, JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE, my pictures turn out yucky? It doesn't matter how much I read in the manual and try to do everything it says, I can't get a good picture. I'm not saying I'm this fabulous person, but usually if I try something I can do it. AND I CAN'T DO THIS! This is going to bother me for a while.

we're here...

all of us are accounted for:
1 husband back in school after a nice little trip to cali-although the girls were a little crazy being cooped up in the car for hours on end, at least he wasn't dealing with angry patients and COLD weather! :)
1 crazy wife trying to finish Halloween costumes and family picture outfits and wondering why she feels the need to MAKE everything...CURSE THE SEWING ABILITY...whatever happened to a good old PURCHASED costume??????
1 DANG CUTE Strawberry Shortcake daughter1 psycho daughter waking up every night at 9pm to talk for a couple hours (or scream, but usually talking-she's getting pretty chatty) before calming down, then not waking up until 10am the next morning, therefore continuing the cycle...and not cooperating with the CUTE CUTE Blueberry Muffin costume mommy spent hours slaving over...WHY WON'T THIS ONE BEND TO MY WILL???? just kidding :) I'm really trying to work on "embracing" her defiance b/c I know it'll be a blessing down the road when people are trying to pressure her into doing things she shouldn't be :)



STAY BACK CRAZY LADY! She actually looks AFRAID of me!
Trying the little piggy-tailed blue wig. Nope...not working either!

Why is it so hard to adjust back to life when you go from west to east? Is it because you lose 3 hours? All I know is that I rely on my girls for my 7:30am alarm clock, and if they aren't awake, I'm not either! And that doesn't bode well for trying to get to a 9am gym class! Seriously, I'm all for sleeping in, usually, but I need to get back into some habits and these girls just aren't getting back into the groove! What works for everyone else?

But, we did have a successful trip to California. Of course, we'll still pray about everything to figure out where we need to be. There is one thing I think we had forgotten-the West is one big DESERT. We're so used to everything being so green and lush out here that we assumed that it would be like that out there. We KNOW it's a desert. I don't know why we expected anything different. It's reassuring to know that it's a little brown (okay, a LOT brown) out there b/c the hot summer just ended and come spring it'll be beautiful and green again. But we have this "dream" in our minds of what we want our ideal home to be and we were having a hard time finding it in California. Then as we were driving around today I was looking at all the houses and told Dave that I think our dream home exists in Ohio. Shucks...it's just too far away from family. Guess we'll have to re-think our dream home. We did find some things pretty close, though, so I'm sure we'll be all right :) Dream home is pretty far off anyway. But it's always good to dream, right?

This afternoon was the Leadership meetings for our Stake Conference. The Stake Primary President was speaking to us and began her talk telling us that while she was preparing, she received inspiration about what she should speak about. She said she was a little confused b/c the inspiration had nothing to do with Primary, but decided to follow through anyway. Then she proceeded to talk to us about the need for US to have family scripture study. I KNOW I'm not the only one to ever experience the feeling that someone is speaking directly to you! She told us some personal experiences and read us some quotes from President Benson's talk about the different blessings scripture study will bring to our lives. So I'll be honest and admit that family scripture study isn't quite working at the Latham household. I've given up trying to read books to Bree b/c she either gets mad and throws them at me or takes them away and won't let me look at it so I can read it to her. And then half the time we ARE all together is spent trying to get Bree fed and into bed b/c she has had it for the day. I REALLY want to make this work! I really felt motivated and inspired by the message today.

So here's my request for help--How does your family work in family scripture time? How much time do you spend on it (especially with younger kids)? Have you noticed systems that work? Any thoughts or advice are welcome!

And then tonight was Tia's annual Halloween party. We forgot our camera-like we do every year. The only reason I can think of is I'm usually getting back from our leadership meetings (it's always the same weekend as Stake Conference) just in time to throw on a costume, get the girls in bed, then get out the door. So hopefully the others will be so kind as to share pictures. Dave and I FINALLY won an award this year-Most Original. I was a Whoopee cushion and he was...a bum. He just wore scrubs and a long sleeve shirt, then some shorts that had a fake bum showing out of it. We're usually not very creative, so I was quite impressed that we came up with that. We were also thinking of a fireman and damsel in distress (burn marks on some jammies, soot on the face, etc), but I just don't know if I could have handled how hot Dave might have looked in a fireman costume :) It was a lot of fun. We tried a new game this year. Everyone drew a number then put it back in the bag. Then Brian drew out 2 numbers and those people had to go sit next to each other and come up with pick-up lines for the other while staying in character. Let me tell you, that was HILARIOUS! The best was when the 2 numbers drawn were 2 guys. And man, was it weird to notice how easily pick-up lines come to a guy, but not to the girls. We were STRUGGLING. But those guys kept coming up with things that had us rolling. Good times all around-I'm sad this is the last year for that party!

Project/Craft Night Ladies...

For the next TWO Monday nights (October 20th and 27th), Project Night will be at Bridi's house. See you there!

some pictures

I LOVE this one! Lauren gave me a CD of the ones that she made brighter and more vibrant or turned black and white. They're huge files, though, so downloading them will take a while. I'll have to put more up later. But they turned out AWESOME!

yippee yippee yippee

My friend Lauren took pictures of the girls yesterday. Emma, as always, was the cooperative one and Lauren has TONS of pictures of her. Bree, on the other hand,...do I even need to comment on that??? Every time she looked up and saw the camera she immediately turned around. I'll bet Lauren has more of her backside than her front side! But, MAN, I loved these outfits! Once again, I copied from somewhere else, but who cares??!! THEY LOOKED ADORABLE!

So you have to go over to Lauren's blog to see my sneak peek. Those pictures over there have to be enough to pacify me for now, but I can't wait to see the rest!!!

Yes on Prop 8!

Lately our church leaders have emphasized the importance of using "personal media" to share the gospel or, in a broader sense, be an example of Christ. I don't know that I've done a very good job of that, so I've made a new commitment to use this blog as a force for good, of sorts. It'll still be our family blog, but I hope I can make this a place where people can come to also be uplifted :)

So, first order of business. I've forwarded on a couple of emails recently regarding Prop 8 that I felt were important and prompted me to action. But just in case I didn't get them forwarded on to YOU, here they are. I hope you'll take the few extra minutes needed to take some action as well.


EMAIL #1:

Hello All.
Sorry for the forward, as a rule I NEVER forward. But this one is worth it. This email was sent to me, Alison. Tracy Picketts is a friend from a previous ward and she currently is a member of the Heritage Oaks ward. Please take the time to help out some one who put it all on the line. If you have not yet seen the Yes on Prop 8 Ad, here is the link.
Please help.

Thanks.
Alison Dunn

If you have watched the TV in the last two days, you may have seen the new Yes on Prop 8 commercial. (the one with Gavin Newsom). The professor from Pepperdine University who speaks on behalf of all of us in the commercial is man very close family friend...so close that I refer to him as 'Uncle Richard'. He does a fabulous job stating some key consequences of NOT passing prop 8.
Since the commercial has aired Richard has been receiving literally hundreds of emails, some violent and very threatening from various gay groups and also some even from the faculty. His wife Patti said that another well respected and prominent professor was supposed to do the commercial but was called away to Washington D.C. and unable to do it so they asked Richard if he would consider doing it. He said that he would but he had to clear it with 'the powers that be' at Pepperdine first. He submitted the script to them and they said that they had no issues with it. Now with the backlash, as so often happens, they are not being very supportive. Richard thought that if there were some positive emails amid all the negative it would help.

To help support this cause and those who speak out publicly as our voice for our stance... would you please email the head of the law department at Pepperdine, Ken Starr, and let him know how appreciative you are for their support in allowing Professor Richard Peterson to speak for all Prop 8 supporters? If you could please also contact your friends and other supporters and ask for their help in sending an email as well.

Ken Starr's email is: Ken.Starr@pepperdine.edu

After receiving this email about the backlash of his participation in this commercial, it confirmed to me again why we CAN NOT be complacent as defenders of the Proclamation on the Family. It also gave me more insight as to the church's unprecedented and vigorous support of this issue. As we can see, many groups against prop 8 are VERY vocal and VERY pushy with their views and beliefs. Many of them are all for freedoms of speech, except when it contradicts their beliefs. I personally have seen many No on Prop 8 commercials and haven't thought once, 'I am going to email those people and tell them I disagree with them through hateful speech and threats.' We can not allow our opponents on this issue bully us into submission and silence our own personal views for fear that we will receive similar backlash as Richard. We can not allow a loud minority to shape an institution that means so much to the very core of our beliefs. We need to stand up and be counted. I give a lot of credit to Professor Richard Peterson and others who (at some cost) have chosen to stand up and be counted.

Thanks,
Tracy Pickett

EMAIL #2:

We need to all vote Yes on prop 8 in Nov. I don't look at it as a matter of marriage between two people but as a confusing message it is sure to send to our little ones. Please, no matter what your beliefs, think first of your posterity and the negative effect it will have on them. Check out the link below.
Deborah

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1815825713