Am I...better than everyone?

Last night Phoebe was having trouble going to sleep. 

I had gone to the church with Miriam so she could practice the organ and record a piece for an organ advent calendar she's participating in. We didn't get home until after Andrew had started putting Phoebe to bed. He thought for sure he had succeeded in getting her to sleep, but the minute he went downstairs, Phoebe sneaked out of bed and ran across the hallway to our bedroom to say goodnight to me. 

I tucked her back into bed. 

She got up again later for something else. And then something else. And then something else. 

She even got up, climbed the bookshelf, grabbed the (child-proof) bottle of melatonin from the top shelf and helped herself to (what she claimed was) a responsible dose (and, yes, got reprimanded for it, even though evidently she needed a dose to fall asleep that night). 

When Alexander went in to bed she was still awake. 

He came in to complain about her because she had climbed into his bed and wouldn't get out. 

I put her back into her bed.

She climbed into his bed again.

He came in to complain again. 

So I pulled her out of the top bunk and carried her downstairs. 

If she wasn't going to sleep, she could work.

This one got lost in the archives...

(A post from September!!)

On Auntie K's last day here, she took Alexander out to dinner at Medieval Times and it turned out to be the best outing anyone chose (and they all wished they had chosen it as well). It was, in fact, Kelli's suggestion, because Alexander didn't know what he wanted to do.

To be fair, we don't do things with our kids like take them to restaurants or stores or play places or anything like that very often. The pool? Absolutely. The playground? It's free, so yes. Hiking? Again, it's free. Museums? Yes, of course, especially if we can get a cheap membership. But, like, "fun" stuff? Not so much. 

(I've actually come to realize that I'm not a huge fan of fun...or at least not the things that a lot of people seem to consider fun.) 

But Medieval Times did look pretty fun! 

Alexander came back with paper crowns, a light-up sword, flashing cups, and so many stories! There were horses, there were knights, there were falcons, there was jousting, there was sword fighting. They had an incredible evening (and I'm still trying to get Alexander to write about it).

Here he is showing Phoebe some stuff that they saw:

Joke books, part II

Phoebe is still claiming to have a "joke book" to share when what she actually has is a "joke." Of course, I'm using the term "joke" very loosely. If you've ever heard a four-year-old author their own joke, you know what I mean. What I mean—and I say this with love—is: they're often not very funny.* 

The other night at dinner Phoebe announced she had a joke book for us and launched into the most mundane little story.

"Once upon a time, Mom had to go to campus. But then she came back."

No laughter. 

"And she put down her bag and she said, 'I'm home.'"

No laughter.

"Why is nobody laughing?" she wanted to know.

"Well..." I said regretfully. "I'm not sure we understand how this is funny..."

"Oh, that's because that was only the first chapter," she said. 

So this really is a joke book. 

"Chapter two. Let's see..."

Let's just say her punchline never landed, poor thing. 

* This is not to say that they're never funny! Children this age are routinely hilarious, though most often unintentionally so. But there was that one joke about the dead goose that Alexander came up with when he was younger that we still tell to this day! 

Q: What does a dead goose say?
A: Haunt! Haunt!

Meow, meow, meow, meow, then we shall have some pie

Thanksgiving has come and gone. We had a wonderful dinner with Grandpa and Darla and Darla's brother Georgia and his wife Laurie. All the food was delicious. Laurie brought buns and sweet potatoes, Darla made turkey and ham and beans and stuffing and berry salad. We did pies.

And cranberry sauce.

In fact, Miriam made 10 cups of cranberry sauce. She hand-grated the nutmeg. She zested oranges. It smelled divine. 

We left it in our fridge at home.

Luckily, Darla had a jar of cranberry sauce on hand.

After we'd had our dinner, Darla ran to her kids' house for Thanksgiving. We were explicitly not invited...but, like...meh. So Darla went to Thanksgiving Dinner, Part II. We had dessert and visited with George and Laurie. 

Andrew and the kids made so much pie. I...worked on my presentation for next week, tasted the cranberry curd, and showed Miriam that putting all the cranberries into a bowl and shaking them in the sugar would coat them much faster and less...sticky-ly...than rolling them around individually with her fingers. 

Benjamin made the Yucky Pumpkin Pie and helped layer the banana cream pies (with Zoë's help). 

There were...so many pies.

I think we ended up with 4 pumpkin pies, 3 YPP, 2 banana cream pie, 1 pecan pie, 1 cranberry curd tart, and 1 Atlantic beach pie. Oh, and an apple pie in a sheet pan, which was divine. 

It was a lot of pie!

Zoë shaped these pumpkin crusts.

Another rough night for Phoebe and Naanii

Rachel is spending Thanksgiving with her roommate's family up in Idaho. One of Hailey's aunts hails from Glenwood and thus thought the Myrna Layton of Glenwood was Rachel's grandma. But that is not the case. We have plenty of connections to that other Myrna Layton, but have never met her. 

So I was texting my family about Layton-everything this morning, while sleepy Phoebe was snuggling next to me in bed and the morning stretched longer and longer.

"Mmmmm..." she moaned, finally stirring. "Are we going today?"

She has been counting down the days until Thanksgiving, so I very cheerfully answered, "Yes! Today's the day!"

To my surprise, Phoebe broke down in tears. 

"Oh! What's wrong?" I asked her. 

"I don't wanna get a shot today!" she wailed. 

"Get a shot?!" I exclaimed. "It's Thanksgiving! We're going over to Grandpa's house today!"

"Oh, yeah," she sniffed, giggling a little bit. "Not the doctor today."

"No doctor today," I assured her. "But it a couple of weeks, yes."

Apparently she's been counting down the days until her doctor appointment as well. She knows it's coming because (a) all of her siblings have had their well-child checks (except Miriam, who is going in at the same time as Phoebe), and (b) she was worried about having to get a shot when I took her in for pneumonia earlier this month (and I told her that she didn't need to be worried because they don't do vaccines at sick-child visits, only at well-child visits). 

While I was texting my family this story, because it's kind of funny, my mom texted everyone to wish us a happy Thanksgiving and to tell us that Josie is being the cook today because/so my mom got both her COVID and flu shots and my dad is recovering from wrist surger(ies). 

It was kind of funny that my mom would be talking about shots this fine Thanksgiving morning as well!

Made me think of Phoebe's birth four years ago when my mom also got both the COVID and flu vaccine...

Beanbag toss

We found a jack-o-lantern beanbag toss board in the church closet. 

It's been in the church closet for years. No one knows who made it. No one knows which ward it belongs to. It's simply perpetually there.

This is boring bzzz...

 

Today Phoebe wore Miriam's beautiful Mary Poppins dress to church. Naanii found it at a thrift store (probably DI (Deseret Industries)) and mailed it to us out in Durham when she heard Miriam wanted to be Mary Poppins for Halloween. It's been a beloved dress ever since.

Six-Seven

We can't escape from "six seven" recently! 

For the record, it's a "thing" kids these days are saying. It means...nothing...like, possibly it means "mid," but mostly it just means nothing. But if the numbers 6 and 7 come up consecutively (which given their spot in the number line happens a lot) the kids all chant, "Six seeeeeeeeven!"

That's the bit.

So, Andrew went to Indianapolis and parked in the long-term parking at the airport. Guess what his spot number was? Lot 8 number...67!

A day of leisure (kind of)

Tonight I made it to a get together with some ladies in our ward. In order to do that guilt-free I had to finish my essay for my qualitative methodology course...which I did yesterday afternoon. 

Without going into too many details, I conducted a critical content analysis on a serial publication produced by the church, looking specifically at how gender was portrayed. I noted one scene in particular where a young boy claimed that he would grow up to go on a mission while his sister would grow up to get married (as well as several other scenes indicating that this male child was a future missionary and finding no scenes indicating that the female child might some day serve a mission). 

I wrote about the mission ages at the time of publication (19 for males, 21 for females) and discussed the change in 2012 lowering the mission age to 18 for males and 19 for females. What, I wondered, would be so wrong with females leaving at age 18? If males could leave at 19...and then females could leave at 19...what made it possible for males to leave at 18 but not females?

I submitted that paper and dusted my hands.

Then Rachel texted this morning: "Mission age for women was just lowered to 18."

And, I mean, I don't want to take credit for that or anything...but...uh...the timing is suspicious. 

Anyway, because I had finished my paper and because the weather was so nice and because we're all healthy again (though I forgot to give Phoebe her last dose of antibiotics with dinner—darn! I'll have to remember that last dose with breakfast), I decided I could fill Phoebe's request to go to the town green.

She has been begging to go to the town green for quite some time, but it's just been so...busy.

But today we ran to the town green between a couple of my meetings (after one meeting, and in time to take my other meeting on a bench at the park—the town green has wifi...which probably means we should go there more because I don't have the excuse of needing the internet to work). 

Here is a portion of the park (probably about a quarter of what's available to play on):

Buda-Pesth? Budapest? 1935? 1989? What's the difference?

We recently finished reading Dracula, published in 1897, the opening scene spilling us into Buda-Pesth (still hyphenated in Dracula because the city had only recently been created, remember, "on 17 November 1873 from a merger of the three neighboring cities of Pest, Buda and Óbuda").

Today the children gave their reports on Romania (Benjamin and Alexander) and Hungary (Zoë) and we had a Zoom call with my friend Amanda, who currently lives in Bahrain. 

Bahrain has little to do with Romania or Hungary, but we're looking into Middle Eastern countries right now and thought it would be fun to chat with her about her experience. I had the kids write some interview questions and then we woke up this morning to workshop them a bit before the interview. Many of their questions were yes/no questions, so we worked together to create "open-ended" questions and wrote our revised questions on the whiteboard.

Five minutes prior to the meeting I went to open the Zoom room. 

"No internet connection," my computer told me. 

After a few frantic moments, I messaged Amanda from my phone to tell her that...we had no internet...and to give me 15 minutes or so to drive to the church (the library wasn't open yet). 

So we called her from the church. And by the time we made it home whatever hiccup our internet was having was over. 

The cooken was chicked

This is just to say that on November 3rd I turned in an assignment that was 13,904 words long. Then on November 10th I turned in another assignment that was 3000 word long. And then today I turned in an assignment that was 13,707 words long.

All. For. The. Same. Class.

That's 30,000 words written...in a single month...for a single class.

Add in the 4'33" contest, a bout of pneumonia for Phoebe with everyone else including myself getting mildly ill, the primary program (I'm the chorister!), my job(s—because I have two of them...like a crazy person), homeschooling the kids, one baptism, two Pinewood Derbies (with four separate cars), keeping up with the blog, Andrew being out of town (twice)...

My brain is exhausted. 

We went for a walk this afternoon and I was telling Miriam that Benjamin—who is certainly growing ever more responsible each day but who simply isn't as responsible as other children of mine at age 13—offered to make Rachel's taco soup recipe for dinner yesterday while I was busy taking Zoë and Miriam to their music lessons. 

I asked him if he would simply boil some pasta noodles for us so we could use the leftover sauce in the fridge because taco soup was just...too much. He would still need more supervision for that than I would be able to give him from...not at home. 

Case in point: When I texted him to tell him that we were leaving piano lessons and were on our way home, he texted back "Oh." But he did not start boiling water. So we had to rush to boil noodles for dinner so we could leave for the Kub Kar Rally in time and I was like, "Wow. Good thing you did not attempt taco soup."

*****

"I sometimes just need to verify what he does before I trust it's done. I would have had to make sure the cooken was chicked," I said to Miriam, who was walking beside me. 

The. Cooken. Was. Chicked.

Those are words that came right out of my mouth!

Like I said, my brain...exhausted. 

So, anyway...all I have to do now is prepare a couple of presentations for LRA.

But first I might take a nap.

Pinewood Derby/Kub Kar Rally

DO THINGS

It's like our new family motto...except that it's not quite new. 

It's something we've been talking about for years. 

We've focused on "cheerfully do all things that lie in our power" (D&C 123:17) and on President Hinckley's admonition to "be up and doing" and on Nephi's call to "go and do" (1 Nephi 3:7), being doers (and not hearers only—James 1:22), and so on and so forth. There are a lot of scriptures about doing things. 

Admittedly, I'm sometimes a little like April Ludgate from Parks and Rec, who says, "I don't want to do things. I want to not do things." Certainly today I feel like I perhaps would have liked to do fewer things. 

Between an hour of gymnastics, two hours of music lessons, and two hours of church activities (plus all the time driving between those events) I hardly felt like I was home today! We did a lot of doing. 

Thank goodness Benjamin didn't have swim practice today!

With all my final projects due this week (and Andrew now out of town at a conference) I am anxiously anticipating doing a little less homework and a little less driving and far fewer extracurriculars...next week.

Anyway, our family motto has for years and years taken on a variation of the theme of doing things. 

Most recently, after a particularly unfortunate day of idleness and shenanigans, Andrew printed out the words DO THINGS and posted them around the house to remind the kids that...they've got work to do!

Uh-oh!

Paper Stars

This morning I taught the kids how to fold star segments and then set them to work folding and folding forever while I read to them from Dracula (which we finally finished reading today). We are using the pages from old Come Follow Me manuals because (a) we get new manuals every year anyway, (b) recycled craft supplies feels rustic and we're going for a rustic look at the Christmas party, and (c) we thought it would be nice to have parts of the pictures from what we've learned about this year up around us at the party—pictures from church history, pictures of the Savior, and so forth. 

So far nothing much looks very star-like in these pictures, but we've folded enough segments to make 40 stars today! 

Here's Zoë hard at work:

4'33" contest

Today Miriam drove into campus with me. She is quite happy to be chauffeur, now that she knows exactly what coming to campus with Mom entails (peace! quiet! spacious office! desk snacks!).

"No wonder Rachel liked coming to campus with you!" she remarked.

And it's true. We do get a lot of uninterrupted work accomplished when we go into campus. 

We just have to offset it with the commute time. Is [[x hours of uninterrupted work] - [y hours of commute time]] > [z hours of Phoebe-infested work time at home]? 

I'm really not sure. That's why we also like to stay home sometimes, too. 

But today I needed to go in because I was one of ten presenters at the 4'33" contest!

I spoke about religious literacy (which is what I usually speak about) and awkwardly used the word "Mormon" in place of "member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" because...when you only have 4 minutes and 33 seconds to describe your entire research project (and your research project necessarily involved you talking about your subjectivity as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, saying The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a billion times really eats into your talking time). So I made a little disclaimer and just went with a good ol' nickname.

Patrick and Hadis watched from Austria (super last minute, too—I was like, "Hey! This is starting in 7 minutes. I'm the second presenter!" and they hopped on) and sent me this picture:

Simply Ravenous

After Phoebe had perked up enough that she was actually able to join us for a meal, she was rather... enthusiastic...about the idea of eating, having gone for so many days with hardly any appetite at all.

"Somebody put food on my plate!" she demanded, before the prayer had even been said.

To be fair, we often do put food on her plate so that it can cool off while we're waiting to say the prayer and she can be...satisfied...while everyone else is getting their food. It's probably a bit of a holdover from her toddler years, which are now over. Apparently.

Are we babying her? Probably.

Anyway, we told her that we hadn't even had the prayer yet and were still getting things on the table—so hold her horses!

"Somebody put food on my plate so I can be ready to eat after the prayer," she clarified. "I won't eat before the prayer. I promise."

We eventually did start filling a plate for her and when the prayer was said she tucked in with gusto. 

"Wow, Phoebe," Andrew remarked. "You're ravenous today."

She stopped, looked at him, batted her beautiful eyelashes.

"Fank you!" she said through a mouthful of food. Then, realizing this might have been a self-centered response, quickly added. "You, too!"

"Do you...know what ravenous means?" Andrew asked. 

"I do not," she said. "May I have s'more pears, please?"

"It means that you're really hungry."

"Oh, I am!" she said.

And she was.

Benjamin's swim meet

Today I got to take Benjamin to his swim meet (because it was at our own YMCA and I...can drive there). I parked myself in a seat in the viewing deck (which was the hallway), pulled out my laptop and worked on a presentation and did some research in between his events. These meets are way more chill than the summer events, which always feel like pure chaos to me.

Probably helps that I've only ever signed up for ribbon duty. 

Benjamin's coach was quite ambitious this meet—he signed Benjamin up for a 50 free, a 200 IM, and a 100 fly in addition to two relays! Benjamin took it all in stride, though! He dropped time on his free and IM events. This was his first time racing a 100 fly.

Here he is doing the fly portion of his IM:

Phoebe is 4!

Where do I begin with this girl?

She woke up around 1:00 in the morning (she's been waking up a lot lately—we'll blame it on the pneumonia). 

"Happy birthday," I whispered when I picked her up.

"It's not morning," is what she told me.

"True, but it is your birthday," I told her. "And listen! Your primary songs are even playing birthday songs for you! Isn't that lucky?"

"It's not," she said. "I need a drink."

"Let's get a drink for you," I said. 

Meanwhile Andrew had come upstairs to take over. Phoebe has always been a little bit...permanently annoyed...with me at night time so Andrew has stepped up to be the one to put her back to bed over and over and over again. Because she responds better to him in the middle of the night.

Though I was secretly happy to hear her also tell him "It's not morning!" in response to his "Happy Birthday!" to her. 

Andrew had to work all day on Thursday, so he wasn't there when Phoebe rolled over, put her face in my face and said, "Mom—presents!" to wake me up. 

Joke was on her! I hadn't even wrapped her presents yet because we'd talked about just doing that on Friday instead. She's a baby, we reasoned, she doesn't understand time. Alas, she's not a baby anymore and has been meticulously counting down the days until her birth, pneumonia notwithstanding. 

I put her off gifts by suggesting she help me make her cake.

Phoebe wanted a pink heart-shaped cake with "bad puppies" and pears, pineapple, and cherries (the latter of which she found in our storage room while we were fetching a pink cake mix). I managed to talk her out of the pears and pineapple. The cherries we turned into a filling.

Here she is stirring the cake batter:

Playing!

I took the boys to the doctor (for well-child checks) first thing in the morning, leaving Andrew and all the girls sleeping away. The boys are growing great. Benjamin is 5'3" tall, only two inches shorter than Miriam (who seems to have plateaued) and precisely one foot taller than Alexander. 

When we came home, Zoë was practicing the piano and Phoebe was setting up an elaborate game of "Bethlehem," with the ball at the very center representing baby Jesus. 

Unlimited snuggle time

We went for another walk in the cold today. Here is Phoebe at the beginning of our walk, looking much more alert and alive than yesterday: 

Phoebe with pneumonia

Yesterday Zoë had her well-child check. Tomorrow Benjamin and Alexander have their well-child checks. So we figured we may as well squeeze in a little sick-visit for Phoebe today (before her and Miriam's well-child checks in a few weeks) so the office really gets to know us.

She's on day five of a cough and fever, and is quite miserable. She's been diagnosed with pneumonia due to her little lungs crackling and is on antibiotics, so will hopefully be feeling better by her birthday!

Poor little thing!

More haiku moments

1) That time (yesterday) I very nearly stepped on this tiny frog that was sitting on our driveway.

Small piece of gravel
hopped away from my foot fall—
camouflaged frog

Three haikus for today

The first is actually from last night when I heard quite the kerfuffle in the front yard. I looked outside and a big ol' buck was head-butting my bananas. I am not sure this is what George Bluth meant when he said "There's always money in the banana stand," but...for us, in that singular moment, we had at least one buck in our little stand of bananas...

Antlered bucks battle,
thrashing my banana trees—

a well-rehearsed rut

We are having a cold snap. Miriam suggested we go for a walk this afternoon to just see how cold it truly was. The answer? Cold. We originally planned on leaving poor, sick Phoebe at home, but she really wanted to come, so we bundled her up in the wagon (in a sleeping bag and another couple of blankets) and let her get some fresh air into her lungs. We were surprised—and delighted—when a gust of wind shook some snowflakes down on us...

Flit! Sudden snowflakes,
erratic crystal butterflies—
a fleeting flurry

And just now I am looking out my window into the chill and windy darkness, and the streetlights look so romantic, flashing out secret codes into the night as they are covered and uncovered by branches and leaves...

Through tree branch shadows
bandied about in the wind

street lamps flicker

They're not perfect...but were a wonderful distraction from what I should be writing (what I desperately need to be writing). 

There is no escaping!

Zoë had a well-child check this morning. She's growing just fine, had her tetanus shot today. No real concerns.

While we were waiting for the nurse to come in for vaccinations (see: tetanus, also flu, with COVID to come in the next little while) we were trying to figure out all the animals and actions on the poster. The manatee playing the mandolin was a tricky one for Zoë—and what obscure things to choose. Urchin for U was interesting, but the poor urchin was doing little other than being under water. 

N was just offensive though...it was of a newt clearly taking a nap. 

And we all know how I feel about napping newts.

Primary Program (and Phoebe's first talk)

We had a long full day of church-related stuff. Thankfully I got to have a nap in the middle of it all. Some notes:

• yesterday was "Donut Day," also known as the anniversary of Karen's death; Grandpa brought some donuts over for us
• this morning was our primary program; Grandpa and Darla came to watch; Elder Fish of the (tenth quorum of the) seventy was there
• then I taught primary as normal; the entire stake primary presidency was there, along with the stake president
• Andrew stuck around long enough to have a temple recommend interview and then took Phoebe home because she's not entirely healthy still
• I had a temple recommend interview after primary
• I took a nap
• We went to choir practice
• Miriam drove me to the stake center for a stake leadership meeting

All in all it was about 12 hours of church-y stuff, so a very church-y Sunday, indeed. 

I made a slideshow that told all the kids when their part was coming up, and had all the songs in order and everything. And then I had a complete brain meltdown before one of the songs and couldn't remember the time signature or even feel the beat of the song somehow and realized that I've probably never actually conducted that song in my life, in spite of having spent the past 11 months teaching it to the kids, because I've only ever done the actions and...it was a bit awkward. But we got through it just fine...more or less.

Next time, I'm going to make a note of the time signatures for myself just to give my brain a break. 

I just...completely forgot how to conduct for a minute there. And I didn't have any music up there with me because I don't use music in primary. I just...sing along with the kids...sans music. So I fumbled through a few bits, but that's okay.

It went well. We had about a dozen kids there and they sang nicely and said their lines just fine. 

Zoë was in charge of helping the Sunbeams, specifically because we knew Phoebe wasn't going to let anyone else help her. She said, "Jesus loves us all the time, no matter where we are. How can you show love to someone else, just like Jesus does?"

Then she prompted Phoebe to say, "I can show love to others by drawing them a picture."

The other Sunbeams said things like "share my monster trucks," and "give a high five," so she was very much on theme.

Oh, Miriam (and Oh, Phoebe)!

We finished reading the Doctrine and Covenants a couple of weeks ago (I can't remember precisely when anymore) and have been working on memorizing the Articles of Faith in addition to finishing up our memorized scriptures for the year (you can see how we're doing here: the green (17) are passed off and yellow (3) mean we're still working on things). Soon we'll start going through our Christmas devotional book. 

Anyway, memorizing the Articles of Faith has been a fun challenge. Phoebe has been working on the first one, which is a funny one for her because she still struggles with fronting. She can say /k/ and /g/ now but it's harder for her to place those sounds in certain words. For example, cat. That is a trickier word than you might think because she used to say "tat," and that's not right because there's a /k/ in there. But where?

Is it tac? Is it cat? 

Sometimes she has to say the word multiple times to get it right. 

And so it is with the first Article of Faith. 

95% of the time, Phoebe will begin, "We believe in dog..."

"God," we'll tell her. "Start at the back and move to the front."

"We believe in dah...in dah...in dog...in dah...in God!"

"Hey! You did it!"

"That was duud, wasn't it?"

"Mmmm...yes. Keep going."

"We believe in dog the Eternal Father..."

Where's my pants?! (part 4, I think)

Andrew packed a suitcase the night before he left. He never worries about these things very far in advance. He's just...a very confident packer.

He landed in DC and...I don't know at what point he noticed, but it was after he got to his hotel room and was going to freshen up before heading to an important everyone-else-was-wearing-suits dinner.

"Guess who forgot *~*~*~pants~*~*~*" he texted.

This was news was incredible! We have such a rich history of DC and...forgetting pants.

Rachel famously forgot to pack pants back in 2016. 

That same year, Andrew forgot to pack a coat for DC. 

And now here it is, 2025 and he forgot to pack pants for DC. 

Everyone needed to know about this.

So I quickly told everyone.

While Andrew was in DC

Andrew is on his way home from a whirlwind trip to DC for a conference. True to their word, the FAA did cancel a lot of flights. Andrew was lucky that both his flights remained on the docket...though they were delayed...and the airports were miserable. 

Phoebe decided it would be a good time to get croup (maybe). 

She was up all night coughing last night. I barely clocked 3 hours of sleep by the time I needed to get up to head to seminary with Miriam. I brought a pillow and blanket and tried to nap in the car while she was in seminary...but was ultimately unsuccessful. 

When we got home (where Benjamin was left in charge), the kids were still sleeping. Here's Phoebe, who definitely claimed Andrew's spot as if it were her own:

Ups and downs

This afternoon while Miriam and Zoë were at music lessons, I took the other kids to the park. Phoebe has been begging to go to "the sandbox park" for ages, but the last few times we've gone the sandbox (intended for volleyball) has been occupied by a large group. So we've skipped out on that in favour of other play places. But today—surely—was our day! 

We got to the park and the sandbox was free but...the sand toys that had been patiently waiting in the van were no where to be found. I guess Daddy took them out when he was loading up soups and things to take to the church for Alexander's baptism on Saturday.

"So it looks like we don't have any sand toys," I said, after looking in the trunk (just in case). 

"That's okay!" Phoebe said. "I can use my hands! I just need to play in the sand!!"

Evidently she's been desperate to get good and sandy for quite some time, but she agreed to go on a little walk around the pond first. Here she is sitting on the bench, watching the pond (her words):

What have I done?

This week I...

• Submitted a proposal to the 4'33" contest (Monday, October 27)
• Had a week full of typical school and work and extracurricular activities
• Celebrated Halloween (a doozy of a day, if ever there was one)
• Hosted a baptism celebration (Saturday, November 1)
• Attended a ward party (Saturday, November 1)
• Went to church, where we had a run-through of our primary program (which will be next week—and I think we can have a Zoom option on if anyone should want to join in). I also was roped into a meeting about the Christmas party, and went to choir practice (Sunday, November 2)
• Found out that I am one of 10 finalists for the 4'33" contest (today!) 
• There is an option to Zoom, I believe, if anyone wants to watch me receive my "prize"...which is giving a presentation... (Such lousy prizes in academia sometimes—right, Mom?)
• Turned in my second to last big project for my "designing qualitative research" class (today!)
• I don't mean to brag but, uh, it's 13,904 words (and I am so happy and relieved to have turned it in)

I also had to spend the entire week negotiating with the ultimate loop-hole-finder. Perhaps "ultimate" is too strong of a word because I find that most little kids are notorious loop-hole-finders.

Alexander's baptism (and the ward trunk-or-treat)

There's this page in the book I Spy a Nephite (which you can borrow on the Internet Archive if you, like, me only own Where Have All the Nephites Gone?—or worse! If you own none of Pat Bagley's search and find books) which I felt like we were living today! 

This particular page is of a wedding reception. There's a pile of gifts on stage (including a canoe-shaped package) beside a little chamber orchestra. There's a bouquet toss going on, a wedding line, a buffet table, streamers and bells and...a basketball game. As it turns out "somebody made a mistake in scheduling the ward cultural hall."

To be fair, scheduling our building is particularly tricky because we have three units in the building across two stakes. So putting things on the calendar is a bit of a gamble. For example, we booked the church from 9 to 2 today...but when we showed up there was a suspicious number of cars in the parking lot and the door to the church was propped open. 

We went inside and found that one of the other wards was decorating for their Fall Festival this evening. The cultural hall was all decked out in Halloween decorations. They'd even put up a big ol' display directly in front of the doors to the baptismal font. 

Andrew explained that we had a baptism today and...

The lady in charge basically told him he'd have to schedule the building like everybody else and pick a new day for his baptism. 

He said that we...weren't going to do that, that we had booked the church. 

She said that was impossible because she had booked the church. 

They both pulled out their phones to show each other that they had each booked the church. And, indeed, they had each booked the church. Further, Andrew informed her, there was to be another baptism after this one...so...

Eventually the lady decided she could give us one third of the cultural hall, that her crew would move all the decorations into the other part of the gym and...that was kind of them because it meant that they had to undo some of their work (we really couldn't have their display in front of the baptism font). 

And then I just had to kick the missionaries out of the Relief Society room (where they were having a meeting). 

And then we were able to set up for Alexander's baptism. 

Halloween 2025

 

Halloween 2025 is in the books! And what a day it was! 

Remind me never to hold a baptism the day after Halloween (and the same day as the ward Halloween party) ever again! I made about 12 dozen cookies, pureed and froze 20 cups of jack-o-lantern, and made 2 loaves of pumpkin bread (with another 2 cups of pureed jack-o-lantern). Andrew has made three types of soup and some rolls and is working on crackers. 

And I spent like two hours taking kids trick-or-treating. 

And I have a big assignment due on Monday. 

It's fine. It's been...just...a big and full day.