Mooning

So a few months ago my Whitny sister asked if I wanted to go see "New Moon" at a special sneak peek the day before it opened (aka last night). I'll admit that I was not super hot on the idea, spending twelve bucks for a movie makes me cringe, but I said I was in since she seemed so very excited and I thought it would be fun to hang out with my sister. Then I started seeing previews and I thought, 'huh, I'm going to go see that in the theater before it opens instead of waiting to see it on Red Box like I normally do. That could be interesting.' And last week I started to get excited about going out in the evening time to see a movie with Amanda and Whitny, and Ryan would stay home with the kids and I would be fancy free. . . I was warming to the idea. Amanda and I discussed the book on the way out to the Chandler Fashion Mall last night and she is on Team Jacob and I am on Team Edward and we had a mild debate (I totally won). We got to the theater and there were girls in their black Twilight t-shirts and pajamas on chairs and blankets lined up all the way around the theater waiting for the midnight show. Our show started at seven. We felt a bit sad for them that they were HUGE crazy fans who would wait in the chilly evening air for hours and hours while we who were mild fans with a comparatively low level of excitement about the whole thing walked blithely into the theater and waited in line for about ten minutes, our seats were assigned. The theater was abuzz with excitement, and the ten men that were there were excited too. When the movie finally started there were excited shrieks and cheering. Amanda and I decided that Bella definately wouldn't be shreiking and cheering about a movie, even her own movie. But the energy was palpable, she might have been hard pressed to remain stoic. I gotta say, I LOVED that movie. Seriously. I laughed, I cried drippy tears (pick your jaws up off the floors). It was like reading the book only faster and that made me really happy. Now I have to go back and read all four of them again.

even though, "you can't really run with vampires."

-Bella, "New Moon"
(she said that in the movie and I know that because I totally saw it,
last night, not at midnight, so I got to sleep.)

Hiking and Leah's Lament

The kids didn't have school today, we love Veteran's Day! Thank you Grandpa Johnson, Uncle Chris, Uncle Jake and all the other Veterans. You rock. So we went to North Mountain and hiked. It was a lovely cloudy day, perfect weather for an outing.

Tess and Pete at the top. Maybe someday her front teeth will grow in and she will begin to look normal again. . .
A well deserved rest after we reached the top. I made them sit there and Alana was very frightened that she would tumble off into the chasm.

The crew.

I found this the other day and took a picture of it for posting. Leah wrote it. Pretty funny.

Public Service Announcement

Roo

Dracula

Mermaids

It's the Monday after Halloween, the children are at school. . .
Did you hide all the Halloween candy yet?

Photos by the Whitny sister (thanks Whit)

My Collection

Okay, so the planets are aligned or something today because today I have cared for, fed and nurtured to some extent a total of nine children (true, five of them are mine). Not that interesting you say? Well, here's the cool part: They range in age from 1-9 and there is one of each for each age!! Yes, I am crazy for noticing that in the first place and blogging about it in the second place, but I think it is cool. So the 9,8,7,5, and 1 year old kids are mine and I had to get outside help for the rest. The 6 year old is on loan from my dear sister, he was dropped off at like 5:30am, yikes, but he's been at school all day so he barely counts. The 3 and 4 year old were here from like 8:30 'till 1 and they were very nice. And the 2 year old I had imported from Utah, her parents are on a cruise in the Bahamas (cry me a river) and I snatched her from Grandma for a couple of hours. Now if there was only a 10 year old out there for me to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for. . .

Also, I had a funny conversation with the 4 year old. I was making cupcakes for the 8 year old's party later this afternoon for Activity Day Girls and the 4 year old wanted in on that sweet action but I nipped it in the bud and she was all miffed and I told her that only 8 year olds can go so sorry kid. And she said, "But I invited her to my birthday party. Why can't I go to hers?" I had to explain a lot of times that not all cupcakes are for birthday parties. It took a lot of explaining.

You know, now that I think about it and read it here in black and white. It's not actually that funny or cool but you've got to account for the fact that I am very easily amused. . .

Christmas in October

For Christmas this year my wonderful parents hooked us up with a hotel room at the Arizona Grand, a hotel here in town that has a waterpark! My three sisters and their families came too, plus Ryan's dad, Terry and Ryan's sister, Jessica and her hubby Mitch came too. It was really fun. There were 16 kids there under the age of 12 and nobody got lost for too long. . .

My sister Whitny took most of these pictures with her fancy new camera. She had lots of fun with it and took some nice snaps.

Of the 16 grandkids there are 5 girls and 11 boys so it got a bit wild at times. Ryan was tossing boys on the two beds that were in our room for a while and I ran to get the camera to catch some video of the craziness but right as I was searching my bag for it Tyler got tossed a bit too enthusiastically and bashed his head on the wall a little. He was fine but it effectively ended the boy toss and I missed out on getting some fun video. Shucks.

Zeke's birthday was Saturday and he was cute running around in his little banana hammock speedo all day.
He hardly ever lets me kiss him because he is a tough guy.

Relaxing in the lazy river. There are three water slides there and I went down one of the steep ones twice and I screamed a lot and got wedgies. The kids were in heaven and had a fantastic time. We all did. Thank you Mom and Daddy! We love you lots!

The Fall

We slept with the windows open last night and it was a wee bit chilly! Yeah! I sure love this little blue planet we live on. It is pretty amazing how life is supported here on such a delicate balance, as if some genius architect or Intelligent Designer planned it all out for us. Nifty.

I'm going to bake pumpkin squares today.

Sooo Funny

My little sister Amanda just bought her first house and she spent today tearing all the lovely wood paneling and faux bricks off one of the walls. So she filled the back of the truck with all the junk and went to the dump. Meanwhile, at our house, Jeff has been begging all day to go to Oliver's new house and help but he had to do his chores first so by the time he finished Amanda had left for the dump already and he was mad that he couldn't go over but I explained that he can't go over because Amanda and Oliver went to the dump. Anyways, (Ryan is totally going to say this is way too long) Amanda and Oliver just came back and Jeff immediately asked. "Did you guys get some furniture for your new house?" To which Amanda said, "No." And then Jeffey said, "You mean you didn't find ANYTHING at the dump?"

He is for sure our child, we don't ever pay retail.