Our House

Ever since we bought our house 5 1/2 years ago, I've hated the exterior paint. (Actually I hated a lot of the interior paint too, but that's another story). It was badly peeling and in need of a new paint job but even more, I couldn't stand the color. When we'd give people directions to our house and we'd try to describe it for them we'd usually say something like: "It's the pinkish, peachy, tannish house with peeling paint..."--sounds like a place you'd like to call home right? But alas, every year painting was just not in the budget when we had other pressing concerns like carpeted bathrooms and moldy shower liners and 5 layers of wallpaper over crumbling dining room walls, and a leaky roof, etc. to deal with. But finally we decided it just needed to be done. We were becoming "that house" on our street. We talked to a guy we know who does house painting as a second job and he gave us a reasonable deal, so we went ahead with it. Here we have the before photo which actually doesn't look as awful as it did in real life:

And here we have the after photo which doesn't even look as good as it does in real life. I can't even describe how much better it looks! I'm excited for next spring when our yard is beautiful again. I think the house will look really amazing with that backdrop.
And now we only have to replace our furnace, buy new windows, get new carpeting, remodel the kitchen... (See my last post under "5 things I'd do if I had a million dollars!)

Two Tags

Like Alison I was tagged by my friend Kirsten who did 3 tags but since I only have dial-up internet I am opting out of the Google tag although I thought that one actually looked like the most fun. Oh well, maybe someday. Anyway here's the other two:

Tag #1

8 Favorite TV Shows:
1. Lost

2. Eli Stone (which I just learned is being cancelled and I am so devastated!)

3. Psych
4. Monk
5. The Office
6. Fringe
7. Chuck

8. Pushing Daisies (seriously creative story-telling)

8 Favorite Restaurants:

(This is a really hard one because we so rarely get to eat out!)

1. Cafe Mexicana

2. The Sweet Tooth

3. Outback Steakhouse

4. Applebees

5. Old Country Buffet

6. Pizza Hut

7. Wendy's

8. Rosa's (like Alison, I miss it so much!)

8 things that happened yesterday:

1. Made it to church on time!

2. Had to change Kaya's entire outfit after one of those lovely diaper episodes that makes the day they are potty trained look a lifetime away.

3. Finished the 8th Work and the Glory book--again.

4. Took Taylor and Kendall to the Albion College Symphony Orchestra who played Beethoven's 7th Symphony--the 2nd movement is just beyond beautiful. I can't even describe what it does to me.

5. Visited with Mom and Jonathan when we went to pick up the youngest 3 kids.

6. Caught up on an episode of The Office that we recorded from another day.

7. Made a grocery list for today.

8. Read the newspaper.

8 things to look forward to:

1. Having Alison and Mike and kids come for Thanksgiving

2. Thanksgiving!

3. All the fun stuff we get to do with everyone while they're here.

4. Putting up the Christmas tree.

5. Kendall's 9th birthday.

6. When all the Christmas shopping is over with and that last package has been sent.

7. Getting Christmas cards and newsletters--I actually look forward to opening the mailbox at this time of year.

8. Seeing the kids so excited over the season.

8 things on my wishlist:

1. A treadmill.

2. A scrapbooking/craft room.

3. A finished basement (won't happen in this house).

4. Money, money, money by the pound!

5. More time in the day.

6. More sleep at night.

7. A new van.

8. High-speed internet.

8 things I love about fall:

1. Smells

2. Beautiful colors

3. Halloween

4. Snuggling under cozy blankets

5. Apple Cider

6. Pumpkin Pie

7. Thanksgiving

8. Crunching leaves when we go on walks.

8 people I tag:

1. Mom

2. Susannah

3. David

4. Samuel

5. Marni

6. Jenn

7. Nikki

8. Ariane

Tag #2

5 things I was doing 10 years ago:

1. moving to a new apartment in Tucson

2. babysitting

3. serving as a counselor in the Young Women's presidency

4. being a mom to just Taylor (wow! A lot can happen in only 10 years)

5. being a lot skinnier!

5 things on my to-do list:

1. Clean both bathrooms so that Alison and Mike don't totally gross out when they come to visit.

2. Write something in Kaya's baby book. (It's still completely blank).

3. Send a card and gift to Kalen's cousin Casey who just got married.

4. Go grocery shopping.

5. Write our holiday newsletter.

5 places I've lived:

1. Duchesne, Utah

2. Logan, Utah

3. Tucson, Arizona

4. Ripon, Wisconsin

5. Albion, Michigan

5 Snacks I enjoy:

1. anything chocolate

2. ice cream

3. carrot sticks

4. cookies and milk

5. fruit

5 things I'd do if I were a millionare:

1. Pay off debt

2. completely remodel the house (or tear it down and rebuild a new one)

3. buy a new van

4. go on a family vacation (and then another vacation with no kid and then maybe take my mom and sisters on a scrapbooking weekend and then maybe...I could go on and on)

5. do some saving for kids colleges and missions and invest anything left over

5 jobs I've had:

1. telephone surveyer (very, very briefly--hated it!)

2. waitress

3. preschool teacher

4. apartment manager

5. child care provider

5 people I tag:

Everyone listed above and anyone else who feels so inclined.

Fall Soccer Season

I've been meaning for quite awhile to write about our soccer season this fall, but never seemed to get around to it. It finally wrapped up about a week ago and the kids had a season-end banquet this past Monday where they even got trophies!!! (Cheap plastic gold-painted things, but the kids thought they were great. Anyway, for the most part it was a really fun season. Kalen coached Lynnsey's team (The Polar Bears) and is officially retiring from that job now. Actually Lynnsey is retiring from soccer as well. At least for the spring season and then we'll reassess. She loved going to practices but when it came to game days she just had terrible stage fright and it was all we could do to get her to move at all. Finally, she became the official "throw-inner" of the team because that was one thing that she was willing to do. This photo below is actually a rare moment when I think she forgot that she wasn't going to play and she really kicked that ball hard. Actually, she has some pretty great natural talent, if she'd only forget about the audience and really get into the game. Oh well. Maybe after missing out next spring, she'll decide to give it another try.

Taylor's season was interesting. He ended up on quite a large soccer team but it was the only one for his age group in Albion so they had no one to play against. They kept trying to set something up with teams from a couple of nearby towns, but couldn't ever get anything together. So finally they just decided to split up and play each other. Kalen was the assistant coach for Taylor's team and really loved coaching that age group so he volunteered to be a second coach next season so that they can actually have two teams here in town. Anyway, all the pictures I took of this game came out blurry. Probably a combination of Kaya "helping" me hold the camera and a nice balmy temperature of 38 degrees! (They hadn't come up with a name for their team yet, so that day they decided to call themselves "The Icicles".) It was a fun game to watch though. The other coach couldn't make it to that game, so Kalen filled in and he told Taylor that he wanted him to try playing forward. Well, Taylor didn't like that at all! He said he was only good at playing mid-fielder and there was no way that he would play forward. But Kalen (as coach, not dad) made him do it anyway, and he was absolutely phenomenal! The only reason that he didn't score a goal was because the kid playing goalie was a very large and exceptional goalie. So I think Taylor really gained some confidence in his abilities from that and said he actually had a great time playing that position. It'll be fun next season to see how he continues to improve.

And finally Kendall of The Blue Jays. He is just SO much fun to watch because he has such a love of the game. When he's playing, he's oblivious to anything else. My favorite thing is to watch him trying to act as if it's no big deal after he scores a goal, but he usually can't contain that great big smile for very long. He had a great season and a really good coach who taught the kids a lot. His favorite postition and the one he is definitely best at is forward. And this is one sport where I think his small size is a bonus because he can really maneuver in and out and around the other players before they even know he was there. This picture was taken right after Kendall scored a goal and still had his nonchalant face on while another teammate gave him five. Right after that though, that smile popped out anyway.

Can't wait for next season!

Kendall's School Pictures

Isn't he handsome? I would never wish for my kids to need glasses, but I think Kendall is just so cute in his! Especially on Sunday's when he's wearing his suit and tie and carrying his scriptures--it's totally adorable. I know he doesn't want to be called adorable since he's almost 9 years old, but I think he's going to just have to deal with the fact that when he's 30, I'll still think he's adorable.

Penny Walk

One of our family's favorite things to do is a Penny Walk. If you've never tried it, you should. We have been on some pretty interesting walks together. If you've never heard of such a thing, the concept is simple. You bring along a penny and everytime you come to any sort of intersection or side street, etc. you stop and flip the penny. Heads means you walk right and tails means you walk left. Sometimes we have to modify it if there isn't a right and left so we may end up choosing between going left or keeping forward. And that's all there is to it. So for family home evening the other night, Spencer begged us for a Penny Walk. It was such a warm day and we thought it would be fun to see the remaining fall colors. For some reason my pictures loaded all out of order, (I'm on Kalen's computer today and I must have done something wrong), but you can still see all the fun we had. This particular walk took us through most of the college campus. This was a cool squirrel we saw. We have a lot of black squirrels in Michigan but we liked the white tip of his tail.

This was actually in a tree in front of our house while we were still waiting for everyone to gather. If only Lynnsey would have smiled like this for her school pictures, I wouldn't be sending her for retakes!

And here's Kendall in the same tree. I never worry about his school pictures which did turn out fantastic and which I will be posting very soon.

Kaya only made it partway through the walk before she decided to take a little siesta.

We made it through with only a minor mishap. Poor Lynnsey was happily running ahead and caught her shoe on an uneven part of the sidewalk. She was on the ground before anyone could catch her. She was pretty sad but didn't want us to go home, so we actually kept walking for another half an hour.

This was such a beautiful crab apple tree with the red apples and red leaves. We also saw a yellow one with yellow leaves too. The fall colors in Michigan have been breathtaking this year.

This was the clan at the beginning of the walk--minus me of course. I'm always much more comfortable behind the camera. I loved Lynnsey's walking stick. Too bad she tossed it aside before she scraped her knee. It might have come in handy.

And here's the most important part of the evening--our penny. Spencer loved when it was his turn to toss it. Usually though, we had to search through the grass where it always seemed to land after he threw it up in the air with all of his might.

It was a really fun adventure and an absolutely beautiful evening. We actually enjoyed ourselves so much that it was dark before we made it home.

Halloween

The last few years we have really enjoyed doing a theme with all of the kids for Halloween (thanks Alison!). The first year we were a zoo (I was the zoo keeper, Kalen was an elephant, Taylor was a jaguar, Kendall was a giraffe, and Lynnsey was a koala.) The following year, we went back to letting the kids do whatever they wanted but the year after that we tried a Star Wars theme (Taylor was Obi Wan, Kendall was Darth Sidius, Lynnsey was Princess Leia, and Spencer was the cutest little Ewock you can imagine). That was so much fun that we kept it going last year with a Harry Potter theme (Taylor was Harry, Kendall was a darling Dumbledore, Lynnsey was the perfect Hermione, and Spencer was a dragon). Well, the kids started planning right after last Halloween for what they wanted to be this time around. I thought it was a great idea and then once I started this blog I knew I had to go with it:

The Wizard of Oz! This is likely going to be the last year that we get all of the kids to go along with a theme (Taylor really didn't want to do this one this year), so I think this one turned out to be a nice way to end it. I also took individual photos of the kids too and will post them on my side bar as soon as I can but I have to go to Kalen's office to do it since it would likely take hours on this ridiculously slow computer. I found Taylor and Lynnsey's costumes on eBay for a good price after a long and arduous search and I found Kaya's dress on there as well, but Mom and I added the sleeves to it since it only had spaghetti straps. I made her crown out of pink foam and covered it with the leftover fabric from the sleeves and finished it off with glitter. We had the lion costume already so that was a bonus. Kendall's costume is actually one of my favorites. He already had the shirt and pants and we just tied the waist with rope. I used the head covering of Spencer's old Ewock costume as the headcovering for this one. We found some little straw-looking wristlets at a Halloween store for practically nothing. The hat was the trickiest because I couldn't find a pre-made one anywhere unless I bought the whole costume which I was unwilling to do for $50. So instead I bought an 80 cent fabric remnant and came up with it myself. I don't sew well at all but the great thing about this costume is that sloppy stitches just added to the whole look! Not bad if I do say so myself.

Anyway, it was a great day. The kids had NO SCHOOL that day due to a teacher inservice day so we spent the morning at a party at our local kids museum. They had events going on throughout the day, the favorite of which was making flubber, but mostly the kids just loved playing and showing off their costumes.

That night we got them all put together again (Lynnsey got paint on her dress in the messy art room at the museum so we had to wash it before going out trick or treating). They have a set time here to do our trick-or-treating from six until eight p.m. The weather was amazing. It has been so cold here recently but Friday was sunny and upper 60's so the kids didn't have to hide their costumes under coats. First we hit our neighborhood. Not too many people actually participate in our area but a few neighbors like for us to bring the kids over so they can see them all dressed up. Then we headed over to what is known as the Faculty Ghetto which is actually a very nice section of town where an inordinate number of college faculty live. They were a big hit over there. Several people would ask us if they could take the kids' picture. As soon as Spencer would see them with a camera, he'd bolt and everyone would laugh because he was playing his role as "cowardly" lion so well. Kaya had been having a great time early on since she loves to be outdoors but partway through she gave up and took a nap. Then we headed to a couple of Kalen's colleagues homes so they could see the kids and finally we wound up at Nana's where she had special bags just for our kids. We visited for a bit but by then Kaya was through! By the time we got home, she was so MAD! Once we got her out of her costume and in some cozy pajamas, she was much happier.

On Saturday we dumped all the candy together and counted out our "tithing" to give to the Branch President for his candy jars. We do this every year and it is a great way to illustrate how little a tenth really is. It has caught on and some of the other families in the branch now do the same thing.

Okay, this isn't from Halloween but Kaya was so stinkin' cute in her little "I Love My Mummy" t-shirt that I couldn't resist. She just had her 4 month check-up a little while ago and is doing great (she's about 24 1/4 inches and 13 lbs 4 oz). She rolled over from her tummy to her back about a week and a half ago and the next day she rolled from her back to her tummy! She might do it more often except she'd much rather be sitting in someone's lap. She's a joy!