Thanksgiving

We had a fun Thanksgiving at my sister's house. My parents were there as well.









The girl in the pictures with Chaz and Kaitlin is my niece, Amy, who is a college sophmore.



The pie pictured is my world famous Apple. It tasted as good as it looked.


On Saturday Kaitlin, Chaz and I went to see the musical "Savior of the World" about Christ's birth. It was really good. Kaitlin and I especially enjoyed looking at the set.

Freedom From Orthodontia Pending

The two years of braces that turned into three is finally coming to an end for Kaitlin. We got word this week that she will be getting her braces off next month.

On the Ruth front, the excitement of having her own retainer has worn off; "It hurts," Ruth tell me when I ask her why she is not wearing it. The super good news is that our insurance approved our application to cover the appliance as a medical necessity. They payed 80%! The woman at the orthodontist said that she almost never sees an insurance do that. So we are counting our blessings.


Happiness is Going to First Grade

This was the name of Jared's 1st grade program this week. He was standing in the front in the middle and was just so stinking cute (I'm his mother, I can say that).





Kaitlin meets HIM!

If you know Kaitlin at all you already know the "him" I'm talking about. This weekend David Archuleta was signing CDs and Kaitlin's dad agreed to take her. She is so excited. Just ask her and she'll tell you all about it.

Winter Has Arrived

Old Man Winter finally arrived with a few inches of snow and lots of cold. On Saturday we bought a indoor cage for Summer, our mini rex bunny and she moved inside. At first she seemed pretty freaked out by all the commotion, but she seems to be adjusting. Summer is litter box trained so if we keep an eye on her she can hop around the house freely.

Reflections

Ruth won her school Reflections this week. She made a puppet show about an Ostrich who thought he was ugly. I served on the Reflections committee and we put on the open house on Wed.. I made a video compilation of many of the entries. It was a big project.

Bishop's Storehouse

On Friday morning I volunteered at the Bishop's Storehouse, which is a foodbank (and much more) run by our church. I was trained to use a box baler, pictured below. I worked with a mentally handicapped young man who would help me take the scrap boxes to the baler and help me load them. Then I would crush them. It was kind of fun and something I never expected to learn how to do.

I learned that you should never donate products to a food bank, but rather, you should give money. A foodbank can buy up to 30x the amount of food for your dollar than you can buying goods at the grocery store.

Care Center Concert

We had an adventure this week when students of Kaitlin's voice teacher held a concert at a care center. When her teacher booked the concert she thought it was an old-folks home, but when we got there we discovered that it was a center for severely mentally handicapped adults.

As we walked in the center a patient met us at the door. I'm sure he was just being friendly, but he followed us with one arm outstretched, dragging one leg and moaning. Yeah, think Dawn of the Dead, which I don't say to make fun, just that that is really what it felt like. When we stopped to check-in, he reached out at the children, patted them on the arms and moaned. Then he picked up a speaker we had carried in and took off down the hall with it.

The hallway was filled with other patients. The kids are freaked out. We had not prepared the children for this and they have never been exposed to anyone severely mentally disabled or with deformities (is there a PC way to say that?) before - let alone a whole center full of people.

As the patients were rolled in and walked into the room, Ruth had had more than she could handle. Though she was supposed to sing a duet with Kaitlin she couldn't, and she and Jared and Chuck left to wait in the car.

Kaitlin was very poised. Always the entertainer, she smiled and sang her best in spite of the very noisy audience that didn't seem to even be paying attention to her. I sang Ruth's part in the duet and when we sang I could see the eyes of the patients light up. Even if they didn't show it with their bodies, I think they enjoyed the music. When the evening was over Kaitlin was slightly traumatized, but I was proud of her.

The Parable of the Princesses

This week was a play that I've been involved in at my church called The Parable of the Princesses. It was written by a woman at our church, based on a childrens book by Jenny Phillips. It is an aligorical story about three princesses who are sent away to build their own castles and wait for their father's return. Along the way two of the princesses get distracted.




I was the crew chief, which means that I was in charge of moving all the props for the scene changes. I was also on the set committee, which means that I helped build the set. We didn't have access to a stage so we built it right in the gym.





This is a close up shot of one of the castles "under construction" which I made. I learned how to make these realistic castle walls so if any of you ever need to make one I'd be happy to teach you how.

I also sang the song for the final scene. Instead of bogging this blog page down, I loaded it up to YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Or at least for my mom's viewing pleasure, the rest of you can skip it if you want.

Snow!

Yes, we had snow here on Tuesday. A couple of inches that melted into icy sidewalks and roads in the evening.

Wed. morning was the jog-a-thon at the elementary school. I worked with Jared's class and it was freezing. The wind was cutting and the little kids just ran their laps and ran right back inside, pink faced and noses dripping. At the end they got a popsicle. It seemed like a good idea when it was planned back in August, I'm sure.





Halloween

After however many years with kids in elementary school I think I finally have the whole halloween parade figured out. I'm not sure why I never knew this but parents don't have to sit in the gym at our school. I learned that parents can sit anywhere in the school hallway. So this Friday found me 30 minutes early with a snack, a waterbottle and a good book sitting in the middle of the school hallway. Yes, some people looked at me funny as they went to the hot stuffy gym, but my persistence was rewarded with a very pleasant parade viewing experience.

After the parade Ruth's grade put on a little program where they sang songs. Half of the songs were Christmas songs with Halloween lyrics like: "Deck the halls with skeleton bones fa la la la la la la la la." Ruth did great, she smiled and sang, but I wondered aloud to the parent sitting next to me if you were going to have 120 children memorize 5 songs, wouldn't it be nice if one of them had some value?

Halloween day was as beautiful a fall day as you could ask for. In the afternoon we were bored so Kaitlin, Ruth and I decided to dress up in our costumes and go to the grocery store and Wal-mart. That was only kind of fun because no one gave us a second look at the Wal-mart. In the evening me and the kids all made a pumpkin shaped pizza together.

Jared wanted make-up with his costume, but five minutes into the process he realized that doing make up took 4 minutes longer than he wanted it too. He seemed more than pleased with what I came up with in 8 minutes. Really, he just was happy with the blood. In fact, he insisted on more and more, giggling with every new line trailing from his mouth. This morning his cheeks were red because he had a mild reaction to the make-up (he wore it 2 days in a row), but I think if you asked him he would have said that it was worth it. Next to the blood he loved his black eyebrows because you could actually see them for the first time.

While I took the younger ones trick-or-treating, Kaitlin had a couple of friends over and they ate, watched TV and played games. Chaz went to a friends party. Chuck dutifully handed out the candy. The weather was in the 50's and the streets were crawling with tons of kids and parents. We had well over 100 trick-or treaters at our door.


The Three Princesses

This is the name of the original play that my church is putting on this Thursday and Friday. It's a small, 1 hour production. I am the crew chief and I also sing a solo at the end. All week I worked with the set crew, turning the church gym into a castle. I made 8 foot pillars, and three small 5 foot wide castles-under-construction (Kaitlin helped me with these too). Our set turned out really good. All of Halloween morning I was at the dress rehearsal. Maybe I can have Chuck record some of it and I'll post it on the blog next week.