A Scary October

Man, this has been a WILD month. I started the month with a huge project at work with tight deadlines--I ended up working some 60-70 hour weeks (including working a full day on General Conference weekend). But now things have settled down a LITTLE (although it seems I'll have a pretty busy work schedule the next few months--that's a good thing!)

Then I won TWO contests on Zooppa.com. The first was the $500 "Early Entry Prize" for the Horizon "Back to School Blues" contest:



Then I won 6th place ($700 prize) in the Amazon Wireless Contest:


It was nice to have won something on each--enough to pay for my time and effort, at least. Now I'm just twiddling my thumbs waiting for the checks to arrive!

Amanda and I also got invited to a Pumpkin Carving Party by some people in the ward. Let's just say, we went, but it's obvious we're not fit for social gatherings.

Lots of other stuff happened, too, but let's skip ahead to Halloween. OK, this blog is being posted the day BEFORE Halloween, but the festivities started early.

Saturday night was our ward's "Trunk-or-Treat." After our fairly boring trunk decoration last year, we decided to step it up this year with a "Nightmare Before Christmas" themed trunk:

[Click on any images to enlarge]

We added lots of fun little details, as you can see, including roaches on the candy canes and a dead bird wrapped in the spider web. The kids also carved pumpkins:

Here's Abe's "Ben 10" themed jack-o' lantern:

And Joel's scary face with an axe in its head:

And Maddy's DALEK (that's from the TV show "Doctor Who"):

As usual, the older kids went as characters no one can recognize. See if you can guess [answers after the pictures].

Joel was Doctor Who:

Maddy was an old-fashioned, "Anne of Green Gables" era lady:

Abe was cartoon superhero Ben 10:

And of course Elliott was Buzz Lightyear (nice to be able to re-use at least ONE costume).

They all got plenty of candy, though before the Trunk-or-treat, we had to teach Elliott how to hold out his candy bucket:

But he didn't need any lessons on EATING the candy (or getting messy):

Well, that about sums things up--bring on Thanksgiving!!!!!

Photo-centric Blog Update

Haven't updated the blog since the start of July. A lot of stuff happened, some good; some bad, but nothing I want to relive, in blog-form or otherwise. So here are a bunch of photos we've taken over the past couple months, with some minor commentary: The kids started school, and Abe started all-day Kindergarten. He wasn't too thrilled with the idea:

but after one day, he got hooked and LOVES school--in fact, he whines when it's a weekend or a half-day.

Elliott likes to hang out on the ledge of the front window:

He also loves to feed Joel apple slices.

We went to the Superstition Springs Farmers Market and bought a HUGE box of over-ripe bananas for only $2. So we had a peeling/mashing party:

After that, we had a LOT of banana bread and banana cake--and we've still got several cups of mashed bananas in the freezer for future use.

We've had a few summer monsoons, and even a couple of HABOOBS (just as dirty as it sounds, but not dirty in that way). During one storm, a pigeon decided to hang out on our porch:

We should've caught it and eaten it, but we didn't.

Abe became a new superhero--Diaperman:

Unfortunately, messing around with the diapers like that sifts their internal absorbing pellets, and Elliott had several uncomfortable days of clumpy diapers.

We had a few weeks of smelly, hairy creatures living at our house; but besides Amanda's relatives visiting, we also watched a ward members' dog:

(Oh, McTeers--I kid because I love...I love that you're not in our house anymore--ZING!!!!)

Elliott gets jealous of the big kids being able to do stuff like play video games:

And use a laptop:

Joel upgraded his Link costume, using tin foil he bought with his allowance:

Seriously, he bought like 3 rolls of aluminum foil.

And let's end with Elliott eating ice cream:

No Power!!

OK, so here's the story of the June 30th East Mesa power outage which affected over 80,000 people...but this is just OUR story.

Amanda Skyped me at work Thursday at around noon to tell me that the air conditioning had broken--the cooler outside had stopped and the A/C was just blowing warm air through the vents. After about 2pm, I never heard anything from her on Skype, and I assumed she must've gone somewhere or something. I came home at about 4:45 to find that the street lights were out in the neighborhood and as it turned out, the whole area was without power due to a transformer fire at the power station (I blame Decepticons).

I got home to find Amanda and the kids in a 95-degree house with no electricity. Amanda was also supposed to make dinner that night for a lady in the ward who'd just had surgery. AND she was supposed to help another lady move out of her house (who was also in the hospital). Because the power outage cancelled our normal dinner plans, we ran to Albertson's to find something we could give her. Due to the power outage, the store WAS open, but on reserve power; most of the produce had been removed, the deli was closed, and we had no idea what to get for a vegetarian that would be ready- to-eat. We got her a peach, french bread, and some cheese. Yeah, exactly--lame, right? We also got a couple bags of ice to help keep our refrigerated food from spoiling.

So, I dropped her off at the place where she was supposed to help move, then drove home to take care of the kids. Turns out she was the only lady there and she felt out-of-place, so she walked home (since of course she couldn't call me) in the 110 degree weather, with a giant pineapple in her purse (don't ask).

While I was home with the kids, I gave them each some bowls of cereal, but when Amanda got home, we decided to head out and see if the mall had power and we'd have a real dinner there. As you might expect, everyone else in the area had that idea too, and it took forever to get some Panda Express and find a place to sit in the food court (it also didn't help that Elliott spilled our extra large soda as soon as we got it--luckily, Joel blocked the flood of root beer with his arms). After dinner, we hung out at the mall for a while, then decided to head home and see if the power was back. We were hopeful as we drove towards our street and saw some streetlights working, but unfortunately, our power was still out.

So then we headed up to Fry's to get some more ice (since Albertson's' ' ' --that's the proper punctuation, I assume--was all gone at this point). When we got to Fry's, there was a semi truck in the parking lot and a line of cars weaving through the parking lot. Apparently when there are power outages like this, the power company distributes free bags of ice! So we got a couple bags and headed home.

We spent the evening testing our emergency preparedness; the results? Not too bad! We had plenty of flashlights and batteries (although a couple were really old and had leaking batteries and had to be thrown away); we had plenty of water on-hand (our upper-class wife and kids had to have bottled water instead of tap water--losers!!!), and we had enough games to play to keep each other entertained. Because our front room was only burning instead of scorching, we all slept downstairs (Amanda and I even pulled our mattress into the front room). After we'd settled down to bed--at around 10pm--there was suddenly a knock at the door. Slightly panicked, I got dressed and asked "Who is it?" Turns out it was just our home teacher making sure we were ok. Apparently, their part of the neighborhood was on a different power grid and they never lost power! But since we'd already settled down for the night and put Elliott to bed, we didn't take him up on his offer to let us hang out at their house.

Luckily, at around 10:40 or so, the power came back on. The A/C was still broken, so we just had to deal with the heat via our ceiling fans. Maddy headed up to her room to sleep, since she has a ceiling fan in there but where she DIDN'T have to be around the boys. Boys are stinky after all. It was a hot, uncomfortable night of tossing and turning in mid-90's heat.

The next day, the A/C repairman came over (at around 1pm) took a quick look at our A/C, and realized that the problem was just the circuit breaker. He switched it back on and we were soon basking in the cool of 80 degree air! In other words, we could've had A/C the whole night before (once the power came back on) and wouldn't have needed to call the A/C guy at all! We're thinking the issues at the power station may have caused an initial power surge that tripped our circuit breaker a couple hours before the main power outage.

So there's our big power-outage adventure. Not the worst experience in the world by any means, but a whole jumble of chaos in a short period of time--makes you appreciate all the times things go smoothly in life...and makes us realize once again how electricity-dependent our existence is!

Celebrations!!!!

"Let them eat cake!"

OK, first of all, of course, the biggest celebration is that I've finally updated the blog after a month and a half! But besides that, we've got some other events to cover, mostly in fast-forward:

Father's Day:

We barbequed burgers and for dessert we had chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting--delicious! For Mother's Day, our ward gave the ladies 2 chocolate bars, so I was looking forward to Father's Day, where they gave us...NOTHING. LAME! Don't they know that's the only reason I GO to church on Father's Day?!?!?!

Amanda got me a couple CD's (the soundtrack to "Twilight Zone: the Movie" and a CD of music from 50's sci-fi/fantasy movies) and an iTunes gift card. You'll notice that I tend to get a lot of music-related presents--that's really out of necessity. I'm lucky that I have a job where I can listen to my ipod at work, but between 40 hrs a week there and 40-60 minutes of commuting every day, I go through a LOT of music, so it's nice to add to the selection regularly.

Maddy also made me this fun card, with a picture of her "holding" a Tootsie pop:

Maddy's Birthday:



For her birthday dinner she chose spinach and cheese raviolis with Amanda's homemade Alfredo sauce--it was delicious!

She chose to have carrot cake, decorated (by her) to look like the TARDIS from "Doctor Who":



In other words, between the fancy raviolis and carrot cake, my daughter is clearly more upper-class than the rest of her family.

She also got a Dr. Who shirt that says "Trust me, I'm the doctor":



and we also got her a Nook (which Amanda has unofficial part-ownership of). Here's her opening some of her other presents:



Maddy also got contact lenses, and has done a MUCH better job learning to put them in and take them out than I did (and I was in my late 20's when I got mine!)

Bee-cause she turned 12 and bee-came a Beehive in Young Women's, the Beehive President "Bee'd" her room:



She also turned 12 just in time to go to this year's Girl's Camp. She leaves on Tuesday and is very excited to go.

Joel and Abe haven't done anything very interesting that I can think of. Here's a funny picture of Abe:



The 3 older kids were all in swimming lessons last week and this week, though Abe freaked out the first day and refused to continue the lessons.

I took Joel to see "Transformers 3" in 3-D the other day (using free tickets) it was fun--definitely worth the price of my free tickets! I also took Maddy and Joel to see "Super 8" (Amanda and I had already seen it--again, we all used free tickets we got from buying a bunch of cereals) They loved it, but Joel claims it was so scary he almost had a heart attack.

Elliott's been talking a lot more lately. 90% of the time, he's saying "show" or "bubbles." In fact, pretty much all day every day, if the TV is not on, he'll keep repeating "show" and pointing to the TV until we turn it onto a kids show. Raising him to be a proper couch potato, we are. He'll also surprise us every so often with words we didn't know he knew, like "cereal," "strawberry," "peach," or "antidisestablishmentarianism." He also started nursery today, and did pretty well--at least we didn't have to deal with him or any tantrums from him, though the nursery worker had to hold him most of the time.

13th Anniversary:

Of course, today is also our 13th wedding anniversary. We kept things pretty simple again this year--Amanda gave me (big surprise) an iTunes gift card (BTW: she got $5 off when she bought the 2 cards--she's still going strong on the couponing thing!); and I got her a magazine subscription (well, she said "I want this magazine" and I said, "OK get it.") I also got her a shirt that says "Talk Nerdy to Me" and has a picture of a Nerds candy guy on it (technically, she bought it when we were at the mall and I was like, "Well, I WAS going to buy that for you, but you can just buy it now instead.")

For dinner tonight, we made pork egg rolls and beef lo mein--delicious! And for dessert, homemade Cinnabons (that IS where we met, after all!)

Tomorrow is the 4th of July, and we'll celebrate by grilling burgers and eating ice cream and Cinnabons and trying not to die of heat exhaustion.

Speaking of heat exhaustion, I've got a wild story to tell about a recent power outage in our neighborhood--but that'll have to wait 'til next time (expect another blog update in a day or so!)

Oh, the Rapture!!

So, as you all know, yesterday was the Rapture. Oh , no, not THAT Rapture. Nobody got taken up to heaven, no earth-wide earthquake, etc. What I'm talking about is the rapture I felt when we went to the 99-cent store and discovered they had tons of boxes of the high-fiber Pop Tarts I used to eat all the time (but which were discontinued a few months ago).



As you can see, I stocked up on them, since who knows how long they'll last, and then they'll be gone forever!!! Now, I WISH they'd been the chocolate ones--those ones were the BEST. But the strawberry ones are ok, too, and eating a 2-pack of them provides me 10g of fiber (OK, and 10g of fat, but who's counting?)



The best part--I used to spend $3 a box for them--but at the 99-cent store, they were...wait for it... 99-cents a box!

That falls right in line with Amanda's new obsession with Extreme Couponing (OK, she's not as extreme as a lot of people, but she does get 3 copies of the Sunday paper for 3 sets of the coupons, and uses them for things already on sale at stores, and in conjunction with in-store coupons and deals). Some examples of her good buys:



Total cost for the items above: $19



Total cost for the items above: $17

She also got 2 deodorants and 3 scotch tapes for a TOTAL of 77 cents. She's gotten free cereals, deodorants, maxi pads, etc. And all of these cereals were between $0.00 and $1.50 each:



Yeah, we're building up our food storage like crazy--and eventually--she promises--this will save us money on groceries (I won't ask how much gas she uses going to 5 different stores every week).

Oh, and at the dollar store, I also picked up some of these rare beauties from my past:



Here's an updated picture of our Disneyland countdown/job chart:



Overall, we're doing pretty well. The things we need to work better on the most are eating healthy (we just really love treats, what can I say?), Amanda and I have had trouble finding time for individual scripture reading, and it's been tough finding a day/time to get to the temple. Otherwise, we've been doing really well--especially on buying food storage (as you know from the pictures above) and the kids' 5-minute clean-up every night.

This past week we went to see Maddy's science project displayed at the 6th Grade Science Fair:





She did an experiment to find out which laundry detergents do the best job of removing stains. Her conclusions: Tide and All tied; Gain did almost as well; Sun didn't do well at all. Strangely, hardly anyone else picked that same topic. Mostly they were experiments about moldy bread or fruit, paper towel absorbency, how to clean pennies, and determining which popcorn provides the most popped kernels.

The worst part of going to the kids' elementary school is passing the large mural in the hallway. Here are the kids standing in front of it:



All the kids on the mural are facing away from us, which I find disturbing. I'm sure if they turned around, the kids would look like this:



Don't blink. If you blink, you're dead.

Elliott has already started his terrible 2's, and he's not even a year and a half yet. So whiney and bratty, and as soon as anyone steps away from the computer, he climbs up and starts messing with it. We have to push the keyboard and mouse as far away from the desk edge as possible, and have to lay the chair on the ground or push it into the corner. He makes us all feel like this: