Halloween

I finished up all of our costumes without a minute to spare.  We first went to the dental office for the traditional pictures by the fish fountain and trick-or-treating along main street.

Abram wanted to be Abraham Lincoln.   Before he was born, we were worried about naming him Abraham because I was worried he would get teased and called "Abe Lincoln."  Abram was a shorter and easier name, and we liked it, so we went with Abram instead of Abraham.  And then one day in kindergarten Abram told me that he wished we had named him Abraham like Abraham Lincoln.

And then as a senior in high school he decided to grow an Abe Lincoln beard and dress up like him for Halloween.  I had purchased this pattern years ago hoping that somebody would want to be Abe Lincoln one day.

 Noah wanted to be Pikachu.  Our boys have had a Pokemon renewal lately.  When Jacob was 5 I made him an Ash costume.  And now that he is 15 he wanted to be Ash again.  There was no pattern for a big Ash, so I just used a shirt pattern and made the sleeves and collar white and ran bias tape around the edges.

 Joel was Buddy the Elf.  Everyone loved this costume, and the collar is so fluffy.

 Gingerbread Zachary.

 And Mary Poppins Savanna.  Practically Perfect in every way.

 Pikachu Noah.  Some people thought he was a banana....or a bumble bee.  Guess they weren't up on their Pokemon classics.

In our family, we have a weird tradition.  The kids get back from trick-or-treating and they all dump their candy in an enormous bowl.  And everyone shares the candy.  It's crazy, I know.  It's a far cry from the way I was as a kid where we hid or candy bag in the closet where nobody could find it.

I have no idea how or why we started doing it this way, but somehow when the kids were little I did it one time, and it stuck.  They are all sitting right now at the kitchen bar sorting through the big bowl of everyone's candy.  After they go to bed I go through and throw away all of the sick candy that nobody is going to eat--and the jawbreakers that their daddy doesn't want anyone one earth to eat.

The other rule we have is that they have to eat a lot of candy all at once--and then brush their teeth.  It's the candy-all-day-long that causes cavities, not the amount of candy.  And then after 2 weeks we throw away whatever is left. 

I don't know that I have ever made 6 costumes in one year.  It's a new record.

Crafty Sunday

The kids spent the entire day cutting paper and coloring all kinds of things. Our house was a disaster.

I made these cute gingerbread mummies this afternoon while I pretended I could not see the happy and creative mess the kids had made all over the kitchen table.  

And then tonight at bedtime Abram needed a quick project made for AP lit tomorrow. For extra credit he could carve or decorate a pumpkin or other fall vegetable to resemble any major character from literature.  When he asked me which character he should pick last week I thought Captain Ahab would be the easiest choice. I didn't know it was due tomorrow....

You may remember that I won a first place ribbon in 3rd grade for my vegetable art project. At my elementary school it was a big deal and almost everyone created something fantastic from all sorts of vegetables.

So tonight I came up with this great vegetable art project for Abram: 2 potatoes attached with a chopstick and another chopstick for the peg leg, forks for arms and a clove for the eye. A ponytail elastic and some black paper made a perfect eye patch.  A little black yarn and some hot glue were the finishing touch to make Ahab's hairy head and chin.

Hopefully Abram's teacher likes it as much as he does.  What we won't do for 25 points of extra credit.

A big scam

Some people think the Better Business Bureau is a regulatory agency with some sort of power to force businesses to let consumers push them around. It is nothing of the sort. It is a club. The more you pay them, the more they will promote your business and recommend you to people who call to inquire.  It's like a chamber of commerce--on steroids.

Over the last 12 years, a few people have threatened to "report" us to the Better Business Bureau (these are people who have dental work done and then feel like they should not have to pay for it even though they signed a form saying they were financially responsible), and we tell them to go ahead.  The BBB is all a big racket.    I never knew exactly how big of a racket it was.  Until yesterday.

Anyway, a woman called me yesterday from the BBB.   She was telling me about how our business was eligible to be accredited by the BBB because of our blemish-free business history with them.  I asked her if this was a sales call and she assured me it was not--simply that our business record was brought to their attention as a business that deserved their utmost seal of approval and she just needed some information.  She started asking me a bunch of questions about Mark, the office, how long we have been in business, etc. Pretty harmless, right?

After about 15 minutes of this I finally asked her flat out how much money this was going to cost me.  She started on a spiel about how the BBB is a not-for-profit organization funded entirely by the dues of its members.  I asked again, "How much?"  "Well, our fees are based on the number of full-time employees a business has, and so in your case that annual dues would only be $975."

I laughed.  I laughed hard.  Really, how insane is that?  Pay a meaningless organization $975 per year so that I can use their logo on my website?  Do you know how many google clicks I can buy with $975?

And then I was mad.  She had promised me up front that it was not a sales call--and it was.  And then she tried selling me on all the benefits our company would reap if we would only join....which was a whole lot of nothing.  I told her she had better move on to her next sales lead, because not a chance I was biting.

So perhaps this was a meaningless post to you.  But just in case somebody out there thought that the BBB actually meant something, I just wanted to tell the world that it does not. 

Jill's costume factory

I'm off to a late start this year as far as costume-making goes.  But today I knocked out two of them.   

If you know nothing else about our family, you should know that we love gingerbread.  Not sick gingerbread like most people make.  But really good gingerbread that I make.  We make gingerbread cookies all year long, and the kids have always loved to be read The Gingerbread Man story.  It's sort of an obsession at our house.  Plus, we like the part about "Run, run as fast as you can."  Because that's what we do.  We run.  As fast as we can.

We also love Mary Poppins. Maybe not ALL of my kids, but most of them love it.  I watched the movie at least 400 times as a kid, and my kids watch it a lot.   I have every word memorized, and I sing the songs quite frequently.  So naturally Savanna wanted to be Mary Poppins for Halloween.  This costume was more just gathering things we already had (the hat, the bag, the coat, the umbrella, the scarf).  I bought a yard of gray fabric to make an easy elastic-waist skirt, and we bought a spray of daisies to attach to the hat.

 Who wants to play Tidy Up The Nursery?

Abram the piano man...and baby

I have been going through our old pictures, and I found this one from 2006 of Abram playing the piano with baby Zachary on his lap.

 Immediately I remembered we had this picture of me playing the piano with baby Abram on my lap!

 Abram was always a nut about the piano.  After he learned to crawl, he would crawl over to the piano and pull himself up to reach the keys.  He was determined to play.  He also loved to chew on the piano just where you can see his baby teeth might reach in this picture.  We still have some teethmarks.

When he was a little guy I would push his high chair up to the piano while I played and we would play together.  If I look huge in this picture, it is because I was 8 months pregnant with Aubrey...

Who knew that my little piano buddy would someday become a kid who rocked Rachmaninoff's Prelude #3 and other crazy piano pieces?  I love to hear him play.  Especially George Winston's Carol of the Bells.  I sure will miss his playing when he leaves for college next year.

A birthday party and I fix the refrigerator

All in one day....

.

Jacob turned 15 this last week.  He is such a cute and nice boy.  Jacob had no school on his birthday, which made a really fun day.  Zachary had designed a cake for Jacob on paper a couple of days before the birthday, and then he directed Savanna and Aubrey in making his creation come to life.  To quote Zachary, "It's even better than I imagined!"  Zack put the finishing touches of the legs and the 1 and the 5 on the lower part of the cake.  All I had to do was bake a cake mix and make some frosting!

 The cake was to be 2 shades of orange with a smiley face with arms and legs in the center and the number 15 on the bottom.

But before we actually got around to eating the cake we had a minor emergency at the house.

The refrigerator was leaking a bunch of water all over the kitchen floor!  Mark was soaking up the water on the floor and I was watching this huge volume of water run down the front of the fridge, down the grill and onto the floor.  I quickly pulled out the bottom drawer to assess the situation.  I could see that the drainage trough was completely full and pouring water out onto the bottom of the fridge, where it was then running out and onto the floor.  I saw the drain tube coming down from the trough and realized that there was just one phillips screw attaching it to the back of the fridge.  I figured that there must have been a clog in that tube.  So I quickly got a screwdriver and a popsicle stick and detached the drain tube.


At this point, the water on the floor was dried up and I had the repair under control so Mark switched from clean-up mode to photographer mode.

The tube was not clogged, but the drain from the trough above was.  So I grabbed a paper cup and set it below the drain, and then used the popsicle stick to perform a root canal.  A huge piece of black gunk came out and into the paper cup, along with about 10 ounces of water!

This picture is of me just after I pushed the huge black mystery gunk down the drain and into the cup.  Sick stuff.

Then we got on with our cake and ice cream.

 And opening presents.  Jake wanted some Pokemon stuff for his birthday...just like every 15-year-old. 
Now that Jacob had a pillow pet the kids decided they all needed to get their pillow pets for a movie party.  And so that's what we did.  Watched a movie...except for Abram.  His pillow made it, but he was off at the Homecoming dance at school.

A costume classic

I have been trying to get all the pictures from old computers all centralized, and I found these treasures from Halloween 2005 today.

We had a Star Wars theme, and I know there are pictures somewhere of Abram as Han Solo.  I didn't make his costume, though.  It was just some goodwill pants, vest and shirt I modified.  Jacob was Darth Vader, which was just a black jumpsuit and cape I made with a purchased helmet from Christmas the year before.

 But this Yoda creation is all my own.

 I used a pattern for the cloak, and created a little green dress for him to wear under the cloak.  The hood was a creation.  I used a basic hood pattern, but between the layers I put a layer of batting so I could stitch the wrinkles into the forehead and ears.  I tried my best on the ear shape, but I think it turned out pretty dang cute.  Especially because Joel is so cute.

For Princess Leia, there was a pattern fortunately.  It was super easy to make, and I wish you could see the sweet hood on the back.  I splurged and bought a wig for Aubrey as the fabric and pattern for her costume ran about $8.

Our costume collection is a mixture of home-made and Disney clearance.  This  Marie costume I got for $10 one year after Halloween.  Savanna has always loved The Aristocats (all the kids have, in fact).  So I couldn't pas sup on this cute little Marie.  We love the movie Aristocats, but we hate real cats.  How is that possible?

Fictional family fantasy

I don't have a lot of magazine subscriptions, but one magazine that I do get in the mail is Real Simple.  I was flipping through the new issue today and there was one section that caught my eye.

"What fictional family would you like to join?"

I love my family.  Both the family I grew up in and the one I have now are actually perfect and I wouldn't change a thing.  But sometimes it is fun to answer a brainless question in a magazine, right?

Some people had sent in insane answers.  A couple of people had pretty good ones.  But nobody had my answers.  And here they are in no particular order.

I would love to be in the Cleaver family.  Those boys were funny and wild and so darn lovable.  And I want to be June Cleaver.  Really, I do.  I want to pack lunches and cook breakfast each morning, clean the house all day, look fabulous in a shirt-waist dress and heels and greet everyone with a kiss when they come home in the afternoon.  And then at night I want to sit and knit after the day's hard work is done.  Leave It To Beaver is our family's favorite show.  It makes us laugh out loud.  We are really strange, I know.

 My second answer would be the Finch family.  My own dad is pretty much the cat's pajamas, but Atticus Finch is the best dad in literature.  I'd love to be Scout and have such a wise, honorable, take-no-crap-from-anyone but be-kind-to-everyone dad.

My last answer would be the Cartwrights.  I love Bonanza.  Seriously, why didn't they have a little sister? Horses are the only animals that don't totally gross me out, and I look so good in hats so I would fit right in.  I would love to be a Cartwright with those big tough brothers.  Plus, they had such a cool house!  Who wouldn't want to live at the Ponderosa?

So those are my answers.  What are yours?

The people in the background

This is one of the pictures I took of Mark and Stephen after the marathon.   It was after they had finally found each other, and then had made their way over to me for a close-up, non-stalker zoom lens photo.  They are both having the highest emotional moment of their lives.  They both had just reaped the fruits of months and months of early mornings, long and hard running and physical and mental discipline.  You can see they are very happy and relieved.

After I looked at this picture on my big Mac screen at home, I noticed some other people did not have such a good day.  On the far right you'll see Stephen (not my Stephen, but another).  He has high black socks and a white headband.  He started near mark in the corrals, and he was a serious runner.  He had plans for a sub-3:00 marathon.  He had his kids planted at 3 different spots along the marathon route to give him water bottles, and he had a pace chart on his left forearm to keep him on track.  Mark remembers seeing him at mile 15, where they were both still on track for a sub-3:00 time.  And then something went wrong for poor Stephen and he didn't finish the race.  You can see from him face, especially when I zoom in, that he is very disappointed.    Sure he is in the finisher's area eating a post-race banana, but look around his neck.  No medal.  And when you look at the race results, he did not finish.  I have no idea what happened to him, but it is sad that for him it was not his day.

Another sad story in this picture is Jim.  He is to the right of Mark in the background.  He has a green race bib.  He is standing with shoulders slouched forward and a sad look on his face.  He is also missing the medal, and did not finish.  His face just makes me so sad and you can see him looking around at all the other people who were able to finish.   Maybe next year Jim will have a better race.

You can see the guy to the left of Stephen (my Stephen) named Assefa.  You can tell from his face that he had a good race, is completely wiped out but satisfied with what he was able to do that day.  And he has a medal--or at least I think that is a medal hanging around his neck and hiding under his race bib.

I also notice the girl in the pink tank top between Stephen and Assefa.  I know from a couple of other pictures in this series that she has a medal.  She is obviously having some post-race butt cramps.  I can tell from her yoga pigeon pose--that's the best way to stretch out the gluteus medius after a run.

It is kind of funny to look at the people in the background of all the pictures I took.  I wonder whose pictures I am in the background of, and what people are saying about me.

My weekend

The big exciting news from the weekend is of course about what Stephen and Mark did on Saturday.  Their runs were phenomenal.  I am so glad I was there to see them both finish.

But while the boys were either driving the marathon course or resting their legs for the 2 days before the race, I was not just sitting around.  I had planned to read a lot, and knit about 5 hats while lounging around the pool at the hotel.

And then we ended up renting a 5.0L GT Mustang convertible at the airport, and that all changed.

Mark never got a picture of me with the top down and wind blowing through my hair, but that is how I spent the entire weekend.  St. George is such a beautiful area, and I drove that beautiful car all around, north, south, east and west of the city.  And I didn't get any speeding tickets--which is amazing.

On Thursday morning Mark and I went to the St. George temple, and then we picked up Stephen from the shuttle.  We went out to lunch and then Mark and Stephen decided to drive the marathon course.  This is one thing I definitely do NOT enjoy doing with Mark.  He stops and analyzes the course over and over, and it is very frustrating for me.  So I just don't go along on those pre-race trips.  I turned the keys over to Mark and Stephen, and I went shopping.  Within walking distance of our hotel were:  Ross, Target, TJ Maxx and an outlet mall.  I hardly bought anything, but it was fun just to walk around and look without Zachary in tow--he does NOT like shopping.  After a couple of hours Mark and Stephen called me and said they were going to drive the course again, so I walked over to a nail place and had a pedicure.

This was the most unusual pedicure.  I have only had 4 pedicures in my life, but they have always been from women.  This time a cranky woman up front yelled something in Hmong to to back room, and out walked a 50-ish year old Vietnamese man.  I thought for sure he was just filling the foot tub on the chair with water, but then he sat down and pulled out his bucket of supplies and told me to sit down.  So I did.   And it was interesting.  But he painted some beautiful flowers on my big toes, so that was good.

Friday morning the three of us decided to go to the temple again, and then I went out to lunch with a friend I grew up with but haven't seen in about 17 years.  She was also it town to run the marathon, and it was so fun to catch up with her.  She drove me to the race expo where I met back up with Mark and Stephen and took possession of the Mustang once again.  I dropped the boys off at the hotel, and I took off on a 3-hour drive all around the hills, plateaus and valleys around St. George.  It was a blast.  I love the red rock and painted hills.  I love to try to figure out what events and forces occurred to create the stunning geologic landscape of southern Utah.  Wow!

I then stopped at Olive Garden and got take-out for their pre-race dinner, dropped it off at the hotel, helped the boys pin their bibs on their tank tops, witnessed the official "arm-swish test", and headed back out for some more driving in the dark.  After a trip Iceberg for a grasshopper milkshake, I headed back to the hotel and quietly snuck into the room where Mark had been asleep for a couple of hours.

Saturday morning we all woke up at 4:00 AM to get ready for the race.  The boys took the hotel shuttle to the race busses and I went back to sleep for an hour.  I got to the finish line around 7:00 AM and picked out a prime spot for photographing the end of the race, even though Mark and Stephen had just crossed the starting line 15 minutes before that.

I've already written about the race, but I didn't tell you about the sweet medals.  Best medal I've ever seen.

Maybe because it's not a medal.  But it is also not cardboard....remember this?


It's a rock.  A beautiful piece of red rock formed into a shiny disc.  I love it.  Perhaps it is the geology nerd in me, but I do love a good rock.  I'm a sucker for igneous rock especially.  I am in love with this "medal."  Am I in love with it enough to actually train for a marathon myself?  I don't know.  I never thought I would ever want to run a full marathon, but this rock has me actually considering it just so I can have a rock.  There were a bunch of perfectly normal-looking people in the finishers' area wearing these beautiful rocks around their necks, and I must admit that I thought to myself, "If that person can do it, surely I can, too."

First I have to see if I can work my way back up to a half-marathon without hurting my knee again.

St. George Marathon

We just returned from our trip to St. George.  I'm home and have now uploaded pictures from our newly-repaired camera, and I must say that I got some good ones.  The picture above is of Mark as he got to my spot 50 yards from the finish line.  He looked strong.  He was very happy with his finish of 3:07:20, which was almost 8 minutes faster than he needed to qualify for Boston.

This a 7:09 per mile average, which is faster than most people can run even one mile, forget about 26.2 miles.  That's about 4 minutes per mile faster than he was jogging when got serious about running almost 3 years ago.

He had been hoping to come in closer to 3 hours, but with the heat of St. George, he felt very good about what he had accomplished.   The picture below is from the same series but shows a different look on Mark's face.

This random picture is of the 4th place winner who is Mark's age.  His family was nearby me in the bleachers, and he is a professor at BYU who runs for fun with the cross country team.  I just love the picture of his leg muscles.

And now for Stephen's story.  Last year in Hartford, Stephen finished in 3:43, which was a great time, but still 13 minutes off of a Boston time.  And then Boston shaved 5 minutes off of the qualifying times, so he was 18 minutes from a Boston-qualifier.  Stephen worked his butt off over this past year and expected to come in close to 3:25.  I had taken pictures of Mark and was looking through the pictures on my camera, as I knew it would be about 5 minutes until Stephen was going to run by.  I almost missed him because he was so much faster than I expected him to be!  Luckily, I caught a glance of him and was able to switch the camera mode quickly enough to capture these images of him just before he finished.  He looked so fast as he finished that I thought everything was fine.  I didn't know that he was actually in the medical tent where he had to spend about 30 minutes rehydrating.  Anyway, Stephen had finished in 3:20:06, which was 5 minutes faster than he needed to to qualify for Boston.  After I called Stephen's family and my mother-in-law to tell them all the good news, I made my way over to the finisher's area to try to find these speedy brothers.

I eventually found Mark in the finisher's area, but I could not go in, so we yelled across the fence to each other.  He was standing with his friend Eric from his freshman year at BYU.  Mark was concerned because he had not found Stephen, and it was coming up on 3:50 on the race clock.  He was worried that something had gone wrong for Stephen and that he was finishing much slower than he had hoped.  I yelled to Mark that Stephen had finished at 3:20 and had qualified for Boston.

A lot of things about the marathon bring tears to my eyes, and to Mark's eyes, but the moment that I told him that Stephen got a BQ, the tears came for both of us.  Mark's emotions went from worried about his brother to pure joy that they will be able to run it together in 2013.

 
Mark and Stephen finally found each other, and I took this stalker picture of them from the 200 mm lens.  It was a happy, happy moment when they met up.

Happy, happy brothers.