Since when did Halloween take over Christmas as the busiest holiday?

Halloween has always been a fun holiday. When I was young it meant we'd throw together some costume, mostly from play clothes or items borrowed from neighbors, and then wear it to school on Halloween and then go trick-or-treating in the evening. Growing up it diminished in my life... mostly thanks to my mom, who would bribe me with legos to stay home and hand out treats. In college, it was even more pathetic. Several years I spent Halloween evening at the BYU testing center, taking exams for some chemistry or math class.

Well, I'm happy to say its importance has resurged in my life.. but I think it's resurged too much. We ended up going to FIVE parties for our kids over Halloween weekend, plus trick or treating.

1. Friday, Oct 28th: Livy's school had a Harvest festival:

 2. Friday, Oct 28th: Mesa housing had their annual Halloween party (geared to students with children) right next to our place, so there was no dodging it...

3. Saturday, Oct 29th: Halloween Spookacular at Sea World

4. Saturday, Oct 29th: Trunk or treat... All of the congregations that meet at our church building got together and threw a Halloween party, complete with trick or treating from the trunks of the cars in the parking lot.

5. Monday, Oct 31st: Halloween parade and party at Anabelle's school. I attended this, but unfortunately forgot to put new batteries in the camera... whoops...

6. Monday, Oct 31st: Trick or treating. Livy had a blast, as did Anabelle. However, Anabelle noted at the end, "That was fun, but not too fun... I didn't like having to walk around so much to get candy... I just want people to give it to me".

After all of this, I feel like I've crammed in a few years of Halloweens into one weekend. For some reason, though, I have the suspicion that even though I think we'll probably still have some of Anabelle's Halloween candy left come next Halloween, we'll have to go through this all again.

Note to parents: Candy is sacred territory for kids. One of the late night guys suggested that parents tell their kids they ate their candy and then post the videos to YouTube (click here to watch). I showed the videos to Anabelle, and all she said was "I can't believe that mean man told parents to do that! I mean, how many kids cried?! That was mean of the parents too! Daddy, you would never do that right?" In the back of my mind the guilt swept over, as I had dumped 90% of Livy's candy and 60% of Anabelle's candy off at work the day before.

What to do when someone in Arizona cuts your power...

A few weeks ago I was madly setting up a number computer jobs to run for a week on our lab's cluster, and was happy when it started... but then... Somebody in Arizona flipped a switch and San Diego county was without power.

So if your life revolved around the computer, and everything you do requires internet access, what would you do? Well, I first pulled out my iPad to read some papers I'd saved on it... but unfortunately it had low battery, so I quickly started to panic...

However, fortunately our neighbors helped me shift my mind to something else... they whipped out their gas-grills  and we started to have a barbecue under the stars (yes.. I think it was the first time I'd seen stars in San Diego).

Anyway, it was fun evening in the dark... and fortunately the power was back on in the morning, allowing me to get plugged back into my computer.

Anabelle told me to point out the best part of this story... "School was cancelled the next day!"

Love is spoken here

Tonight the girls were driving us crazy, so at 8:30 we rushed them to bed. I tucked in the girls, but Livy didn't want to go to sleep without a song. As I started to sing "Love is spoken here", Anabelle asked if she could get up to get a stuffed animal. I said yes and continued singing to Livy. Midway through the song, Anabelle was in the bedroom doorway, playing with her stuffed animal, so I stopped singing briefly to remind her to come to bed since she had her stuffed monkey, and then I continued singing. Maria started laughing hysterically from the other room. This is what she'd heard:

(Me singing):
"I see my mother kneeling with our family each day.
I hear the words she whispers as she bows her head to pray.
Her plea to the Father quiets all my fears, And I am thankful love is spoken here.
Mine is a home..."
"ANABELLE!! COME HERE!!!" (said sternly, and then I continued singing):
"...where ev’ry hour is blessed by the strength of priesthood pow’r.
 With father and mother leading the way,
Teaching me how to trust and obey;
 And the things they teach are crystal clear, For love is spoken here.
I can often feel the Savior near, When love is spoken here."

oh, the irony.... everyone was laughing after this, except me... I looked at Anabelle and said, "it looks like I have some repenting to do"

The things we teach our kids....

This morning, Anabelle was perusing an American Girl Doll catalog as we were all in the bathroom, getting ready for church. Anabelle pointed out how it was not good that the dolls were so expensive. She then said, "When I'm a mom, I'll help make my girls not want to get one." Amazed at the wisdom of our doll-crazy daughter, I followed this up with a question in hopes to instill the virtues of prudence and frugality. I asked her, "So you think they're too expensive and are not interested in getting one?" She quickly said "No, I'll still get them for myself. I just will make my daughters not want them."

We laughed and then when thinking about it, I had to admit that I fully understood the logic (and think I know where she learned it... whoops...).

Google Voice is trying to destroy my marriage..

So, the last few days, Maria and the girls were on a road trip in Utah. Today they were coming home, and so Maria gave me a call before they left. Since I wasn't there to answer her call, she left a message, and my voice mail messages are always transcribed by Google Voice and the text is sent to my email. This is what Google Voice said that Maria said:

"Hey Larry, hi call me. I'm calling to let you know that weird leaving Saint George. Right now it's 12 30California time And And I'll call you later. I love you. Not. Bye"

This broke my heart... I mean, who's Larry??!!! and that's cruel that she'd say "I love you... Not!" So after weeping bitterly for an hour, I listened to her cruel message, only to find that Google Voice had lied to me. Click on this sentence to listen to what she really said.

On cue....

In the middle of a diaper change the other day, Maria realized she'd left the desatin in the car. I was in the bedroom working when I saw a little naked Livy run in the room. Maria then yelled out her intent of running to the car for a minute. I voiced my objection about leaving a diaperless baby in the house, but Maria replied "She'll be fine. She's never peed without her diaper on before." That instant, Livy looked up at me with a goofy smile, as I heard the pitter patter of something on the small stack of children's books under her feet.....

Prelude to Christmas

Christmas came early in the Lewis household thanks to Grandma Fae. Nate's mom came to stay with Nathan and Livy while Anabelle and I had some quality mommy/daughter time in DC ten days before Christmas. Grandma brought gifts with her and had her own little "Christmas morning" with our family. The girls were ecstatic.






Livy especially liked the dinosaur toys that sounded just like her!



She also loved the alphabet wheel that had all the fun sounds. Yipee for mom and dad, right?



I was just grateful that grandma came so I didn't feel so guilty leaving Nathan to hold down the fort with Livy. Grandma Fae reported that things didn't go too bad and she may even consider doing it again sometime (which is always a good sign that it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be).

Polar Express Ward Party

Our church had a family Christmas party and the theme was "The Polar Express." All the kids came in PJs and watched the movie, while the grown ups enjoyed a delicious meal.





Santa made an appearance and the kids had a blast.


My really good friend Julie (on the right) and her family joined us for the winter fun. I can't believe we've known each other since Anabelle and Aeryn were 4 months-old. She's one of my oldest friends in San Diego.




Two of our newer friends were there as well. Ronia and Erika live just across the way from us and have become an integral part of our neighborhood support system. This is Ronia with Santa Claus (who was having a wardrobe malfunction), isn't Ronia cute?



and of course, some of Anabelle's "bestest friends" (Anabelle's words) were there to add to the festivities too.

Precious Moment

Thanksgiving with friends

Yeah, I know we've completely neglected this blog, so we have a lot of catching up to do. Thanksgiving last year was spent with our friends the Hansen family.

We had a fun Pilgrim theme going, which the kids really enjoyed.





There was a bounty of food and despite our determination to make a dent in it, we still had plenty of left overs.

Runaway Baby

Coming soon... an update on the past several months

I recently realized that I hadn't posted anything since October. Also, according to Google Analytics, I'm also probably the only one that has noticed since they only report 6 visits to this blog since Nov 1.

Anyway, I'll be posting a few highlights from the last few months over the next couple weeks in case any of you 6 anonymous visitors are interested.

Anabelle's recent artwork

The other day, Anabelle drew a little something for us... can you tell what it is?

Yeah, it's mommy and daddy at the Salt Lake Temple. It's fun watching Anabelle grow in her faith.

Livy's favorite fruit

Guess which fruit is the official favorite of Livy? Yep! Blackberries...
Needless to say, she has blackberry stains on most onsies and pajamas...