Turning our hearts

Now that both Aspen and Toby are old enough, we are trying to go do baptisms for the dead at the temple more often.  Aunt Joan kindly supplied us with some family names and we have been trying for the last two months to get to the temple.  While we were in Las Vegas, we wanted to take advantage of the close proximity to the temple (2 miles away) to finally get the baptisms done. 


We remembered last minute (as in a few hours before leaving for the airport) to get recommends for Toby and Aspen while we were at church.  We even caught the name typo on the recommend before leaving the church and had the bishop correct it.   I kept them for safe keeping.

In Las Vegas, I called the temple and got the last time slot available before the holiday for family baptisms.  Everything was all working out.  We were all showered, changed and ready to go.  I had the names, Nate and  I had our recommends.

I went to get find the kids' recommends, and they were nowhere to be found.

I looked everywhere, twice.  We prayed.  I looked everywhere again.  I called a member of our bishopric.  It seemed hopeless.  So I called the temple to let them know we couldn't make it.  But they had a solution.  A member of our bishopric just needed to call the temple.  So, though we were late.  We still managed to get in.  We were able to get all our names done. 

I know that it was an answer to prayers.  I think that those family members we were doing baptisms for really wanted us to be able to get their work done for them.  I am also glad that we could go as a family.  Soon, I will be able  to be in the temple with all of my children.  I am looking forward to that day.

Hazel and the first Thanksgiving

Hazel's school class had a Thanksgiving feast.  It was complete with chicken nuggets, tater tots, mac 'n cheese and cupcakes.

Hazel's class dressed up at native americans in a little skit about the first Thanksgiving. (The other class were pilgrims.)

Happy Birthday Earl!

Earl celebrated a landmark birthday this year - 60 years!

And look what he has to show for it...

13 of his 16 grandchildren. 

(This picture was as good as we could get.)

More Thanksgiving

Besides our non-traditional lobster, we had all the regular Thanksgiving fixings too.  Everyone was busy with something. 

Bryan and Sariah roasted a beautiful turkey, made stuffing and mashed potatoes and the famous frog-eyed salad (a Brunner family staple).

Everyone enjoyed pitching in to get dinner ready.

Earl was sporting one of my favorite Texas tees (from Rudy's) while making gravy.

Robin made some yummy rolls.

Sariah's daughters made some lovely place cards for the Thanksgiving table.  I liked my best!

Everyone donated some pies.

There was definitely enough food for all.

Thanks to Vickie and Earl for hosting us for a very filling Thanksgiving.

just like the first thanksgiving

One of our Thanksgiving traditions is to do something different for Thanksgiving.  We've gone camping and had a smoked turkey reheated in a cardboard reflector oven.  We've had a roast pig at a samoan luau.  We've had a typical traditional thanksgiving.  We've deep fried a turkey.  We've been with our extended family, with friends, and by ourselves.  This year we joined our family in Las Vegas.  Nate redeemed some card points and we got ourselves some original Thanksgiving fare...

10 live lobsters!

The pilgrims mst likely ate lobster, right?

All the kids wanted to see the lobsters.  Not all wanted to touch the, but eventually did.  Some were fiestier than others.  We only had one premature fatality.

China wasn't sure what to make of them either.

We cooked them up, thanks to Earl's new deep fryer.

Don't they look tasty?

Nate outdid himself this year.

cool running

I went running this morning. 

I had to talk myself into it for about 3 hours.  I had to take a bunch of advil because I am still not feeling great.  But I brought all my running gear to Vegas and I felt like I had to use it since I brought it.  You know what happened?  I ran three miles.  (I had planned to just walk, really).  And I did it 10 minutes faster than the 3 miles I ran at home last week!  Yes I know...CRAZY!  I am guessing that my asthmatic lungs don't like the humidity/mold/allergen laden air in Texas.  Or maybe running at higher elevations is easier for me (it's close to sea level in Texas).  So, even though I was sick, tired and not really motivated, running here was definitely more inspiring than at home. 

I might actually go again tomorrow!

over the river and through the woods

Here's a run down of the news in our life (if you're interested):

Finally got my birthday present last week - my very own lap top.  I jumped up and down giddy with excitement (just like a teenage girl) when the FedEx man rang the doorbell.

Also finally got a new phone (my old one would randomly white out the screen.  Making it impossible to call anyone (unless I had their number memorized or on speed dial) Or know who was calling.)  iPhones are fabulous.  (Nate has iphone envy, even though his work finally got hiim a blackberry).  My kids use it more than I do...it has games and movies.

Aspen had her first lock-in at school last weekend. (her drama class is rehearsing for their upcomping play)  I went with her as a chaperone.  No one slept.  But there was lots of drama!  (of all kinds).

After 4 1/2 years, Nate was released from being the Elder's Quorum president.  Finally.  So he has this week off from church responsiblity.  I'm sure that won't last though.  Nate is too awesome for them to let sit idle for long.

I was called as the first counselor in the Relief Society.  It has been an interesting change for me.  I am humbled beyond measure to be serving the sisters in our ward.  Our fearless leader/president is fabulous.  I am learning so much from her already.

The weather has been nice and fallish.  Fog in the morning, cool evenings and mornings, some rain, we even had a light freeze last week! 

We are in Las Vegas for Thanksgiving.  Yay!!!  It has been 5 years since we were here last, and it is nice to visit with family.  The kids are having fun playing with cousins.  I think I caught the nasty cold Hazel had last week.  Not feeling so hot.  But at least I don't have any big responsibilities this week.  So I guess it's as good a time as any for being down for a bit.  Maybe I'll get some reading in, or blogging...maybe both!

I can't believe it is the holiday season already.  2009 is nearly over!  Time flies...

I think this is awesome

I was reading this post on cjane enjoy it the other day.  I think this would be so much fun to have in my house.  I think the biggest hurdle would be convincing Nate. 

When we lived in Taylor we let the kids paint on one of the walls during a long remodel.  They keep asking to do it again. 

I think Sharpies would work even better.

I need to work on this a bit.  We'll see...

"Tomorrow is always fresh."

Do you ever have days that you just want to start over and try again?

Hazel came in bed with me sometime in the middle of the night last night. (They don't make a bed big enough for me, Nate, and an extra kid.)  Consequently I did not sleep at all.  But I wasn't awake enough to get up and move her back to her own bed.

After getting up, doing a seminary car-pool, making three lunches, three breakfasts, two school drop offs, and one child dressed and hair done, I was done for the day and it was only 8:15 am.  I so badly just wanted to go back to sleep, get some rest, then wake up and try to do the day again.

Didn't happen.

Instead I spent 4 hours going to the dentist with Toby (6 cavities filled takes a long time), running two errands, doing preschool carpool and getting gas.

I don't function very well on little sleep. I tend to not be very productive and pretty grumpy.

So I plugged Hazel into PBS and took a nap for the afternoon. (Adult naptime should be mandatory.)  My children were very cooperative (read QUIET) and entertained themselves.

Woke up just in time to go to a meeting and now I finally feel ready to start the day.  Since it's just about bed time, I guess I'll just have to wait until tomorrow to start again.

Thankfully, it is a school holiday.

"It's just like one of those fancy dinners."

We dined by candle light tonight.  Just because.

Aspen made that comment  about the ambiance, not the dinner fare (BLT's and french fries are such fine cuisine:)


Actually, the candle stick is part of Halloween decor and I need to finish putting it all away.  And, since it gets stored in the attic, I didn't want to put the partly used candles up there just to melt and make a giant mess.  But I'll let them think we had candles just for fun.

It was fun.

Halloween Part 5

This will be the last of the Halloween posts, I promise.  It is more for me to document for myself, than for anyone else.  And since it is my blog, I can do whatever I please.

Isaac and Nate wanted to try the eyeballs this year.

For an Activity Day Girls activity last month we talked about how sometimes evil can be in disguise. And how important it is to choose good friends and good activities.  Then I took pictures of the girls in mustaches, wigs, masks/sunglasses.  Since Nate was out of town, I had to bring Isaac and Hazel with me.  So they got their picture taken too.  Kind of silly.

okay.  That's it.  Now we can move on.

Can you believe it's only 51 more days until Christmas?  This year is flying by!

Halloween Part 4

We threw a last minute Halloween Party for Hazel and her friends on Friday morning.  I like throwing little kid parties.  There's less stress; and the kids like whatever you do.  So Hazel, and 9 of her friends enjoyed playing games and eating spooky food.

We played some musical chairs and some pumpkin bowling.

Pin the wart on the witch (done with dots candy).  Put together the skeleton.

Eyeball on a spoon relay (kind of) just not relay style.

The we designed and colored jack-o-lanterns.

And had spooky food: monster mouth apple wedges, bread bones, poison brew (green hawaiian punch), and eyeballs (grapes).  We had sugar cookies for dessert.

It was all pretty low stress.  And everyone had a great time.  I had blue hair (hazel's is pink to match her pink princess outfit).

Halloween Part 3

We carved pumpkins on Thursday.  It is always lots of fun.  Isaac made sure we all did it together. (Aspen was babysitting and I wanted to go work on the nacho costume - but he convinced me to wait).  My favorite part of pumpkin carving though, is taking fun pictures.   The kids looked like this:

Nate's looked like this:

 

So here's some of my favorites:

 

Isaac is always so intense.

 

 

 

Love candle light for pictures.

Halloween Part 2

Aspen and her friends took Hazel trick-or-treating around the neighborhood.  They went as 80's girls.  Which I found ironic for many reasons.When we were looking for clothing for her to wear I found some of it new just at the store ('cause the 80's is back "in"), some other vintage stuff she deemed too ugly to wear. ( the '80's weren't exactly good looking).  But they all had a good time.

My hands after helping the girls color their hair.  That stuff gets everywhere.  I had to wipe down my entire bathroom because the color spray went everywhere.

 Isaac riding in a cape! I liked how he looked with the cape billowing out behind him.

Toby is the grim reaper in roller blades.  Toby was finally deemed too old to trick-or-treat so he and Isaac stayed home and passed out candy to the neighborhood. 

Hazel got lots of extra candy for being so cute.

Isaac couldn't eat any of the candy.  So in exchange I bought him his own box of NewmanO's (very tasty non-artificial oreos).  He made a LOTS-of-stuff cookie, and dunked the naked cookies in milk.  Tried to eat the whole box, but couldn't (thank heavens).

Hazel sorting her loot (Nate and I got all the chocolate (she's lactose intolerant and can't eat it - lucky us!)

Happy Halloween! Part 1

 Ten points if you can guess what Nate is.

Hint: A character on the TV show Big Bang Theory wore this to his neighbor's Halloween party.

 

Toby went as the Grim Reaper, Isaac as a Charlie Brown ghost (complete with a rock), Hazel is Super Girl.  Everyone called her superwoman - she corrected them every time.

Handing out candy at the ward trunk-or-treat.

Best husband ever...part 4

Nate came home from work yesterday bearing a gift!  I like gifts! Especially those that are unexpected and thoughtful.  This is a true show of love from Nate.

This book is the twelfth in a series that I love.  However they are pretty long.  And when I read them, the rest of my duties seem to just get ignored (it's hard to put down a good book).  I didn't even know that this book was out yet.  But Nate went and got it for me on its release date, even though he knows that once I start reading it, I'll likely be otherwise occupied for a couple days. I have the best husband ever!

Click here for info about the book.

Did you know...

That it's a felony to allow a chinese fire drill to occur in your car?

Yea, I didn't know that either -- until this morning.  I picked the boys up from seminary and they thought it would be fun to do a drill at a light.  I figured that it's a rite of passage being a teenager.  I did it as a kid. There wasn't much traffic.  So they did it.  Then, they did it again at the next light; but unfortunately, there was a cop right behind us.  (It was dark. I couldn't see it.)  Twenty minutes later she let us off with a stern lecture on safety.

Thank heavens for her compassion.  I'm still shaken. I could have been arrested!