October photo dump

Can you spot what's hiding in this picture?

I french braided Ann Marie's hair one day and when we took it out her hair was super curly! So beautiful!

Ann Marie and I went to Steed's Dairy for a preschool field trip. She probably spent 2/3 of the time in this playhouse with babies and a play kitchen, which is what she does at home anyway, so...glad I spent $5 for her to do that somewhere else. She did eventually move on and try some other activities, including disappearing for a few minutes :(.

I had my second ultrasound and we found out we're having another girl! To celebrate I made a chocolate silk pie with pink whipped cream.

I've thought several times about how well the timing worked out. October would have been the due date for the baby we lost last March. It was nice to have happy news from the ultrasound at a time that would have been a little sad. Baby Girl will also be arriving around the "anniversary" of the miscarriage. It's continued to be a healthy pregnancy and I'm hopeful that this will be our rainbow baby. I still wonder what will happen to the baby we lost. Ryan and I both felt that that baby was going to get another body. I'm not sure, but I don't really feel like this baby is the same spirit.

The vincas finally died, so I put the last of the pretty ones in a vase and pulled the rest out of the garden. I'm definitely planting more of these this year!

Kevin's cowboy costume:

Richard Elliot (organist for the Tabernacle Choir) came to Augusta to play at St. Mary On the Hill Catholic Church, and I was able to go! It was so fantastic! I cried a few times!

I was on a chicken salad sandwich kick for a while, and one day Ann Marie said she wanted what I was having, but without the chicken or mayonnaise. This was the resulting sandwich:

Halloween decorations:

I promise the kids had a good time trick or treating! I asked Heidi why she wouldn't smile and she said, "I don't like creepy stuff." I was going to make costumes again this year, but when we got to Goodwill they had lots of princess costumes for $10, which is less than I would have paid for the materials to make costumes, so we went with princess dresses for the girls and found supplies for Kevin's cowboy costume. So we had a cowboy, Cinderella, and Rapunzel. I also picked up two more princess dresses for Christmas presents.

We went trick or treating with our friends the Martins and the Ahlstroms. It was so fun to go with friends. The kids' buckets were overflowing by the time we got home, and they were very generous to share with Ryan and me.

Kevin's teacher emailed me this picture and said, "What a great way to start off this Friday!  These 2 boys were spotted sitting together with their Social Studies books out and were reading and talking history together.  They spent 30 min. together this morning and I hated to break it up to start our day.  Love it!!" It made me happy too!

September Photo Dump

We had a ward party at Camp Helaman. They made a giant slip n slide with a huge tarp and soapy water, and all the kids had a fantastic time. The bishop joined in too. They had a dessert contest, and we won with Mindy's amazing chocolate chip cookie recipe. (The prize was a huge container of animal crackers.) They had a game where the kids/youth could put a pie in the bishop's face if they answered a scripture question correctly. It was a really fun time, although it was kind of bittersweet because we knew that they were going to be rearranging ward boundaries the next day and many of us would end up in different wards.

We got hit by the edge of Hurricane Irma. There was some heavy wind and rain. In the afternoon the power got knocked out and it didn't come back on until 3:00 am the next morning, so that was a little challenging. The kids had actually never experienced a power outage before (thank you, generators at UNC), so this was really different for them. At first Kevin thought he could just fix it by turning the lights on and off really fast, which of course didn't work. At one point after they had gotten used to no power, Ann Marie ran into our bedroom and then came back out saying, "Mom, the batteries are burned out in your bedroom too!" We tried playing some games while there was still some light, and then I ended up reading Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars out loud for quite a while. Eventually it was too dark to see and I read some more with a flashlight. That was a nice memory. Since the power was still out, we were trying not to open the fridge or freezer so we could save the food, and we ended up having things like crackers and granola bars for dinner. It worked okay. I had bought some canned soup so we would have something easy to make if the power went out, but that didn't really work out since we had no way to cook it with rain outside and no camp stove or anything. That was the only meal we had to worry about since the power was back on by morning. My phone died, so that was stressful (it didn't want to turn on again in the morning even after being plugged in for a while), but I guess it wasn't a huge problem considering the flooded and damaged homes that people were dealing with in Florida and Texas, and especially Puerto Rico.

Here are some pictures of our yard after the storm. As you can see, we didn't really have any damage. Lots of leaves and pine needles to clean up and one branch, but no big problems.

A couple of weeks later, Ryan went down to Jacksonville, Florida, with some other people from the ward to help with clean-up there. They left Friday evening and came back on Sunday. They ended up in this neighborhood where a tornado had gone right down the street, and literally every house had some trees down. The people were very grateful for the help getting branches and fallen trees moved.

They would move all the branches and stumps to the side of the road to be picked up.

This shows a tree that was completely uprooted.

Another huge tree that was uprooted.

And this tree was reduced to matchsticks.

Even though we missed Ryan and it was hard to have him gone all weekend, I was grateful that he was able to go and help. There was so much damage caused by the hurricane and I'm glad we could make some contribution to help make things better.

Ryan took this picture of Saturn one night.

Heidi had a music performance at the school. Their music teacher does a wonderful job.

Ryan found Woody like this. I think we all feel this way sometimes. :)

Kevin had a class project about the Georgia coastal plain. He made a diorama showing what landscape, plants, and animals can be found in the ocean and on the coast of Georgia.

I had my first doctor appointment, and he did an ultrasound. This shows her head and upper body, and her hand up by her face. I guess we are getting our fourth thumb-sucker. (Speaking of which, Kevin gave up thumb-sucking a couple of months ago. We tried some of the gross-tasting nail polish stuff, which helped, and after a few applications of that he decided he was done and hasn't sucked his thumb since.)

One Friday night I thought we would make personal pizzas. The kids were completely confused and at first refused to make their own, but after a while they figured it out. I thought they'd be excited.

Ann Marie and I usually get new library books on Thursdays after story time. Thursday evenings are my favorite because when Kevin and Heidi get home from school they immediately start reading all the new books.

I took the kids to Feathered Friends Forever, a nearby facility that adopts or temporarily cares for birds. The founder decided to start the place because many years ago he had to give up his parakeet when he was deployed, so they will keep birds while military are deployed or they will adopt birds that people can't care for anymore. A volunteer drove us around the place on a golf cart and told us about all the different birds and how they care for them. The kids loved the bird that would say, "Hello" and wave it's claw at them. They collected several pretty feathers.

They also had this huge tortoise. The volunteer actually warned the kids not to go near it because it would bite their hand off, and he meant it!

The Columbia County Ballet was performing Beauty and the Beast, so they had Belle at the library after story time. The guy in blue in the background was politely and solemnly serving animal crackers and juice to the children. It was so sweet. Ann Marie enjoyed meeting her but said she wasn't like the real Belle because she was a kid.

Books that are Different But Interesting

Some books are random or different enough that you have to be in the right mood to read them or else you'll hate them. But if you catch them at the right time when you're ready to read them with an open mind or just want something really different, they can be interesting. Here's a list of some books I've read that I think would fit in this category (with links to the titles on Good Reads):

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Have Space Suit--Will Travel by Robert Heinlein

Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars by Daniel Pinkwater (Also try Lizard Music.)

Howl's Moving Castle series by Diana Wynne Jones

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki--a graphic novel that was the basis for the Studio Ghibli film produced by Miyazaki. Kevin has read this at least four times!

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy--Yes, C.S. Lewis wrote a space trilogy, and it's weird! Don't expect another Chronicles of Narnia. But it also explores some interesting subjects in theology and philosophy.

Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series

The Giver series by Lois Lowry--The first book in the series, The Giver, is fairly well known and has a familiar style and plot, but I think many people haven't read the other three books in the series, which are a little strange but very riveting. In the fourth book you get to find out what happened to the mother of Gabe, the baby Jonas rescued in The Giver. Also try Gossamer by the same author.

I also highly recommend Brandon Sanderson. His books are high fantasy and you will find them a little different, but the way he builds and explores worlds with new magic systems, religions, cultures, and politics is impressive. I would recommend starting with his Mistborn series.