Scentsy Reminder!

I have decided to get the scent basket mailed to me, so I will have samples of all the different scents. If you local girls want me to throw an informal party with snacks and smells, let me know and I'd be happy to have you over.

If you do want to place an order, go to this link. When you finish submitting the order, make sure you hit the "submit to main office" button. You will then get a confirmation email from Erica. If you have not gotten a confirmation email, the order did NOT go through.

Because I am getting the basket, I am extending the deadline a couple days. But PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE order something so that I do not have a loser party. I don't want to be a loser!

Halloween Cupcakes

My kids have been begging me to make Halloween cupcakes, so the other day I finally did. I let the kids decorate them.

My parents came over for dinner, and they helped. If my dad looks slightly guilty holding up his cupcake, it's because he'd already eaten his, and just grabbed another one for the pose.
The weird finger decorations are Tootsie rolls that were rolled out to the finger shape. M was very proud of his work.

Halloween Preview

My kids are all going to be pirates for Halloween. The school parade and class party was yesterday, since there is no school today. So, yesterday morning, the big kids got their costumes on, and full makeup.

S was really jealous of the costuming and makeup, so I painted a pumpkin on her face. Unfortunately, by then we were late to school, so I didn't take a picture of her face. I dropped S & Z at the sitter's house and took the kids to school.

Here's the kids during their parade.

After the parade, I volunteered to help at M's class halloween party. I was in charge of the "craft". I decided to do creepy finger pens, idea courtesy of Family Fun online, the website that also gave us the plans for the kids' sandbox. It was really quite simple to do. I gave the kids each a glob of air drying clay (I would've preferred Crayola Model Magic clay, as the stuff I used seems to crack as it dries) and a red ball point pen. I let them form the clay into a finger around the pen. When they were done, we glued a false nail to the tip, and then I let them use craft paint to paint the nail. Some of the kids painted the finger too. Some were extremely creative and cool with their painting. I wish I'd taken pictures of all of the pen fingers.

Save the Sea Kittens!!

This is PETA's (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) latest campaign. I honestly thought it was a joke when I first found the page. Here's a quote from their page:

People don't seem to like fish. They're slithery and slimy, and they have eyes on either side of their pointy little heads—which is weird, to say the least. Plus, the small ones nibble at your feet when you're swimming, and the big ones—well, the big ones will bite your face off if Jaws is anything to go by.

Of course, if you look at it another way, what all this really means is that fish need to fire their PR guy—stat. Whoever was in charge of creating a positive image for fish needs to go right back to working on the Britney Spears account and leave our scaly little friends alone. You've done enough damage, buddy. We've got it from here. And we're going to start by retiring the old name for good. When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it's time for a serious image makeover. And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?

Given my dislike of eating fish, I can easily get on board with their "fish are friends, not food" campaign. And I have to give them props, it's very creative. On their page, they have "bedtime stories" designed to raise awareness and sympathy for the plight of fish--- errr sea kittens. They also have a place where you can make your own sea kitten.

That Kai Lan!

When we were camping last weekend, I found S perched on top of a red ant hill, chattering away and talking with the ants. I got her off quickly and brushed all the ants off, counting ourselves lucky that none had bitten her yet.

She was indignant about the whole thing, and didn't understand why I was telling her to stay away from the pretty red ants. Then, unfortunately, she understood. I missed an ant, and it started biting her. She was screaming and crying from the pain. We killed the mean old ant, even though I don't generally kill bugs (unless they are black widows).

She was so shocked and confused. I had no idea why.

Then, this morning, she was watching Ni Hao, Kai Lan. It's a show about a cute little Chinese girl. Many of the episodes feature the ants. The ants on the show are very kind, and more than excited for Kai Lan and pals to play with them and help them out.

oh.

Well.

That explains that then. Poor kid. Learning that reality isn't like tv in that way. At least she was only attacked by one ant than a whole colony, eh?

Tagged!

I got tagged by friend Kristen. So, here goes.

7 weird facts about myself:

1- I worry that dh's vasectomy will fail, even though he got two "all clear" tests.

2- I hate sewing, and yet I continue to do it.

3- I am too chicken to get laser eye surgery to fix my blindness.

4- I play with the kids' moonsand while they're at school.

5- I'm afraid of hair/makeup/fashion stuff

6- I love rocks. Especially gemstones. I love looking for them.

7- I really, really hate cockroaches and earwigs.


Hmmm, I am going to tag Renee, Kirsten, Chardell, Alison, Katie, Melissa, and Katie (the other one!).

Why?

Why did I find my unsweetened box of Hershey's cocoa under my ten year old's bed?


I have let her taste it in the past, so she knows it isn't sweet. Hmmmm.



Ok, I asked her. She said that she wanted to add a little bit to her hot cocoa and see if it would make it extra chocolaty. She reports that it does taste better, has a dark chocolate taste to it. All right then. Carry on.

Topaz Mountain

We just got home from spending the weekend at Topaz Mountain. Unlike Greenland, Topaz Mountain is aptly named. The mountain is just glittering with topaz. The colors range from yellow to orange to blue to clear. I have been told that there's "no topaz left". However, as I spoke further with those people, they reported finding topaz that were 2-3" long. Sure, if that's your standard, there isn' t much left. Most of what we found was smaller than my pinkie fingernail. But, it's extremely exciting to be digging around in the dirt and find a chunk of semiprecious stone that glitters and sparkles. Here are some of the topaz that I found:


The kids were out of school for Thursday and Friday, so we left Thursday morning. We planned to have both sets of parents join us, though my parents couldn't make it down til Friday. We met up with J's parents at the One Man Band Diner in Nephi, UT. It's our usual lunch spot when we're heading to Ephraim or other parts unknown. Usually it's really wonderful, but this time it wasn't quite as good. I felt like we were overcharged for our food, but I wasn't able to see where the overage happened. Having four kids and your inlaws around makes concentration a bit difficult.

We got to Topaz Mountain around dinner time. Our spot from last year was taken, but we got a nice spot right next to some tall rocks. The kids were like a bunch of mountain goats all weekend. They definitely loved this spot better.

Some previous camper had made a Anasazi style shelter from one of the hollows in the rock, and the kids thought that was pretty neat, but I think I was more impressed.

We spent quite a bit of time looking for crystals. In the washes, all of the topaz has been bleached to transparent. However, when we found topaz within rocks that had been unexposed to sun, it was anything from a pale yellow to deep amber to orange. Here is a rock with some topaz still embedded in it.


On Saturday, we did a rhino/atv expedition to the Dugway Geode Beds. We attempted to go there last year, and tried to dig for geodes, but found nothing. This year, we did more research, got GPS coordinates and everything. Everything online assured us we would be successful and be constantly tripping over them. The ride out there was a lot of fun, except when Buddy, my inlaw's dog jumped out of our rhino. He wasn't hurt, though he is missing a bit of fur where his eyebrow would be. As we got there, a vanful of kids got there. The ladies accompanying them said their neighbor told them all of the kids would have their buckets full of geodes within a couple seconds. Unfortunately, we didn't have any better luck this year and neither did our new friends.

I've been told "they" come in with back hoes and turn the ground every once in a while. Maybe it had been a long time and the grounds were really picked over? Who are "they" anyway? Maybe we'll attempt it again, but only if we can find out when these backhoes are there, and go in soon afterwards.

We came back to camp where J's parents prepared to go home. We bid them farewell and took the kids and my parents back up to the excavation site where you are most likely to find the topaz. While we were preparing to leave, Z started throwing up. I stayed in the wash with S and Z while everyone else went to chip topaz out of stones. We found a bunch of pretty transparent crystals. Then S got diarrhea, and Z threw up on me again.

My parents also planned to leave Saturday. Given the unsettled digestive systems of our youngest two, we decided we would leave too. Nothing ruins a trip faster than vomit. I got the younger two bathed and cleaned up (vomiting and diarrhea are extremely messy while in a primative area that doesn't even have outhouses, let alone running water or toilet tissue) while J got camp packed up.

We drove without incident, stopping for dinner at Fazolis in Provo. It was extremely noisy in there, as the SUU ladies' softball (?) team was there. To tempt fate, I gave Z a plate of spaghetti with red sauce. Thankfully, it all stayed down.

We got home without incident. The younger two seem to be perfectly healthy today, but I am glad we erred on the side of caution.

Scentsy

I am normally adamantly opposed to having "parties" in which people come to my house, eat mediocre snacks (not that I'd serve mediocre snacks! LOL) and feel pressured to buy stuff. However, since this is online, and it's SCENTSY, I am making an exception.

If you don't know what scentsy is, it's a wickless smelly candle product. You get a cute ceramic "warmer" that plugs into the wall and has a simple 25 watt light bulb in it to warm the wax. This is the one I have.
So, you buy the warmer. Then, you buy little bricks of the wax that you put in the top. It melts and makes the house smell really, really good. You can even mix two different scents if you want a cool custom scent.

Obviously, my friends who live out of Utah will have to pay to have it shipped to them. If you are in Utah, you can select whether you want it to ship to the hostess (i.e. me, which means free shipping), or to yourself, which would be 10% to your order as a shipping charge.

If you want to order, click on THIS LINK. Along the top, there's a green bar. Within that bar, there's a "place an order link". Click on that, and then choose Wendy as the hostess. It will then take you to the catalog. The party will close on Nov. 2, so order early. These make awesome Christmas or Birthday gifts. If you have any questions, you're welcome to ask me or consultant Erica.

Once you have your order put together, click on the "submit to home office" button. Erica will send you a confirmation, but it won't actually go in until my party closes on November 2.

Choose only one!

Here is something fun to contemplate. If you're reading this, you should answer the same question in your blog, and link me back because I want to see your answers.

If you could only listen to one recording artist for the rest of your life, who would you choose?


I was thinking about this yesterday, and realized I would pick Weird Al Yankovic. Wait, hear me out. Chardell, quit laughing!!! I consider Weird Al to be an absolutely brilliant artist. Not only can he write and sing his own songs, but he can make brilliant parodies of other peoples' music. He's had a long lasting career, with lots of albums and songs, covering several genres. It would take me long, long time to get sick of his music.


Or I'm juvenile. Take your pick.

More Snow

It's been snowing pretty steadily all day today. We've got quite a bit sticking to the ground now. I'm happy to report that so far, my trees are handling the load well. Other people haven't been as lucky from what I've seen.

First Snow '08

We woke up this morning to find about 4-5" of snow on the ground.

The kids were absolutely thrilled, and wild to go outside. S only vaguely remembered snow, and was so excited. Z obviously doesn't remember snow at all and keeps pointing outside and saying, "Whoa!".

I am a little concerned about our trees. Up until this weekend, the weather has been really mild, and the leaves have just barely started to change color. We've only had a couple actually fall off the trees. Hopefully they will be ok.
I'm really glad that for once, I actually watched and believed the weather report, and I made the kids go harvest every single vegetable left in our garden.
Here's our veggies:


And here is our garden now:

Brothers

When we spent the night at my parents' house, my boys shared a bedroom. There is a crib and a twin bed in that room.

M reported to me that sometime during the night, Z woke up and began to fuss. Because he couldn't reach high enough to get Z out of his crib, he came and sat down on the floor by the crib, and held Z's hand through the crib slats. He soon fell asleep, and ended up sleeping on the floor, holding Z's hand through the slats.

Touched my heart.

Field Trip

Last Friday, S went on a field trip with her preschool class. We walked from the school to the fire station, where we learned about fire safety.

The teachers had an ingenious way of keeping the kids together. They tied mason lid rings on twine to create a line. Each child hung on to a ring and 5-6 kids per "line".

It was a lot of fun to see all of the little kids interact with the firefighters and play on the equipment.

I did feel like a senile old woman though. That same day, I volunteered with the older kids' spectrum program where we helped them play team building type games. I asked my friend C to babysit the littles while I volunteered. In exchange, she asked if I'd watch her kids in the afternoon. After I agreed, I remembered that I was going to help with the field trip. A couple hours after that, I remembered that Fridays are early out day at the big kids' school, and I was supposed to drive them home about 30 minutes into the field trip. Oops! Lucky for me, K's best friend's mom was willing to give my kids a ride home.

Seriously. I would leave my head somewhere if it wasn't screwed on.

Conference Weekend

In a fairly long standing tradition, my parents invited everyone to their cabin for conference weekend. I think it's an attempt to get us wayward souls to pay attention to conference. It ends up being a ton of fun. We play Conference Bingo, in which we listen for key words and phrases and try to get a bingo. My mom buys a ton of prizes for the winners. This year, we made our own cards, which was a lot of fun. "Sin" and "death" did wonderful things for me, but "pornography" did not.

We weren't able to be at the cabin this year. The forecast was for a lot of rain, which usually translates to snow at the elevation of the cabin. We still did the sleepover, just at my parents' house instead.

Saturday night we made caramel corn and played "Apples to Apples".

Sunday, we played conference bingo. Unfortunately, my dad won the super irritating plastic flutes. I was planning to win them and have them as a special "when grandma babysits" treat.

After that, I made gourmet caramel apples. To make it easy, I bought the caramel wraps. I coated the apples with them, and stuck them in a 200 degree oven for about 5 minutes. Then, I melted some milk chocolate and dipped the bottom in them.


Everyone got to pick toppings to sprinkle over the chocolate. We had crushed toffee bars, oreos, or crushed peanuts. Everyone really enjoyed it.

I apologize for the photo quality- I used my cell phone in not the most ideal light for a camera with no flash.

Free Trick or Treat Bag contest

A friend of mine owns a toy store, and they're having a contest in which they're giving away some darling Gund Trick or Treat bags. If you'd like to enter, click HERE to go to the site. All you have to do is comment on the post and you're entered. Easy!