Tricks n' Treats

Here is Hobbes, Broom Hilda, and Darth Leopard at the obligatory (yet somehow compellingly convenient) Trunk or Treat activity. They are trying to look menacing to scare away other kids so that they'll be more candy left for them (or maybe the sun is just in their eyes.)

Here is the ever-charming Good Witch Lisette. Saffron is conspicuously missing from the photos because she refused to get into her little lion costume. Oh well.

We skipped neighborhood trick or treating and instead went to Grandma and Grandpa's for a little Halloween party. We ate donuts from a string, bobbed for apples, and drank witch's potion (Crystal Light with dry ice.) Deja and Brian were there and we all had a good time.

I forgot to bring our camera, but we played with Grandma's nice new digital camera. Talk about features, this one's got 'em! It makes my poor camera look pretty sad. Amy also got a new camera and the pictures on her blog look fabulous! Sigh. We'll have to upgrade our camera someday.

Toaster Pizza

Toaster Pizza
by Lisette

Once upon a time a penguin named Phil went to the North Pole to visit his friend Jerry the polar bear, who lived in a small igloo there. When Phil got there he said, "Jerry, let's get pizza!" 'So Phil and Jerry got frozen pizza.

Then Jerry said, "I forgot I don't have an oven!" So they thought and thought. Then Phil asked, "do you have a toaster?" They did have a toaster so they put the pizza in Jerry's toaster and ate toasted pizza.

The End

Lifesavers

We are still all a little sick at our house, but we're getting better. We now to the coughing stage, but not so stuffed up. Hopefully by Wednesday will be back to 100%. I got to take a nap both Saturday and Sunday, so that was a good thing.

On Saturday Kevin called me waking me up from my nap. I was pretty groggy so I couldn't quite figure out what was going on. He asked me if I had any lifesavers. The conversation went like this.

Kevin: Do you guys have any lifesavers?
Me: No.
Kevin: Do you know where you can get them?
Me: The candy isle in the grocery store.
Kevin: How much do they cost?
Me: I think they're under $2.
Kevin: Wow.
Me: ???
Kevin: But I think I want a cool one that flips open? Do they have those?
Me: Wait what are you talking about? Did you say lifesavers or Light Sabers?
Kevin: Light Sabers.
Me: Oh, that makes more sense. Yes we have light sabers.

Pathetic

Our whole family has been pretty sick since Sunday. Usually we don't all get ill, and if we do, we're usually staggered. This time we got it all at once. It is pretty pathetic to hear everyone's froggy voices and see everyone just lie around.

There is a Primary song titled "A Happy Family." I keep thinking about us and "A Pathetic Family" keeps popping into my mind.

Mommy's coughing, can't you see?
Daddy's retching, yes sirree.
We're all sick, and so you see,
We're a pathetic family.

Lisette's glazed over, Saffron too,
Miles and Ian have the flu.
We're all sick, and so you see,
We're a pathetic family.

My apologies to the Primary board for that little song. We are starting to get better, really, we are.

Standing Together

Melinda went to the National Student Dialogue Conference this weekend. It's basically a Evangelical Christian and Mormon conference where they discuss doctrinal differences, similarities, and try to find common ground. It was sponsored by Standing Together which is an organization started by Rev. Greg Johnson to create understandings between Evangelical Christian and Latter-day Saints. Bob Millett spoke there as well, and we've both enjoyed his works, especially "A Different Jesus?" and "Grace Works."

Here are the highlights (and lowlights) of the rest of our weekend:

• Ian and Miles bought a Lego Star Wars set with the money they have saved up
• I played stay-at-home dad for 2 days
• I have much deeper appreciation for all the work Melinda has to do everyday
  
• Ian got an ear infection on Friday
• Max (one of our mice) died - we were all very sad; especially Miles
  
• Miles was the only one to make it to the primary program; everyone else was sick this morning
• All the kids wanted to be "simpsonized" like their mom so we made a collage

As american as apple pie

Miles made this yummy apple pie today. Melinda helped, but he is quite the intrepid baker. The lattice top turned out very nice, as well.


Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm pie. I can't wait until Thanksgiving!

Melinda in 2-D

If Melinda were a Simpson, she might look like this. But I think the real-life version is much better.

Ian shoots the moon

Miles wanted to play Pinochle tonight. Pinochle has been a tradition in my family for as long as I can remember. I have lots of fond memories of my parents, uncles, and grandparents staying up late at night playing, talking, arguing and laughing. We always had loads of Pinochle marathons during our yearly vacation with our cousins at our condo in Island Park.

Miles and Lisette are carrying on the tradition. A couple of years ago while we were on vacation with family they learned how to play. Ian hadn't learned yet, but tonight he had a very auspicious debut.

I helped him with his first hand and was amazed as he shot the moon! (I did help him, a bit). For those non-Pinochle players if you get a hand that is so stupendous that you think you won't lose any points, you can wager the whole game on one hand. He actually had one loser card, but his partner saved it and they won. He then left and Melinda played 2 hands. He came back later and played another game. This time Melinda helped him and he had a lay-down shoot the moon, which is super colossal amazing! Even more incredible, was that he only got 2 cards from his partner.

I'd wager that there is a high probability of this family tradition continuing strong.

Scott's mission report

Melinda's brother, Scott, came home from his mission on Thursday. He spent 2 years teaching the gospel to the Spanish speaking residents of Ft. Lauderdale Florida. We went to his ward to hear him speak today.

He started out directly with his testimony of Jesus Christ and of His Atonement. Wow. Scott used to be this precocious, opinionated kid, and now he is a man who during 2 years of service really gets the heart of the gospel. Through his blood (bicycle accidents), sweat (Miami heat), and tears (this one I'm just assuming) he has seen the hand of the Lord in his life and in the lives of those he has served.

I liked his mission stories, but seeing his love and gratitude for Jesus Christ is what was really moving. He has changed in 2 years, and all for the better. Is their anything better a nineteen year-old could be doing with 2 years than serving Jesus and getting to know Him?

Day Off

Friday I took the day off. It was glorious. I slept in, lounged around, and took a nap. It's so nice to just stay in bed with warm comfy blankets on a cool fall day. I got a couple calls from work, but I was able to remote-in an fix them pretty easily.

Today I slept in again! It was great. I felt like just lounging around all day, but I thought I'd be happier get a few things done. I was contemplating cleaning up the back porch or going to the temple. I thought the temple was a loftier goal, so I drove downtown and spent a couple hours there (Melinda had gone on Friday morning with her cousin Emily).

Then I got home and rounded-up all the kids and directed them in cleaning up the house. They washed dishes, did the laundry, mopped the floor, and Ian even mowed the lawn. I went out with Ian while he mowed the lawn and ended up getting the back porch all cleaned up like I originally wanted to. I guess if you get your priorities in the right place, you can make room for some of the other things as well.

Of Mice and Men

Never, ever purchase male mice. Don't even think about it. Yes, they will look so cute running around together in the pet store, but resist; they smell like mortal sin. They weren't bad when they were young, but they are now adult male mice and they are oh so potent.

We still love our mice, Willis, Jack, and Max, but sadly they have been exiled from the boy's room. Their deadly aroma became too much, especially for me. If you ask Melinda, she'll say I was dead-set on exterminating them. Alas, that wasn't ever actually an option, so plan B was to give them to a good home. That plan failed too. We believe in truth in advertising, so needless to say there were no takers. Let's face it, "would you like a stinky mouse?" isn't a very good sales tactic.

So I resorted to plan C - Operation Rodent Ventilation. So far it has worked out great! No more stink from the boys room! I had been hatching this plan for a while and 2 weeks a go I decided to go for it.

Materials:
1. Flexible dryer vent (we had this already)
2. Small box fan (we had this too!)
3. Duct tape (this I had to buy; the boys go through this faster than toilet paper)
4. Plastic sheeting (from the garage)
5. Rigid styrofoam insulation (this I had to buy, too)
6. Small amount of screen (found it in the garage from an old windows screen)

I moved the mice habitats downstairs to the sprout room (the spare room I use for starting seedlings). Then I ducted tape plastic on both sides of the fan - one to cover their tanks, and the other to attach to the dryer vent.


Then I ran the dryer vent to the windows (one of the old panes was cracked, so I broke it all the way out and placed the styrofoam sheet to the windows, cut a hole in it, attached a screen, then attached the hose. Then I put plastic on the windows, and ducked taped the rest of the vent to keep out leaks.


Below is the vent from the outside. Warning: stay way unless you want your nose hair burnt!


Anyway, life is much better now that the boy's room doesn't smell like the zoo. The sprout room only has the very faintest hint of rodent smell, and even though we still have to clean out their cages every week, I can live with that.

Scott "El Cubano" regresa

Melinda's brother, Scott, came home from his mission today. He went to the Florida, Ft. Lauderdale Spanish speaking mission. He looks pretty much the same, albeit a little older and a little wiser, but still the same old Scott we love.

We had dinner up at Grandma and Grandpa's house with some extended family and the kids got reacquainted with Scott; they are glad to have him home. Saffron even gave him a kiss. When we left for the evening some of us cajoled him into giving the family prayer in Spanish. He finally did once we counted in the room and about half of us there speak Spanish (there were two Portuguese speakers, which is close enough.) So he gave the prayer with a great Cuban accent. Most of us (5) learned Chilean Spanish and two of us (Lisette and Melinda) learned Mexican Spanish, but Scott sounds completely different than any of us. He sounds great and I was so proud that he knows how to use the subjunctive and past subjunctive!

Of course his work teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, and all the people he helped to live a more righteous life is more important than his command of the language, but it's great fun having another hispanohablante around.

All nighter

Monday night after our bonfire in the canyon, I connected to some servers at work to do some security updates. It went pretty well, but our Citrix remote gateway server didn't come back up after a reboot. Since it was already after midnight, I debated just going to bed and dealing with it in the morning, but I thought I better go in and check it out. It's good I did, because that server's fan died and it was running really hot and wouldn't boot.

I had to take the hard drive out and put it in a another machine. It still wouldn't boot, so I had to run the chkdsk utility. It still wouldn't boot. I ran the Windows 2000 repair and it still wouldn't boot. Finally I got the second drive which was mirrored to boot. Then I just had to rerun all the updates. I finally left at 6:30 AM.

I debated just staying there, but since I was wearing shorts, Crocs, and a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, I thought I'd better go home and at least change. I slept for an hour and half and came back to work. Thankfully everything was working. Nobody even noticed that anything had been down. Thats how you want it to be, even if nobody knows you sacrificed your sleep for them.

Tuesday I came home at about 2 and crashed. Melinda took the kids to their book club, but Ian stayed home and snuggled up in bed and napped with me. Ian is very loyal, he likes to be with me even when I'm boring, which is very flattering.

Working all day and night makes for a long day. I kept thinking it was Wednesday. I can't imagine having to be in a job that requires 60 or 80 hours weeks.

S'moreos

We had an Elders Quorom leadership get-together in Millcreek Canyon tonight. We had a package of Oreos leftover from Miles' birthday party, so we decided to take them. Miles said, "lets use them with the roasted marshmallows and make S'moreos!" They were actually very tasty. We bought some stuff from Harmons before we went up, but I didn't feel like hot dogs so Melinda got a roasted rosemary and lemon roasted chicken. I thought it was kind of cheating, but someone else just brought take out from Arbys, so I didn't feel too bad.

The kids really liked it. The fall leaves were very pretty, and and it was fun to see some early snow on the ground. It was a little chilly, but we had a blazing white man's campfire, so we kept warm. As soon as we got home we all had to take showers to get rid of the smoky smell and we threw all our clothes in the washer. We are all glad we don't have to cook over an open fire on a regular basis.

On a side note, Saffron's cuteness never ceases to amaze us. Yesterday Melinda was play biting me and Saffron said "Don't bite my daddy!" Then she wrapped her arms around my hand and arms and said "I save my daddy!" Cute, sweet, loving, and funny; that's our Saffron.

Choose ye this day

Kevin and Brian had an extra ticket to this afternoon's Priesthood Session, so they invited me to go with them. It was a very nice experience. I remember the last time I went my knees ached so bad because of arthritis and lack of legroom that it was just painful. This time I was fine and I enjoyed the talks immensely and felt the Holy Spirit there.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does a wonderful job of teaching it's people how to live. The church is truly centered on Jesus Christ and his teachings and it helps it's members to become better people and how to be a disciple of Christ. It's amazing to see so many men and boys assembled not for a sports activity, but to listen of Christ and how to live righteously. These are some of the many fruits of the church.

Tonight we were taught to control our emotions and not become angry. We were taught to have vision, be faithful, be virtuous, and to work for good causes. We were taught to avoid pornography and the sins of this world.

The righteous men who taught us today were true examples of how to live. When we left the conference there were many protesters shouting at us. The contrast between the protesters and our Priesthood leaders tonight could not have been greater. It is not hard for me to choose which ones I would rather be like.

Donald or Donny?

I saw an interesting website yesterday, My Heritage. At first sight it seemed like a serious family history site. At second glance it seems much more frivolous. It has this face recognition feature that seems really cool and scientific, but I have my doubts.

OK, so here are the celebrities who supposedly resemble me:



No, wait. These are the celebrities who I really look like.



So which is worse, resembling Donny Rumsfeld or Donald Osmond? Just call me Rummy Osmond.

The Persistance of Music

Tonight we tore through the house and cleaned up everything up in preparation for Miles' birthday party tomorrow. Having company over (even if they're small always help motivate us to clean up the house.) Miles has invited about 7 of his friends to have a bug themed party. They're just made a cake with Oreo dirt on top and various gummi insects. They bought a flower shaped piñata (for the bees to pollinate, of course).


So all the kids have been pretty excited to get ready. That helps a lot when trying to get them to clean up. They were really good little worker bees tonight. It's so rewarding to have them work so cheerfully. They actually can help a lot when they get into the groove.

Right now Miles and I are listening to iTunes on the computer. We've got some good speakers with a sub-woofer in the bedroom, so we can sit on the bed and listen to music. Lisette was in here earlier listening to Diana Krall and Edie Brickell. Miles came in and then we listened to Dave Matthews and Morrissey.

I remember when I was a kid I would listen to my dad's music on his record player and on his reel-to-reel (anyone remember those?) If you thought 8-tracks were old, they were even older. I remember listening to Simon and Garfunkel, The Carpenters, Barry Manilow, Olivia Newton John (who I always referred to as Olivia Fig-Newton John). I still have very fond memories of Simon and Garfunkel and The Carpenters, though now I would never admit to listening to Barry Manilow. Though I have to confess that his song Copacabana is one of my little guilty pleasures. The kids really get a kick out of the song too, probably because I know all of the words and I always have to sing along with it. It's campy, silly, maudlin, and very disco. Absolutely fabulous. And in case you can't remember all the words, I've included them below for your nostalgic enjoyment.

What songs will my kids remember when reminiscing of their childhood? It seems like some music ages better than others. Of course I have such impeccable taste in music that it is inevitable that they will appreciate all of my music, though I have a suspicious feeling that my dad thought the same thing.

Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl
With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there
She would merengue and do the cha-cha
And while she tried to be a star, Tony always tended bar
Across a crowded floor, they worked from 8 till 4
They were young and they had each other
Who could ask for more?

At the Copa (CO!), Copacabana (Copacabana)
The hottest spot north of Havana (here)
At the Copa (CO!), Copacabana
Music and passion were always the fashion
At the Copa....they fell in love

(Copa Copacabana)

His name was Rico, he wore a diamond
He was escorted to his chair, he saw Lola dancin' there
And when she finished, he called her over
But Rico went a bit too far, Tony sailed across the bar
And then the punches flew and chairs were smashed in two
There was blood and a single gun shot
But just who shot who?

At the Copa (CO!), Copacabana (Copacabana)
The hottest spot north of Havana (here)
At the Copa (CO!), Copacabana
Music and passion were always the fashion
At the Copa....she lost her love

(Copa. . Copacabana)
(Copa Copacabana) (Copacabana, ahh ahh ahh ahh)
(Ahh ahh ahh ahh Copa Copacabana)
(Talking Havana have a banana)
(Music and passion...always the fash--shun)


Her name is Lola, she was a showgirl
But that was 30 years ago, when they used to have a show
Now it's a disco, but not for Lola
Still in the dress she used to wear, faded feathers in her hair
She sits there so refined, and drinks herself half-blind
She lost her youth and she lost her Tony
Now she's lost her mind!

At the Copa (CO!), Copacabana (Copacabana)
The hottest spot north of Havana (here)
At the Copa (CO!), Copacabana
Music and passion were always the fashion
At the Copa....don't fall in love

(Copa) don't fall in love
Copacabana
Copacabana

Winwoes

Woe is Windows. Connie has Windows XP on her Dell laptop, and yesterday it died. Not the computer, but Windows. It kept coming up with an password error and it wouldn't even boot into safe mode. Microsoft's site said it was a corrupt registry and they had a fix for it, but since the passwords in the registry were corrupt, I couldn't even fix it using the repair console. I had to reinstall.

Today Windows Vista on my work computer died. I installed the latest version of iTunes, and then it wouldn't reboot. I tried the recovery console, but it couldn't repair it. I could have run the System Restore utility, but I had disabled it to improve performance. So I had to reinstall.

I once read that you spend 6 months of your life at stoplights. I don't even want to think how much time I've spent installing Windows. But I guess I can't complain, I suppose it's better than digging ditches, and everyone has to make a living off of something.

Bob

If you haven't already noticed, I really dig palindromes. I don't know why, but they just capture my imagination. This will be my third post with a title that is a palindrome (even if it is a short one).

Here's a really cool Weird Al Yankovic video where he channels palindromic Bob, Bob Dylan.