TBT - Halloween 1999

In 1999 I lived in a house full of girls: my dad was attending law school out of state, my brother was serving an LDS mission, and my older sister had moved back home while she finished college.  That year (16 months?), living with my two sisters and my Mom, was so much fun - one of the stand-out happiest periods of my childhood.

Our Ward held a Trunk-or-Treat Halloween party every year and my sisters and I decided to put together a group costume.  We were the Y2K bug*.  I remember talking my sisters into the Y, K, and K instead of a Y, 2, and K because... it made more sense to me.  Anyway, they went along with it and with very little work we had a unique and relevant group costume, which won us the coveted adult costume award, thankyouverymuch.

We wore all black, made sandwich boards, and completed the
"bug" look with sunglasses and sparkly pipe cleaners attached to headbands.

You can't see much in this picture, but Suz is decorating my
1980-something Mazda 323, which was a stick shift and had manual
window cranks and a door that you couldn't open from the inside.

Nobody has ever written down our names on this
fancy certificate, but that's okay.  We know we won.

* At some point all of my kids will read this blog - I hope - and for their sake I will explain what the Y2K bug was: this was a possible failure of IT systems to continue to operate after the New Year when the new millenium started, because nobody was sure whether computer calendars would function with the new century/millenium.  There was genuine relief when New Year's came and went and computer systems did not fail.

The Chicken Chronicles 10.23.20

This week Ben installed a battery-operated door opener so that the chickens don't have to rely on us to let them out of the coop every morning and close them in each night.  Such a great idea!  I did a time lapse video of the chickens going to bed yesterday so that you want to see it in action.

Eliza also took it upon herself to tighten Bandit's collar in an attempt to mute his crow further and I think it really helped!

And the final bit of news is that when I was out with the chickens one day, Bandit actually pecked my forehead.  When I told Jack about this, he said Bandit did the same thing to him.  Oh, Bandit.  We need you to learn that we are not food.

Cat's Soccer Season 2020

Cat had another great soccer season!  Last year she broke her school's record of goals in a single season with 25.  As the season progressed we knew there was a chance that Cat could break the overall career record, and sure enough she broke the women's record (42), then the men's record (43), and ended with 23 goals for the season, equalling 48 career goals.  Amazing!  And it's so great to watch her - she's a smart player, a great ball-handler, and she's tough and aggressive.

Below are some of the pictures I took with my good camera (plus a few from our phones), and several pictures that other parents took and shared.

Home Game Season Opener vs. Providence Hall

Home Game vs. North Sanpete

When Cat got home from the game at North Sanpete,

where she broke the career goals record at her school

with 45 goals, midway through her sophomore season,

she was pretty happy.

Game at American Leadership Academy

This was the last regular season game and Cat scored with about

10 seconds left in overtime play, helping her team win 1-0!

1st Tournament Game at Richfield

This game was tied after regulation, tied after 10 minutes of overtime, and tied after the second 10 minutes of overtime.  Cat played almost all of the 100 minutes of play, including a few minute at goalie - with four saves - when the goalie got a yellow card.  Next was a shootouts, with each team getting 5 chances.  After that, the score was 3-3 (and Cat got hers!), so then there was a sudden death shootout, during which our team got two goals and the other team got their first and missed their second.  The final score was 5-4, and we advanced to the quarter finals.  Not only was it exciting that they won after such a battle, but they pulled off a big upset, defeating a team that was ranked #5 while Cat's team was ranked #12.

You can see how completely physically and emotionally exhausted

Cat was in these pictures from right after the game:

Quarterfinals at Juab

This game was tied at 0-0 until Juab scored with about 10 minutes left in the game.

This is an opponent Cat's team has played multiple times and this is the closest

the game has ever been.  They played very well, and even though they lost, it was

a positive note to end on.

(Can you see how the opponent was double-teaming Cat?
Sometimes she was triple-teamed.)

P.S. I have some videos too, but I'll post those separately once I've had a chance to sort through them and do some editing.

Fall Break

We'd planned to spend a long weekend in St. George for Fall Break but Cat's soccer team pulled off a big upset in the state tournament the day before the break started so we decided to postpone our trip.  

It was fun to take the kids to Richfield for Cat's tournament game that Wednesday afternoon.  The game was over pretty late (more on that in the next post) so we stopped at "Sandi's Drive Inn" for hamburgers and shakes before heading home.  The kids declared these were the best burgers they'd ever had and said we would definitely have to return.  I told them we would not be driving back to Richfield for hamburgers.  But we did appreciate the ruralness of the drive on our way home, pulling over to admire the bajillion stars that were visible!

.

Cat now had practice on Thursday and Friday, and a game in the middle of the afternon on Saturday.  So we spent Fall Break at home - almost entirely at home - and it was great.  Laid-back, relaxed, easy.

Tickle fight.

The kids did lots of Wings of Fire reading.

Luke had aspirations of building a big box fort.

Eliza was excited that I let her use this temporary tattoo -
and took it a step further with extra freckles and lipstick.

More Wings of Fire.

And little puzzles.

That Saturday, a wildfire started on Timpanogos.
This is what it looked like from State Street that night.

Our ward started video calls for Sunday School and other classes
this month.  Here's Jack during his Deacon Quorum lesson.

We drove down to Exchange Park in Provo so we could
go on a little Sunday afternoon walk along the Provo River.
Luke brought his bike, and he let Eliza and Jack take turns on it too.
Here he's making sure Eliza wears the helmet while she rides.

Eliza and Luke didn't have school on Monday, and Cat and Jack
were having an at-home learning day, so it was kind of an extension
of Fall Break.  Monday evening we had some time to just hang out
and play games and it was the best.  We need to do more of that.

Not pictured: Eliza spent over 2.5 hours as a mommy's helper for a woman in our ward who has 3-year-old triplets.  She loved it and she did a great job!

The Lingo*

"This is so satisfying!"
Eliza, stirring glitter into corn syrup for
a Halloween decoration potion bottle.

cringey (adj.) - irritatingly unpleasant; grating on the nerves

example: My fork scraped against my plate and it made that cringey loud screeching sound. 

satisfying (adj.) - pleasing; enjoyable; an experience one would like to prolong or repeat because it makes you feel fuzzy inside
example: Cutting frozen peaches is so satisfying.

thicc** (adj.) - describing a "good solid bottom"
example: Ooh, she thicc.

dumpster fire (n.) - a major failure; a crazy big off; a fat rip; a big sad
examples: All of my student council ideas are dumpster fires.  My life is a dumpster fire.

a hot minute (n.) - an extended period of time; however long the author and user wants it to be, but it never means exactly one minute
example: When's the last time you practiced piano? It's been a hot minute.

low-key (adj.) - a small amount; often used in conjunction with an adjective that means the opposite in an attempt to downplay the intensity of an emotion
exmple: "I'm low-key really mourning that we can't stay at that house." - Cat

* After consulting with the kids to prepare for this post, Eliza asked me, "What does lingo even mean?"

** The other day Jack asked me if the word "thick" is spelled this way, and when I said it wasn't, he kept asking me about t-h-i-c-c.  Cat chimed in and said that sometimes it's spelled that way, and that it's been used "For a really long time.  Since January."  And we realized Jack saw it in an episode of the JK Studios series "Loving Lyfe."

The Chicken Chronicles 10.16.20

Sadly, Bandit is cointinuing to become more aggressive.  Cat shared this experience: "I found a spider in my room and kept it alive overnight so I could feed it to Bandit.  When I fed him the spider on the spoon, he ran up the spoon and then attacked me like a ninja.  He didn't eat the spider.  It just bounced off the spoon and landed on the ground."

Buttercup started laying!  We know it's her because of the color of the egg.  Can you figure out which one is Buttercup's?

It's hard to tell with the coloring in the picture but Buttercup, whose breed is Olive Egger, lys bluish green eggs.  When Hei Hei starts laying, her eggs will be a more true blue.  With three laying hens we now get 2-3 eggs a day.  So eggciting!

Lastly, we've noticed a definite habit that the chickens have established of waddling over to us whenever we walk into the back yard.  As Ben put it, "I know they're only coming to me because they think I'll give them treats, but I still enjoy it."  I agree - it's nice to see living things come right to you as soon as they know you're around.  You can't help but think, even for a fleeting second, "They love me!"

Pumpkin Patch

Ben's social distancing Halloween party took place at at pumpkin patch in Provo.  It was unseasonably sunny and warm and it was really nice to see some familiar faces (the upper halves, anyway).  Ben, Cat, and Eliza all had somewhere to be that evening so they just stayed long enough to enjoy a yummy food truck dinner and some cotton candy before leaving.  The boys and I stayed for another hour or so to ride some rides and pick out some pumpkins.  It worked out great!