Long overdue. (today is day #78)

I have been absent from the social networking world for good reasons. Actually, when are there ever BAD reasons? Maybe I need more in my life to think I need good reasons to not blog every day... Whatever. The point is that I have had a thrilling month and need to put as many things into one post as possible. I don't like back-dating and I don't care to separate my posts. It's like telling lies to your journal. Pointless. (to me. I really don't care if you want to do it, nor do I judge you. Because let's face it, I'm probably just lazy)

SO--on to better things. In some sort of order, maybe.

First things first:

I went to Seattle. There are lots of good things in Seattle. 7 GREAT things in particular. Those 7 things are as follows:

1. Brandon Winder

2. Melanie Winder

3. Alison Winder

4. John Winder

5. Christian Winder

6. Peter Winder

7. Jane Winder

Really, they are 7 of my favorite things. It was all I could do to contain my excitement and act like a normal person. After spending 98% of my time alone or sleeping for any number of months, I was thrilled to have companions at all hours of the day.  Peter and Jane were mine at any time because they are not in school. Well, Peter is in JoySchool (preschool), but lucky for me, his JoySchool was cancelled during my visit due to illness (not on his part). I really didn't mind. My first day there, we painted. Alison and her friends were busy painting pumpkins, but Peter and Christian were pumpkin-less, so they busied themselves painting the back of paper plates and construction paper.

Really, there is not much better than watching little hands and faces in pure concentration. 

That weekend, we took a little drive to Oregon to watch the BYU play Oregon State. It was a lot of fun. We went to Chevy's for dinner (another family's choice--I won't put that one on the Winders), and Peter and I had a blast watching the tortilla slave. I call him a tortilla slave because often at Mexican restaurants, they have a cool machine you can watch do all of the work. (a demonstration can be seen here: http://youtu.be/2qW9T2wxpcA) It is magical. At Chevy's, they don't have a machine. They have a slave. I mean, I'm sure they pay him, but they can only press two balls of dough into tortillas at a time, then they put them on this huge rotating skillet thing and have to flip them over by hand. He is not even cool enough to have his own YouTube video. But it was more entertaining this way, because Peter had a lot of questions related to the tortillas and the tortilla making man. Some of these included "Why is he doing that? Don't you think he would get tired after doing that all day?"  Also "Those are like pancakes!" and when I responded that yes, they looked a lot like pancakes, he said "And they taste the same to me, too."  It's amazing how even without the machine, Peter could be entertained for the long 25 minutes it took for our food to come out. When you are eating with 8 kids, 25 minutes is entirely too long. We stayed in a hotel Friday night where there was a swimming pool, and you can bet I did NOT bring my swimsuit. Peter brought his, though. And pooped in it. This became humorous the next morning when he said "Mommy, remember when I pooped in my swimsuit?" and chuckled. As if it was a distant memory.

Saturday was game day. Everyone was really into the game until the second half when Jane fell asleep and Peter and Christian took an intense liking to my iPhone. They took turns with Alison playing "Nyan Cat: Lost in Space" and took an exorbitant amount of pictures of themselves.  Those are the only pictures I really have of the game. Melanie and Brandon took a few of us all together, but they only have a private blog, so imagine that I linked you to them and you saw us all in our blue and white gear. Luckily, we have these photos:

Then after a long trip back, we spent the next few days preparing for the best birthday party I have ever attended. Christian turned 6 and decided to celebrate with a Despicable Me party! This is one of my favorite movies, so it was more fun than I can even say to plan for and execute.

We played Minion Bowling

We shot down UFOs

We pinned the nose on Gru

 before

 

  during

after

We ate Minion Cupcakes

and opened presents with hand-made birthday cards

 "I made it myself! Its a picture of a tornado sucking up a bad guy!"

(my favorite quote of the party)

We had a shark pinata

We watched Despicable Me

and we even put on jet-packs so we could get to the moon

Melanie and I made all 10 of these by hand. It was so fun and they looked dreamy!

I made a lot of signs (because I really love to do that, in case you didn't know--seriously. one of my favorite things)

...and we were sad when it was all over. So we left a few signs up.

 That night, I had to leave. It was really sad. I didn't want to say goodbye. I mean, who really wants to leave this cutie?

  

Second things Second:

I left late at night because I was traveling to the other side of the country to visit Andrea in NYC with Vickie. This really could have been a rough night, but I would much rather travel through the night than travel through the day and miss an entire day of fun. HOWEVER, I have THE BEST BROTHER-IN-LAW IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!!! who may have upgraded my ticket to First Class, which may mean I slept like a baby on an airplane (which is the best option available). I still can't get over the amazing kindness of Eric Dance to do that for me. Even if First Class wasn't awesome, I would still be in awe at how nice it was. I don't think he reads this, so I'm probably safe to just say cheesy things. If he does read this, I'll know because he will make fun of me for my cheesiness later. haha. 

We basically ate our way through New York City. OH! And we saw TWO Broadway shows! We saw Memphis, which was great, and we saw Mary Poppins, which I had never seen and was also adorable. We hit up Dishes (twice), Chop't, Magnolia Bakery, Penelope's, Momofuku, Chickalicious, and some other places I'm surely forgetting. At Chickalicious, we ate an Eclair ice-cream sandwich. It was so delicious and so enticing that I took a picture:

It was not so enticing that Mairin and I didn't notice Mr. Suite Life himself walk in with his main squeeze (who I don't know).  It was pretty funny, actually. There was a gaggle of 13-year-olds who were obviously loitering in hopes of catching another view of him as he left. Only, he was the twin who is not as cute. I know enough to know that one of them is cuter than the other, but not enough to know which is which. Or to care. 

Other things we did... we went to Dylan's Candy Bar! Vickie had never been and since I am basically a child (ask David about the crisis I had when I ran out of LipSmackers and we had to go to Target on a special trip just to get a few flavors) I think Dylan's is a must for anyone who goes to NYC. Andrea and I filled bags with gummies and chocolatey goodness, but Vickie basically just got chocolate covered peanuts. She didn't realize what she was missing. The colors in that place are a dream. 

One of the most eventful things we did all week was go to Central Park. 

(yes, the beauty in this picture is my sister-in-law. I am so glad we are related.)

This was eventful for two main reasons: 

1. We saw this frisbee shrine. I have to believe that someone died in a freak frisbee accident and this was commemorating said accident

and 2. We saw this wedding. 

no, this was not two weddings happening on the same day.

yes, they kissed for pictures.

New York was so much fun. It was harder to leave New York than Seattle. Most likely because I was not heading to another point of interest, but I was heading back to real life. Also, it was sad. I spent a lot of time with Andrea and quite a bit of time with Mairin, and since they are two of my favorite people in the entire world, I didn't like the reality of them being in the same place and me being across the country. It is a lot easier to bug people when you live in the same place. (and by bug I mean be with)

When I came home, it was amazing to realize how many things I had to do. One of those important things was to prepare for Halloween. Unfortunately, we live in an Apartment Complex, where we didn't get any trick-or-treaters. Fortunately, Becca agreed to carve pumpkins with me so I had this guy to put on our porch:

Also, I conned David into frosting and decorating sugar cookies with me. It was harder than I thought it would be knowing his heart just wasn't into it. Plus I didn't get any dregees, which are always the best for grills on jack-o-lanterns. And I forgot pictures.... Being pregnant is rough on emotions and memory.

We did go to Stanford Theatre Halloween weekend for the Sci-Fi presentation of "The Time Machine" and "Forbidden Planet".  Stanford Theatre is the most amazing part of Palo Alto nightlife.  It shows old movies, there is an organist who plays between the features/before the feature, you get a double-feature for $7.50, if you want to buy popcorn and a drink, a large bucket of popcorn is $2.00 and a large drink is $2.50, plus any candy is about $1.50.  And it looks like it came straight out of a fairytale: 

So... that about sums up my life over the past month. I'll save a few things for the next days of blogging. I'm trying to be better about keeping it up since it is the majority of my journal these days and I really do want to be able to review my life at some point. Maybe I should take pictures of me as a pregnant person again... that way it is more believable. Plus, I am getting rather large, so it would be a shame to waste all of this body.

In other thoughts, when I was younger, I had a dream of growing up and not doing chores. Now I know that growing up is doing chores all of the time but not getting any sort of recognition for them. At least sometimes I do things that make me feel like a good wife. This morning, I was so proud of myself for getting out of bed at quarter to seven and making breakfast for my Boyf. So proud, I even took a picture. I don't want anyone to say it didn't happen.

Back to being a housewife.

Day #40: I'm a work in progress

I'm still working on getting myself together.  I like to tell myself that we spend our entire lives "getting ourselves together," that way with each failure, I still feel like I am moving forward.

Biggest Success of the Week: my music room is almost DONE! This was a lot more work than I thought it would be because music room has to have space to accommodate Tiny when he arrives. That meant I decided to move the heavy things around and needed Boyf to come home from work to help me. Only there isn't any light in there, so it is REALLY difficult when David always comes home after dark. After I finally moved a lamp pre-his-return, the furniture was moved successfully and TODAY I almost finished setting it all up. Unfortunately, the movers ruined one of my key pieces of equipment, which means I need a claim check before I can actually use my speakers and microphone. At least it is in the right place and the boxes are in the recycling bin. WIN.

Best Fail of the Week: I offered to make dinner for a couple in our church who just had their first baby. Time to make dinner on hottest September day ever came and I turned the oven to 400 degrees in our 88 degree apartment. I sweat. A LOT. But in the end, I took dinner only a few minutes late to their home. Afterward, I had plans to make dinner for Boyf, but I just couldn't. So I settled on making quesadillas when he came home. Too bad that I forgot to take the tortillas out of the freezer.... And haven't cooked dinner at all this week. FAIL. We ate sandwiches. I have eaten so many sandwiches in the past two weeks. I need a new lunch idea. That is just as easy. Thanks.

This weekend is General Conference for our church.  Since we don't have cable, we will probably be at church for a lot of hours... Fortunately I have already made Boyf promise to take me to THIS STORE tomorrow. So the weekend will be a success. It is in pursuit of Halloween. I love Halloween.
Last year, we made these cookies:

And I dressed up like this (I won a contest for this homemade costume and my superior dancing. PRIZE MONEY!):

And we had a party that looked like this:

 AWESOME.

 (duh. My mom was in charge and everything she does is awesome.)

This year, I would like to make these cookies:

and dress up maybe like this:

(no, it won't be as funny since no one here knows my brother, but it sure would look great on me)

and have a party that looks like this:

SUPER AWESOME.

and countdown to Halloween with my own version of this:

Also, I have already planned Tiny's first Halloween costume (next year, of course) which will be THIS (without the ruffles and with a lightning scar):