weekly 2014.10.26

Bekah just told me to type, “Halloween is coming up! Yay!” She’s just a little excited. She’s been marking off days on the calendar to count down to Halloween for a few weeks now. I’m not overly excited (as usual). My friends were all texting around the other day looking for supplies for Halloween costumes and I asked them “what’s the rush?!?!?” I plan on thinking good and hard about costumes on Thursday. However, Spencer will probably force me to function sooner. He’s getting Halloween on the brain, and if I don’t get something done ASAP, he will nag me to death until I do. His nagging can be very persuasive.

Harry’s plans to be Nacho Libre have been foiled. His teacher says no masks even though I am positive that I’ve seen kids in the past wearing masks for the school parade. So he will probably do something else for school (probably our stand by Indiana Jones) and Nacho for Trick or Treating. (Lame.)

Spencer bought a blue morph suit at Target that he was pretty excited about. But either he’s too skinny or it was meant for a chubby kid, because it's so baggy on him it looks a little ridiculous. So now he is going as a wizard, which means I have to sew him a costume. (Cue nagging.) He made himself a wizard staff out of pvc pipe and paper mache that looks pretty neat.

Thomas spent most of the day yesterday writhing in agony. After his soccer game, he helped at our ward Day of Service and at some point in the middle of a lot of raking leaves, his chest started to hurt. He had a little trouble defining the trouble, but from what I can tell, it was a lot of pain right below his rib cage. We never did figure out what was wrong, and today it seems better.

Aaron went to a stake dance last night. He was very reluctant to go, but two of his friends talked him into it. He came home kind of grumpy about the whole thing. (ha!) I told him boring/dumb stake dances are a rite of passage. I guess the problem was that the dance was in west side of town, and we live in east side of town, and they didn’t know a soul there. Horrors.  He did dance with one girl, but he can’t remember her name, and she had really sweaty hands.

Rachel had her big group date last night. She had fun. I think. Mostly? She had a lot of fun with the group as a whole. And because Stick told me I should only write nice things, I will just say that her date was a little more enthusiastic than she would have preferred. Ok, a lot. A lot more enthusiastic, and I can’t stop laughing about it.

Somehow it was decided that Rachel would drive. Lovely. Not our junky Subaru, our Excursion, our family car, with seven other teenagers inside. She said she felt like a mother, telling everyone she wouldn’t drive if they didn’t have seatbelts on. Then she had to lock all the windows shut because they were trying to hang outside. And then all seven other kids were back seat drivers. You know, because they have all been driving for one whole year now, they’re clearly experts. But despite all that, she managed to get all the kids and the car back in one piece. (yay) She picked everyone up, and took them to a house in our ward where they took pictures. A house that goes crazy every year for Halloween so it was a neat photo shoot.  I had fun seeing the kids laugh and tease and have fun together while they took the pictures. After the photos, they went to Riley’s house to eat pizza and decorate Halloween ginger bread houses with one of their hands tied to their date’s hand. Then they went to the dance. To finish off the date, they had planned to go to Lazer Tag, but when they got there it was booked full for the night. So they went to 7-11 and got Slurpee’s and went to the park. Then she had to drop everyone off and really made up laugh telling us how awkward the “end of date” door scene is especially when seven of your friends are in the car laughing their heads off as they watch you do the awkward hug. Oh man, good times!

The downside to all the kids partying last night was that Aaron got home at 11pm and Rachel got home at midnight. We are surely too old to be staying up that late waiting while the kids have a social life. I can about imagine how it will be with Rebekah. We will probably be sound asleep before she even starts her night!

In other news, Rachel took the ACT yesterday. In preparation for the ACT, Rachel went to the temple every day last week before school. Once by herself and rest of the time with her friend Riley. How blessed are we that she can do this regularly?

She felt good about it but didn’t finish the Math or Science sections. Which is normal for her, she’s smart in both these areas, but slow. She told us that a girl got kicked out half way through for cheating! Yikes. Rachel’s next big event? Applying for BYU. (Double yikes.)

Also, mom, don't read this:

My morbid news for the week: I was doing indexing on Thursday and  I did death certificates from Virginia in 1972. I ended up indexing a husband and wife murder suicide! First I did the wife and saw that she had died from a gunshot to the head, which seemed odd. Then I realized that the very next record was the lady's husband and he also died from a gunshot would to the head - probably self inflicted. Crazy, I tell you. They were in their mid fifties. While doing the indexing you can't help but wonder about each person and think about them for a minute. But that one really made me think!

Here’s a neat quote I saw today:

Nothing will surprise us more than when we get to heaven and see the Father and realize how well we know Him and how familiar His face is to us. – Ezra Taft Benson