Just quick . . .

I'm not doing much blogging because of NaNoWriMo (computer time is preeeecious--and you're supposed to say that in your head in the exact same way as Gollum in the LOTR movies). But a couple of things.

1. Ethan's been in MN with his Dad having a grand old time shootin pheasants and visiting our old house. He hasn't been back since we moved almost 4 years ago and he told me it was "cool but weird. Everything's small. And not as wooded." He's coming home tonight, flying as an unaccompanied minor (and Forrest didn't find out until he checked him in at the gate a few hours ago that it's an extra 100 smakeroonies to do that). It worries me a touch, having him fly all alone, but then I remember that I flew by myself to Albuquerque to see my Grandparents when I was eight and nothing terrible happened. Other than the fact that I returned home with my hair cut short. As I remember it, my Grandma didn't really run that decision past my mom. But the cool thing about hair is that it grows, right?

Anyway, in honor of Ethan, I want to point everybody in the direction of his rarely-posted-upon blog. He has a new post up and he wants some input. So everybody visit here. Fly home safe, bud!

2. I've written about 22,000 words of the 50,000 I plan to have done by Nov. 30. I'm a little behind, it's true, but I think I can do it. I'm feeling more groovy (as in in-the-groove, not so much groovy-baby), and although I have no idea how the story's going to turn out, I've forgotten how much fun it is to have characters and conflicts start leaping up out of the bushes.

3. Wyatt refuses to be poop trained.

4. How come I never win cooking contests? In the past few years I've entered chili contests, cookie contests, and just this week, a cobbler contest. All of these are church activity or neighborhood togetherness related, of course. I'm more a social baker than a serious chef. No Pillsbury Bake-off for me. I mean, heavens, I'm like oh-for-five in WARD cook-offs. This last time there were FOUR entrants and they gave TWO prizes and I still didn't win.

It's enough to make a girl swear off cooking altogether. Except I do make wicked good chocolate chip cookies. Even if nobody wants to give them a prize . . .

Family Photo Shoot

On Sunday I called Cindy with the bright idea to have her take some pictures of our family and I take some pictures of hers for Christmas cards, etc. (We both have the same camera.) But turns out that Tony and Cindy already got some pictures taken (gorgeous, gorgeous pictures), and as we started comparing schedules it turned out that the best time to get the pictures taken was exactly 25 minutes from the time I picked up the phone! It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, we were all relatively groomed post-church, and I knew the colors I wanted to wear. So--shazam!!--I made everybody change clothes, put on a swipe of lipstick, fluffed Elise's hair, and out the door we went! We just barely caught the light--but we caught it! And the pictures turned out really beautiful, I think.

So here for your viewing pleasure--our photo shoot! And thanks so much, Tony and Cind, for taking such wonderful pictures. I'm thinking of using the first one below for our Christmas card photo. Whaddayathink?

Halloweenishness

So here's the Halloween rundown.

The night before Halloween, we had an adult neighborhood Halloween party. Most couples tried to coordinate outfits. You know, with their spouses. But Forrest and Cody had other ideas:


It really was a pretty good idea, though, I've gotta admit. Freaky and disturbing, but also pretty funny. And yes, he's wearing an old dress of mine from a decade ago.


But it did leave me without a costume "theme," so instead of trying to be an Elder or something (I guess I could have dressed up in a suit and been their Zone Leader??) I took elements of Elise's costume, ratted my hair, sprayed it silver (which made me look kinda like a 65 year old woman with bedhead, but what they hey) and called it good. I also put sparkles on my face. Just because we had them (for Elise's costume). Because under what other circumstances would I ever have the opportunity to put sparkles on my face?

Anyway, it was a fun party and Forrest only spoke in a falsetto about 40% of the time.

Ethan's costume consisted of a pair of realistic fangs we purchased on the internet. He begged and begged for the fangs--but nicely, he knows how to work the system--and like any good permissive parent he finally wore me down and I spent just as much on fangs as I did on Jonas's costume. He assures me that he's going to use them for movie-making in the future, though--and he was highly, HIGHLY pleased with the way the fangs turned out.
This cloak we dug out of the orange Halloween bin . . . since he spent all his money on the fangs, of course.
Ethan and two of his friends (the third hadn't shown up yet). As yet another example of my parental aquiescence, I let Ethan go trick or treating even though I'd told him that last year was the final year. Lots of kids his age were out and about, though--and they're still on the young side of teenagerhood. And they're good kids, too. Had fun. When they came home, we'd rented "Something Wicked This Way Comes" for them to watch in the basement (one of our classic PG rated 80s horror movies, that and "Watcher in the Woods"--remember??). But guess what? They all decided they didn't want to watch a scary movie and watched Napoleon Dynamite instead.

This is Elise, wearing much of what I wore to the Halloween party the night before (but not looking like a 60 year old woman). She looked dang cute, actually. When people asked her what her costume was, she said she was a "dead maiden."

Spooooooky!

Elise and Tayler. Both dead. Elise and Tayler and another friend from school trick or treated both our neighorhood AND the school friend's neighborhood. Double score!


Jonas was some kind of medieval knight / "Nasgruel" (??? Jonas supplied this spelling) Lord of the Rings character. Mainly he wanted the sword and the shield when he saw them at Target, so we bought both of those and rummaged the rest of the costume from the aforementioned orange Halloween bins. I really am not one of those "homemade costume" moms, apparently. And although I think homemade costume moms ROCK . . . I'm very comfortable in my store-boughteneness. We all have our talents, etc etc, right?

Jonas and a bunch of his friends at our neighborhood Halloween party, Halloween afternoon. Jonas took off trick or treating with this gaggle of boys and I didn't see him until almost 10:00 that night. Kids scattered hither and thither this Halloween!

Good think we have Wyatt still at home, willing to let his parents tag along while he trick-or-treats. Wyatt was going to be a dinosaur for Halloween, but changed his mind at the last minute. When I asked him if he wanted to wear the policeman outfit he'd found in Grandma Sweat's costume collection, he was all over it!

This is a shot of the Wy-dog post trick-or-treating. He was hilarious. Not only did he have to psych himself up for the "scary" houses (one house had spooky music and a bunch of zombie mannequins lining the walk and Wyatt was mumbling, "I not scared, I not scared" under his breath), but once he got up to the door, even though we'd coached him on proper "trick or treat" and "thank you" etiquette, he'd simply put his hand out, palm up, and wiggle his fingers in a "gimme gimme" gesture. Luckily most folks thought it was cute.



Muscles! He had a ball on Halloween this year, but he's glad that all the scary stuff has been taken out of the grocery store and the giant skeleton guy is no longer in the lobby of Lifetime Fitness. In fact, today when we went to Target and got to the "holiday" section he said, "Santa! I love Santa! Christmas! Mom, it smells like apples!" (And he was right. It DID smell like apples.)

So onward and upward. Christmas here we come!

Missus Edit-pants

So this week I've been hustling around working on my two editing projects. Okay, mentally hustling around. Most of this editing stuff I do with my bum firmly planted in my office chair, and I haven't gone to the gym since Monday because I had RS meetings Tues morning, my visiting teaching Wed morning, and my own being-visiting taught Thursday morning. So, yeah, I supposed I could have gone to the gym this morning . . . but the kids are off track and I slept in until 8 (thanks hon for getting up with Wyatt at 6:15--3,000 calories worth of brownie points right there) and then took all four kids to get haircuts, bought pumpkins, and then went to Payless with those same four kids and 12% of the population of South Jordan because there was some Oprah 50%-off- everything-in-the-store promotion and my kids all simultaneously grew out of their church shoes last Sunday.

So I haven't gone to the gym. But I have been hustling.

Hustle-job number one has been Irreantum, which is finally all typeset and ready for last-minute proofing. I'm really proud of this issue and think it's going to be the best one yet--all 220 pages of it. Here's the cover. Isn't it gorgeous? It's a window in the Boston temple. We have a great collection of other black and white photography from sacred places around the world in the interior of the journal:

I've also been busy working on Dispensation, finalizing ideas for the cover and working with Chris at Zarahemla on copyedits. Here's THAT cover:

We went back and forth on a number of different designs (39 in all!) and there were a few at the end I really liked. But I decided this one would be best after we changed the background from black (which I thought was too stark) to this rust color. I think it's bold and memorable and pretty cool.

And tomorrow's Halloween! Then (drumroll) in November I'm going to do something called NaNoWriMo. Yes, some of you might think I'm crazy, but Irreantum is all but wrapped up, Dispensation is close, and I've been editing instead of writing for way too long. This is a way to jump start the whole process. You commit to writing 50,000 words during the month of November. I'm not planning to have anything but a messy first draft (or the beginnings of a messy first draft) of the novel I've been tinkering with now for almost a year--but I'm excited to jump in. So during the month of November, Forrest will do his first full marathon and I'll try to write a novel :-). Sound ambitious enough?!?!

Should be fun.

Choo Choo!

Yes, my friends, we've been on the train lately. What train, you ask? The Heber Creeper (special Halloween edition)? The new FrontRunner (with free wifi!)? The Orient Express (wouldn't that be fun?).

No, this is the fourth time we've boarded this particular train, and I've gotta say, the station's in sight. Knock on porcelain.



Wyatt's potty-ing adventure began last week, and despite a few frustrating days and some extra loads of laundry and bouts of spot carpet cleaning, we're making good progress. He's reached station number one (no accidents now for over 24 hours! well, not counting nighttime) and station number two is coming into view. Today he arrived independently at station number two for the very first time. I was on the phone with my mom when it happened. She told me she wrote it in her journal.

Seriously. That takes Grandma-pride to a whole new level.

So we've been doing the potty dance, the boys have been playing sports, Elise has been singing away in the children's choir, and I've been dutifully teaching my class of four students--about which I won't say much just in case one of them Googles me and ends up over here somehow. But who Googles their college professors, you ask? Well, I've actually Googled a few of mine for various reasons, come to think of it. Which takes my nerdiness to the same level as my mom's Grandma-pride, I realize. But my class is full of good people--it's just different when the class is so small. I'm not missing the grading time, though.

I'm also in the midst of finishing up the 2009 double issue of Irreantum. It's going to be, well, awesome. If I do say so. I know none of you read it. But still. Someone will. Somewhere.

Also: Fall Television--Reality Edition. Yes, my friends, let's do the rundown, shall we?

-The Biggest Loser: I'm beginning to wonder if Tracey is a plant. She's a producer's dream. Almost dying on the first episode, stabbing people in the back willy-nilly, suddenly veering into violent crying jags, losing weight even though she's not exercising (much to the consternation of both Bob and Jillian), then inexplicably staying on when she could have been voted off. But Tracey is so weird she's gotta be for real. Opinions? And the lady whose entire family was killed in a car accident a couple of years ago makes me cry if she raises her eyebrows. Highly emotional season so far.

-SYTYCD: Of all the contestants (the final 20 were just announced--let the real show begin!), I think two Utah girls have the best chance of polarizing the audience. We have Ashleigh Di Lillo, BYU graduate and queen of the fakey-smile who made it into the competition by the skin of her teeth, along with her chest-baring, vaguely Lothario-like husband who hails from Springville. People love to hate girls like Ashleigh. We'll have to see if she grows on anybody. And then there's cute little Mollee (two l's, two e's please) with her blond ringlets and High School Musical resume. She's barely old enough to compete at 18 and Nigel's already complaining that she dances too young. And she does seem reaaaaaalllly young--and squealy and jumpy and giddy, which can grate on a person's nerves. But from what we've seen so far she can really dance. Only time will tell. Hooray for Fall SYTYCD!!

-Top Chef: Oh, Kevin--you of the pig tattoo. You remind me of a young Santa Claus. Plus you can COOK (last week's Restaurant Wars notwithstanding). I hope you win because the other three who are gunning for the title--Jen, and those Voltaggio brothers--don't have anything approaching your sweetness factor. In fact, the elder Voltaggio, Bryan, downright unnerves me. I'm sure being in a room with Bryan Voltaggio would be akin to hanging out with with John Stockton. You'd know if you told a joke he'd look at you for a beat or two, then furrow his eyebrows disapprovingly. Cooking (like basketball) is NO LAUGHING MATTER. Also, I miss Fabio from last season. Can't help it. Just do.

-Project Runway. Eh. Still mad at dumb Harvey Weinstein for dumping it over on the Lifetime network. I don't like watching those Lifetime sit-com commercials, and something about the show seems less urgent and more glossified (i.e., Lifetimeized) than it did back in its heyday. But this might be due to the fact that a show like PR can only keep going for so long before it starts to feel tired. Sigh. One observation, though: so many of the female designers this year are drop dead gorgeous! Where do they find these girls? And they're talented, too, which adds insult to injury.

Okay, and yes, I watch a few other reality shows (Survivor--barely and only when I have time; America's Next Top Model--I am ashamed to admit, and isn't Tyra looking SKINNY this season?; and The Amazing Race--also barely because it's getting reaaaaallly old and I'm still irked that it won the Emmy for Best Reality Show YET AGAIN). But as I've explained in previous posts: the vast majority of the time these shows are TiVoed, and I watch them during the magical 8:30-9:30 a.m. dishwasher unload/kitchen cleanup/laundry folding hour. Back in the day I watched the Today show during this portion of the morning, but thanks to TiVo I'm now spared Willard Scott's Birthdays-brought-to-you-by-Smuckers segments and instead get to see blindfolded chefs try to figure out if they're supposed to poach the sablefish or pan fry it.

And, finally, a few more pictures. This time, sports:

That's Ethan with the flag in his hand during the final game of the season. I'm a big fan of flag football. Not nearly as all-consuming as real football, or as dangerous (seriously, there's an article about head injuries in the New Yorker all football players should read)--just fun. Ethan had a great time.
Jonas, doing the soccer two-step. He's scored a few goals this season and really kicked up the intensity. His team doesn't win much, but as Jonas says, "It doesn't matter if you win or lose. It only matters if you play with your friends." Amen.


Elise's picture represents the sport of fashion. It's highly competitive. Just ask Tim Gunn. And can I just say that Elise is rocking the 6th grade? Some nights she has hours and hours of homework, and she deals with it with real aplomb. If patience-with-homework were an Olympic sport, she'd be getting a gold medal. Or at least a silver.

And now Wyatt must have CHOCOLATE MILLLLLLKKK! So I'm outta here.

A Week (or two) of Wilkeyness

Sheesh. It's been a while since I've blogged. Life, you know.

But I do have some photos and commentary to share, all of which have an element of Wilkeyness. So on to the photos! First, fishing:

Forrest took the boys and Darrin and the Wilkey boys fishing on a cold UEA weekend Friday. They bundled up and started reeling 'em in.
Ethan looks too cool for fish, doesn't he? (He was already too cool for school. UEA weekend and everything. Ba dum bah!)

Max won the prize for ginormous-trout-catching. Isn't she a biggie? The guys had a great time seeing that one reeled in.


That's a biiiig fishie! Forrest came home and smoked a couple up, too, and they were tasty.

So that was two weekends ago. Last weekend Forrest and I left the kids at home with Mindy & Pete (THANK YOU!) and took off with a whole gaggle of Wilkeys to visit Moab. Interestingly, I'm a lifelong Utahn who's never been to Moab, never traversed the slickrock trail, never seen Delicate Arch, so we thought we'd round out our year of National Parking (Zions, Bryce, Yellowstone, etc.) by visiting Arches. I was hoping when we woke up at 5 a.m. on Friday to meet the rest of the family for the "unimog" (explanation below) that it would be worth it . . . and it was!

Handsome husband, handsome view.


An actual dinosaur track. I guess they're all over the place up there. See Mom? They ARE real! :-0
This is the unimog, the vehicle which (that?) spurred us to wake up at 5:15 on Friday morning and speed to Moab so we could meet the rest of the Wilkeys for a 9:30 ride. It's basically a big ol' jeepish kinda truck thing (don't you love my technical vocabulary here?) that's all tricked out so it can traverse the Moab terrain and almost tip over, but not quite. The unimog you see here is a bigger version--we were behind on a smaller one.

The couple-shot.


Taking to the hills. They call it "slickrock," which is a terrible misnomer because the sandstone in Moab is just about the stickiest rock I've ever walked on. It's almost like hiking on sandpaper. Made it easier to get over some (SOME) of my paralyzing fear of heights and scramble around a little.


Up, up, up!!


Scanning the vistas.


A bunch-o-Wilkeys, looking happy.


And uuuuuup, uup, up. (This hill was at a 45% angle. Luckily our drivers were good. Or so they told us.)


Later that day we hiked up to Delicate Arch. (That's Forrest and me in the right corner.) This iconic symbol of my state is iconic for good reason--it's breathtaking. Pictures don't do it justice.
This is an example of the type of thing that triggers my height-phobia. Although I went up there with everybody else I had to keep my eyes straight ahead, and I'm afraid that if I brought my kids on this hike I'd have a full-on panic attack.


Pretty picture, no?

At 83 years old, Muriel managed the strenuous 3 mile round-trip hike all the way to Delicate Arch. Here's hoping I can be like Muriel when I'm 83 (although she had 14 kids, so there's a chance she's tougher than me).


This was another hold-my-breath, look-straight-ahead-and-scurry moment. A bunch of us went off the beaten path so we could get a different view of the arch and I decided to be a good sport and go along.
Here we are, post-scurrying.


And here's the worth-scurrying-for view.


(And here too, sans blurry, windblown people.)


Sunset, on the way down from Delicate Arch.

The next morning we explored some other nooks and crannies in Arches National Park.

A rock formation that looked suspiciously like Garth in profile.


The Windows. We also scurried up inside this arch--but I don't have any pictures of it (until Quinn emails them to me, at least. Hint, hint?). This was the scariest scurry for me. I was okay once I sat down but couldn't look behind me, and there were people who had some little kids up in there, running around like mountain goats, and it was all I could do not to yell at them: "Don't you realize your children are going to plummet to their deaths?!?!?!?" Which would have ruined everybody's fun, I realize. (Not the plummeting. My yelling. Although, come to think of it, my yelling would have ruined things a lot less than the plummeting could have . . .)


Another handsome husband, handsome view.


This is a baby rattlesnake that slithered by in the parking lot of Landscape Arch. It ended up under somebody's car, then on top of this woman's backpack. Initially, the woman thought Forrest was trying to steal her backpack, but when she realized he was moving a rattlesnake off of her backpack with a stick her mood turned from indignation to terror to gratitude for Forrest's baby snake wrangling.


And this is Landscape Arch. We hiked in to see it but were running out of time (it was almost 2:00, nobody had eaten, we had to get back on the road to get home before nighttime), so we just snapped a few pics from a not-so-primo spot and high-tailed it home.

We had a wonderful trip. So fun. Nature! You know? And the Wilkeys are a great bunch to hang out with and we're so glad they include us; even without the DNA test to prove our family ties they saved us a spot on the Unimog. Thanks Wilkeys for a great weekend!

(Oh, and to extend the Wilkey Weekend, we hosted Extended Wilkey FHE at our house on Sunday night. Needless to say, our house was full to the brim w/ Wilkeys, but, alas, no pictures. But many chocolate chip cookies eaten and good to see a bunch of kids and grandkids who didn't go to Moab.)

And I'll end with a slight departure: a video that contains to Wilkeyness whatsoever. But it does contain a cute boy and some washable magic markerness:

Cousins

One of the things I like best about living in Utah is cousin access. Nothing makes me happier than seeing my kids enjoy their family, and I know they really love their cousins. Even Ethan was excited when he heard that Bella, Ayva, and Lilly would be joining us from Thursday to Sunday last week . . . and when a 13 year old boy is glad to see three female cousins age 6, 4, and 16 months, you know your family ties are pretty tight. Double-knotted, I'd say.

Mindy and Pete's girls were with us while their parents took a little trip to the land of trolley cars and Ghirardelli chocolate. (The last time I visited good ol' San Fransisco was when I was 23 years old, pregnant with Ethan, and Forrest and I and another newish high school teacher chaperoned the journalism kids from West Jordan High for a conference . . . and we missed our plane home. And it was spring break weekend. Oh, heavenly day, we had no idea what we were doing. A little shudder runs up my spine whenever I think of it. Sprinting through the airport, gaggles of trusting teenagers trailing behind me, gasping for breath, watching as the plane pulled away from the concourse, thinking, "Holy crap! I'm IN CHARGE of this mess." Ah, adulthood.)

Anyway, I digress. While the girls were here things were pretty busy--they were good girls, to be sure, but nine people in the house is nine people in the house--and I'd planned to take some pictures. Alas, I only took one. It'll have to do:



It was fun to have the cousins here and to inject a little girliness into our otherwise male-dominated environment. And I'm glad Mindy and Pete were able to take off and have some time alone. Oh, time alone. I love time alone.

But to amp up the level of cousinliness, Amy and Dave came to town and brought their two offspring along (since one of them is three and the other is one, they have this habit of tagging along with their parents.) We had a fun Sunday dinner with them and Tony & Cindy and then today while the big kids were in school we went to the zoo. Love the zoo! Especially on a beautiful day like today. So--pictures:

Touching the "water ball." A must at Hogle Zoo. (I like how this photo captures his reflection. Double cuteness.)
It was a day for babies at the zoo: baby giraffes, baby tiger cubs, baby meerkats. But the baby to beat all babies was the newborn elephant. Oh, what a cute, cute animal. She galloped around the enclosure, played with the big red balls, and I thought this was a pretty cool shot of the baby nursing while the mom got a little lunch for herself. Wyatt loved it.
Awwww. Right?

And this is little Miss Macy. Dear Macy: You are so cute. I love your hair. My hair was your color when I was your age. None of my children inherited it, but I'm glad to see somebody did. I'm sorry we kept ignoring you in your stroller while everyone else looked at stuff at the zoo, but next year you'll like it a lot more. Promise. Love, Aunt Angie.

Cousins: A profile.

Riding the tigers. I love how Jack's hat was always just a little skeewompus. Jack is three. Jack can read. He's a supergenius and Wyatt loves hanging with him.

The obligatory Famous Lion Drinking Fountain Photo

And the obligatory Do You Measure Up Stretch Your Arms Like a Gorilla Photo. Although they changed it! It used to be one gorilla--a male, probably, those zookeeping sexists--but more enlightened zookeepers now have a male, female, juvenile and infant gorilla. Much more equitable. But Grandpa is, and will always and forever be, the Silverback Male.

It was a fun day, and it's been a fun cousin week. Here's to cousins! And Grandmas and Grandpa and Aunts and Uncles and Brothers and Sisters and the whole lot of you. Love ya.