Loverly

It's Valentine's Day!  We just finished up our Valentine's Day "Breakfast Dinner"--pancakes/eggs/bacon/french toast--the only dinner everyone in the family actually likes equally (I KNOW!).  Although we do have to make both pancakes and french toast since Ethan and Jonas, inexplicably, don't really like french toast, but Forrest and Elise and I all prefer it to pancakes (the sane opinion).  So . . . perhaps I shouldn't say that this is a dinner we all like either.


Really.  Is there no dinner we all truly love?  Could it be possible?  I think yes.  Jonas is our biggest monkey wrencher, since the only meat he'll eat is chicken of the nugget variety or hot dogs, which severely limits our options, and Ethan doesn't like Italian food with red sauce (suspicious of most pizzas, won't eat spaghetti).  I'm sure this turn of events is all my fault.  But that's not what this post is about.  It's about Valentine's Day!  Love!  Togetherness!  The eating of scrambled eggs!  (Prepared by Elise, who makes DELICIOUS scrambled eggs, lovely and fluffy and light.  And Jonas had a few bites.  It was a Valentine's Day miracle.)

Forrest and I spent our Mormon Valentine's Day (which is what Saturday the 13th of February is if V-Day falls on Sunday the 14th) in Moab.  At the last minute, Forrest took the place of a guy in our ward who hurt his back and ran the Moab Ret Hot 33 K trail race.  Why they call it "red hot" I'm not sure, since there was snow on the ground at it was about 20 degrees when the race started that morning, but it was fun to go and cheer him on.  Here he is right after the race, in front of the snowy Moab mountains.  He's holding a bread bowl full of really bad burned soup that they gave to all the runners once they finished.  Nice thought, bad soup.

Since I didn't get to go cheer for him at the finish line of his first marathon (remember the vomitorium?), we took advantage of the opportunity to have a little weekend getaway this weekend, thanks to Mindy and Pete and Forrest's mom and sister Chelle.  It was a quick trip, but it's always fun to get away and spend time just the two of us.  Forrest did a great job on the race--there was a 50K option (just over 34 miles), but Forrest did the more sane (but still crazy) 33k, about 20 miles.  Although the distance was shorter than a marathon, it was a trail race up in the mountains of Moab, so there were lots of hills to climb and rocks to jump down and slicky spots of ice to avoid.  Mountain-goatiness required.  But he came in faster than he expected.  I joined him at the finish line after spending a few hours in the hotel room writing (bliss!), and made it there just 5 minutes before he came around the corner.

Looks pretty chipper after running twenty miles up and down mountains in the snow, doesn't he?


In other news, I'm getting in the swing of things with Webelos.  They combined the two Webelos dens (long story) and now I have about 14 10-year-olds to whom I must teach the principles of electricity (yes, that's what I did last week, after much studying on the internet--did you know that many generators are gigantic spinning magnets?) and help to build catapults with clothespins and milk-carton tops.  But they're cute kids and I think I'm figuring things out.


I also had a dream that I turned my novel manuscript to an agent (and no, I'm not NEARLY anywhere close to turning in a manuscript to an agent) but that she cc'ed me on an email that she sent to other people making fun of me for using so many parenthetical asides.  It said things like "Get a load of this (crazy [super awful!]) novel and this writer (can she call herself a writer [she of the parenthetical asides])?"  It's true that I use a lot of parentheses in blog posts (ya notice?) but I don't in my fiction.  Much.  What I do overuse is the hyphen --- oh how I love the hyphen!  But, yes, my subconscious is not pleased with my new novel.  My conscious isn't much enamored with it either.  But I'm trying to take my own advice and let the rough draft be rough and, hopefully, hammer it into something.  Maybe.


And lastly: Survivor Heros vs. Villains!  I haven't been excited about Survivor in ages, but I've gotta say, the premiere was a lot of fun.  And Boston Rob!  (I've always really liked Boston Rob.)  Colby!  Stephanie!  The smarmy-apparently-Mormon-cyclist-guy!  Always glad to have at least one reality show to look forward to.  Survivor + Lost + Modern Family (my new favorite comedy) + the Olympics = some fun TV over the next few months.


So happy Valentine's Day to all of you.  Hope you had some chocolate, took a nap, felt the love.  I did.

I had the wherewithal to upload two videos to Youtube

So, for video number 1, I give you Wyatt, doing the happy dance to the birthday song (with Jonas as the videographer):



Video number 2, Ethan's second foray into standup comedy.  We all probably remember his debut standup performance in the 5th grade, but this year he decided to bravely go where no Hallstrom has gone before and do standup in front of the teeming masses that are junior high students.  Seriously, my kid is brave.  But he's also good.  He wrote all his own material, and although Forrest and I helped him a little with transitions, this routine is all him.  The video below was taken at the "family only" show, so there weren't nearly as many 12-15 year olds in the audience (lots of grandmas and grandpas who might not get, say, a texting joke), but he got a lot of great laughs even in our group.  But I hear the routine killed in front of its target audience.  He's been getting props from the junior high crowd all week.  So, I give you . . . . Ethan!



And before I forget--this isn't a video, but I keep neglecting to mention Elise's hard work and success with this year's science fair.  She did an experiment growing pea plants under different colored light (turns out pea plants like colored lights--they're festive that way) and did such a great job that she was one of 5 kids in her class chosen to go on to the school-wide science fair.  Great job Lou!

 

Gotta love the tri-fold board.  Do any of you remember trying to MAKE your own tri-fold board by taping regular poster boards together then dealing with the thing falling over, drooping on one side, propping it up in the back.  Oh, the misery.  I tell you, prefabricated trifold boards are, along with the TiVo, one of the great advances of modern life.  (Actually, we probably DID have prefabricated tri-fold boards when I was a kid, but taping together poster board was lots cheaper and had the added benefit of teaching me and my WVC peers to DEAL WITH IT!)

And finally:  Lost premiere!  Totally awesome.  Smoke-monster Locke, cheesy CGI sunken island, lucky parallel-universe Hurley, Charlie!  Loved it.  The only sad part was watching it alone.  Stupid traveling husband.  (HE's not stupid.  The traveling's stupid.  He's very smart and must make a living, I understand.  But it's lots more fun to watch Lost with the added benefit of his commentary and warm lap on which to rest my feet.)

Now we're off to Classic Skating.  Off-track activity #4, check!