Well, yesterday's results are certainly a blow. My candidate came in 3rd, though, with 1.26% of the total votes. That would be Charles
Baldwin, the
Constitution Party candidate. Always a long shot, but not, in my opinion, a wasted vote. "Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." -- John Quincy Adams. Thank you for that apt reflection, Mr. Adams.
I would like someone smarter than me to please explain the whole electoral college thing. Maybe we covered it in high school government class, I don't know. I wasn't there very often and when I was I was usually busy with social matters. Besides, a public school education on the running of government is obfuscatory at best - intentionally, I'm sure. SO - can anyone please tell me why, when the majority of the citizens of this country voted for McCain (62.86% McCain / 34.15% Obama according to
KSL), Obama won the election. I do not understand the electoral college. PLEASE, if you understand this concept,
edjumicate me.
In the meantime (Tessa, I always see
Keaneu Reeves in Much Ado saying that) I realized that I forgot to update much on the
fam when last I posted. Almost the entire post was taken up with my maybe-future-someday house plans, and nothing present. Here we go.
O - nothing new. She and I were (almost) matching butterflies for Halloween. Her costume was all bought (or, "
boughten" as the natives say) this year - black velvet(
een, probably) pants and shirt from Savers, lovely black and purple wings purchased at 60% off at
JoAnns, a headband with yellow (her
choice) pipe cleaner antennae and gold sparkles from an aerosol can. My apologies to the environment.
B - a few loose teeth and molars taking forever to come in. He was the Pirate King for Halloween. When people ask him what he was for Halloween, he starts with, "have you ever seen Pirates of
Penzance?" and they give him a blank stare. He then says, "...well, I was the Pirate King from that show," and they go, "
ooohhh,
okaaay..." His costume was awesome, may I just say. I also got him black velvet(
een?) pants at Savers. I had to clip off a little bow. He's been told in the strictest words that these pants are for costume purposes only, which came as a hard knock but he's enduring it well. I did let him sleep in them on Halloween night.
So, black velvet pants. I made him a pirate shirt out of white flannel because I wanted him to be warm. He wore his thermal shirt underneath, to which I pinned a triangle of black
faux fur for chest hair. He got many compliments on it. He had a sash at his waist, topped with a black belt with silver studs (he picked them out himself from Savers) and a plastic sword bought at 60% off at
JoAnn's. From our
existing dress-up collection, he chose a very rakish black-and-purple striped sash to tie around his head. I made him the
awesomest boots ever - tall black pirate boots made from poly-whatever-looks-like-leather-stuff-fabric. They're actually shoe covers, and he wore his
tennies underneath.
J was Curious George and R went along as The Man in the Yellow Outfit. He was not The Man in the Yellow Hat because mommy never got to the Hat. I bought yellow dye and dyed a church shirt and his too-small old temple pants a very look-at-me shade of yellow. HELLO, yellow. However, in the light of yellowish street lamps, in the dark of the neighborhood, his outfit looked
whiteish and everyone thought he was a missionary with a monkey.
J's costume was not convincing. I had an adorable pattern, cut from fleece, complete with a hood with stick-out monkey ears. I started sewing it. My machine
kapooped out. We took it to
Wimmer's, a local mom-and-pop and they gave me some advice and helped me adjust the tension and such. Turns out I've been threading it wrong ever since I bought it from Karen 6 or 7 years ago. Can you believe that, Karen?!? (I lost the manual long ago) Anyway, came home full of hope. Went to bed full of frustration. The next day Randy called around and I was able to borrow a machine. It was very different from mine. All went well until I had to change the bobbin. I read the instructions. I tried my hardest. But I was doing something wrong and I couldn't figure it out and I had about 2 hours till R was going to get up and want to take the kids trick-or-treating.
Ack!
I told myself, scrap it, we're buying one of those horrid,
cheezy, flimsy, stinky
pre-made costumes this year. Grabbed F and headed out to the Halloween store. They had Curious
George but only one, too small. Went next store to
JoAnn's and considered buying flannel, which I knew my machine could handle (it wimps out at fleece is all). Knew I didn't have time, got in the car and went to
WalMart where I thought at the very least if they don't have the costume I can buy chicken pieces from the deli for the kids for dinner.
No costume. Inspiration struck - sweats! But would they have BROWN sweats? They did! I also got a brown knit hat and brown gloves. Got the food, came home, used Wonder Under to attach the contrasting tummy to the brown sweatshirt. Took the cut-out ear pieces and stuck them into the folded-up part of the brown hat. They flopped over forward like a hound dog but there was no time to do anything about it. He lost one at some point in the night. He did not look in the LEAST big like Curious George and I was highly
disappointed and - yes, I'll admit it - embarrassed. It was probably good for my pride but I didn't like it one bit. I'll send them out of the house in
mis-matched clothes,
unbrushed hair, food face and
highwaters.....but a lame Halloween costume? It was hard. Very hard.
So it all worked out, J was happy with it anyway and they all had fun and brought home plenty of loot, on which we've all been gorging every since. Rather, R and I have been gorging while limiting the kids to pretty "healthy"amounts. It's a well-established and accepted fact in our house that mom and dad get to eat from the candy bags. The kids are usually pretty happy to share, especially since they don't really know what they've got so they don't realize when the good stuff goes missing. And we only take stuff that they have 2 or more of, which means we lose interest after a few days anyway.
We're now looking to Thanksgiving. We're going to be home again this year, and have invited some friends over. We're also going to go invite our new neighbors. In the morning, R will be playing in the (flag) Turkey Bowl he organizes in our ward. The guys in this ward are so lame, they refuse to play the first half with a real chicken like they did in Sacramento. But at least they always have a good turn-out. Anyone can play, so they have men, women and kids too, which I think is cool, although R has yet to live down trampling a 9-year-old last year. Good times.
I think we'll eat on the special family Red Plates this year, which Randy grew up using on special occasions. We also have the Blue Plates, but they don't seem
fallish so the Red Plates can do double duty as Thanksgiving
and Christmas plates. Some day I will have special holiday plates (or maybe even *gasp*
whole place settings) that I
wll pick out and buy brand new from a
real store (
ie not Savers or DI) and keep in a hutch and only use once a year. One set for Thanksgiving and one for Christmas. And one for birthdays. And one for Easter.
Hmm....better be a big hutch. And a big plate budget.
Has anyone watched Dan in Real Life?
Oh! I forgot to update on F. He's sleeping better at night, just got tooth #8 (in your face, Layton!) (yes, I'm kidding......
gosh) and has started using his push-walker! He has even balanced standing up by himself a few times. The big ONE is coming up very quickly! He eats like a
trencherman. He likes ravioli's and he LOVES bread, and
mozzarella cheese. And he's naturally very partial to Cheerios, especially the yogurt kind. And actual yogurt. And fruit, peaches being his favorite. Today we discovered that he also likes freeze-dried blueberries that have almost reached the end of their shelf life.
Friday is a Daddy-Daughter thing at church. O is beyond excited.
Pickle is
channelling her inner Predator and attacking a wooden snake.
R went and had his brakes inspected today and we found out that they are.....FINE! MIRACLE!!! *angelic chorus* They squeak pretty badly, but all of the parts are in great shape. The
squeak is from dusty drums. He does need new tires, but that's more do-able than breaks.
We've been very worried about money because with this new work schedule, R is missing an average of 6 hours of work per week because of school. But they work 4 10's which means they've got Fridays off, and R's boss said that he could come in to the shop on Fridays and work there to make up the hours. It'll be horribly boring work, like stripping wire or something, but at least he'll be able to make up the missing time so finances won't be QUITE as horrible as we'd anticipated. This paycheck will be teeny, though, because there were a lot of mix-ups in the schedule last week and work was cancelled one day, plus R missed a few hours one day because we had something important planned and they didn't tell him about the schedule till like 2 days before. It sucks this week because it's the mortgage week, plus we need cat food and litter and laundry soap and probably won't have money for them. I don't know what we'll do about that because I can't go 2 more weeks without that stuff. But I'm waiting till tomorrow to see the paycheck before I panic.
The job he's on right now is in Salt Lake so gas isn't too bad. Next job is in Logan, though.
That'll stink.
Right now I'm reading an awesome book my
gma G sent, called Historical Atlas of the
Renaissance. I just started it. Thanks, grandma! The kids wrote her letters today (they call her The Book Grandma) and I'm going to write her tomorrow and send it off. B's letter started off with, "Please send me a book. Oh, any kind will be fine." I let it go because it's illegible anyway :D and I couldn't even make it out, he had to read it out loud to me. We'll talk about letter
etiquette when he's older.
The kids also got to make Christmas lists for The Regular Grandma (my mom) (and...are you regular, mom?) and I emailed them to her. They were very excited. They're being very ambitious this year - both O and B asked for laptop computers. And B wants an electric guitar. They'll write their letters to Santa after Thanksgiving - those are always pretty interesting.
Home school is going along fine - better this week. I've changed our schedule to keep up with current demands of life. We do chores in the morning, then school in the afternoon. When chores are done they have free time. I had to clear out my supply cabinet a few days ago because the roof leaks right there and everything in the cabinet gets wet. I knew that was going to happen when I put it all in there, and I thought, "I'll find a new place for it all by the time the wet weather starts," and of course forgot. So it's all over the floor now and I still haven't found a different place for it. I need to get it up before it gets trashed. I could pile it all on my sewing table, I suppose, since my machine is back at
Wimmer's getting a repair I can't afford.
I'm tired and I have a headache, so I'm going now. Check back soon because I'm planning to post Ezra Taft Benson's
The Proper Role of Government. Oh, and check out these awesome blogs:
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ This one is Cake Wrecks, and one of the
home school gals posted it on the Yahoo group. The picture on the front page today is a birth cake, and it's censored. It's weird. Don't judge the whole site by that though, get down to the list of posts and just start looking, some of them are hilarious and
this gal who does the blog is really funny.
Here's another one, which I found through a link on Cake Wrecks. It's the "Blog" of "
Unnecessary" Quotation Marks and I especially think that Mary, as a fellow Grammar Stickler, will appreciate it:
http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/ The only warning here is occasional liberal political statements, but not often and not enough to be obnoxious. And it's funny.
Now it's WAY late and I'm off to bed. My house stinks like dirty
cat box. *shudder*
This is an artists rendering of the front (okay, duh).
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