Happy Halloween

We've been busy lately so we were behind on doing pumpkins, so we bought them last night and decorated them today. A few years ago, my mom bought the kids sets to make the pumpkins like potato heads, so that speeds up the decorating for the kids at least, and they have a good time doing it.


Cole wanted to be Luke Skywalker again this year:

Lindsay was Gabriella:

And Bailey was a pirate:

Getting ready to go to our neighbor's for a party:

I didn't make Charlie dress up this year (last year I put a Superdog cape on him), but I thought that if I just left him in the house, he'd go nuts with all the people around. So I took him outside with me while we were handing out candy and he did really well. For the most part. He actually started to want to bark and snapped at our next door neighbor for some reason, but with the kids and the rest of the adults, he just wanted to sniff them and jump up on them. But, I kept telling him to sit and so he did. Not bad for his second Halloween:
The kids ended up with a pretty good haul this year, more than most years. And even though I'm a party pooper and made them come home at nine, I think they had a good time.

Making myself feel better

It never fails, scrapbooking always makes me feel better. I don't always have the time, and I really wish I could do a little every day. Today was such a bummer of a day that I decided to skip studying and scrap instead. I'm such a perfectionist when it comes to my pages that it will usually take me several days to get a two page layout finished. So I was really pleased to finish the layout I started just yesterday. Two pages for a two page layout is really good for me. I'm so far behind it's not funny, but I just can't seem to scrap out of order. So for now I'm working on Cole's album from 2005, the year he turned four.


This is another layout I did recently from Easter that year. This is one of the reasons I'm bummed about not being in California. Every holiday that we spent at home we would visit with the Mausses and Easter 2005 was no exception. The kids had such a great time with their Grandparents and Aunt. I love that they got the chance to make all those memories and look forward to the opportunity for more.

Having a hard time

My aunt posted on her blog about missing my grandparents, and it resonated with me because there are so many things I'm missing right now. I think it can be summed up to say that I miss California. While we're still the same distance from my family, we're twelve hours from Jason's and we hardly see them. I miss the weather in California. I miss our ward in California; church here has been a struggle for me and it was so great there. I miss the friends I had in California. I miss having things to do besides work and school. This area is great for Jason with the tennis center, but I have no evening activities to do and it has really worn me down. I miss being able to go to a pumpkin patch that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Both in Stockton and Livermore, we had great pumpkin patches that didn't charge admission, you just paid for your pumpkins and the corn maze. Here, they all charge admission, and I really hate that! I don't care about the petting zoo, I just want pumpkins that aren't all funky like the grocery store ones.

The list goes on and on. I think the worst part about it is that we feel stuck here. Even if Jason found a new job that would move us, we have no idea when we'd be able to sell our house. So it seems that we're here for however long we're supposed to be here. And I keep on trying to make the best of it because there's nothing else I can do, but the last few days have been hard for me, so I'm just bumming out for now.

Silly girl

Tonight I'm wondering why I have a blog if I don't get to use it to embarrass my kids. I mean, that's my job as a parent, right? Jason and I were in the loft this evening and I started hearing what sounded like it might be singing. I asked him if Bailey was singing in the shower, he thought maybe it was Cole. So I creep down the hallway and listen at the door. Sure enough, Bailey's in the shower singing what we think was David Cook. We were cracking up--she's never done that before. She's been growing up a lot lately, more than I want her to. The other day I had the kids at Michael's. While we were looking at the Halloween stuff, she suddenly gets all excited because they have a Tiger Beat magazine. She swore she would pay me back when we got home (and you can be sure that I made her pay up, I'm not wasting $6 on that!). It just takes me back to when I was so boy crazy and had Joey McIntyre "wallpaper" from all the posters in Bop and Big Bopper magazines. I didn't want her to get to this point already, I don't think I'm ready for this. *sigh* I guess I don't have a choice, but sometimes I just wish she could have been that sweet little baby a little longer. And now she's singing pop songs in the shower and getting excited about putting posters up in her bedroom.

Surprise tennis tournament

Jason is stringing racquets this weekend for a tennis tournament that the "retired" players are playing at. Todd Martin, Jim Courier, Mark Philippoussis, Jimmy Arias, Wayne Ferreria, Aaron Krickstein, and Andre Agassi played this year (John McEnroe was here last year and didn't come this year). For the most part, Jason has converted me to a little bit of a tennis fan, but I only like watching the players I like playing, not all of tennis. We did get to see Jim Courier inducted into the hall of fame, and Todd Martin was really cool to my kids last year when they had to spend one evening with their dad down at the tennis center, so it would have been cool to meet them. But, I was really dying to meet Andre. Jason started trying to pull some strings to see if I could get back there to meet him, and it was crazy how reluctant everyone was to allow it. Until finally, Jason asked the guy who was in charge of all the players, and he said, "Ask Andre". Andre was really cool about it and so I got to go back and meet Andre Agassi and have my picture taken with him. It was a lot of aggrivation for a whole ten seconds of his time, but it was really neat to meet him.