Irony

Today started so good and ended somewhat badly. I had a great morning. I was up at 7:30, out the door at 9. I did a little early Christmas shopping and even found a screaming deal, 93% off! The house was even cleaned up.

I headed out this afternoon for work. Right now I'm just doing on-call hours for the place I did my internship over the summer. Today I picked up a 9 year old boy that I've been working with quite a bit. So, we did our normal schedule of schoolwork at the library, then dinner, and then play time. He did great a his school work (not even one complaint, which is saying something for this kid) and wasn't fussy when we got him dinner. The problem was finding things to do after dinner. We found a few things to keep us going and had a good night together.

The problems all started when I brought him home. No one was there. And my phone was completely dead. I couldn't even turn it on long enough to get my coordinators number. We drove to a pay phone and I had a few numbers written down, but no one was picking up. We drove back to his house a couple times in between calls to see if anyone had arrived home. Finally, 30 minutes after he was supposed to be home, his foster dad finally showed up. An emergency had come up so his foster mom was in the ER and his foster dad was delayed at work. Now, I just had to get home to charge my phone and let my coordinator know everything was alright.

So, I'm hurrying home on the freeway, when I see a cop come on the freeway. I slowed down a bit and kept driving. The cop slowed down and as I was going the speed limit I passed him. He then got behind me and started up his lights so I pulled over. I didn't know why he was pulling me over when I wasn't speeding and there were people going much faster than I was.

"Miss, did you know your headlight was out?" I told him I didn't and that my dad had an auto body business so I'd bring it in to get fixed right away. He checked my license and insurance and let me go. As I finished my drive home I just started laughing at the irony of the one day my phone dies is the one day I need it most. And that the one day I need to hurry home after work (since my phone is dead) is the one day I get pulled over. I finally got home, finally called my coordinator, and finally got dinner at 9:30 pm. I'll never let my phone battery get that low again.

Happy Halloween!

We didn't really do anything for Halloween. Brad had to study and we didn't even get that many trick-or-treaters (only three knocks). We did carve a pumpkin and listened to Harry Potter while doing it. Brad did a great job with carving it. And we had worms and dirt as our spooky Halloween treat.

Marshmallow Play Dough

I made these cute ghosties and pumpkin from a recipe I got from an enrichment on candy making. Microwave marshmallows with a little bit of water and then mix into a mound of powdered sugar until it's a stiff dough. Then you play with it and form whatever you want. The ghosts are actually standing up on pretzel rod with some of the dough on each end. For the pumpkin I kneaded some food coloring into the dough. Super easy.

Spookie Cookies

Sorry we have dropped out of the blogging world for a while. Brad and I had the swine flu and haven't been up to much. I'm better now, but Brad is still getting over the last of it. In the Halloween spirit we made some cookies.

Conference Weekend

There isn't a much better way to spend conference weekend than with your family.  When Brad and Aaron went to Priesthood session together, I got to spend some time with my mom and Adrianne.  Coldstone ice cream and a chick flick.  Perfect.

On Sunday, we got to see Brad's mom and Baby Ella.  It's nice when Janet is in town and we get to see her.  We also loved playing with Ella.  She's just adorable.


Grandma Packer also has the tradition of having the family over for dinner on Conference weekend.  So, after conference finished we went to Grandma's.  It was really good to see everyone again. We also got to play Yatzee with Grandma.  This however wasn't your typical game of Yatzee.  It was Yatzee Free 4 All which was a little different, but really fun.  It was a nice way to end our weekend.

Fall Colors

Brad and I took a little drive up the canyon to see the fall colors.  We went up to see Bridal View Falls and Vivian Park.








Brad also got a cool picture of the moon.



I love this time of the year.  I love the vibrant colors of fall leaves.  I love the cool weather. I can't wait till more of the leaves change around our home so we can see them more often.

Wicked

In my family, we do things at the last minute.  So, when I got a call on Thursday asking if I wanted to leave on Saturday for San Francisco to see Wicked with the girls in the family, I shouldn't have been so surprised.  I was so excited though to see Wicked.  I've listened to the music for years, but had never seen it.

We headed out bright and early on Saturday morning for San Francisco.  When we got there we had issues with the car rental place that left us an hour behind.  After finally making it to the hotel, we headed out again to catch a trolley to Downtown San Fran.

Not really knowing where we are going, we went all the way down to Pier 39 only to find out we had to back track 10 blocks and head another 12 blocks west (thank goodness for a nice lady with an iPhone).  We caught a bus thinking it would take us all the way to our destination, but then we had to frantically change to a trolley.  We made it to the theater a half an hour later than we were supposed to (you're supposed to be there an hour early for Will Call tickets), but we were still able to get our seats.  Wicked was AMAZING!!!  I didn't think I would be completely overwhelmed with how awesome it is because I have listened to the CD so many times, but I got goosebumps from how incredible it was in person.  Loved it!





After getting back to the hotel, we finally got some food into our systems after not really having anything since breakfast at 6:00 AM.  We went to this little Italian place that made homemade pasta.  So good!  Our waiter was so funny.  He looked liked his name should have been Vini, with his shirt slightly unbuttoned and his gold chains.  We had a lot of fun just trying what everyone else had got and went away full to the brim.

The next day we went to church at Fairfield.  My mom lived here for two years in high school so we went to see her old ward.  There were actually a few people who remembered her there.  After church we headed to Bodega Bay.




We had a great dinner of clam chowder and french bread right on the bay.  We just sat enjoying our dinner and watching the sun go down.



On our last day we went to the Oakland Temple.  You could walk up on the second level of the temple and see all way into San Francisco.


Even though it was a short vacation, we had a lot of fun. I'm glad my lovely aunt Shanda could come along. We'll have to go on another girl's weekend again.