Thanksgiving Break

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We're had a great Thanksgiving break. On Wednesday, I did some more on-call hours with the 9-year old kid, but brought Byron along. We went to the Hutchings Museum and to the Legacy Center Swimming Pool. It was a lot of fun and as always, Byron was a crack up.

Wednesday was also, Gia's (Adrianne's) birthday so we all went out for Olive Garden to celebrate. I can't believe my littlest sister is getting so old. Happy Birthday Gia!

For Thanksgiving we spent the day with my family in Alpine. Aaron and Kendra came up as well and there was one girl, Svetlana, from my dad's ward that came. Svetlana made an extra special contribution to Thanksgiving dinner. Svetlana is from Russia and made us a traditional Russian dish called pelmani (sounds like peel-many) to go along with the feast. Delicious! The rest of the day was spent playing games, eating way too much pie, and trying out the Wii Fit.






Saturday, I went up to my family's house and watched the Holy War (aka. BYU vs. UofU football game) while Brad was studying. Yay Cougars! Byron actually went to the game. He stormed the field when BYU won and got signatures from a lot of the team including Dennis Pitta and Harvey Unga. He even got a high-five from Max Hall. My brother is so cool.

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.