Halloween

Here they are in all their glory

A crazy hamburger and a goofy hot dog
(I did not join in on the fast food theme- I didn't dress up, although if I had I probably would have been a short-order cook and stuck a french fry on my stomach that was "baking in the oven" or something totally original like that)

Sadie got to wear her costume many times. A few times just to play around the house. Once to show off for her parents' coworkers and the basketball team. And once to the ward Halloween party.

It's pretty safe to say that our ward Halloween party was the best night of Sadie's life. Not exaggerating one bit.

At first she stayed somewhat close to us. She'd wander off a bit and then come running back like this. Then she noticed all the other stuff going on and she took off and never looked back. Not once. She could have cared less if we were there.

She ran around the middle of the cake walk and occasionally danced.

She attempted (multiple times) to go directly for the prizes behind the partition in the ward party classic- the fishing game.

At one point Sadie noticed this baby and rocked her in the car seat for a while. If you think that baby looks huge- she isn't (at least not for her age)- she is about a month younger than Sadie. Her parents keep her in the car seat a lot- we haven't figured it out yet.

She clapped for herself when she won a costume award.

She continued to clap for herself while posing for a photo op with Daniel, who was awesome and wore his costume the whole night despite being called "big wiener" by multiple people.

Sadie grabbed herself a cupcake from the food table and took off to play some more.

We could not convince Sadie to go home. She was literally having the time of her life. She wasn't playing with other kids- she just wandered around by herself watching the games (thinking she was a part of some of them), trying to take stuff from other kids, and moving on whenever she felt like it.

When we got home we convinced Sadie to put on the hot dog costume for one more awesome picture.

New Obsession

Any kind of empty bag or box.
It will be filled with toys, toothbrushes, cleaning products, trash, and if there is enough space, Sadie.

On Sunday morning she got in and out of this bag for about an hour.

Hot Halloween Tip

For all those of you who live in Utah-

head over to 260 S 300 E in Orem.
One of my coworkers does this amazing Halloween display in her yard. Display isn't even the right word, it is almost a show.
And it's free!

On October 30th and 31st they have live people mixed in to the show. It really is amazing. Here are some pictures from our visit in 2008.

Part of the yard- fuzzy because of the fog machine

One of the creepy people (this one wasn't real). When they put live people in the yard you can never tell who is real and who is fake until they jump at you.

7 Occurrences

I never seem to have an overall theme for blog posts lately. I just kind of spit out a bunch of random stuff. I am too impatient to split things up into different posts. So here is some stuff that has happened lately.

1. Daniel called me at work the other morning to tell me that Sadie had picked up a cup of water (just a little water I left within her reach) and dumped it over her head. I wasn't too surprised though, given the fact that she does this with any dish I give her free reign over.


2. I got a painting for my birthday and it came in this cool tube. Daniel thought the tube was was especially cool and got both of his arms stuck while playing with it. When he first got his hands stuck he declared I was going to have to saw the tube in half. Instead, I took a picture and despite the fact that he looks like he is smiling, he was legitimately mad at me. Seriously. He yelled at me. Fortunately, all it took was me holding the tube steady in the middle and he could pull his arms out. I haven't laughed that hard in a while.


3. I can't remember if I ever blogged about it, but if anything is blog-worthy, this is it. Sadie is now in a big-girl forward-facing car seat, and loving it.

4. We won the Pleasant Grove co-ed softball league championship this week. So even though I struck out looking to end the tournament loss last week, we still came back and won all 3 games this week. I got a decent opposite-field hit, which I was excited about since the other team brought their 2 female outfielders to just behind left infield every time I was up and I had been robbed of 2 decent bloop hits. I also played horribly in right field. Daniel yelled like a proud coach/parent when I finally appeased him and went opposite field.


5. Sadie is terrified of the vacuum. The we stuck Sadie in the corner of the couch with the little push toy she had been playing with while we were vacuuming. She did not move a muscle until that vacuum was out of sight.


6. Sadie (and Daniel) love to snuggle while she drinks her milk before bed. She also loves to grab Daniel's nose as she drinks.


7. See the bench next to the ottoman? Sadie finally realized she could use it to climb on things. On this day she climbed on the ottoman and just stepped off, fully confident that I would catch her, which I kind of did. Last Sunday Sadie stood on the armrest of the recliner and fell off onto her face. Literally- just landed on the side of her face. It swelled up a little. Sadie doesn't seem to have a sense of danger when it comes to playing on things that are 3 feet or so off the ground. I would not describe her as fearless because I don't think she recognizes that if she falls off it could hurt. One of her favorite things to do is run back and forth on the couch. We line the floor all along the couch with pillows and every time she falls off she just rolls off the pillow giggling. She has missed the pillows a few times but it didn't seem to bother her.

Photographers in Boston

I need some help! My sister Hillary is getting married on December 28th in Boston and the photographer we wanted to hire is not available. Do any of you Boston people (or Utah people) know any reasonably-priced photographers in New England? Maybe your neighbor? Someone in your ward? Friend of a friend? We will pay decently well. It's not like we expect all day photography for a couple hundred dollars, but photographers in Boston are crazy expensive!

For Alicia's wedding in May we found an LDS photographer who was reasonably priced and understood the strange quirks of Mormon weddings and was willing to change locations (within 15 minutes of each other) a lot that day. The photographer obviously does not have to be LDS, but we found it was so great working with her because she understood everything we did and didn't try to charge us a bunch of extra fees for the different things we wanted. It's alright if the photographer does not have a ton of experience shooting weddings.

Thoughts

Some random thoughts as of late:

1. Chilean Miners- wow. What a crazy story. I get claustrophobic just thinking about being stuck underground. I can't believe they survived the first 17 days knowing the outside world didn't even know they survived and they didn't go crazy.

2. My daughter is hilarious.

3. The new fake crying thing Sadie does is pretty annoying. But it did make me laugh the other day when she was fake crying and I went into the kitchen to work on dinner(away from her). She came in 5 minutes later, squeezed herself in between me and the oven so she knew I could see her, and fake cried some more.

4. The basketball season and winter are both coming up- 2 of the things I dread most in life.

5. I struck out looking to end a depressing co-ed softball team loss last night. Yes, it is slow pitch softball and you only get 2 strikes and the second strike was very iffy, but I just can't believe myself. I struck out looking to end the game! What a fitting end to our worst game of the season where we gave our opponents somewhere between 8 and 10 unearned runs and lost by 4. We are the better team and now we have to beat them twice next week in order to win the tournament. Oh well.

6. I pretty much love everything that comes from Kneaders.

7. Sadie randomly started signing "milk" and "banana" in the past few days. She hasn't watched her Baby Signing Time DVD in a month or so, which means she could definitely sign these things before, she just refused to do it.

8. We got our family pictures back and Sadie made some amazing faces

aka- ruined some great pictures

But that's okay because we are still pretty much in love with her

I survived

Don't worry, I shouldn't be alive today but I am.

UVU Buildings Evacuated After Natural Gas Leak

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

I happened to be across campus when the alarms started going off so I was left without my purse. After waiting outside for over an hour I had had enough and I snuck through an employee-only entrance in the back of the library, sprinted up 5 flights of stairs, grabbed my stuff, and ran back down without being noticed by the firemen. I did this without knowing what kind of emergency was going on since none of the emergency responders would tell us. I was fairly confident I would be okay since: a)firemen were standing around outside the buildings and b)the alarms had started in a building far away from my office.

Was this stupid on my part? Probably. As I was running up the stairs, skipping every other step, I started thinking to myself that I was going to be that one stupid casualty in some natural gas explosion or lethal chemical spill because I just had to get my purse.

When I got back outside I convinced myself that my throat was burning and I probably was going to die, but all those worries went away when I called Daniel and he laughed at me.

What was also awesome was when I found out they let everyone back in the building 1/2 hour later.
Oh well. At least I got my exercise for the day. And I got to go home early.