October in a Nutshell

General Conference

October began with a fun Conference weekend. Dan was gone at the Rim to Rim hike for the Saturday sessions, but the kids and I still reveled in watching the sessions between a soccer game and theater practice. In addition to the traditional junk food, we made up a tray of healthy offerings. It wasn't quite as popular as the M&M bowl for some reason.

And these are the different ways that Joseph watched Conference:

Joseph turned a box into a Conference viewing shelter. It was barely big enough for him to fit in. He also fit in a blanket, a light source and a fan to keep him cool. Aubrey chose a more traditional approach, sitting on the couch and taking notes.

Our trek son Hunter spent Sunday with us.

Middle School Recovery Hideout

About a month into school, Joseph found that he needed a place to decompress after a wild day of acclimating to the demands of middle school. He created a little nest for himself in the small space between his bed and the window. He set up a small TV on a box, brought in some Disney movies and a Nintendo game system, a beanbag, and some heavy blankets. It was just the thing to help with the transition!

Hard Labor is good for the soul and body

My garden spot in this house has always been a bust, despite my best efforts. It's really discouraging to plant pretty tomato and zucchini plants every year with no success or fruits of my labors. Even  my strawberries and raspberries were pitiful this year. I finally swallowed my pride and talked to my gardener friend about what I could be missing. She suggested I do what I knew would help but didn't want to put in the effort to do. I worked large amounts of organic material into the soil. I also pulled out the strawberries, which were past their prime, and planted a cover crop. I'll give it one more year before I throw in the towel on growing veggies in Washington!

Joseph was my willing helper in chopping up the leaves to mix into the soil.

Bathroom vanity DIY

I am slowly but surely ridding our house of the orangey oak wood.  After paying someone to do a fabulous job on the kitchen cabinets, I got a DIY bug one day and decided to tackle the bathroom cabinets with a highly rated "Java gel stain" product which didn't require sanding to bare wood.  When Dan was out of town hiking the Grand Canyon I dismantled the cupboards and started staining them. I was super exciting to see the cabinets go from blah to rich and dark. The downsides of the project . . .1) many coats of stain and then topcoat were required, and my learning curve was steep so I had to sand and redo several spots, so the entire project took me a few weeks. I have even more appreciation for the awesome painter who did our kitchen cabinets, because it's tricky to get the cabinets looking perfect.  2) While I love the Java gel stain, I didn't love the recommended water based topcoat. It's too shiny for my taste. What I probably need to do is find a matte product for a final coat, but that would require removing the doors and drawer fronts again, and I really don't want to do that for awhile because 3) putting the doors and drawer fronts on was more tricky than it should have been because I mixed up my carefully labeled doors when I carried them back upstairs. Plus, it was trickier than I thought to adjust the doors to hang correctly.

The before picture. I had already removed half of the doors and drawers, so this is only part of the cabinet.

The first and second coats of stain.

The finished product. Definitely an improvement.

When I started the project I had visions of staining our stair railing, den bookshelves, and many cupboards in the laundry room. After finishing the project I decided that I'm done for now, and I would definitely prefer to entrust the railing to a professional!

The Storm Which Wasn't

In mid-October a massive windstorm was forecast for the entire Pacific Northwest. 50-90 mph winds were predicted, along with punishing rainstorms along the coast. Everything was cancelled the day before - soccer games, theater practice, and even an LDS regional conference meeting (it was cancelled because there were concerns about members driving to Vancouver from the coastal areas).  This meant that at the very last minute I had to let the wards know that they were not going to be attending a stake meeting the next day after all, and they had to staff and prepare primary in their wards. It was crazy.  At our house, Dan took apart our trampoline because the last comparable storm "taco-ed" our trampoline and hit it against our house. He also brought all the garbage cans into the house and took down the fall decorations outside.

Aubrey and I ran to Panera for a fortification breakfast before the big storm on Saturday.

And this is our view of the storm. It was a dud, as in nothing happened!  But, it was really nice to have a day off of all the scheduled activities!

Soccer, Rain or Shine

Soccer games started early September and continued until the beginning of November. Joseph had a great year. He had fun playing with his friend Ian, and Alex came several times to cheer them on. The Raptor team worked hard and progressed in so many ways this year!

The first game was beautiful and sunny

and the second game was freezing cold and pouring rain. That's the Pacific NW for you!

More pictures from games throughout the season.

Going on a date

One night Dan and I had plans, and Aubrey was in charge of Joseph. She decided to take him on a "date" to Krispy Kreme. What a great sister, and such fun memories for them!

The kids got a few days off at the end of October for parent/teacher conferences. We took Joseph and two buddies to a fun trampoline park where Joseph showed off his flips

and then we stopped by Costco to get some food and to look at the larger-than-life stuffed bears.

Temple Trip with Aubrey

In September Aubrey had set a goal to find a family name for the temple. She, of course, was quick to master the familysearch technology, and she found several names for which she did baptisms for the dead in October. Then Dan and I did the rest of the work for her names.

 Spooky Dinner

We had a REALLY fun (annual) Halloween dinner this year!  The pic below is super blurry, but it's the best I could capture Dan's spooky handing out of the wacky menu items. We love traditions!

 And this was Bailey's face when we sent her pictures and videos of our Halloween dinner.  Happy for us, sad for herself.

No Drought Here

This was the rainiest October in Portland/Vancouver in history.  Seriously! It was so soggy that we couldn't find a weekend to go to a pumpkin patch to pick out a pumpkin to carve. Finally, one day after school the clouds had parted and I grabbed Joseph and we set off in search of a pumpkin. Most of the big pumpkin patches were closed, but we found one tiny, mom and pop establishment where you take their wagon out to the fields, choose your pumpkin, weight it yourself, and leave the money in a cash box.

 Joseph dodged the puddles to drag out pumpkin back.

 Famous Bailey

 Bailey was chosen to be part of a photo shoot to be used to advertise the BYU devotionals across campus. Her beautiful face was featured front and center on posters all over campus!

 Needles up the Nose

Dan got a cool procedure done on the turbinates in his nose, in which long needles were used to numb the area and then the ENT (a good friend of ours) "crunched" the turbinate to move it out of the way and allow more room for breathing, especially breathing while lying down.

 Glimpses of Bailey at BYU

Bailey and her roommates spent a night at Grandma and Grandpa's Heber cabin. None of them wanted to leave! They took these fun pictures, including the re-creation picture below.

 More very random pics we received from our college daughter. She keeps busy with lots of adventures!

Carving the pumpkin just in time to trick-or-treat

 We were very last minute this year, but Joseph and I accomplished the carving together. Then Joseph's buddies came over and we trick-or-treated the neighborhood before coming back to trade candy at our house.

Last day of November

Finally posting this a few weeks into December . . . .

Wow. December tomorrow. I have to say that we are already headlong into the Christmas season and enjoying reveling in the season. Our stockings are hung by our chimney with care, plus we decorated the rest of the house when Bailey was home for Thanksgiving last week.  Yesterday I added more lights to bushes and trees outside. We are usually boring Christmas light people, with just one colored strand across the front of our house, but I was feeling especially festive and want the house to look inviting when all our kids come home in a few weeks!  Dan and I did some serious black Friday shopping and completed our lists, and we have been playing Christmas music since Halloween. I wrapped presents yesterday while watching a Christmas show, which is one of my all-time favorite things to do.

Other things we have been doing in November:

Lots of church work 

As part of being on the High Council, Dan teaches Mission Prep to a great group of kids in the stake every week. He says it might be his favorite calling ever.

I held a fun informal discussion meeting for primary presidencies in the stake. I promised them we would be out in an hour and we were done in 55 minutes!

 Somehow I was in charge of two different dinners this month too. Definitely out of my comfort zone. I coordinated a big dinner for the visiting authority to our stake conference, stake presidency, and lot of other people. Everything turned out great, largely due to the advice and decorating help from my good friend Cami, and I hope that I'm not asked to do something like that for a long while!

Aubrey was in charge of a big Book of Mormon mystery dinner for all the Laurels and Priests in two wards. She did a great job organizing and leading the fun dinner!

Enjoying this beautiful world

The colors this fall were just amazing, as always. This was my view leaving our neighborhood one day and so I had Joseph duck down and I took a picture.  And the sunsets . . . wow. Because of all our clouds and trees, it's hard to see the sunsets sometimes, so when we enjoy a good one, we really revel in it.

Helping others

I was so proud of my Aubrey girl. We have been helping a friend of ours, a boy who was our Trek "son" a year ago last summer. He talks to us frequently and lets us know when he needs something. He is a senior and really wanted a senior picture for the yearbook. So Aubrey found a sweet girl from her art school who is focusing in photography who was willing to take and edit our friend's pictures for free.  Aubrey was the photography helper, and she did a great job suggesting poses and jumping around to get him to smile.  We had our own little weather miracle, too. Rain every day for weeks, but that day the sun came out and we got some great pictures in the fall leaves after school.

Painting 20 shades of greige on the wall

 It took me forever to decide on the right color for the re-do of our family room and kitchen, to coordinate better with our painted cabinets and to update the look.

The paint color winner is on the right.

Pampering

Dan and I attended a fun couple's date night at which one of the women (who used to work at a spa) led us in soaking, exfoliating, moisturizing, and paraffin waxing our feet and hands. The husbands were good sports!

 Decorating for Christmas

We just couldn't resist. The second week of December we put up the Christmas tree. We waited until Bailey arrived to decorate, but Joseph and I slept in the living room with the lit Christmas tree on the first night it was up. Great memories with my sweet boy! 

I sent this snapshot from my phone to Bailey on November 1st to show that I had fully embraced Christmas music.  

Bailey is home!

Bailey got home on Monday, the 21st. It was great to have her around! Here, I caught her teaching Joseph the latest dance craze. I have a fun video of their performance later on.

 Hot chocolate with my girls

 Black Friday shopping

I loved the Black Friday deals, specifically the online bargains. Dan talked me into going out on Thanksgiving evening to Target to get a specific awesome deal for Joseph. We waited in the cold rain for 35 minutes, were one of the first 40 people in the building, and the thing we wanted was already gone off the shelves. SOOOO not worth it. Next year I am only doing online shopping! 

 Turkey Bowl

Brandon and Dan joined the Kartchners and other friends for a Turkey morning football game. It was POURING rain and was really freezing. Joseph came back soaked to the bone, but he had a great time!

 Thanksgiving Day Photo Fail

We traditionally take pictures on Thanksgiving Day, but this particular year was so wet and gloomy that we couldn't venture past the front porch. We tried in vain to capture a little bit of non-existent natural light. Plus, Joseph was an unwilling participant in the picture taking. So, oh well.

 Joseph is almost as tall as Aubrey!

 These girls had so much fun together during the break, watching Hallmark Christmas movies and talking about boys.

Thanksgiving Dinner

We made a point to have something on the table that everyone likes to eat. Only Dan wanted turkey, so we DIDN'T cook a whole turkey (gasp!).  Instead, we got some sliced turkey for Dan, cooked a ham, and made other requested items.

 After the dinner . . . . SO full!

Decorating the Tree

After dinner we blasted Christmas music and decorated our beautiful tree!

 And I found this hilarious note in a box titled "My Gift to Jesus."  Joseph must have written it at about age 7.  His gift to Jesus is to play more with his best friend!  Ha ha . . . .

 Party all the time

We make an exception to our "no sleepover rule" for "fuzzins" like the Kartchners. Joseph and Alex had a very fun sleepover over the break.

 We also went with the family and Aubrey's friend to Moana.

 Goodbye to Bailey for 3 weeks!

We took Bailey to the airport for a few more weeks of school before Christmas break. That night I helped pull off a 70th birthday surprise party for a friend.

 Creativity overload

Joseph made this cool Lego Mindstorms robot on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Other non-pictured November events:
I helped edit college essays for quite a few high school seniors and I helped paint sets for Aubrey's play, Elf.  I will do a different post devoted to her play!

And that wraps up November!

I dropped a computer on my head

How is that for a title? Sadly, it's true. It's kind of a crazy story. . .

The last two weeks have been really busy (which seems to be what I say every time, and it is always true). But I had finally settled on a paint color for the family room and kitchen.  I really wanted to get the painting done before next Monday, when Bailey will arrive home for Thanksgiving, because then we will be in party-with-Bailey-mode and our house will be re-decorated for Christmas!  Earlier this week I looked at my schedule and figured that I could squeeze in a couple of hours a day to paint. It was delightful, as painting is definitely my happy place. So on Tuesday I put on a 4 hour PBS documentary on LBJ and blissfully painted and nerded out to history. It's so relaxing!

I'm really good about beginning painting rojects with meticulous care, taping off and covering every exposed surface with paper or dropcloths.  The first day I finished the kitchen. The next day I started the family room, but soon realized that the prep for that room was taking forever.  There was so much to tape off and fix before the actual painting could happen. In case you are wondering, I do NOT find the prep work for painting relaxing! My prep work on this day was adequate, but a little less meticulous.

By the time I was actually able to put paint to the wall I only had about an hour before picking up Joseph from school.  Sadly, I had to put away my painting tools for the day because about an hour later the sister missionaries came over for dinner  (I made a new recipe for dinner and it turned out super spicy and one of the sisters is a wimp about spicy food and was totally freaked out by my spicy butternut squash curry!)  Immediately after the missionaries left, I headed to the church to help at a Book of Mormon mystery dinner Aubrey was in charge of for the Priests and Laurels from two wards.

So, yesterday I got up and raced through my long list of things to-do, hoping to carve out some more painting time. I had just donned my painting clothes and opened the lid of the paint when a friend called to say she was locked out of her car and needed my rescue services.  When I got back I painted for a bit until it was time to get Joseph. And then I painted on in the waning light, stopping now and then to help get everybody food and off to their activities. At this point my prep work was LOUSY and, I am embarrassed to admit, I wasn't even moving the drop cloths when I moved to a new section of the wall. I'm afraid I always do that. I start projects with careful preparation and by the end I am moving quickly and cutting corners. Sigh.

To reach the top of the wall I had been standing on an old kitchen stool, which isn't the most stable base on a carpeted floor, but I have good balance and don't mind a little danger.  I was painting above the TV, which is on a high mantel above the fireplace. I reached up to cut in along the ceiling and couldn't quite reach as far left as I needed to paint, so I leeeeaaaaned to the left . . . . . and lost my footing on the unsteady stool. I reached out with my right foot for the flimsy and pathetic slipper-type chair next to the fireplace, but it just knocked over backward, bringing me down too. My paint tray dropped onto the floor, spilling some paint on the carpet. Even worse, though, somehow I snagged the computer which sits next to our TV on the mantel and brought it down with me.  It hit me in the back of the head and then ricocheted over to gouge the wall by the fireplace.

All this because I was in such a rush to finish painting and didn't 1) prep the floor properly (which would have avoided spilling on the carpet) 2) get a decent ladder to stand on, or 3) take the extra second it would have taken to get off the stool and move it to the left rather than leaning precariously to the side and creating a messy and painful mess.

So, I spent last night googling concussion, wondering what kind of damage I have done to my brain.  Luckily, I felt fine after falling and hopped up to clean up the mess and then finish the painting. But today my head hurts. There is definitely a sore place in the back of my skull, as heads are not supposed to come in contact with falling computers!

Beginning of November Thoughts

I haven't taken time to record many of my own thoughts in the last few months because any time I have to look at the blog I have tried to add in a post about something I missed from the last 9 months. Which was everything!

After I got over grieving that there wasn't a blog-to-book option that I like, I have buckled down and found a way that will hopefully work for us. Every time I post I then copy the text and upload the pictures to a Book Wright program. It takes longer than I would like to format the pages, but hopefully by doing it in small chunks I will actually have a blog book/family history scrapbook to print out sometime next year.

We just finished the rainiest October in Vancouver and Portland history. And that's saying something! It did rain a lot and very steadily for most of the month. We never really made it to a pumpkin patch (along with just about everyone else I know) because the rain never let up. Plus, our Saturdays are crazier than crazy, so it never happened in the traditional way. More on that later.  I feel really bad for people I know who have just moved here and who are pretty blown away by the amount of rain. I remember feeling exactly that way when we moved here 10 YEARS AGO (how can it be that long??) and we experienced the rainiest November in history!  The last few days that rain lifted and the sun and crisp fall air are just magnificent. I always enjoy and appreciate the sun even more after days of rain. There is a powerful and very true analogy about life in that statement!

What keeps us busy on Saturday? Soccer games for Joseph (usually in the rain), theater practice all day for Aubrey (who is the main female lead in Elf the Musical, to be performed the week after Thanksgiving), and assorted church responsibilities. I only attended my own ward a few times in the last 3 months, as just about every week was a Primary Program or a Ward Conference in a different ward in the stake. I really miss just sitting in classes and learning in my own ward.

I am experiencing travel envy right now. My parents are in Europe for a trip with friends. 3 years ago we traveled to Switzerland, Austria, and Germany with them. It was such a magical trip and I dream about it all the time. I am chomping at the bit to travel somewhere fun again, especially after seeing all of Bailey's pictures from her European study abroad last Spring. Life hasn't allowed for extended trips for the last few years, and we are projecting that it won't be for about another 18 months that a trip will be feasible sans kids. I have always loved traveling. I love seeing new places, people, historical sights, beautiful vistas and interesting buildings . . . really everything about it. So in the meantime I will dream. Plus, I am pulling down pictures in my house and putting up "aspirational art," which is art that depicts places in Europe I want to see!

Things have been humming along really well in the Porter home lately. After some adjustment pains at the beginning of school, everyone is feeling happy and engaged in school and activities. I have been able to look outside of my own home to help some people around me. I have also dived into several home improvement projects. I re-stained the orangey oak wood of our long vanity in the master bath and the cupboards above the toilets in two of our bathrooms. And I have painted about 30 swatches of paint on the walls of the kitchen and family room before deciding on a color. I am waiting for paint to go on sale and some busy things to conclude before starting that project. Dan has been embroiled in big issues at work. But that's what he always does so well. Dan is also really enjoying teaching his Mission Prep class each week. It has been as gratifying as teaching Seminary without the early morning rising and every school day schedule!

We are looking forward to Bailey coming home for Thanksgiving and Bailey, Brandon, and Angela coming home for Christmas! We have a little getaway planned with the entire family over Christmas break.

Happy Friday!