Turning Myself In

Warning: If you are one of those Twilight Haters, please don't read this. You would lose entirely too much respect for me (assuming you had any in the first place!)

I saw New Moon on Saturday night with a group of girls from the ward. I liked it way better than the Twilight movie (which I did like, but not nearly as much as the book) and way better than the New Moon book. It's rare to find a movie that I like better than the book.

A big reason I liked it so much better is probably quite obvious. Taylor Lautner sans shirt. I had pictured Jacob as pretty darn cute in my head, but I guess I hadn't really taken the time to visualize all the big, hunky muscles. And his smile was right on with how Stephanie Meyer always described it. He really was just SO good looking. As others have expressed, Edward paled in comparison. Literally. He was so pale, scrawny, hairy and somewhat disgusting after watching Jacob through the whole movie. I wish they had exceeded my expectations in casting Edward like they did in casting Jacob. Then again, that may have been darn near impossible considering he's supposed to be the most perfect, gorgeous guy ever.

So, I left with a little crush on the werewolf. I told Nate that if he wants to put on 30 pounds of muscle that would be okay with me. After some discussion, we concluded that 30 pounds of muscle on his frame would be too much, but he'll work on it. I can't believe I, of all people, especially in my current physical state, would have the audacity say something like that to my husband who has some pretty nice muscles as it is. He was so funny, he said if werewolves were what did it for me, he could get into that and proceeded to start howling right there in the middle of the kitchen. Sadly for him, it did not have the desired effect. But it did make me adore him.

So, I am the only one who didn't know that Taylor Lautner is 17 years old? When I found that out I felt like I should be put on of those lists that the neighbors can look up on the Internet. I mean honestly, he is a boy child. I was slightly disturbed. Especially when I heard myself saying, "Well, he doesn't look like a 17 year old." Can't you just hear some creepy guy saying that about a well developed teenage girl?

I did resist the urge to cut his picture out of a magazine and hang it on my fridge. At least things aren't totally out of control around here.

Breaking News

At 7:30 AM Friday morning, Elizabeth was climbing on the couch (climbing is a very regular occurrence in this house) and she reached over the back to get something off the floor. She went over the edge and started crying pretty hard. I went over to console/lecture about "how many times do I have to tell you not to climb on things because you're going to get hurt," when I saw her arm and immediately knew it was broken.

I forwent (?) the lecture and proceeded to freak out and yell for Nate's help. Thank goodness he was still home, because I was a mess and definitely couldn't have handled it on my own.

First of all, don't mind the hat that makes my head look ridiculously huge. My very dirty hair would have been even more disturbing.

Most of you probably know that I avoid the ER like the plague and generally think my kids will be fine. In this case, I knew there was no avoiding it, so we headed over.

The x-rays determined that both bones in her lower right arm were broken enough to need to sedate her to set them, and that we would most likely be there until 1 PM at the earliest. So we decided to have Nate take Harrison to Logan's (Mina has become my go to emergency girl! Thank you SO much, again!) and he went in to work for a few hours. The reason we had to wait so long was so for the breakfast in her system to get digested so that she wouldn't have any complications during sedation. So we waited and tried to keep her happy and entertained for 3 hours. They gave her a teddy bear and wrapped up it's broken arm too. That helped a little.

She was pretty enamored with this tiny bottle of Tylenol. (I was actually trying to get another good picture of the broken arm, which she was very opposed to, so I had to pretend to be taking a picture of the Tylenol). She hated the IV (I don't blame her, I hate IVs too), but I was grateful that she'd only have to have one poke for all the different meds they needed to give her.

They eventually put a splint on it. Then they moved her to a new room for the sedation and resetting. At this point she was very ready to go home and not wanting me to take anymore pictures!

She got very concerned when all the people came in for the procedure. She wanted my face right next to her face. I obliged and watched her quickly get "out of it" when they gave her the medication in her IV. The weird thing about this sedation was that her eyes were open, but she wasn't "there." They sent me out to the waiting room while they reset it. I don't know what would have been more difficult -- watching them reset the bones or waiting by myself. Thankfully, it went really fast and they brought me back to wait for her to come out of the sedation. They said she had asked for mommy a few times while I was gone. Sad.

She was pretty funny coming out of it. She recognized me right away, but was definitely not fully there. After a little while she said, "What do I look like? Halloween? Can I have some candy?" She kept doing funny things with her mouth. It was cracking me up.


Then she got pretty happy and had some apple juice.

It didn't take long for her to come down off her high and crash. She got REALLY fussy and cranky and then just conked out.

So we finally got home at about 2 o'clock. She laid on the couch, watched movies, and milked her situation for all it was worth. She ate skittles and chips and ice cream, she repeatedly asked to sit up, then lay back down, and wanted to be carried everywhere she wanted to go "because my arm is broken." Yes, I know, but your legs are not broken, sweet child. I decided to indulge her for one day.

In true Watabe fashion, we went to Chick-Fil-A for dinner, because Chick-Fil-A makes everything better.

She was very disappointed that we wouldn't let her play on the play place. She ended up pretty whiny by the end, but a promised trip to King Soopers cheered her up again. (Who wouldn't want to go ride in a car shopping cart and get a free cookie?)

By the end of our King Soopers shopping, both kids were completely falling apart. In trying to get her ready for bed we found ourselves in a predicament with her shirt. It wouldn't come off over the cast. It was brand new shirt and I really didn't want to cut it. Either did she. "Don't cut it, it's special to me." But we had to snip it a little to get it off.

She went to sleep watching Charlie Brown, but woke up again around 10:30 and was very distraught. The plan was for her to sleep in the bed with me and Nate and Harrison would have a sleepover downstairs. I was envisioning a night of crying and really didn't want to deal with that after our exhausting day, so we called over a friend to help give her a blessing. By the time he got here, she was asleep again, but they gave her a blessing anyway, and she slept soundly through the night. She did wake up crying at about 6:15 and said, "My armie still hurts, but daddy said it would feel better today." She had more Tylenol and watched Lion King and then went back to sleep until 10 AM. I think she just need a lot of sleep, because she was very happy and has been 100% herself today. It's great to have her back and gives me a lot of hope for the rest of the recovery.

My other great hope of the situation is that Harrison will be motivated to be nicer to his sister. He was very concerned about her and kept giving her hugs and kisses at the hospital. He said he was worried about her while he was at school and keeps saying that he feels bad for her. I hope having the cast on will be a visual reminder that he needs to be soft with her and can't hurt her. I'm hoping that after 4-6 weeks of that, he will have kicked his habit of picking on her (at least physically). We'll see.

I am thankful for modern medicine, good insurance, that Nate was home, the sweet nurses and good doctors, the priesthood, that it happened on a day that we didn't have anything going on (unlike last Friday when we went to Wicked), Chick-Fil-A, movies, and the care and concern of friends and family.

That's our breaking news.

Love This Girl!

Elizabeth has decided she is not a fan of feet pajamas. So we had to get her some new winter pajamas, sans feet. There were lots of cute choices, but I couldn't pass these up.

We have fun seeing which pajamas she will pick to wear each night (and sometimes trying to sway her choice!)

When I first showed her the pajamas she said, "But about (what about) I wuv Heson (Harrison) and I wuv Zibis (Elizabeth)?

Speaking of love, she frequently says, "I hate you. I love you. I do. I don't." Which is a variation of one of Harrison's sayings that HE thinks is funny. Another thing she learned from Harrison is "I'll always love you, even if you're ugly/fat." She also says a lot that she loves me the most, and daddy the most, and Heson the most. But if you get mad at her she is quick to point out that she doesn't love you anymore.

I'm pretty sure she knows that I will ALWAYS love her!

She got into the lipstick the other day and had fun showing off her new look.

Another unintended matching day (not that I am at all opposed to intended matching). The little grey dress was hand-smocked and sewn by my lovely mother, for me as a child. I really can't get enough of putting her in my old church dresses.













We're about to be out numbered, so us girls are going to have to stick together! I sure do love her!

The Wonderful Weekend of Oz

Nate has every other Friday off, so this weekend started with a busy Friday full of errand running. We didn't plan on having Dad and Sis wear matching outfits, but when it happened, we had to take some pictures.

She has definitely taken to hamming it up for the camera.

Harrison wanted in on the pictures with dad, and also took the opportunity to show off the new "spacer" he had just gotten put in where they had to pull the tooth a few weeks ago. He was very nervous about the procedure, but very excited once it was done. Remember how cool it was to have glasses and braces and casts and stuff like that in elementary school? I remember making fake retainers to wear, having my mom wrap my arm up in a sling just for fun and praying that my baby brother would come out deaf. Thank goodness Heavenly Father disregarded the requests of an ignorant child.

Friday night we went to see Wicked! We got the tickets way back in June and the only reason I was able to talk Nate into going was that he kept deserting me to go on business trips to California when I was newly pregnant and it was our anniversary. So we celebrated our anniversary 5 months later and went on a really fun and really expensive date.

Here we are at the theater, but you can't tell because we are so far away from the stage. We were the first row of the balcony, which is as good as it gets for the balcony. In the future I would spring a little extra cash for better seats.

Notice how red my face is. It was SUPER hot in there. And, our server at dinner had been really slow, so we had about 5 minutes to scarf down our food and then walk as fast as we could to the theater. Between the fast eating, fast walking, being pregnant, being hot, dying of thirst and refusing to pay theater prices for a drink, and having very little leg room, I was a little distracted during the show. It wasn't nearly as bad as the time I saw Phantom when covered from head to toe in an itchy rash, or as bad as poor Dan, who had to run out and be sick in the middle of the finale, but really I'd prefer to be completely comfortable the next time I go to the theater.

Other than all that, we had a great time spending the evening with our friends the Welches and the Weavers. Here are Randi, Tiffany and me. I was sad there wasn't a big Wicked poster to take our picture by.

We were very entertained by Wicked (I might have had my hopes a tad too high after hearing such rave reviews from friends for the past 5 years, but I still really liked it). Elpheba's voice was incredible and Glinda was quite comical.

We loved trying to figure out how everything tied back in to the Wizard of Oz. So much so that we both agreed we needed to go home and watch it. I thought we owned it, but we don't. Well, what do you know? It was on TV last night. So we DVRed it and watched it with the kids. We pushed the couches together, which was very exciting for the children. We have had multiple requests to leave it like that forever. We are compromising by leaving it like that until tonight. So, Harrison was the only one who stayed awake for the whole thing. It was just so darn cozy in there all snuggled together. Before we all fell asleep, both kids kept giving us hugs and kisses and telling us they loved us the most. It's really the simple things that make life so sweet! Anyway, I felt a little bad that Harrison was left to watch the scary parts at the end all by himself, but he says he wasn't scared. We eventually got everyone put in their proper beds for the night.

Before our Wizard of Oz sleepover yesterday, Nate had some guys over to watch the BYU game. I was excited to have my kids wear their new BYU shirts that I made them last weekend at Super Saturday. Ashley taught a class on making freezer paper stencils that you iron onto shirts and then paint over the stencil and then peel it off (google it if you're interested, it's really pretty easy and fun). So instead of paying BYU bookstore prices for their shirts, I made these for about 3 dollars each.

Side Note: Here's a picture of another shirt I made using the freezer paper. Harrison has been DYING for some "character" shirts. Well, I must be the meanest mother on earth because I despise most character clothing and shoes. In general, I think characters should be reserved for pajamas and underwear. Ashley has made quite a few really cute shirts for her boys using the symbols of some popular characters, so I took a note from her and tried to appease Harrison. This is as close as he's going to get to a Bakugan shirt. It's one of the Bakugan symbols, "Darkus."

Side Side Note: "We" spent all morning making this on Monday. Which means, I made it while trying to keep the children from killing each other. After several warnings that he wasn't going to get to wear it to school if he didn't stop bugging Elizabeth, I had to follow through and relinquish his privilege to wear the shirt. You would have thought it was the end of the world. He cried for at least an hour. So hard he almost threw up a few times. He refused to eat lunch before school, didn't want to go to school at all, and was still sniffling when we got there. Thankfully, he snapped out of it and gave me a very loving goodbye. I am still learning to stick with my guns and follow through, so I considered this a victory.

Back to yesterday, here's a cuter picture of their faces, not showing off the shirts as much. Nate is not in these pictures because he refuses to wear his blue now that the Cougs aren't doing as well. I look down on fair weather fans. I'll proudly wear my blue no matter what. However, that could be because I don't care about the actual games very much at all. It's all about supporting the Alma Mater and brainwashing the children to want to go there from the earliest possible age.

We've gotten 6 inches of snow in the last 24 hours and it hasn't stopped yet. They canceled all church meetings, so we are having another low key day, spending more time in our comfortable couch creation, watching a little conference that's still waiting for us on our DVR and maybe a few other things.

Too Much Dance?

Most of you probably know that I'm an avid So You Think You Can Dance Fan. There were the embarrassing weekly reviews I did on my blog 2 summers ago. I promised myself I would not do that anymore. But I have to say one thing. Perhaps there can be too much of a good thing. I was so looking forward to this season, but it has been kind of a let down. I am feeling like they are running out of story lines so last night we had reincarnated storylines from other seasons. Have we not had AT LEAST 2 other "robber" dances. One hip hop several seasons ago and the Wade Robson one from last season that was FANTASTIC!!! So why do we need another robber dance? Also, hasn't the "toxic relationship" theme been done several times as well? And done better, at that? Altough, that was one of the best numbers last night, which goes to show how disappointing it was. None of the dances were amazing last night.

And as much I felt she was getting full of herself and I was sick of everyone worshipping the quicksand she walked on, Mia needs to come back to the show. I heard she said it was time to "move on." To what??!! What dancing production gets more exposure than this show? Maybe I'm naive about the dance world, but being the best choreographer on the best dance show on TV seems like about as good as it gets.

Of course I will keep watching. Just like I keep eating the Halloween candy even though we're down to the rejects like Milk Duds. Whether you are addicted to sugar or dance shows, you're standards start to slip and you just need a fix. But like Halloween, some things are better left to once a year.

Heck of a Long Halloween Post

Halloween has come and gone and my kids keep asking when it's going to come again. Not for a whole nother year, my pretties. But we probably have enough candy to last us until then. And pictures too, as you are about to see!

This year I decided to upgrade some of my decorations to go with the decor of our front room. I was pleased with them.


TRUNK OR TREAT
The weekend before Halloween was the ward Trunk or Treat. I'm sad to report that for the first time in history, I did not win any prizes in the soup cook off. To my defense, they did not announce ahead of time that it was a contest, so I did not put my best effort into it. I tried a new recipe (dangerous move). It was good, but I actually voted for someone else's, which goes against everything I stand for when it comes to cooking contests. Namely, winning. However, there was a soup that I liked better than mine and I had to have culinary integrity. Perhaps if I had voted for myself, I would have gotten my 4th win, but it wouldn't have felt right.

So, here's our little lady bug. She actually insisted that she was not a lady bug, she was a "Halloween Bug," and was much more cooperative about putting on the costume when we called it that. (Dressing up isn't her thing). This was the first time we put her in her costume, so she got the full treatment. Curled hair, make-up, etc. You'll notice throughout this post that by the last time we dressed up (actual Halloween) things had gone dramatically down hill.


Here is our ninja boy, showing us his muscles.


The best thing about both of these costumes was that they were hand-me-downs. AKA - Free. Thank you Kelly and Raquel. There was a small tinge of guilt when I remembered the time my mom took to sew all of our costumes and the pride I felt at having such nice costumes. I always felt sorry for the kids with store bought costumes (they have come a long way since we were kids, remember the cheap plastic outfits and flimsy masks?) But then I remembered that a) I don't really know how to sew b) I'm pregnant c) my kids don't know any different d) there are a million other things I'd rather spend my money on, and I felt a lot better.


Elizabeth with my friend Shauna's girls who were also bugs.


Enjoying the loot after the trunk-or-treating.


Our family in our "trunk."


The week that followed produced A LOT of snow and 3 canceled days of school. That's another post, but I just wanted to show the contrast of the tree from the first picture. I love that tree. It is the perfect portrait of the 4 seasons right out my front window.


HALLOWEEN DAY and NIGHT

So all month I had been wanting to stop by this little garden center by our house to take pumpkin pictures. I finally stopped at the last possible moment and grabbed a few of Elizabeth. Harrison wasn't with me and didn't have any halloweeny clothes anyway. We borrowed this dress from a friend when Elizabeth had an accident at her house. We liked it so much that we wore it again on Halloween.



Later that day, we went to my friend Julie's mom's ward's Halloween Party with them and the Jensens. The ward members had been encouraged to bring friends and family. This thing put every ward party I've ever been to to shame.


Apparently some of the ward members have deep pockets so there were a lot of receipts that weren't going to be turned in. They had the entire church decked out from floor to ceiling, a haunted house, a trick-0r-treat street where each room was fully decorated in differing themes, tons of great food, about 20 different carnival games complete with prizes AND consolation prizes. Elizabeth won this Woody doll, which I must admit I was pretty stoked about, because my kids love Toy Story (Sudy, as she calls it). We had Buzz and Zerg, but no Woody. Welcome to the family, Woody.


Harrison playing one of the games.


A tiny bit of Elizabeth's arm doing the ring toss.


At first she was timid about the games, but when she figured out that you have to play the games to get candy, she got much more into it. At one point we were waiting in line and she said, "Can we just play another game so people will give me candy?" The other funny thing that happened was that most of the games involved throwing things. So we got to this game where you were supposed to shoot a squirt gun to knock ping pong balls down. She took that squirt gun and chucked it at the balls. Pretty good reasoning skills, if you ask me, and much more effective.

That night we went trick-or-treating with the Godfreys, then later ran into the Gillespies and even later the Welches.



There was a haunted house in their neighborhood and my kids were quite brave about going in. They did the one at the ward party twice and the neighborhood one twice. Elizabeth is still talking about the scary house with the guy who had spaghetti in his belly (it was supposed to be guts).

A note about trick-or-treating. My husband is very into it. He was disappointed that we got a late start this year, because we didn't maximize our candy collecting potential. He was also bummed that we went to a neighborhood where the houses were farther apart and the walk up to the doorway was longer, because it was less efficient. At one point our friends were chatting with their neighbors and he totally ditched them saying they were a liability. When the kids got tired he took this approach.

Seriously, honey, how much candy do we need?

So, here we are with the pumpkin. Let's just say that this was not a successful pumpkin carving year. I don't really enjoy carving pumpkins, but apparently I enjoy it more than anyone else in my family. I was the Little Red Hen of pumpkin carvers, except I didn't really have anything wonderful to show for it at the end. Harrison's only contribution was picking out one of the more difficult patterns for me to carve. Since I only had a 40 minute window in which to get this necessary evil of Halloween traditions completed, I was rushing. My hand slipped and we ended up with a skull and crossbones minus one eye and a nose.


HARRISON'S SCHOOL PARTY
One of the aforementioned snow days was on the day that the Halloween parade and party were scheduled at school. Let me tell you, that's one day that kids DO NOT want to miss school (I think I was even more disappointed than he was, though). So we had a somewhat anti-climactic party on Monday, November 1. I had volunteered to help, but so many mom's came that I all I ended up doing was helping my two kids with the activities and pouring juice. The mom who planned it all was so sweet to allow the helpers to bring their little ones and had enough crafts and snacks for them to do too, so Elizabeth had a great time as well. Here she is not sure about being made into a toilet paper mummy.





Harrison and his partner had tons of fun having a toilet paper fight when they were done mummifying each other. This activity bothered me for two green reasons (financial and environmental). Did each child really need an ENTIRE roll of toilet paper?


Decorating pumpkins. I was thrilled to see Elizabeth getting really into this craft project. Crafts have never been Harrison's thing, so I usually end up doing his for him. Maybe I'll have a crafty child after all.



The teachers reported that the kids had a really hard time behaving that afternoon. Well, what do you expect after a week of Fall Break, followed by a week with 3 snow days, Halloween weekend, and party at the BEGINNING of school? When I was a teacher our parties were always the last hour of a Friday afternoon.

Whew, that was a lot of reporting to do about Halloween.

I continue to eat the majority of my kids' candy. When we were trick-or-treating, I got after them for always going for the candy instead of the chocolate when given a choice. Elizabeth finally caught on started saying, "Mommy, I get you chocolate next time." At one point Harrison yelled from a door step, "Mom, I got you some M&M's." He could have had the decency to wait for them to close the door before outing me like that. I think next year I won't try to sway their candy choices. I've gained 2 pounds this week. I wish I were kidding.