Happy Birthday Dallin!

Dallin turned 6 last week. His birthday was Tuesday, but since his Nona and Grandpa, and five of his aunts and uncles (Melanie, Reed, Emma, Jacob and Nathan) were coming into town late that night, he opted to wait for them and celebrate on Wednesday. We had a lunch-time party, but of course all I heard that morning was, "Can we just have a breakfast party?" It's funny how time crawls by when you're anticipating something big. I am due to have this baby in eight days, and time has officially slowed down for me too.

After looking at all the available party themes at the store, (Star Wars, Spider Man, Cars, Transformers, Shrek, etc.) Dallin chose a very original theme: "Go BYU, and Go USA." That boy definitely thinks for himself. So we had football plates and Red, White and Blue streamers and American flags to decorate with. Nona made his birthday cake red, white and blue and it said, "Happy Birthday Dallin!" on top with "Go BYU!" and "Go USA!" on the sides.

He had a great time with the aunts and uncles there.

Happy Birthday Dallin! We love you and are so grateful you are in our family.

Blog tag-and I'm it.

So Natalie blog tagged me which apparently means I get to write six things about myself and tag somebody else. So if you aren't interested in six "Sharee facts" you can skip this post. I won't be offended (because I won't even know.) It's kind of hard to think of six things that aren't super obvious. Let's see . . .

1. I love to sleep. When I'm finally done for the day, and my head hits the pillow, it is like heaven. Arthur calls it "the flop" when I climb into bed and just drop into the downy goodness of my wonderful pillow. I really can't find words to describe it--It's just marvelous.

2. I have been keeping a journal since I was 8 years old. I received my first journal for my 8th birthday and have kept one ever since. I have filled probably 14 journals since then. I am not consistent by any means; I don't write every day or even once a week. Sometimes it's just once a month. But I enjoy keeping a journal because it's kind of therapeutic for me -- besides, "one should always have something sensational to read on the train." (name the play/movie).

3. I grew three gray hairs when we were in New York while Arthur got his Masters at Cornell. I couldn't believe it when I found them, and plucked them out as fast as I could. Thankfully I haven't sprouted any more since then. I guess that's just proof that stress can age you prematurely. Poor Arthur got too many gray hairs to pull out that year, so he is just accepting those gray hairs, however premature they may be. He's still very handsome though, gray hairs and all.

4. I believe in long, hot showers. I think that a long hot shower can fix almost anything. Does your back hurt? take a hot shower. Are you congested? shower. the steamier the better. Are you anxious or stressed out? shower. Can't hear yourself think? you can in the shower. How about a vocal rehearsal room? Can't beat the shower. It even has cool acoustics. I love hot showers so much, sometimes I take two in a day. I know it's a bad habit, especially for somebody who lives in a desert, but what can I say? I just believe in showers.

5. I don't watch TV. I watch movies, but I rarely sit down and watch TV. I don't have any TV shows that I watch regularly, or care if I miss. Even the sound of it continuously on bothers me. I'd much rather curl up with a good book and relax that way.

6. My senior year in college, I wrote a really great paper that my professor thought I plagiarized. I worked in the music office, and he knew me personally, so I was shocked that he could believe me capable of that dishonesty. I was almost in tears when he confronted me about it. But after several minutes of grilling me about the paper, I eventually convinced him that I'd actually written it. I guess that could be considered a compliment in a weird, twisted sort of way, if you can get past the insult on my integrity. Anyway. I got a big fat A on that paper, so Go Me!

And here's a bonus tidbit, since I'm on a roll: My favorite candy bar is Twix. mmm . . . I love those.

Okay, I'm tagging Melanie, and I don't know if this is allowed, but I'm tagging Julianne and Jenny too, even though they don't have blogs, because I wish they did. So maybe you guys should start one and your first post can be "Six Fabulous Facts About Me!"

A Hogwarts Halloween

After practically living at the sewing machine for two weeks, I finally finished everybody's costume. (I sewed the last button on Arthur's just a few hours before the Halloween festivities were to begin.) Hopefully it's obvious what we all are, but in case you aren't familiar with Harry Potter, we are Harry Potter (Dallin), Hermione Granger (Daphne), Ron Weasley (Sean), Professor Trelawney (Sharee), and Professor Snape (Arthur). Technically, I didn't sew my costume. I found most of it at Good Will.

We went to the ward Trunk-or-Treat for Halloween which is great, because our neighborhood isn't a very big trick-or-treat neighborhood. Not a lot of porch lights on, and not a lot of kids to be disappointed by the lack thereof. We've had to outsource our trick-or-treating to other neighborhoods the last few years anyway.

So the trunk-or-treat was fun, but the gusty cold winds that came out just for the evening kind of put a damper on the party. Our dry ice potion blew away too quickly, and wind always makes people a little less keen on hanging around. Oh well. At least our costumes were awesome. Here are a plethora of pictures to satiate your burning desire to see them in all their glory.

Getting dressed takes almost as much time as we spent at the Trunk-or-Treat. If you look closely at the trash can on the counter, you'll see the rest of Arthur's wig. We had to alter it significantly since it was originally a long black "Elvira" wig with strands of gray in it.

We gave Arthur's wig a haircut and then added a bunch of pomade for that nice greasy look that Snape has. And we used a toothbrush to apply Sean's red hair color, without which, how could he possibly be Ron Weasley?

Two "Harry Potter" families. The Andersons were Cederic Diggory, Tonks, and a couple of Hogwarts owls.

An unlikely romance has developed between Snape and Trelawney.

Sean never holds still, especially for pictures, so here's a candid shot of what he does best. Run.

Harry and Hermione

After we got home, I tried once more to get just one shot of the three kids by themselves. At this point, they've had a little too much sugar, Dallin's glasses got sat on, I think, and Sean is trying to drink Dallin's glow stick. Nice.

And finally, the "de-Weasley-fication" process.

Jack-O-Lanterns!

We carved pumpkins for Family Night this week.

Here's Dallin scooping out the guts.

Sean wasn't very interested in gutting or carving the pumpkins. In fact, we ended up putting him to bed after he scribbled on his pumpkin and then ran off somewhere--probably to break some more DVDs.

But Daphne and Dallin enjoyed it.
Daphne requested a "cute happy face," which Arthur helped her with.
Very cute and very happy, don't you think?

Dallin designed his very own angry face, which came out great. And those straight lines make for some speedy carving action. It's the blasted curves that take forever!

I ended up carving a face Daphne drew since Sean's design was impossible to carve.
Halloween just brings out the creative genius in us all. Happy Haunting!

2007 Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

This is one of my favorite things about Albuquerque. Every year at the beginning of October they put on the annual Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, the biggest ballooning event in the world. It is so much fun, and I think I like it more than the kids. We woke up this morning at 5:15 and headed out to Balloon Fiesta Park. It's normally a 15-20 minute drive, but with all the traffic for the fiesta, we arrived there a little after 7 a.m. The cool thing about Balloon Fiesta is that you can walk around the field and actually watch the whole inflation process from rolling it out to take off.


There are a lot of "special shape" balloons, but I think wind forecasts may have scared some off this morning. The one shape in particular that we all wanted to see was the new Darth Vader balloon from Belgium. But he must have left early because we didn't see him there today, much to Dallin's disappointment. (Mine too, I admit.) But we found a picture of it to show you all because it really is an impressive balloon. Hopefully he'll come back next year.


We did get to see a lot of other cool ones; Clarabelle the cow, The two bees who take off holding hands, give each other a kiss, and then fly separate directions, a scarecrow, a haunted house, and of course the traditional tear-drop balloons are fun too.




After the balloons have all taken off (there are hundreds of them on a good wind day--it's really spectacular) we share breakfast burritos (with lots of green chili) and fresh squeezed orange juice. Mmm-Mmm good! After such a fun morning, we will all enjoy a good nap this afternoon.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Mike and Amber!

We were lucky to have Mike and Amber (Arthur's brother and his wife) come visit the last weekend in September. We visited the zoo on Friday while Dallin was in school, and then Saturday, we went to the BYU/UNM Football game. BYU won 31 to 24. GO COUGARS! We just wish Mike and Amber could have stayed longer! We love you guys!

Daphne is feeling a little nervous about that cougar. It was pacing because feeding time was approaching.

Sean and Uncle Mikey

The BYU football team doing the Haka! (a Maori war dance)

BYU FANS!