What Have You Been Up To? Oh, Nothing.

Conversation I just had with my husband:

B: what are you doing?

C: I'm going to go blog?

B: about what?

C: about everything I've done since I last blogged?

B: Bud, we haven't done anything.

He may be able to pull that over on someone else, but it's not gonna work with me. I document things!

I blogged at the end of our vacation about how Shane was in town for some training. That required one more get-together. My parents came back down and Jason's family joined us for dinner. Plus, the day before Shane came and hung out at our place to get some laundry done. It was fun to see him for a little bit, and to remind my kids of what mean brothers I have!

BYU celebrated chemistry week with magic shows all week long. I took the girls to one of them. We got to watch a lot of things blow up, and the teacher really liked to set things on fire.

Then I took them to the Young Filmmakers of Utah conference. I had worked as a volunteer for it so that I could get free admission. The girls haven't ever really expressed any interest in becoming filmmakers, but I like to expose them to as many different things as I can -- and then let them decide how they feel about it. They were just excited to go and meet several of their celebrity heros: Dave Roberts (from Kid History), Jeremy Warner, David Nibley & Daryn Tufts. Paul from The Piano Guys was supposed to be on the schedule, but he must have backed out. Sophie was pretty bummed about that. So, we went and learned a few things. This was on Saturday, and then Monday morning I got an email from Sophie asking me if she could use the video camera, and explained the movie she wanted to make. Then there was a P.S.

P.S. there was no inspiration from the young film maker of Utah conference! I decided it would be fun for me and my kids to see all the awesome things I did.

Yeah, right. No inspiration at all. She just felt like it.

They ran out of time to do individual shots with the celebrities, so we just had to squeeze into a big group shot with Jeremy. Can you see them hiding away in the back, on the right?

Way back in July the library held a photo contest. You had to take a photo and then zoom WAY in on a section of it to create a "new" image. (The theme for the summer reading program this year was ZOOM!). We got a phone call that Chloe took 3rd place in the contest, and that they would be making a display at the Viridian Center around the first of October. We finally make it over to see her photo on display. They also created bookmarks with the winning photos on them, and you can pick them up at any of the county libraries.

On the way out to the parking lot our driver got a little mixed up. I had my camera on me, so you get to see my family having a little fun.

The girls first year of growing crops was an interesting experiment. Not much turned out, but they did get quite a few pumpkins. They were even able to sell some (Chloe sold 25 and Sophie sold 20). On Halloween they decided that since they still had some left over, they would just pass them out to any trick-or-treaters who might stop by (we weren't expecting many). We did get a few though, but you should have seen the excitement of the kids when we told them they got to choose a pumpkin. One girl lost her shoe running so fast to get hers!

Chloe finally got some dry ice. I think she's asked for it every year since she was like 7. It made her pumpkin smoke a little, but she wasn't terribly impressed. I guess it was no chemistry show.

But the important part of the day was celebrating this man. He is a wonderful father and husband (even if he thinks we don't do anything). I don't have any photos to show his hard work, but he's still working on my island and table. Sophie put her "un-inspired" skills to work and make a video of Brandon. She was a little sneaky and managed to get some photos of him from her grandma. That was really fun to see. At the end she filled the time with dancing. We were laughing so hard our faces got a little wet. It was a good birthday.

I am still painting the fence, but I got our ditch filled back in with all the dirt that was dug out to run pipe to the back of the field. The girls are helping me fill the rest with falling leaves. I made a small amount of progress on Chloe's closet, and she now has window coverings. All of our old appliances have been sold! I have a living room back. And I just sold the folding tables we had. They were being stored in the bathroom for some reason, so we now have a bathroom back -- and thanks to Chloe's awesome cleaning skills it even looks good. But then we start dreaming about remodeling that ugly old room. I told her we can dream, but no more projects for a long time.

Last night we had a ward chili cook-off. I made my yummy white bean chili. It was supposed to be outside, but the weather turned nasty so they moved it to the church. Brandon and I were at Lowe's when the wind went really crazy. Our licence plate flew off the van while we were loading our stuff. Lowe's lost one of their sheds -- the manager told us someone just came in and reported that they saw it blow away. At least my island top isn't going anywhere. Have you seen that thing? I wanted a moveable island, but just the top has to be over 100 lbs!

OK, Brandon, have I blabbed enough to prove that I did something?