My Whirlwind Trip

Matt and I recently read Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol, and thoroughly enjoyed it. We were talking about it and kept saying how much we'd like to go to Washington DC and see some of the places he was talking about. Then it dawned on us that we actually could go to DC and it would cost almost nothing if we didn't stay overnight. So, this past Sunday Matt got on the midnight flight to New York City and then to DC by about 10:00 Monday morning. He then spent about 4 hours seeing the sights and got on the direct flight back to Salt Lake City. He got home at around 8:30 and at 10:00 I headed to the airport. I flew overnight to Atlanta and then got to DC at 9:00 on Tuesday. I had 5 hours to see everything before I had to go get on my flight home. It was totally worth it. I was amazed at how many things you can see in a short time. We did the Washington Monument tour, the Capitol tour, saw the Library of Congress. Matt stopped by Congressman Chaffetz office and I opted to go into one of the Smithsonian Museums and to see the US Botanical Garden. We both had a wonderful time. I absolutely hate these pictures of me but I want to remember my trip so I'm posting them anyway.

Playing In Leaves

I took the kids for a walk yesterday, and when they saw all these leaves they had no desire to go any further. I remember raking leaves and jumping into them when we lived in Maryland. Those were fun times, I especially love the smell. We had a blast of winter last week so the last few days have felt like heaven. I like to take advantage of the lingering fall days when I know winter is coming. I feel like I have to store up the sunshine.

It's Halloween!

I love Halloween night, but unfortunately it's about 10:15 and I've only been home from work for half an hour. Yep, I got scheduled on Halloween and I wasn't very happy about it. I love taking the kids trick-or-treating. But it turned out okay, Matt was here to take them and they had lots of fun. In case it's not obvious, Essie is Hermione, Summer is a bride, and Sinjin is a werewolf.

Kisses

Yesterday we were sitting in Sacrament Meeting and Sinjin crawled up on my lap. (This is not unusual, all three kids like to do this during church.) Then he asked me the cutest question. He looked at me very seriously and said "Mom, have you had enough kisses today?" I, of course, told him no and that he should give me one. He's very generous to me with his kisses. What a sweet little guy. This morning I told Matt he should ask me that every day too:)

Beatles Rock Band

We just rented Beatles Rock Band for the XBox, and I must say...it's awesome! I don't even like video games, but this one is totally fun. I've played Rock Band before and thought it was okay, but I rarely knew any of the songs. Well, this version of the game is the perfect solution for that. Lots of fun to play, sing, and watch the animated Beatles. Doesn't Sinjin look like a natural? Matt or Uncle Tim will have to teach hime to play a real guitar some day. I should have gotten a picture of Essie singing - she is great at it, and knows almost all the songs.

Halloween Decorations

I just wanted to display my incredibly cute Halloween decorations. I can't take any credit though, my mom is very talented and very generous:) Other than Christmas, Halloween is my favorite holiday to decorate for. The kids were begging me to get our stuff out, so they helped me get it all organized a couple days ago. Now we just need to do our porch. We try to make that a little more scary than cute, but I'm not sure if I succeed because I don't really like the super gorey Halloween stuff. I'll put a picture of that up when I'm done.

My Lake View

One of the nice things about Matt being temporarily unemployed is that he's getting all kinds of tasks done around the house. In the last week he has fixed a big hole in the wall, painted both porches and the swingset, fixed sprinklers, repaired an outside wire that was coming undone, and replaced some shingles on the roof that had blown off from Tuesday night's big wind storm. While he was up on the roof today I decided to go hang out with him. It's quite lovely up there. What a great view of the mountains and the lake. I've always said that I wish I had a lakeview property, and today I realized that I do:)