Halloween

I have always loved Halloween. I love the costumes, I love the candy, I love the dances (back when I went to those!), I love it all! Except the scary stuff, haha. This was my first Halloween with Astrid and now I love it even more!

The day started out with errands because we were nearly out of milk and I didn't think I had enough candy, so off to the store we went. On our way home, I saw a sign for the farmer's market and figured I'd stop by since Astrid was being good and we didn't need to rush home. Little did I know they were doing trick-or-treating at the farmer's market. So as soon as I walked in with baby in hand, people started throwing candy at me despite Astrid not even having a costume. It was awesome. I've learned that people love to give babies candy even though they can't eat it. I also learned that if I'm going to run errands with Astrid on Halloween I should just dress her up in her costume because, a) it's adorable and, b) you never know when people will want to throw candy at your child.

The middle part of the day was fairly uneventful. I spent it prepping the entry for the trick-or-treaters, prepping the Jeep for trunk-or-treat, getting dinner started since the evening was going to be busy, and making sure I had me and Astrid's costumes in order.

At 4:00 we went to the church parking lot for trunk-or-treat and it was so fun! Astrid had a rough start because as I was zipping up her monkey coat I caught her neck in the zipper :( She was pretty unhappy about that. So here I am with a wailing child in my arms and I'm going round to open up the trunk and before I even touch the handle I start getting swarmed by trick-or-treaters. In the 30 seconds it took me to open the jeep, set up my pumpkins and open the candy bowl I had at least 15 kids surrounding me shouting "trick-or-treat! trick-or-treat!! TRICK-OR-TREAT!!!"

Once I got through the first wave of kids, things went pretty smoothly. Handing out candy is so much fun! It's fun to make the kids do things in character to earn their treat. I had a wizard come by so I had him cast a spell for me (he chose wingardium leviosa) and then when I met a ninja I made sure he could do a proper karate chop for his candy. I made a rookie mistake though because at the beginning of the trunk-or-treat I was handing out 2-3 pieces of candy per kid and before I knew it my bowl was half empty with a whack-load of kids still to come. Even though it feels stingy, handing out one piece at a time is necessary. Besides, it's not like the kids aren't going to get a butt-load of candy by the end of the night anyway. I did run out of candy but it worked out because it gave me time to take Astrid around and collect some candy from those who were still left.

After trunk-or-treat was done we hurried home to hand out candy at our house. This was our first time handing out candy from our own home! Since we've been married we've lived in a basement suite, at my parents', and in an apartment building so we've never had the chance to hand out candy ourselves. I was smart and didn't bring all my candy to the trunk-or-treat and I left one 24-piece bag of candy behind. I had a feeling we weren't going to be a high traffic area and I was right. We had 18 kids come to our door. It worked out though, because it was quiet enough to allow me and Astrid to eat dinner without me having to get up every 30 seconds to answer the door.

At the end of the night my favourite costumes I saw were the little sisters dressed up as Darth Vader (I love it when girls opt for the non-princess costumes!) and the kids dressed as the characters from Five Nights at Freddy's. The game scares me, but they had some good costumes.

My monkey! 

My decorated entry

5 minutes

I want to blog. But I haven't known what exactly I should write for the last little while. I've had lots of ideas, but nothing fully developed. So here I am setting a 5 minute timer and just - going for it.

I'm starting to really like my calling. I am the Compassionate Service Leader in my ward and that means that when something big happens like a baby, or a move or sickness or even death, it is my job to contact those in need and find out what we can do for them. And then I get those needs met. Not by myself, heavens, that would be exhausting. I call other members of the ward and ask them to provide meals or assistance or whatever is needed. The first couple months that I had my calling were quiet. But now I've had the chance to fulfil my calling a couple times and I've liked it. I have a lot to learn, but I think this will be something that is really good for me.

When my Bishop told me that the Relief Society president wanted me to do this job, I didn't even know what it was. But as I learned about it, I felt that it was right and it was something that God wanted me to do that will help me to grow. I'm excited to have this calling and to help others. One of my favourite things about this church is how well its members can come together in a crisis. I get to be a big part of that now and I'm excited.

Time's up.

A Day in the Life of Astrid

I am an early riser and like to start my days at the crack of dawn. (which around here is about 5:30)

Daddy usually comes to me and changes my bum, but sometimes mommy does. Then I am brought to mommy and she feeds me the good stuff. Usually after this point, if daddy brought me in he will hide for the rest of the day and I will spend my day looking for him with mommy. Though she doesn't try as hard to find daddy as I do. Sometimes daddy doesn't hide though and those days are awesome. Anyway, daddy hides most mornings and on those mornings after I'm done eating I will either fall back asleep until later, or I will crawl around the bed and explore while mom snoozes. I think she just pretends though because every time I get close to leaving the bed, she pulls me right back. It's no fun. Eventually I get my way and mom will let me play on the floor while she continues to pretend to sleep. I don't get her game. She's weird.

Once mommy gets out of bed, then we go downstairs and she puts me in my eating chair and gives me a snack while she eats food of her own. Her food looks way better than mine, but she promises I'll get some one day.

After we eat, mommy will either put me in my stroller and run me around the neighbourhood to spy on everyone or she will bring me downstairs while she does these funny movements and sometimes she carries me while she does her movements. I think this is a game as well, but I don't really get it. Either way, when mom is done running me around or carrying me around, we go upstairs into the noisy room that gets damp. Mom will plop me in my bouncy chair while she hides behind the foggy glass.

By this point I'm usually pretty sleepy and I let mom know by yelling and crying at her. Sometimes she takes a while to catch my hint, but she's learning. I have to be so patient with her.

After my morning nap, that's when the days can really vary. Sometimes mom takes me shopping and sometimes I go play with other kids while mommy hides. When we stay at home mommy is usually playing in the kitchen with the dishes or in the laundry room with clothes and I am usually looking all over and calling out for daddy by saying, "dadadadada!". Sometimes mom calls for daddy with me but she always says it wrong by saying, "mamamama!" and she always looks right at me! So I correct her and tell her we're looking for "dadadada" and then she'll respond back with, "mamamama". This can sometimes go on for a while. It's very frustrating. I love my mom, but I don't think she's the brightest light on the Baby Einstein keyboard if you know what I mean.

Anyway, the rest of my day tends to go pretty standard. We'll have lunch and mom will try to feed me some new food which I may like or reject, but she always makes up for it by nursing me afterward. Mom will play in some part of the house either with me or with something else while I continue my vigilant search for dad. Then I'll have an afternoon nap and when I wake up, mom has usually started making dinner. It's around this time that dad's game of hide and seek is almost up and I frantically try to find him before he comes out of his hiding spot. I still have yet to succeed. Sometimes daddy will hide for many days and I'll be stuck with mom 24/7. I don't know why he thinks it's a good idea to hide that long, but I'll be having words with him about it soon.

Either way, when daddy finally comes out of hiding I'm pretty happy about it. Then we'll all have dinner as a family and then play downstairs in the living room or outside. Then mom and dad read me stories and on some nights dad will give me a bath. Every night ends the same though and that is with a nursing from mom. It puts me right out (most nights) so they bundle me up and put me to bed.

Then the next morning it starts all over again!

In a random burst of motivation, let's go on a tour!

I'm alive.

I had you worried didn't I?

Things have been grand here in the world of me. Homeowning is good, work is good and family is great. 

We've been in our house for 6 months now and we're still loving it. I never did upload pictures for you so let me give you an imaginary tour... 

Hello, welcome to my home. Come in, won't you? What's that, you love the metal pine cone light that hangs above the entry? Don't lie, it's ugly. As soon as I find something better it's coming out. But if you actually like it then maybe I'll let you have it. Here, have a seat on the couch in our sitting room. I call it that because there's a couch here and that's about the only thing you can do in this area. That and stare out the window at my purple tree. Yes. My tree is purple, I don't know why. Anyway, stop staring at my tree and look at my dining area! It's the one with the gigantic table in it. We bought the table because we like having people over to eat. No, we don't eat them, we eat food with them! And right beside the dining area is the kitchen. It has lots of cupboards and I like it. I've discovered that glass top stoves are a pain to clean though. If ours ever dies while we're here I totally want a gas stove like we had in our first place. 

Alrighty, now that we've made it through the kitchen you'll see our side entry and a set of stairs leading up and a set of stairs leading down. This is a bi-level split and you know what that means: stairs, and lots of 'em! Oh you've decided to take the stairs going up, excellent choice. Here we have Astrid's room which has a window that faces west. That means that when we're trying to put this girl to bed the sun is shines right in to light the whole place up. Thank goodness for blinds and blackout curtains. Across from Astrid's room is a bathroom. Yup, I don't think I need to elaborate. And then at the end of the little hallway that I forgot to mention you were in is our room. Don't mind the mess. There's a door that leads onto our deck (which we'll explore later) and there's also an ensuite bathroom and a nice big closet for all my crap to go into. There's some awesome shelving in there too which I love!

Okay that is it for the upstairs so let's get back to the main level and decide where we'll go to next. Excellent choice, downstairs it is. As we come down, you'll see we're in a big room with carpet and a couch and a comfy chair and a tv. There's windows level with the deck so you can look out and see everyone's feet when people are out there. Yup, nothing too exciting about this room except for the fact that in the summer time it is considerably cooler than the upper levels making it a nice retreat from the heat. Wait a minute there's a door here, is it a closet? Nope, some more stairs! (Bi-level split, remember?)

So we journey down the stairs into the unfinished basement. The bare concrete gets pretty cold on your bare feet, hence the pair of flip flops near the stairs. But those are for me, not for you. You should have brought your own flip flops. Right at the bottom of the stairs is a closet type area under the set of stairs that led from the main level to the living room and then at the end of that little space is the entrance to a huge crawl space which is the entire area under the living room floor! This is gonna be awesome for Astrid to play around in when she gets older as long as we don't accumulate so much crap that we fill it up. Okay, coming out of the crawl space and continuing our tour of the basement we see another bathroom, no elaboration needed. Then there's the laundry room/furnace room, a spare bedroom and then what I like to call the Spare Oom. I call it that because of the giant wardrobe the previous owner left behind. One of these days it's going to open up right into Narnia, I just know it. 

And that completes our tour of the basement so let's head up the two sets of stairs to the main level and go out that side door onto the deck. Don't be alarmed, but we don't have a backyard. Just a deck. It's a big deck though, so don't feel too sorry for us. Oh yes, if you recall, while we were in my room which is upstairs, there was a door leading onto the deck, remember? So the door leads out onto a little deck and then there's a whole new set of stairs leading down onto the main level of the deck. I feel like whoever was building our house was in a competition with another guy building a house and they wanted to see whose house could have the most stairs without any of them leading to nowhere. I have a feeling our house won. ANYWAY, back to the deck: Joe felt like the whole thing was too empty so he just had to buy a BBQ. (I wasn't super thrilled about the purchase, but whatever. It was going to happen eventually). Right behind our deck is our garage. There's a couple steps (yes, more stairs) leading down to the door and inside is our Jeep which we named Bagheera. Having a garage is nice because in the summertime it keeps the jeep out of the sun which keeps it cool and in the wintertime I don't have to scrape the windshield! Wahoo! 

And this concludes our tour of my house. Maybe I'll post some pictures later and you can see if you imagined my house right, haha. Oh and because of my little tangent about the stairs, I just went and counted them and we have 21 stairs inside the house and 17 stairs outside. Can you beat that?

Duets and Song Mates

Do you know what needs to be invented?

A dating service. For singers. Or for people who like to sing but don't consider themselves to be "a singer".

In my teenage years I was lucky enough to find my vocal soul mate, or song mate if you will, Trudy. I think we were sitting next to each other in church and as we were singing the hymns we discovered that our voices blended really well together. We sung a song in front of the older couples we were serving dinner to for a youth activity and bam, the rest was history.

I had never sung in front of people except in a choir until Trudy came along, but after the first song we sang together, we became official. We were a duet. We sang several times a year in church and at various church-related functions.

Even when we were hanging out, we usually sang. Her mom would play the piano and we would flip through the hymn book singing whatever took our fancy. Yeah, we were the coolest of the cool kids.

But alas, as we've grown up our lives have taken us in different directions and I have lost my song mate. I think the last time we did a duet was Christmas of 2012. We would certainly jump at the chance to sing together if it comes along, but I don't think we'll have one for a while.

Though my heart still misses Trudy, I believe the time has come for me to find a new song mate. Not to replace Trudy, but just a song mate for while I am here in GP, where Trudy is not.

So here goes, my personal ad for a song mate:

I am a 24 y.o. female seeking a female (preferably), but open to a male. Age is no issue.
I sing alto confidently and can also sing tenor if the alto part is boring or if I have a cold.
The highest note I can hit and still sound good-ish is a D, the lowest note being an F.
Prefer to sing hymnal music, but also willing to sing pop music if it has good harmonies.
I enjoy singing recreationally and am not afraid to sing in public.
Looking for a semi-serious relationship, but also open to one-time gigs.
Call me at 1-800-HOT-ALTO ;)

And that's a fact

I'm too lazy to write up a full, proper post so let's just get into this, shall we?

Fact #1: we bought a new vehicle. Our old car got rear ended at the end of January two days before Joe went back to work. Thankfully it was just him in the car. But unthankfully, the girl who hit him took off and Joe never got a chance to even get her license plate. So there's a lesson kids, if you get in a car accident first check to see that everyone's okay and second, GET THE LICENSE PLATE NUMBER OF THE PERSON WHO HIT YOU!! Anyway our insurance declared the car a write off which was fine cause we hated it anyway, the timing just really sucked. So long story short we got a 2015 jeep Cherokee and we love it. I love the heated seats and Joe loves the extra leg room. 

Fact #2: Astrid is nearly three months old! She is getting so big and strong. When you're holding her she can pretty much hold her head up on her own except for when she's tired. She's started cooing and some mornings I'll have entire conversations with her just saying "oooh?", and "kgoooh" (which you do by making a scratchy sound at the back of your mouth combined with ooh).

Fact #3: oil prices can suck my big toe. Yes it's nice to have Joe home in the evenings more often, but come onnn! We just had a baby, bought a house and now a car and we'd like to start making headway on our payments please! Plus I'd really like to buy some new clothes cause my old ones don't quite fit the way they used to. I found some good deals the other day and got a pair of pants and two shirts for thirty bucks and I still felt guilty for spending money!

Fact #4: I know I'm way behind the times but I've recently fallen in love with Pinterest. I've been trying a bunch of the recipes I found and pretty much every one has turned out great. 

Fact #5: I wrote this post with Astrid in my arms because the poor dear just did not want to go to sleep and now she's out like a light! Let's just hope she stays out once I put her down...

5 thoughts on the 5th

Wow I didn't post anything in January.

I am a horrible person. Please forgive me. To make up for it, I will blog at least twice in February. (Ha! I'm already halfway there)

Let's see, today is the 5th, so I am going to share 5 thoughts with you.

1. I am loving this mom thing a lot more than I expected to. Not that I was dreading it or anything, but staying at home with Astrid and taking care of the house is more fulfilling than I thought. I thought I would be dying to get back to work, but really, I could go without it. Right now I'm just working a couple days a week for a couple hours at a time, but I'm just waiting for them to hire someone to fully replace me so that I'm not needed there anymore.

2. I have zero decoration skills. And my organization skills are lacking. I need to hire my own personal Martha Stewart so I can get my house pinterest worthy. Or at least worthy enough that I can bring someone into a room without saying "excuse the mess."

3. I am sooo done with winter, but it's only February :( I want to take Astrid outside to explore the world! Instead we just have to settle for books and blankets. My toes haven't been warm since before we moved into our house. To cope, I've had at least one cup of hot chocolate or Milo everyday. I'm sure that's healthy.

4. I've started working out again! Hooray! I downloaded the Johnson & Johnson 7 Minute Workout app and it's great to get me started. My push ups are pretty pathetic these days and my cardio is a joke so I've got my work cut out for me. I know I won't be rugby ready for this summer, but I'm totally looking forward to playing some touch at least!

5. My mom and sister are coming to visit in over a week! Now that I have a baby my family wants to visit all the time, it's great! Where was this last year when I was totally homesick?!

And now for the only thing people really care about these days: my baby!

She loves her swing. Thanks, Auntie Katee and Uncle David!

All smiles!

Her lovely church dress from one of my coworkers. 

Me and Astrid!

Supah cute