First Trick-or-Treating

After 10 years of childless living in apartments and condos, we missed years of real trick-or-treats. So I  knew we'd found a great family-friendly neighborhood when the people around our new rental home kept warning us: "Look out for Halloween! There are hundreds of kids and the traffic is awful."

PERFECT!

Before we moved from Florida, I figured I'd get Jessica an Elmo costume, since she loved him so much. I found a thick, warm long-sleeved one at the consignment store, and bought it, hoping we'd be moving to a colder climate by October.

I got Jessica the classic pumpkin bucket, and we practiced. We read Halloween books, and watched It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown several times. These are important childhood skills, you know. Very  American. I told her to knock on every door inside our house and rewarded her "Trick or Treat", "Happy Halloween", or "thank you" with candy corns. Because are few parenting tools better than repetition, time & love, combined with sugar.

She didn't get to use her awesome door-knocking skills at the church trunk-or-treat, or Halloween night, since most people sat in their driveways. Here's Jessica with our really nice neighbors with our house in the background.

We tagged along with a few other young families. Dave heeded our neighbors advice to get home before traffic started at 5 pm. We parked our car next to the mailbox at our landlords' request, since they'd lost mailboxes to Halloween and the annual neighborhood garage sale.

It was perfect weather. We saw several other little Elmos, and when we were done, we sat in our driveway and gave away huge bowls of candy. Last year's Halloween traffic jam resulted in cars being towed to clear the roads. This year the police put signs up at the neighborhood entrance that any non-residents would be towed, the crowd was half as big and just right.

 And we knew what to do with all that candy!

Virginia Is For Lovers

We are pleased to announce that Dave has accepted a new job in Lynchburg, Virginia, starting in early October. He'll work for Limitorque of Flowserve, who manufactures industrial valves. The engineers there are looking forward to having him streamline and modernize their testing equipment, and they're hiring 2 junior test engineers to be under Dave. It will be a great new challenge for him.

Flowserve has lots of other locations and opportunities for career growth, and possibly international travel (Dave was drooling over a chance to work in Brazil.) They've offered Dave great benefits, an increased salary he won't have to work overtime for, a much bigger year-end bonus, and a nice moving payout. Another big reason for moving is that Lynchburg has 3 LDS wards in the same area as our 1 ward here in Florida. Yay, more Mormons! (And by more, I mean from .5% up to 1.5% Mormon.)

Dave put his resume on Monster at least a year ago, and got calls from headhunters asking if he wanted jobs like cell phone developer and beeswax quality engineer. Uh, no. About two months ago, 2 headhunters got him 3 phone interviews for test engineer positions, 2 of which turned into trips and offers. (The other offer was in Boston: only an hour from his sister, but very cold winters, smaller company, no new challenges, and a higher cost of living. But here's a nice picture from his trip.)

Lynchburg is in central Virginia, and was named after a Quaker surveyor, not lynching, I was relieved to find out.  The MSA has about 90,000 people, and is an independent city not in a county--a feature leftover from colonial times. It's right next the James River & Appomattox County, where Lee surrendered to the Union Army. It's an hour drive to Roanoke, a 3-hour drive to Washington, D.C. and Dave's Aunt Denene, and 10 hours from Dave's sister Melanie, who just moved to Connecticut.

We're only a short drive from the Blue Ridge, Appalachian, and Allegheny mountains and Shendandoah National Park. Camping here we come! (We haven't camped once as a family here in Florida. Dave hates camping in the sand, and I hate camping in the heat.) Central Virginia, though, is Johnny Appleseed country, has rolling hills kinda like Austin TX, cheaper to live in than West Palm Beach, and filled with hardwood trees, (which Dave is eager to chop down and turn into furniture.)

Lynchburg, VA courthouse, which overlooks the James River and a 100-foot high fountain spray.

The obvious downside, for anyone who knows Dave, is the cold winter: it's only a little warmer than Provo, UT. I love Florida winters, but I really dislike the humid, hot 8-month summer. But I tell Dave to repeat to himself: "Snow means fruit, hardwood trees, canoeing, and a garage." Because we're hoping to rent a real house, with a real yard, at least 3 bedrooms, and a proper shrine for Dave's tools. HOORAY!!!! We'll go house hunting the weekend of Sept 17.

Lynchburg is home to Liberty University and several other colleges.

There's really no way the bank would let us sell our condo here, or refinance, since we are upside down/our house value is tens of thousands of dollars below what we purchased it for. We may try a short sale or a loan modification--we still need to meet with a mortgage broker or lawyer. In the mean time, we're hiring a property management company to find renters and maintain our condo. The rent we get won't bring in enough moolah to cover the mortgage payment, so we'll just have to eat that loss. Bleh. Wish us luck. And I'm taking recommendations for moving companies.

Maybe this all sounds very factual, but we are giddy with the idea of moving! It's been soooooooo hard not to spill the beans, but it's Dave big news to announce, and we wanted to wait until we had officially accepted a job offer. We have had some good times here in Florida, and we hope many of you will keep in touch.  We have a lot to arrange in 3 weeks, but we'll try to keep you posted.

Family Home Evening Deluxe

Around General Conference time in April, Dave and I decided Jessica was ready to join us for little scripture lessons on Monday Family Home Evenings. She loved singing "Do As I'm Doing" and "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree", and listened as we read from the Illustrated Scripture story books. Besides identifying "Jesus!", it seemed she liked being with us, but she didn't seem to remember anything we read.

But one day the thought came to me: "It's not fair to my family to spend lots of energy planning creative activities for other church members, or designing fun teaching strategies months in advance for my piano students, yet throw something last minute together for my kids' spiritual education." So I started planning some fun family time. Starting with this gem from my childhood, which I've been playing at the start of our F.H.E.: "Hey Everybody It's Family Night"

Hey Everybody it's Family Night

We'd better take the phone off the hook

Hey Everybody it's Family Night

I've already got the family night book

Hey Everybody it's Family Night

Don't anybody go away

C'mon Everybody to Family Night

I've been waiting for this all day

Hey Everybody it's Family Night

I washed my face as good as new

Hey Everybody it's Family Night

I have a special part to do

Hey Everybody it's Family Night

There's a treat as yummy as can be

C'mon Everybody to Family Night

If you hurry you can sit by me! 

Week 1
Dave was out of town at "man camp" (rafting with his brothers & Dad in Georgia). Jessica and I read the story from our illustrated children's Bible. Then we watched Disney's Fantasia 2000 "Pomp & Circumstance" clip, with Donald Duck as Noah's assistant. We agreed to watch it twice; with the surround sound blaring, I always tear up at the end when Donald and Daisy find each other--and Kathleen Battle hitting those high notes--sniff--and the rainbow----thank you composer Edward Elgar! It was our favorite video of the whole month. Jessica learned how to say "boat! boat!".

Then we both colored a rainbow picture downloaded from our church's kid website: www.lds.org/friend.

As we colored, we half watched/half listened to a cute video "Build an Ark", which you can also print sheet music. ("I can be like Noah, yes I can be prepared...When the rain starts to fall on me, I'll be ready for that day".)

For a treat, we had ate a pile of marshmallows, because we like them, Dave wasn't around to protest.


Week 2
I checked out "Baby Miracle Noah" from the library (which turned out to be an awful Baby Einstein's wannabe). We tried to teach her to say "Noah" with no success-ah.

During the movie we made foam people. I bought a kit with multicultural kid cutouts with stick-on clothes at Micheal's. (It looked faster than cutting out flannel people, which I still want to do eventually.) Dave and I tried to make them look like Bible characters, and Jessica ripped their limbs off.

Then we assembled chocolate rice crispies with rainbow M&Ms. They don't look as perfect as the picture on someone else's blog, but they were good enough for consumption.

Jessica was only interested in chocolate; we couldn't get her to even try a marshmallow rice crispie.

Week 3
This week's video was the real Baby Einstein Noah. I don't know how good it is, since I had a tennis game I couldn't reschedule, and when I came back, the movie was over, Dave was asleep on the couch, and Jessica was playing in her room. (I watched it later; it's mainly "world animals in videos and puppets, interspersed with a few paintings of Noah's animal ark".)

Then I made a quick paper boat taped around our short bathroom hallway. Dave helped Jessica collect pairs of animals, and she learned how to answer the question "How many ducks/lambs/lions?" "Two!" We got dressed in costumes, and put all the animals on the "boat". Then we held up an umbrella, and squirted water on ourselves with a spray bottle and said "It's raining! It's raining!" Jessica was getting claustrophobic, and kept breaking out of the boat. It took me so long to get this picture, we had to cheat out a smile by asking "Show me happy!" (which is how we get all these big cheesy smiles.)

We cut out Jell-o jiggler animals and called it a night.

After Jessica went to bed, we planned our date for our 11th anniversary.


Week 4
I get so excited for Monday night to come! This week we watched "Noah's Ark", a library DVD narrated by James Earl Jones. There's lots of story embellishment, and 30 minutes was a long time for Jessica to hold still.

We were getting close to bedtime now, so we planned to have the treat cook during our activity. We showed Jessica how to assemble banana boats with chocolate chips and marshmallows. Her response was "Eat?" and stuffed the toppings in her mouth. They were pretty good, even if they were not pretty.

Then we painted pictures of rainbows, which Jessica can now say well enough for me to recognize. Dave and I really enjoyed the nostalgia of a Crayola paint box. 

But Jessica wanted mainly rub her page to pieces with a wet brush. Seeing that, we had an 6-second Parent Board meeting; the minutes reading-- Financial CEO: "How about getting one of those paint-with-water books?" Purchasing Manager: "Done."

But I'm learning how exhausting it is! After Dave gets home from work on Mondays, and we eat dinner immediately, and get family night started with a song and prayer. We corral Jessica on our messy craft & treat, and clean up, we're exhausted. I make plans for the adult lesson and activity, but we usually just plop down on the couch and just listen to a religious message online, and try to stay awake.

This week's lesson was an interview of a non-LDS author who wrote about the Book of Genesis.

Week 5

We had little time for family night, and I was ready for an easy night. Jessica taught our Noah lesson this week. I handed her pictures and told her where to put them and what to say. It sounded something like this: "No." "uh." "Boat!" "Two!" "Ren." "Fud." "Renbow." Well said, babe.

 We sang: 

• "Up and Over and Down" (Janeen Brady, about Rainbows)
• "I Like to Look for Rainbows" (Children's Primary Songbook, #103)
• "I Will Build an Ark" (Marianne P. Clark)

We ate Mother's brand circus cookies, (Dave's favorite---with the pink and white frosting and rainbow sprinkles) and put Jessica to bed. Dave and I played Yahtzee, and listened to Elder Bednar's April 2011 Conference talk: The Spirit of Revelation, during which one of us fell asleep. Inspiring and relaxing.

I'm pleased with our fun Family Nights. I haven't decided about next month's theme--Noah was so easy. I'm debating between topics like God made my body, who are the prophets/apostles (before General Conference), the Creation, or sheep (Jesus is the Good Shepherd, Ammon defends sheep, Nativity shepherds). Got any other ideas?

Sesame Street is Brought to You Today by the Letter M

Jessica, almost 18 months old, can repeat most of her letters, point out a few, and sings a mostly recognizable first line of the alphabet song. We usually watch videos over breakfast after Dave leaves for work, mostly "Elmo!", but today "yo-yo" is her favorite new "Y" word.

I give credit to toys with letters, educational TV, Youtube vids of Sesame Street, and two new parents who show ridiculous levels of enthusiasm for every new word.

Marriage Party

Two friends at our church, Dustin & Deena, got married this July for time and all eternity. I attended their wedding in the gorgeous Orlando LDS temple while Dave stayed home with Jessica. I didn't get any pictures, but the day was about like this picture: beautiful, just very hot.

Another mutual friend John Haase had just flown into back to the states with his lovely girlfriend Esther. As John had the key to Dustin's house during their honeymoon, we decided a little 'welcome home' was in order. So we drew pictures of a bride and groom riding an alligator by a lighthouse on their windows:

marked their mirror with X's & O's:

left a surprise in their closet...

and John found some gifts he knew Dustin would appreciate. Who needs Ferrari pictures, when you can look at High School Musical? or DVDs, when you can have Richard Simmons and country line dancing on VHS? What a great friend John is!

We drug Deena's siblings into the dastardly plans by decorating Deena's car (no pictures, unfortunately, but it was cute), and sneaking some furniture into Dustin's bachelor pad.

I helped decorate their reception, which was post-honeymoon and had a great fun beach theme. Congrats you two; we're happy for you!

You can see Jessica at the bottom of the picture.