Speaking of schedules, I think my earlier post should have been called “ideal” rather than “typical.”  I rarely get dinner on the table that early, and I think that night I got it together closer to bedtime, which is also fairly late quite often.  But it’s good to have a schedule to shoot for even if you don’t hit it exactly very often.

Last night Sonja helped me cut out the pieces for the pajamas I’m making for Heidi for Christmas.  My mom always used to give all us kids pjs for Christmas every year, often making them herself, and I’ve continued the tradition in our family.  Sonja and I went down to the fabric store on Monday when the patterns were on sale for $2 and picked out a pattern that would work for all the kids, plus possibly Maggie’s Halloween costume (she wants to be a doctor this year).  And flannel happened to be on sale, so I bought the fabric for all the pjs while we were there.  Last night I figured it’d be a good idea to get going on the project while I was still excited about it and Sonja helped me lay everything out and cut it out, which is almost invariably the toughest part for me.  It was fun because, like my mom, she’s very skilled in getting things straight and accurate and saving fabric.  I think she saved about 1/2 yard over what the pattern required!  Pretty amazing. I LOVE the fabric we found–Heidi’s is a brown polka dot, Degen’s a robot print, and Maggie’s has frogs and butterflies.  The colors all coordinate, and they’ll be in the same pattern, and it’s going to be so cute!  I just hope I can get it all done.  Four months seems like a long time till you have to work only during nap time and after bed…  I have no idea how my mother did it.

FYI, my sister Emily says that the woman pictured in this post is “fired” because her hat looks like a “dessert got stuck in a fan.”

Halloween used to be in my top three holidays (behind Christmas and my birthday). I loved dressing up! But sometime since college I’ve lost my excitement. I finally have an idea of why my mother always seemed less than enthusiastic. Between the energy expended to dress the kids, my expanded post-baby body self consciousness, and the lack of widely available, modest, flattering, affordable women’s costumes, I’m about ready to put on my mom uniform of jeans and a T-shirt and leave the fun to the kids for the fourth year in a row. For me, it’s a little depressing to see otherwise sane women using Halloween as an excuse to dress provocatively. But I haven’t seen much between that option and a huge ugly gorilla costume on the store shelves.

When I asked my out-of-the-box husband what I should be, he started out with “It would be funny if you were…” To which I blurted the reply “I don’t want to look funny, I want to be pretty!” He said “Great, be a princess!”

Isn’t there anything slightly more creative than a princess, with more coverage than the average party-store mini-skirted pirate costume, less dark and scary than a witch or gorilla, that doesn’t cost me my Christmas budget, and that I can look pretty in? I know it’s a challenging list of requirements, but I’d really love to re-discover my love of Halloween dress-up.

This year I asked Degen if he wanted to be a dog, a cat, or Bob the Builder (all costumes I thought I could manage).  He chose Bob the Builder so we'll see if he still wants to wear his hat this evening.

Maggie has an orange and black outfit on right now that could work, but I may try to find our old ladybug costume if I have time.  Or she would be a very pretty kitty in he sweats with a pink nose and eyeliner whiskers and a headband with paper ears attached.  So many options…

Colin wasn't allowed to dress up for work, so he wore his orange and black sweater to be festive.  I haven't planned myself a costume yet…we'll see if I can come up with something this year.

We bought a big pumpkin for $2 earlier in the week and put it outside next to the front door.  Degen likes to say hello to the pumpkin and give it a hug every time we come home from being out and about.  Then he points to it and says "stay there!" as he walks inside the house.  When we first got the pumpkin, Degen wanted to bring it inside the house and I told him it had to stay outside (I wanted it to be decorative) and ever since I guess he has to explain to the pumpkin that it can't come in.  Pretty cute, no?

I don't like gross things, even on Halloween.  Like the arm hanging out of the trunk of your car.  It may be a little bit funny in a bag with brightly-colored marketing slogans at the store, but once you arrange it on your car it becomes gross and nothing better.  Please don't do that anymore.

Scarey movies that make light of mean people hurting others aren't funny, either, and I don't like flipping through the channels on TV during October for fear of my little ones having images of violence and horrified faces of victims of yuckiness etched on their little brains forever.  Suspense is one thing, horror is quite another.  We have plenty of real horror around to deal with without dealing with the contrived stuff, too.    

So, buy candy and put big plastic bats and spider webs around your house and dress up as Frankenstein's monster, but don't pretend that the truly sick and gross and horrific is funny or appropriate just because it's Halloween. 

• Having a Passover Seder every year
• Easter baskets
• Christmas: cinnamon rolls for breakfast, opening gifts one at a time directed by Dad, reading the Christmas story together, advent calendars, putting baby Jesus in the nativity scene on Christmas morning (Colin's parents do that one), reading A Christmas Carol every year, singing Christmas carols, taking plates of goodies to neighbors
• Reading the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July
• Watching all the sessions of General Conference every time
• Family prayer, twice a day
• Daily family scripture study
• Weekly Family Home Evening
• Family Council
• Family Outings
• On birthdays, the birthday-person gets to choose what to have for dinner and doesn't have to do any chores.  We go around the table at dinner and everyone says something nice about the birthday-person.  Mom and Dad tell the story of when the person was born.
• Interviews–my dad regularly had a one-on-one meeting with each of us kids to talk about what was going on in our lives and what we needed help with and how we were doing spiritually.  I loved interviews.
• Date night–weekly date with spouse
• Daddy-daughter dates-Dad used to take us on one-on-one "dates" occasionally and we got to do fun things with him like go to museums and restaurants
• Going to church every Sunday
• Staying up till midnight (or trying to) on New Year's Eve
• Singing around the piano
• Agendas for everything, including vacations and family reunions
• On Valentine's Day, Dad would buy each of us a carnation
• Getting a Priesthood blessing before starting a new school year or going to a new school
• Trick or treating in costume on Halloween, even though my mom hates Halloween
• Thanksgiving–saying things you're thankful for at Thanksgiving dinner.  Talking about the Pilgrims.  Making tons of pies together from scratch and eating them!
• Dad making us hug each other and say nice things to each other when we fought
• Summer goals–Mom would talk to each of us and help us make a list of goals to accomplish each summer.  She would give us lessons (sewing, cooking, cleaning, etc.) and Dad gave us our "reading assignments."