Crafts, Costumes, Flu Shots and other fun

Two weeks ago I finished my blog update pretty close to midnight on Sunday night/Monday Morning.  Almost as soon as I hit publish Brandon came out of our room and started getting ready for work. Working the early morning shift is weird. 

But good news.  Brandon doesn't have to work that crazy shift much longer. He has been offered a new aircraft mechanic job with a company at the Jerome Airport. This is definitely an answer to prayer. We are so grateful that he can work in the industry that he loves without having to move again. He'll start there in about two weeks because he wanted to give his current company a chance to replace him. 

I'll add some more details about the job hunt as we go through this update. So let's rewind two weeks and do a re-cap. 

On Monday October 7th Veronica and I worked on her Halloween Costume after she got out of school. She wanted to be a bat and wanted her costume to look like the one Lydia wore when she was six. Veronica is much taller than Lydia was at age six so wearing the same costume was out of the question. So I had to make her her own costume - but that was fine because I already knew how to do it. 

We'd found a long sleeve shirt and pants at a thrift store, and bought black fabric at Hobby Lobby about a week earlier. On Monday we traced out a pattern for the wings on tissue paper and cut it out. Veronica sat on my lap while I sewed the wings.  That felt like it should have qualified as an Olympic sport. Even with Veronica "helping" the costume came together pretty quick. She was so excited to put it on.

She wanted a 'bat mask" and after some google image searches I found out that meant she wanted a fancy mask. We found this one at Goodwill and she loved it. 

That afternoon I took Veronica to the doctor for her 6 year old well child check.  This was the third child I've taken to this doctor since we got here, but he still introduced himself to me. He's new to Twin Falls too so I'm sure he's just in the habit of everybody being new to him.  Aside from the fact that he can't remember me I really like our doctor. He is so good with my kids.  He talks to the kids and makes them feel really special. So we'll stick around with him. 

On Monday evening Lydia and I worked on her costume.  She wants to be an artist (both in real life and for Halloween.) She wanted an apron that had lots of paint on it. I used one of the little Home Depot aprons for a pattern and sewed an apron with some white fabric I had left over from another project. Then Lydia and I changed into pajamas and started splattering paint all over her apron.

She had so much fun!  She loved getting messy.

Seriously, she was in heaven.

I had a lot of fun with the project too.

We let the paint dry overnight and Lydia modeled her costume the next day after school. She's so excited.  (And don't you love the beret?  I found it at Goodwill for $1!)

And here is Charlotte's costume.  She wants to be a builder (both in real life and for Halloween). I found the hard hat at DI and we bought the Overalls at Walmart (these are a Halloween costume/birthday present because she really wanted overalls to replace the ones she wore out this summer.) After we took this picture she said she needed boots.  I realized that the winter boots we'd bought for Derrick will work perfect so she'll wear those. And Brandon is working on putting together a little tool belt for her.

Here's Veronica modeling her mask again.

This picture was taken a little bit later. Somehow the kids were asking about atomic bombs (I'm not sure how that came up but it did) and so Brandon was showing them some sort of Youtube video about atomic bombs.  Just a regular Tuesday night in the Illguth Home.  (Also you can see that we are all incapable of shutting closet doors.)

On Wednesday we went to the Open Art Studio at the library. The kids had a lot of fun with the art supplies there.  Brandon and I picked up books.

When we got home we had dinner and then went through our box of old costumes.  We like to go through this once a year because 1. It's always fun to look back at our old costumes. 2. we usually need some of the accessories. and 3. Derrick wears the same costume every year so we need to get it out.

So we had fun doing that.  Veronica LOVED the 1920's flapper dress.  I realized that she probably would have loved living in the 20's and would have enjoyed smashing all sorts of stereotypes by being a flapper.

We pulled out Derrick's batman costume for the third year in a row. But we also found some things to make a Jedi costume to go with the light saber that we bought him.  We'll see if he really dresses as a Jedi or if he's batman with a light saber.

I'm trying to remember the exact day that this next thing happened. Basically at some point in the week Brandon casually walked into the living room and told me, "Hey remember when I dropped off my resume at that place at the Jerome?"

I was like, "yeah, like a month ago?"

"Well they e-mailed me to see if I was still interested in working there, and they want to interview me."

I think my jaw hit the floor. Brandon had dropped off his resume with that company right around the time he start working at the emergency job.  They didn't have any openings and he got the impression that they weren't interested in him.  

But here was the Jerome job reaching out to HIM.  Maybe that resume had made an impression after all?

Both of us were feeling pretty jaded and burned by the aviation industry though so we didn't get our hopes up. 

He e-mailed back and later someone called and left a message and then Brandon called them back and left a message. And none of it seemed real until Brandon actually had a phone interview with the owner.  The interview went well and the owner told Brandon to call on Monday when the guy over maintenance was back from vacation and they could set up a time for an in person interview.  

This was GREAT, but again we were jaded and burned and so we didn't get that excited.  We were just like, "okay this is happening."

In the meantime I went to the temple for my ward Relief Society Temple Day. It was a good visit. 

That night Brandon went to the temple for some different type of service. He helped with some landscaping. They pulled out flowers and got the grounds ready for winter. 

While he was doing that I took the kids to the fire station for a community outreach thing for fire safety week. We've been to these types of things before so the kids and I were really just there for the free food and pictures with the fire trucks. But this place expected us to rotate through stations in different rooms.  The kids and I politely listened to two different presentations.  The first one was fun.  Derrick kept asking questions and the firefighter was so patient with him.  But the second station wasn't so fun. The fire chief was pretty oblivious to all the kids in the room and was talking to the adults about the costs/benefits of installing a sprinkler system in a home.  (Short answer: it's a good idea). 

When we FINALLY got out of that room we were supposed to go into another room and watch a movie or something.  But another mom with kids that were even younger than mine was like, "Nope, my kids can't sit through that. I'm just going out to the bay area"  I liked her style and so the kids and I followed her out to the bay. 

We were happy to finally have found the trucks. So we got out pictures with the trucks.  Here's Veronica. 

And Derrick.

And Lydia.

And Charlotte

Then we had to take pictures with this fun picture.  This is Lydia.

And this is Charlotte (fun fact. I almost didn't upload this because I thought it was another picture of Lydia.)

And Veronica.

Then we finally found the food.  Everyone got two pieces of pizza, a cookie, and free yogurt.

The free yogurt entertains me probably more than it should. Chobani is a HUGE presence in the local economy so it seems like there is always free yogurt at community events. 

Believe it or not, but we were tired by Friday.  I came back from donating plasma and found Brandon and Veronica snuggled up on the couch like this.  That looked like a great idea so I took my own nap in the other chair until it was time to pick up the big kids from school.

We were supposed to clean the house as a family after school, but it was one of those beautiful fall days.  All the leaves had fallen off our tree while the kids were in school so we held off on cleaning the house and played in the leaves. At first it was just the kids, but they got Brandon and I to join them after a little bit.  I love this picture of me with the kids.

We told Brandon to join us and so then we took this picture.  I don't like how I look in this picture. But I love how happy everyone looks and I'm happy that we could all be outside enjoying a moment together so here it is.

We had lots of fun burying eachother in the leaves.  Here's a video of the kids popping out.

We also played birds.  This is a super easy game for me because all I have to do is sit in the "nest" and react to the things the kids do.  They "fly" around and then come back for worms from me. Some times cats come by and we all hide in the nest. It was great fun.  

Eventually we did go in the house and clean, but that wasn't until after it got colder around 5:30.  We had dinner and then we had movie night.  We watched Aliens in the Attic.  The kids saw a preview for this about a year ago, but the Pocatello library didn't have a copy.  So we were all super thrilled when we found out the Twin Falls library did have a copy. I reserved it several weeks ago and everyone cheered when I got the e-mail that said it had come in.  The movie was actually pretty entertaining.  

After the movie Brandon turned on a fun background with the projector and played fun dance songs.  The kids danced around.  Derrick's favorite song had been the Alvin and the Chipmunk's version of Uptown Funk, but he changed it to Gangnam Style when Brandon played it. Derrick LOVES to jump up and down and dance crazy to his favorite songs. 

We had a really fun dance party for about 45 minutes.  The girls started pretending they were in a band.

Charlotte wants a party light for her birthday and if (when) she gets that our parties are going to be even more awesome.

Brandon worked on Saturday morning.  When he got home we went out for a day of fun. But first we had to do something that wasn't so fun.  We had to take the kids to a flu shot clinic.

Here are things I learned for future reference.

1. Don't tell the kids about the shot more than 1 day in advance. I'd told the kids about two weeks in advance and so at least once a day the girls told me how worried they were about the shot.

2. Don't have more than 2 kids in a room at a time. Last year we took all four kids at the same time, but they were split up into two rooms. This year all four of them were in the same room.  The girls were hysterical and just fed off each other's energy.  By the time we got to #4 she was screaming, "I DON'T NEED THIS!!!!!!" As Brandon and I helped hold her down. 

3. Derrick is emotionally unaffected by immunizations.  He was actually kind of excited. In the days leading up to the flu shot visit he kept telling me "I'll get a shot and then my muscles will get bigger, bigger, bigger."  I told Brandon that I was pretty certain Derrick somehow thought he was getting a steroid shot.  Never mind the fact that Derrick doesn't know what steroids are.

Derrick went first to get his shot.  He reacted a little bit when the needle went in, but he didn't cry.  (And we didn't have a repeat of the Kick the Nurse Incident of 2014.)  When it was all over he thanked the nurse and gave her a hug.  What a sweet boy.

4. Derrick is physically affected by immunizations. I'll tell you more about this as we go on.

Anyway, we survived the shots and all the kids got a giant lollipop.

Usually I take the kids out for ice cream, but this year they told me they wanted Dollar Store Lollipops as a reward for getting a shot.  So I had those in my bag and they got them as soon as they were done.

The shot clinic had been held at the hospital and we were all very impressed by the lobby.  The kids said this looked like an airport instead of a hospital. Next time I need somewhere to write I might just come here. 

Our day got a lot more fun after we left the hospital.  We drove out to Buhl and went to Crismore's pumpkin patch.  I picked this place because I wanted to go to a pumpkin patch, but I didn't want to go somewhere where there would be a lot of other expensive things vying for our money. I heard about Crismore's in a Facebook group and when I looked it up I was happy to see that they had a small free corn maze as well as providing pumpkins.  So that's where we decided to go. 

This ended up being the PERFECT place.  The kids had so much fun running around and looking for a pumpkin.

There were a lot to choose from.

After we found our pumpkins the kids ran over to the straw bale maze and played on that.

They had a lot of fun.

Then we tried out the corn maze.  I'm glad we didn't have to pay for this.  The twins were convinced we were lost and kept insisting we go back. 

I think we were in the maze for about 3 minutes when the novelty wore off.  We were out of the maze within 8 minutes and that had seemed too long.  Maybe one day we'll like long corn mazes, but until then Crismore's was perfect for us.

The girls all wanted to play on the straw some more, but Derrick was getting antsy.  So he and I took the pumpkins to the front and paid for them.  I'd been a little worried about the price because some of the big pumpkins were pricey, but the ones the kids had picked were each the $5 size.  We bought one for each of the kids so the total was $20 which is what we would have spent at Smiths.  Add in the free corn and straw mazes and this place was an excellent deal. 

Derrick helped me get the pumpkins into the car and then we went back to get the other kids and Brandon.  We had the kids pose here on our way out.  I told the kids, "Next year we'll grow our own regular sized pumpkins, and we'll come here to buy a giant pumpkin.

We drove around a little bit to find a place to have a picnic for lunch.  (BTW I was driving because Brandon had been awake since midnight.) We found a really awesome park and so we stopped there.  We had lunch and then the kids played for over an hour.

While the kids were playing Derrick came over to talk to us for a minute.  He showed us his arm and said, "It's getting bigger."  He was right it actually was a little bigger. Brandon was a little concerned, but I told him, "oh Derrick always swells a little bit when he gets shots.  It's nothing to worry about."

But on Sunday I was the one who was worrying.  Derrick woke up with his whole upper arm swollen, red, and hot. His arm was so swollen that it felt hard.  This was more than it had ever swollen before.  

Aside from the swelling in his arm Derrick was fine. He was breathing normal and he was playing like normal so I knew this wasn't an allergic reaction to the flu shot.  But I figured it was a reaction to something in the vaccine. Out of all my kids Derrick is the one with the most sensitive skin.  He gets little rashes when he plays in grass or gets licked by a dog.  Once he broke out over his whole body when he wore brand new pajamas that hadn't been washed.  So I figured this was something like that. So I rubbed his arm down with hydrocortizone cream and we went to church.  

At church we had the special presentation on the new youth program. (We'd had Stake Conference the week it was announced for the rest of the church.) I'm really excited about the flexibility and simplicity of the new program.  My favorite part of the presentation was when the little girl made a cake with her father and then SHE ATE THE CAKE.  Under previous programs I'm sure the girl would have been encouraged to make the cake and then give it to someone in need or enter it into a contest or some other extra step.  But under this program making the cake was the whole point of her goal for herself. She wanted to make a cake with her father and that is what she did.  End of story.  I love it. 

Derrick sat with me during the whole presentation and so I was keeping an eye on his arm. I'd told him that if it didn't change then we would stop at the store on the way home and buy him some more medicine.  It didn't change so we did get some Benadryl at Smiths on the way home. We also put ice on his arm when we got home.  

I was hoping Derrick's arm would look better on Monday, but it didn't.  It did seem to be draining a bit down his arm. It was no longer as tight or as red near his deltoid but it was more concentrated by his elbow. I wasn't exactly worried, but I knew that if I sent Derrick to school with a red and swollen arm I was sure to get a phone call.  So I knew it was time to call the doctor. 

I got the other kids off to school.  This involved leaving Derrick home alone and awake for pretty much the first time ever. I was a little worried about what I would find when I got back 5-10 minutes later.  Derrick is a lot more trust worthy than he used to be, but still I had a lot of scenarios running through my mind. When I walked back in the house Derrick was blowing bubbles.  I had no idea where the bubbles had come from, but at least those were a safe hobby.  

Anyway, I called the doctors office and spoke to a triage nurse. She agreed with me that it didn't seem like a life threatening allergy, but that someone should look at it.  She booked an appointment with the Nurse Practitioner at our doctors office. I took Derrick in and he was so polite to everyone.  He liked showing off his big arm.  The nurse brought in an Ice pack and Derrick was enamored by it.  His love language is gifts so he appreciates anything he is given.  When he was handed the ice pack he said, "For ME?"  Then he kept taking it off his arm and saying things like, "Mom, can we take this home?"  And "Mom, can I show Charlotte, and Lydia, and Veronica the ice pack?"  We also read every word on the pack and he learned to say "I C E spells Ice." It was adorable. 

The NP came in and looked at his arm.  She wanted a second opinion and so she had a Dr come in. He explained that this was some fancy word that basically meant a reaction that didn't have a known cause.  It could happen again with the flu shot next year or it could not.  Since it wan't really an allergic reaction benadryl wouldn't help much.  What we needed to do was give Derrick the full dose of ibuprofen that he could take based on his weight.  That was about 250 milligrams. I had been giving Derrick ibuprofen, but it had only been the 100 milligram children's chew-able tablets.  He told me that Derrick's arm should drain by about the end of the week.  If it didn't or it got bigger we should come in. 

So with that news we left the doctors and went to Smiths to get more ibuprofen (I'd given Derrick our last tablet the night before.) I bought more of the chewable kind because that's the easiest for him to take.  Then we went home and I gave him 2 and a half tablets.  He liked that he could have so many. 

With all this excitement going on it seemed a little weird that Brandon also had a job interview that day with the place in Jerome.  He came home from work about 5 minutes after I got home with Derrick.  Brandon took a shower and then headed out to the job interview.  It went well, but he wasn't sure what to think about it. On the one hand he REALLY wanted to work there.  This company was actually one that he'd looked at while he was in school. But on the other hand he didn't want to get burned again.  Part of him wondered if he should just stick with the good job he had now.  

But really we didn't put a lot of thought into the job. They said they'd get back to him in a day or two and so we just put it out of our minds until then. 

In the meantime I was busy with my latest crazy endeavor.  I'm one of the small percentage of people that actually enjoys public speaking.  And lately I've wanted to find more opportunities to do it.  So when I read a blurb in the local paper about the Rotary Club hosting a story telling night and looking for people to submit their stories I felt like this was a good chance for me. So I called the man in charge and got more info.  He told me I needed to submit my story via a YouTube video by October 15th.  So on Monday the 14th Brandon helped me record my story.  

I'd written about our summer in Yellowstone.  Specifically the why and how of that summer.  I'm super proud of the story.  It's one of the best things I've written in a long time.  Even if I don't make it into the actual story telling event I'm glad I grew as a writer by crafting my story. 

I'll find out if I was selected on Tuesday.  If I didn't make it I'll share my story in my next blog. 

That evening the kids went downstairs to watch Aliens in the Attic again.  Brandon sat down in one of our comfy chairs and immediately fell asleep. There was still about 2 hours until bedtime and I was bored. I thought about going on a walk. Instead I took the garbage down to the curb.  

My neighbor Diantha had just come our of her house and I went over to chat with her. She was getting ready to go for a walk and so I asked if I could come too.  Within minutes we were walking and talking. I really like Diantha.  I feel like living next to her is one of the reasons we were meant to be in this house. 

We had a great time talking and our walk ended up taking us by the bishops house.  Diantha likes to stop in and say hi to him and his family so she took me over there and we both said hi.  Our bishop is so great. He and his wife made me feel so special. Diantha and I continued our walk and came home.  I know it sounds like such a little thing, but I love having good neighbors. 

Derrick's arm was looking better by Tuesday morning so he went to school. Even though this whole thing was a little nuts, I'm still glad that we got the flu shot.  All of this was much better than the flu.  

I had a doctors appointment and fully intended to get a flu shot while I was there - but it completely slipped my mind.  I really don't know how that happened. The flu shot was probably the thing I thought about the most in the last 4 days, but I couldn't remember to get one for myself.  

Instead the doctor and I talked about why I'd made the appointment in the first place.  When we moved in I'd been really tired.  It had worried me enough that I'd made the appointment, but then I stopped being so tired.  Still I figured I should get checked.  I was worried that maybe I was pre-diabetic or that my thyroid was doing something it shouldn't.  So the doctor and I talked. I told him that I'd been tired during my move, but not any more.  He and I decided that it was probably due to a combination of all the fast food I ate plus the stress.  He said I didn't have enough symptoms to worry about my thyroid. But he did do a little test for diabetes.  It came back in a great range.  So I don't have to worry about that.  So everything checked out.  That was a relief.  

Until I got home and realized I'd forgot to get the flu shot.  Ugh.  

The rest of Tuesday was pretty uneventful.  That is until about 6:30 when Derrick came out of my room and said, "Mom, I ate all the medicine."

I FREAKED OUT.

He'd eaten the whole bottle of chewable Ibuprofen.

Brandon was down in the basement with the other kids and I yelled down to him, "Brandon, we have an emergency!"  He came running upstairs while I called the poison control number on the medicine bottle.  

Brandon's first thought was to get Derrick to gag up the pills, but within a few minutes the man who answered at poison control had me assured that Derrick would be fine. So I told Brandon to stop trying to get Derrick to gag. 

Derrick had eaten about 20 milligrams.  The poison control guy told me that based on Derrick's weight we didn't have to worry until about 45 miligrams.  And even then, that would just give him a bad stomach ache.  We wouldn't even have to worry about taking him in to the hospital unless he ate close to 90.  So we were way far away from the danger zone.  

Still it had been quite the scary few minutes. 

On Wednesday I went back to my doctors and got the shot.  It basically gave me a headache right away.  I spent the a lot of the afternoon before the kids got home sitting in my comfy chair and not doing much.  

Brandon was also pretty tired on Wednesday.He ended up sleeping on the family room couch.  At one point he wandered upstairs and told me, "I just got offered the job. I accepted it." 

I responded happily, but with not too much excitement because I didn't want to hurt my head. 

Then Brandon went over to the other chair and soon went back to sleep.

And that's how we celebrated him getting back into aviation.  

After he'd had more sleep and my headache cleared we were a lot happier about the whole thing.  When he was fired from the other job I didn't think there was anywhere else he could work in the area.  We are both so happy that he was able to get back into the industry so quickly and still be close to home.  

He put in his two weeks notice at the emergency job and so he'll be starting at the new airport job around the first week of November. I'm going to miss having him around during the day, but I am happy that he'll be doing a job he loves again. 

Okay, let's get back to looking at pictures.  I'm not sure what day this was from.  But it's Charlotte reading to Veronica.  Charlotte and Lydia have both improved a lot at reading this year.  I love hearing them read to Veronica. 

On Monday night we got a knock at the door during bedtime.  Lydia looked out her window and said, "Mom!  Some girl is being super rude.  She ran away from our house and jumped in a car and they DROVE away!"  Brandon went to the door and opened it. He came in the bedroom and said, "They weren't being rude, they were leaving a treat."  The kids thought this was the coolest thing ever.

Another day we made hard boiled eggs.  We were babysitting Veronica's friend Averie and I thought it would be fun to make spiderweb eggs with them.  So we cracked the eggs and then put them in water with food coloring.  The next day I sent Averie's mom this picture so Averie could see the eggs. They turned out really fun. 

On Thursday night I went to a Relief Society activity where we made old paperback books into pumpkins.  This was super fun to do, and actually really easy.  I'm pretty proud of my pumpkin.

Here's Lydia posing with it the next day.

That Relief Society Activity was actually the best thing for me on Thursday because I'd had a rough morning that day.  As you probably know I'm a huge fan of podcasts.  The show I've listened to the longest is the Radio Ronin show.  I've listened to the hosts of that show for 8 years. Through all my moves those guys have been my most consistent friendship. Granted it's a pretty one sided friendship, but still I feel like I know them really well.  Well on Thursday morning they dropped an episode without one of the hosts.  And it sounded like he wasn't coming back. 

I know that being devastated about the loss of a podcast host is a First World Problem, but trivial or not it still ruined my day.

When I heard the news one of my first thoughts was, "Thank goodness Brandon has his new job, because I don't think I could handle this one top of everything else."

So yeah, it was good to go to Relief Society and build some actual relationships with real physical people instead of mourning the changes to a podcast.

In other crafty news we also made this ghost out of cheese cloth. We'd actually made the ghost the previous Saturday, but it took us a while to actually get around to hanging him up. The kids named him Booey.

He hovers around our living room.

At some point Derrick smashed Lydia's lego house.  This was a tragedy of epic proportions.  But Lydia rebuilt the house and it's better than ever.

The kids didn't have school on Friday because it was the end of the quarter or something.  We had planned to go camping at Craters of the Moon National Park, but that was before the temperature started dropping.  Friday nights forcast wasn't looking too good.  The final straw for me was when I realized that you can only have charcol fires there.  So we couldn't even get warm around a big bonfire.  So we cancelled the trip and just decided to stay home.  

I'd finished Harry Potter with the kids and I'd been hoping to get it at the library, but it was already checked out.  So for movie night we watched High School Musical because one of the girls from Aliens in the Attic is also in that.  The kids didn't really care for the movie.  Veronica was completely confused.  She had no concept of High School before watching the movie and she kept asking me, "Why are these grown ups in school?" 

Saturday was a nice lazy day where I probably said, "I'm so glad we stayed home." at least a dozen times. 

We'd cleaned up the house on Friday so on Saturday we had time for lots of projects.  Lydia and I worked on some little adjustments to the clothes we'd bought for her to wear under her artists apron.  She helped me thread the sewing machine.

We also organized the craft room to make it more inviting. 

I'd promised Charlotte that we'd go to the dollar store and buy some more Halloween Decorations. So we went there.  As we were leaving it was super windy.  We stopped at the gas station and I felt like I was going to blow away while I pumped the gas. There were leaves blowing everywhere. While we were in the dollar store it started raining.  And soon after we got home it was snowing! Yes I'm so glad we stayed home.

But the storm didn't stop me from venturing out two more times.  The first time was when I got an e-mail from the library saying that the Harry Potter movie had come in and was waiting for me. 

The second time was after the storm was over.  We finally went got around to "booing" two families.  We'd made the treats and had the plates all ready on Friday.  But I COMPLETELY forgot to take them to anyone that night.  So on Saturday Charlotte and Lydia and I took the plates to two familys before it was even dark.

That night we watched Harry Potter.  Veronica was also indifferent to that movie.  Derrick loved it though.  Charlotte and Lydia kept saying, "They are skipping things." and "This isn't like the book!"  But overall they loved it too.

After the kids went to bed Brandon and I stayed up and watched the Count of Monte Christo.  It's been a long time since we watched that movie. It was really good too.  Brandon recently made a really nice screen for our projector so he was happy to have a grown up movie to watch in his home theater.

 This morning we had a hard time getting up, but we made it to church on time.  Derrick had a melt down before Primary and it was a good reminder why we don't usually stay up late.  So I think we'll go back to being bedtime nazi's even on weeknights. 

But I'm not sure if that will happen this weekend because we have a lot of fun Halloweeny things happening this weekend. 

Anyway, that gets us caught up.  It's not midnight yet so I'm going to try to get this published before Brandon wakes up for work. 

Thanks for reading.