Emergency Preparedness

livingroom

You know how some families practice fire drills or disaster evacuation? We practice getting the house ready for an emergency showing. We have our rolls and routines and we’re getting pretty good. We’re supposed to get at least a minimum of 24 hrs notice, but realtors in Beaufort don’t seem to respect that rule. We’ve had realtors call from outside the house wanting to come in for a showing. Seriously?? We try to maintain a clean house, but it’s not easy with a baby and a large dog. We had another showing last Friday that didn’t go quite as well. The client showed up a half hour early! They had to drive around the block a few times while we scrambled to get Ezra and Kenzie ready to leave after last minute tidying. Once we left on our walk they drove by and waved. Pretty embarrassing.

Power Saving Outlet

energy saving outlet

energy saving outlet

Standby power waste accounts for nearly 11% of household energy consumption. Switch, designed by Yong-jin Kim, allows you to turn the outlet into an “off” position when not in use, saving almost a month’s worth of energy on your bill per year. It’s a nice concept and a lovely design, but it seems like it would be just as easy (and cheaper) to unplug the item seeing as how you’re already there. Instead of twisting, just pull it out!

via

A Last Minute Halloween

This entire month has been insane and even though Halloween is one of our favorite holidays around here, we weren’t planning on celebrating this year. I know… sad, right? So last minute we decided that we really suck as parents if we just let holidays pass like any other day. So what do you do when you have 20 minutes to make a costume before the party?

Moving boxes? Check!

Spray paint? Check!

Packing tape? Check!

You go as Legos!!

halloween09

We were high off paint fumes by the time we arrived, but everyone knew what we were! Yay! Success! And as an added bonus, the costumes made a great fort for Ezra when we were done. Sadly, though, no pumpkins to carve this year. Would you believe that Walmart ran out? They ran out of candy, too! Wha? Guess you gotta get in gear quick if you want to celebrate around here.

BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHOUT OUT TO AUNT AMY!!! WE LOVE YOU! HOPE YOU HAD A GREAT DAY!!!

Feed My Sheep

sheepcupcakes

Or in this case… eat my sheep. Sheep cupcakes I mean. We held a teacher appreciation dinner for our primary teachers on Wednesday. (Primary is the Sunday School program for children ages 18 months to 11 years.) Our theme was “Feed My Sheep” I was in charge of dessert so I [attempted] to make sheep cupcakes. (They resemble sheep, right? Before you laugh too hard keep in my that all of my baking supplies are in storage so I had to use sandwich bags to decorate them. I can’t wait to move!!!) The tasty little lambs were a big hit! Ezra says “baaa” to let me know he wants one. 🙂

A Wicked Good Time

So this post is a little late. I can’t totally blame it on my sister. She sent me the pictures a little over a week ago and I just haven’t posted yet. Anywho… last month Evan left on his mission! I can’t believe it. We already miss him so much! He’s serving in the Lima, Peru mission and he’ll be gone for two years. Two years! Wow! Here he is looking spiffy in his new suit.

evan-mission

My mom graduated (top of her class – woo hoo!) the same weekend. Congratulations, Mom! Her degree is in Radiology and she is specializing in Mammography. She’s worked very hard the last four years and we’ve hardly seen hide nor hair of her, so it will be nice to have her back 🙂  Erin didn’t send a picture of mom from graduation, but I do have one of Ezra. He was an angel right up through the third song of the slide show that mom’s colleague put together. By that point everyone was getting fidgety, so you could hardly blame him. Learn to edit woman!

ezra0909

So these two things were great and well worth the quick trip, but the most exciting thing about the weekend? BRAD AND I HAD A DATE!!!!!!!!!!! (GASP!) I know. Hard to believe, right? This marks the first time Ezra was awake while being babysat. We’ve only had two other dates since he was born and both times we waited to leave him until he was asleep. We only called to check on him like five times, too. Not bad.

So what did we do on momentous our date? Brad got me tickets to Wicked! OH. MY. GOSH. It was awesome! I would say it’s my new favorite, but then I would feel like I was cheating on Phantom, which I’ve seen multiple times, so I’ll say it’s a tie.

wickedplaybill

On the way home we hit a milestone:

carmiles

Our car hit the 100k mark!! Pretty exciting! Not bad for an ’01, eh? Most of the miles were racked up when it served as Brad’s commuter car back in Utah. We hardly drive it now.