Halloween 2009

Fionn and Noah as Dorothy and the Tin Man. You can't see the ruby slippers in this shot, but she does have them on.


Aislin as Alicia Spinnet from Harry Potter.


Bayley and Kegan as Scully and Mulder from 'The X-Files.'


Liam as Yoda.


Ronan as Spock (He made his own Phaser with duct tape).


Erin is Pam from 'The Office, Rhys opted for the ever popular 'muggle in serious need of a haircut' costume.


Amik as Revan (a Sith Lord from the game Knights of the Old Republic, or so I am told).


A view of the ruby slippers, which Fionn will tell you came from The Wizard of Oz Store (aka Target).

Lots of Cheesecake

Two birthdays in one week. Despite our higher than average total number of birthdays in the family, we don't often have two within a week of each other. Okay wait... Bayley and Aislin, Erin and me... do Kegan and Rhys count? So maybe we do double up occasionally. Bayley turned 17 last Wednesday and Aislin turned 12 on Sunday. We now have more kids out of Primary than in.

The celebrations this week have mostly been about the food. There were balloons and the traditional Happy Birthday posters (custom made by the siblings)and the home movies of the birthday girls as babies, but the focus was definitely the food. The tradition in our family is that the birthday person gets to pick the meals for their special day. Several years ago we had to ammend this tradition to say that they could choose a breakfast and a dinner, but no lunch. We were just too darn stuffed by the end of the day to eat the desserts. So lunch on birthdays is on your own grazing, but dinner and breakfast tend to be fantastic. Oh...if you happen to have a twin, you each get to pick separate meals and they are consumed on different days. This went into affect after a birthday breakfast one hot July morning that consisted of chocolate french toast, chosen by Kegan, and strawberry cheesecake stuffed french toast, chosen by Rhys, or maybe it was the other way around. It is true that I still have a few children who will choose things like hot dogs or cheese sticks, but for the most part the tastes have become more sophisticated. And some children will spend literally months planning their meal, combing magazines and websites for the right recipes.

This year Bayley chose cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting and fruit for her breakfast. Her dinner was chicken cordon bleu with an alfredo type sauce on it, green beans with sugared almonds and garlic mashed potatoes. And the dessert was a white chocolate, raspberry and chocolate truffle cheesecake with a raspberry sauce on it. Luckily, our schedules were such that Bayley's meals had to be broken up over two days. So we could feel free to pig out on cinnamon rolls at breakfast and know that the cheesecake wasn't coming until the next evening. So we finished off Bayley's leftovers on Friday. We took the weekend to recover.

Even though Aislin's birthday was on Sunday, we ate both her meals on Monday. Sunday is just too crazy with church at 8 and then meetings afterwards and firesides in the evening. So, on Aislin's actual birthday, most of us probably missed breakfast all together, the lucky ones got some cold cereal before rushing out the door. And dinner was waffles, a very common Sunday afternoon meal at our house, we did put chocolate chips in them and made a fruit sauce to top them with though. Aislin's day late birthday breakfast was baked brown sugar cinnamon french toast and turkey sausage. The leftover french toast was consumed cold throughout the day by the deprived children whose mother wouldn't make them any lunch. Dinner was italian chicken with both spicy white and tomato sauces on top, tortellini with olive oil, spices and parmesan cheese and more green beans. Dessert was cheesecake again. This one was strawberry, Aislin wanted the cake itself to be strawberry, so I made my regular plain cheesecake but stirred in pureed strawberries before we baked it, so the cake turned out slightly pink. On top of it we had a strawberry sauce, a chocolate sauce and fresh strawberries.

We still have Aislin's leftovers to consume, so I shouldn't need to prepare much food tomorrow. And even when the rest of the food is gone we have one last birthday tradition--that the very end of the birthday dessert is consumed by the birthday child with Mom and Dad one evening after the big day has passed.

Backyard Funeral

Yesterday we held an impromptu bird funeral. I was sitting on the family room floor, leaning against the couch that is situated under the window when there was a terrific crash against the window. My first thought was that one of my children had hit a ball into it, and the looks of shock and gasps of horror from the children all around me, momentarily convinced me that someone had carelessly broken the window. Never mind that all the likely culprits were the same chilren who were staring in horror at the window behind my head--these were instantaneous thoughts. Then began the chorus of "It was a bird!" and "That bigger bird was chasing it!" Dreading what I would see, I went to look out the back door, as the majority of my children moved to look out the window. There on the back porch we watched a robin take it's last few spastic breaths before becoming completely still.

Our family room window looks out on a covered porch of reasonable size, this bird had to have made some calculated moves just to have gotten near the window. Then there is the matter of the second bird that was sighted. The younger eye-witnesses claimed it was a hawk. I think this is unlikely, as I have never seen a hawk in my backyard. However, we have Arizona Woodpeckers in the area, and one in particular that frequents our yard. The coloring is similar enough to a Red Tail Hawk, to be mistaken in a moment of excitement. So my assumption is that the other bird must have been our resident woodpecker. Another mark against him. This woodpecker loves to pound on my house! Usually in the early morning hours, right outside my bedroom. You may not know this, in fact it is a sign of the desperation this bird has driven me to that I do, but you can't shoot a woodpecker. They are a protected species. Interestingly, the woodpecker has ran into that same window before. So the prevalent theory among my children is that he purposely led the poor robin to its death, chasing it into a window he had previously ran into himself.

Well, we could hardly leave the bird lying just a few feet from the back door. So Erin and Bayley got shovels and picked a spot in the yard where the ground wasn't impossibly hard. Fionn was desperate to oversee every aspect of the proceedings. A bit of scientific curiosity/ ambulance chaser mentality/ honest sadness all apparent in her words and actions. "I want to see, I want to see!" "Oh...he was my favorite birdie." "He broke his neck!" Before the earth could be piled over the bird's body, Liam felt moved to proclaim "He was a nice bird, and the other bird was a meany bird." Erin and Bayley filled in the hole and Aislin led Ronan, Liam and Fionn about the yard finding violets, rocks and pine cones with which to decorate the fresh grave. Inside, the older boys had watched most of the proceedings through the dining room window, at most, faintly curious. When the funeral goers returned inside though, Kegan expressed the opinion that he thought it would be fitting if we took the rest of the day off from school. In honor of the poor bird, of course.

Two Weeks (almost) Without an Oven

A couple weeks ago, I decided that Sunday dinner needed to be apple pie. Yes, dinner on Sunday is weird at my house. Anyway, in my ongoing quest to remove shortening from my cooking, I looked for and found a fabulous pie crust recipe that used butter. Really yummy--you need the recipe. So, I put together my pies (beating off little fingers throughout the whole process) and I put them in my oven and pretty soon my kitchen started filling with smoke. All, those fabulous chunks of butter in my crust were melting and spilling to the bottom of my oven. Plainly I need a little more practice with this recipe. Being who I am, I turned off the top oven, turned on the bottom one, transferred the pies and continued to bake them. We aired out the kitchen, ate our pies and went to bed.

Monday morning I started the self clean cycle on that top oven. About 2 hours into the cleaning cycle I walked through the kitchen and noticed that the electronic display was completely blank. I thought to myself, 'maybe that's normal and it will all come back on when it finishes cooling down.' I didn't really believe myself, but it gave me a couple hours of stalling time. Eventually though I had to admit that the oven felt pretty cool, but still had no display. I tried the fuse box. Nothing. I went to Google. I looked up my oven and 'self cleaning problems.' I got a lot of hits. It seems that everyone with a Kitchen Aid double oven has had this happen. (I shouldn't pick on KitchenAid here--if your oven is made by whirlpool--and that means pretty much everyone whose oven wasn't imported from Europe--then don't trust the self clean cycle!) That evening we pulled the oven out of the wall. And when I say 'we' I mean Kris, Kegan, Rhys and Bayley. You probably never really thought about it, but a wall oven can be removed from the wall, well, cabinet really (it is helpful to have a few teenagers around when doing this). After removing the back panel, we decided we were not qualified to go further and Kris called a repair guy the next morning.

Repair guy, also known as Dave, got here Thursday morning, two new fuses in hand ready to fix my oven. His timing was good, since we were scheduled to feed the missionaries that evening and the planned meal was lasagna, french bread and salad with a lemon cream cake for dessert courtesy of Erin. Notice how everything but the salad really required an oven. Well, Dave got those parts switched out, Kegan, Rhys and Kris helped lift the oven back into the cabinet and we prepared to bake! Erin's cake was first, we started to pre-heat the oven and she started to beat together cake batter. Pretty quickly we noticed that the oven smelled a little odd. A little like Dad's old electric train used to smell--not a good sign with any electrical appliance. If it smells like Dad's train--turn it off! Except I didn't, because I thought the smell would go away. What went away was all power to my oven. And we had four cake layers ready to bake. So Erin and Aislin carried cake layers across the street to bake at a neighbor's house and Dave came back to visit. And my oven was sitting on my kitchen floor again. Dave's diagnosis? The control panel was fried--actually a piece of it, but you can't replace a piece of it, it all comes together. So, he ordered my part, put my oven back in the cabinet, and I made fajitas for the missionaries. We still got the lemon cream cake though, and it was awesome! You probably need this recipe too.

That cake was the last baked item we consumed in this house for another week though. Because the panel Dave brought on Friday and completely installed turned out to be a dud straight out of the box. Once it was all installed, I switched on the power and.... nothing happened. He was at my house for two more hours looking at every connection in the blasted thing. And there are a lot of variously colored wires criss-crossing one another and connecting here and there in an oven. But everything was good the only thing it could be was the brand new panel. We had to order another panel and wait all week for it to finally show up. The first one we got in just one day, but apparently it takes longer if you want a functioning one. So, Thursday night, a week after the original repair job, we pulled the oven one more time and this time when I switched the power on the oven made a beautiful beeping noise and the panel lit up. It was a very exciting moment for the whole family (and Dave too). It was even more exciting later when we baked our first batch of chocolate chip cookies in two weeks.

Pioneers

Erin, Bayley, Kegan and Rhys traveled to Wyoming last week to participate in a pioneer trek. They boarded big, comfy, chartered buses at 5:00 Thursday morning with over 250 other teens and their 90 something adult chaperones, all in pioneer costume. Each of our kids was reassigned to new 'families' for the duration of the trip,with a 'Ma' and 'Pa' and 7 to 8 new brothers and sisters. They refer to their pioneer families now as 'My Fake Mom and Dad' and 'My Fake Brothers and Sisters.' Day one was a 7 hour bus ride followed by lunches brought from home, setting up camp, and some preliminary hiking to Devil's Gate and Independence Rock. They climbed to the 130 foot summit of Independence Rock, an ascent that I am assured was nearly vertical, where they tried in vain to find famous names among the many carved there. All the while they were wearing their pioneer clothing, which for Kegan and Rhys basically meant out of style, but still basically comfortable, muslin shirts, suspenders and straw hats but for Erin and Bayley and all the other girls and women in the group meant long skirts,aprons and bonnets! (They were allowed modern shoes though.)

Day two was the long day. Each 'family' was given a 200 pound handcart to carry their things in and they began their 'trek' along the actual trail traveled by the Mormon Pioneers in the 1850's and 60's. Part way through the day they stopped at Martin's Cove, where the Willie and Martin handcart companies awaited rescue in the Fall of 1856. They took their handcarts back to camp with them that night, and started again the next morning. On the third day, a man dressed as an army captain came and marched away all the men and boys and left the women and girls to push and pull the handcarts alone up the steepest part of the trek. While Bayley believes that the attitude of many towards the 'girls' pull,' as it was nicknamed, was a little sexist (she was offended by the general opinion that it was somehow harder for the girls to pull the carts than it was for the boys to do so), the intent was to simulate the pioneers' actual experience when the men and boys really were taken from them and inlisted in the 'Mormon Battalion.' Of course, they couldn't really march them off to California, as I believe the real Battalion was, so instead the boys were asked to stand silently at the edge of the trail and watch the girls get to the top.

All in all it was a good experience. They had square dancing and campfire testimony meetings (during which they were rained on and bitten mercilessly by mosquitos). Kegan was hardly allowed out of sight of his 'fake parents,' while Bayley and her 'siblings' frequently couldn't find their Ma and Pa and in fact were left on their own each night while their parents went to bed early. Erin's parents turned out to have lived previously in Raton, New Mexico and knew many of the people we know from the branch there and even knew where Branson, Colorado was. Rhys's family seems to have bonded over 80's movies, and spent a good deal of the 3 days conversing in movie quotes. There was only one real medical emergency which required the administration of an IV to rehydrate anyone, and it happened to be one of Kegan's brothers, the rest of them seem to have taken to drinking plenty of Gatorade as instructed.

We picked them up at 10:00 Saturday night, still in full pioneer costume, caked in dust and a little smelly. It was a bit of a surreal sight, hundreds of 'pioneers' exiting big buses, toting back packs, plastic garbage bags(with sleeping bags and pillows in them), and 5 gallon buckets and then hopping into various mini-vans which lined the streets outside the stake center. I wonder what the neighborhood thought of that? We stayed up another 3 hours that night listening to stories while I washed pioneer clothes and mended torn hems so they could wear them to church in the morning.

Reunion

The reunion turned into about half a reunion when Don decided to fall off a roof and break his back, shatter his pelvis (do I have that all right?) and generally scare his family out of their wits. We think this was a pretty drastic way of getting out of the long drive to Colorado, but I guess Don likes to be thorough, and who hasn't always wanted a chance to fly in a helicopter? So, we missed the Vanderholm clan lots, but are relieved that Don is home and mostly put back together, and has lots of time to catch up on his reading. We missed Rich, Kathleen and Alison too, who most of us still know primarily through Facebook photos. We are grateful though for the plethora of photos that keep everyone pretty up to date on Alison despite our distance.

The LaFond, Enright and John Laverty families as well as Grandma and Grandpa started out the week together with a trip to the Denver Zoo. It was a wicked hot day in Colorado and I couldn't help but feel a bit bad for those polar bears and penguins. We all paused for a moment of silence in front of the rock that Kegan fell on and broke his nose 13 years ago on another LaFond/ Enright zoo trip. Okay, not really. After the zoo trip, we spent most of our time hanging out at the KOA pool, ignoring the "No Jumping" signs as much as possible and watching Jake tirelessly toss one little cousin after another into the water. And getting sunburnt. And bit by mosquitos. We enjoyed s'mores, (both the traditional variety and some made with Reese's Peanut Butter cups-yum!), held an impromptu Disney Movie Songs sing-a-long, taught one another new card games and talked a lot (sometimes only in movie quotes). The boys all slept in a cabin together, the girls in another and Moms and Dads in the third. We finished up the week packed into Grandma and Grandpa's house for a night. We had lots of fun and are missing our cousins terribly this week.

Birthdays and Cell Phones

Last week, Erin turned 18. Which means that Kris and I are officially really old. For her birthday, for those of you who have not already figured it out via the flood of text messages now coming your way, Erin got a cell phone. Not only that, but I got one too and just for fun we got a third one which was designated the 'family phone.' It travels with various children when they are out of the home. We are coming a little late to the whole cell phone thing, but until the last year or so have not really felt we were suffering too badly. Now, with the kids home alone more often, or at classes or activities it made sense to us to start passing out some cell phones.



What the kids really love though, is the cameras and the texting. I actually had not anticipated that the phones would have cameras, didn't even occur to me. Well, they do. One day I opened my phone to find a picture of our trash can (his name is Bob, but that is a whole different story) as my wallpaper. Bayley spent a good half hour entertaining herself as she sat in front of dressing rooms waiting for Erin by taking pictures of herself. It took her awhile to figure out just how far away to hold the phone and how to center her face, but she was persistent. And, of course, Liam and Fionn are always happy to be the subjects of an impromptu photo shoot.






Then there is texting. Interestingly, the phones actually have a stock of instant texts to choose from in case you are slightly texting challenged, you can just choose from their stock of phrases ("On my way," "Where are you?," "You're the best!"). Mostly this is way too boring for my kids though. Kegan can frequently be found hiding out with a phone, chuckling to himself, and later when I turn on my phone I will find lots of messages like "Whazzzzap" and "Hehehehehehehe...." Most recently, the boys discovered they could record and send sounds via text message. I opened my message only to hear a terrific belch courtesy of a very talented friend of theirs. Sadly, my texting skills are not quite up to par, in fact I am completely incapable of texting while walking or eating or holding a conversation. This pains my children, who often feel compelled to take over and just have me dictate.

Bicycling

For my birthday I got a bike. Like most things in this house that are not food, we bought it used. I found it on Craigslist Friday after several weeks of searching while I borrowed Bayley's bike occasionally. I love it. The seat is considerably cushier than Bayley's hard, narrow one and the handlebars are positioned higher so I can sit up more as I ride rather than leaning in over them. My kids assure me that my posture is not too reminiscent of the Wicked Witch of the East.

It has been years since I had my own bike. It is now possible for our whole family to go for a bike ride together for the first time since Erin was a baby and she rode in one of those horrible little seats mounted on the back of Kris's bike. After church yesterday we loaded all the bikes into the back of our bus and drove over to a favorite riverside bike path. We had to take both cars to get all of us and all the bikes to the path. Fionn and Liam are still tricyclists, so when we all ride together they ride in a trailer on Kris's bike. Infinitely better than the old seat that Erin had. So Kris is pulling over 75 pounds extra behind him up and down the hills. I don't know how he does it, but Fionn and Liam think it is a blast. They scream and giggle and even hold their hands in the air when they go down a hill. They were carefully coached in proper roller-coaster etiquette last December at Disneyland.

Ten people of varying riding skills and personality styles all trying to stay more or less together along the trail can be interesting. Generally Noah and Ronan ride first with the rest of us strung out behind them in a long line trying not to run into one anothr too often. At the tops of hills many of the kids prefer to stop and wait for the person ahead to get far enough ahead to allow for taking the hill at top speed without fear of having to slam on the brakes suddenly to prevent a collision with someone who may be taking it more slowly.

At one point in the ride I heard a muffled scream from around a bend ahead. I came around the corner to see three of my children stopped and staring off the path in the direction of the river which at this point along the trail is at the bottom of a steep incline directly beside the path. I experienced a brief moment of panic before I too could see Noah and his bike only a couple of feet down the hill. We made sure he rode more towards the center of the path after that!