Happy Halloween

Another Halloween has come and gone.

Jeramy took this picture of the girls at Wal-mart a few weeks ago and it still makes me smile every time I see it.

You all know that I am a blog-writing, camera-packing momma...I don't have any pictures of my kids from trick or treating tonight! I'll explain in a later post.

Just wanted to send a quick Happy Halloween your way!

Pirates and Pumpkins

I absolutely love teaching preschool. Right now I am doing a co-op with 5 amazing moms, so I end up teaching every 6 weeks. I so look forward to my week! I hope someday to be able to teach preschool full-time, crazy, I know! This past week I taught the letter "P." We learned about pirates...
And pumpkins...

We took a field trip to Hee Haws after my "pumkpin" day. It was so much fun! The kids each got to pick their own pumpkins and I thought we were never going to be able to leave - they had the hardest time finding the perfect pumpkin.

I was going to hide our snack on Pirate day and call it our "Pirate Booty." Jeramy nicely suggested I just call it a treasure. Good idea. My girls would have loved shaking their "pirate booty". Snicker, snicker.

Provo River Halloween Cruise

Last Friday night we went on the Provo River Halloween Cruise. Us Mommas had really wanted to give it a try, even though we'd been told it was lame. So, we put the address in my nifty GPS on my phone (yup, there's an app for that), and found our way in the big city of Provo.
Here's my review for you:

1). It was definitely overpriced. My family of 5 was $28 - WITH a coupon. The boat ride itself is only a half hour long.
2) They were super organized, considering the massive amounts of people they were dealing with.
3). The kids LOVED it! Macie is still talking about the pirate that jumped onto our boat!
4). Decorated fun for Halloween, not too scary, so it was great. They had jack-o-lanterns lining the river and the reflections from them into the river was cool to see. It was dark and just creepy enough for us chickens.

I'd do it again, if it were half price. It was fun to be able to do something Halloween-ish with our little girls that wasn't scary.
The best comic moments of the night brought to us by Maddie:
1). Maddie trying to "jump rope" her jacket and face-planting it in the dirt.
2). Maddie thinking Jeramy was hiding in the bushes and her yelling, "Dad, knock it off, I want to get in the van!" I told her it wasn't her Dad rustling around, so we had to investigate and we found a HORSE! A real one...behind a fence. She was a little freaked out, and embarrassed.
3). When I told Maddie what we were doing, she said, "Should I go get our life jackets?" I said that we wouldn't need them, and she huffed and puffed about boat safety. When we got there and bought our tickets, they said, "Children under 12 need to go over and get a life jacket out of the bin." Maddie immediately said, "See, I told you." Rules, schmules.

Never a dull moment at the gym

(I just typed "Never a dill moment at the gym"...should have left it and made everyone think it was another pickle post).

Funny things keep happening. At least funny to me. I thought I'd share so maybe you'd like to come to the gym and burn calories laughing with me.

Funny#1
Jer wanted to go to the gym the other night around 7, the daycare couldn't fit the girls in until 7:30, so I took them to the store and waited for my time slot. I dropped them off, then went to the cardio room and found Jeramy. I got on the treadmill next to him and said, "Hi." We had a casual conversation for a few seconds, then I started my run. It was then that I noticed the guy next to me. He kept looking at me and I was all "dude, what the heck?" after about 10 minutes of him glancing over at me, I realized that he was waiting for me to talk to him. He obviously thought that I didn't know my husband on the treadmill next to me and thought that I was just being nice to a stranger and you could see the little wheels spinning in his head wondering why I chose the man on my left to be nice to, but not the man on my right. (neither of us were wearing our wedding rings, either). I was chuckling to myself about it, when the man on my left (Jeramy) laughed out loud and said, "Charles Barkley is funny." (He was watching basketball). So we had a good laugh about basketball as the poor man on my right watched us...and wondered again why he was not included in our conversation.

I'll admit, I enjoyed thinking about what he was thinking about. And it made it all even funnier when we got to the car and Jer said, "What was up with that guy next to you? He totally kept looking at you!" So I explained my theory and we had a good laugh.

Embarrassing story #2

We had our VIP orientation and it included a 20 minute session with a trainer. Cute kid was getting us all pumped to get a trainer, and I think it did the total opposite for me. He started me off with 15 pounds on each side and said, "let's do 12 of these" I got to 6 and my little weakling arms were shaking so bad that he said, "6 is fine." And he had me go on to something else. When I got back to that machine, he nicely said, "I just went ahead and took all the weight off, give it a try now." I made it through all 12...barely. Then he said, "I want you to do 12 girl push ups." My arms were rubber and I couldn't even hold myself up. I could tell he really wanted to laugh at me. We survived our 20 minutes with the trainer, and we were both incredibly sore for about a week after.



Embarrassing story #3

My "yogalates" (half yoga half pilates) teacher is freaking 7 months pregnant. 7 months. She doesn't even break a sweat! She said the other night, "Your invited to join me in the splits if you feel like you can..." I laughed and then looked up and saw her doing the splits! So not cool.



Embarrassing story #4

I LOVE the cinema room. For those of you who haven't been, they have a room full of treadmills and such that has a huge screen and all day they show movies on it. AND the keep it pretty much pitch black dark. We've learned to take our cell phones and use the light off of them to find a treadmill.

I tried to get on a treadmill that already had someone wearing black on it. Whoops.

Embarrassing story #5

Cinema room again...went up to a man who I thought was my husband and got on the treadmill next to him and said "Hi" It wasn't Jeramy. (this time I was the strange lady talking to the stranger)



Story #6

30 seconds after I said "Hi" to that man, my own husband grabbed me from behind and I "yelped" and about fell off my moving treadmill.



Aren't you motivated to go to the gym now? I can hardly wait to go and see what I do next!
(I actually wrote this post way back in May, but I was thinking about it this morning and realized I never posted it).

A riddle for ya...

What has 440 feet, 440 eyes, 2200 wiggly little hands, and 220 chatty little mouths?

Give up?

Our Primary.

Our primary has 220 children from the ages of 18 months to 12 years.

I love our primary.

Really, I do.

I've been in Primary for many, many years in many, many callings.

About 4 months ago I got released from Primary and for the first time in over 5 years, I went to Relief Society. I went to Sunday School and sat by my husband. I loved it.

Then 3 weeks ago, I was asked to sub for the pianist in Primary. As I sat in there and played and watched all these kids and all of the amazing leaders, my heart ached. I missed Primary.

Apparently the Lord knew I needed to go back to Primary. I am now the 1st counselor in the Primary Presidency. I am so excited to be back serving the children in our ward!

My brother sent me this youtube video/song in honor of my new calling. Couldn't figure out how to get it to just play here, but if you have 3 minutes and want to jam out to the Primary Jamboree, go for it!

Fishers of men

Sunday morning Maddie came in and said, "Mom what do the scriptures mean when they say 'fishers of men'?" We were running late and I told her we'd talk after church.

Monday morning, she lugged her scriptures into me and said, "Look mom, I found that fishers of men scripture." I said "Good job! Now go brush your teeth." And made a mental note to plan FHE around that scripture. Then I forgot.

I just went in to clean up Maddie's room and found this hanging on her wall:

Here's what it says:

Jesus did lots of miracles like five loaves and two little fish, 10 lepers, waves "peace, be still", blind man see and more. Learn about them and thank Heavenly Father and Jesus. What miracles did he do for you? Do miracle to others and Jesus did in St Matthew 4:19 it says, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

Maddie's old primary teacher wrote me the sweetest note about how much Maddie knows and I was quick to tell her that it's all Maddie, not me. This pretty much proves it. Poor kid had to go "fishing" for her own knowledge. I suppose I should stop writing this post and go teach my child.

The what-ifs

We went up to the Mower cabin for conference weekend again this year. We tried it a little different this time, since we had such an adventure last time when the men-folk went to the Priesthood session, we decided we would go up Friday night and be home for the priesthood session.
For the first time in the history of the Wakewii family I - and I alone - made us - and everyone else - late. Good thing Grandpa had gone up the day before and got the dish set up for the BYU/Utah state game. Once we got there, the men watched the game in the cabin and us ladies cooked foil dinners on the fire outside.

My 18 year old nieces wanted to sleep in my van because "We are adults now and can handle it". I said that was fine, so we took all the seats out and they got real cozy and slept out there. As I was laying in the cabin, I couldn't fall asleep. That's when the "What-if's" crawled inside my head"
I remembered that I was the last one to ride the 4-wheeler and had parked it on a hill right by my van. What if the parking break came off and it rolled into my van and freaked the girls out. What if it wrecked my van? Should I go check? No, I'd wake up the other 16 people sleeping in the cabin.
The girls cracked all the windows and I had food in there. What if a bear smelled it and tried to break in ?
What if they get too cold? What if they are too hot? Do they have a flashlight if they need to go to the bathroom?
And on and on. It was ridiculous. I finally dozed off and was startled out of my sleep by a BEAR outside and screaming...then I calmed down and realized it was someone snoring and someone else wheezing. I was a wreck by then and stayed awake until dawn.

We had a great Saturday! The girls had a blast going for rides with their cousins. Maddie played with Tank, the dog and she was very pleased that her stick was still there. (Thanks, Todd for getting there before us and finding a stick for her and putting it right where she left it). Jeramy and I took Lindsay out for a ride and Jer let her drive...that would be her little thumb in the picture trying to hold down the throttle. She lasted about 1 minute before her hand was too tired. We drove home during the last session and then I took a 3 hour nap to recover.