I Flippin' Folded a Fitted Sheet!

Yes, that's right. I folded a fitted bedsheet. (Mental fist pump.) It actually resembles a folded square instead of a mass of cloth shoved in the linen closet. I never thought I'd get to claim that as one of my skillz. I'll go ahead and mentally check that off of my "Things to Learn to Do Before I Die" list. Why just mentally check it off, you ask? Because I never wrote it down, and if I don't write it down then I automatically meet all my goals, don't I? For those of you looking for help learning this skill, (Kristie ;) ) I wish I could help you. I don't think I could explain how it's done. And I don't know if I could ever do it again. And if you can't do it already, I'm not sure if it's learnable. I've had more than one lesson from my mom on how to do it, and it never stuck. I guess it's one of those things you blunder through until you have an epiphany. Lucky me.

Yet Another Trip to Utah

A scary, yet well-dressed pirate with his earring and patch

We took another trip to Utah last week for Ben's grandpa's funeral. Man, it's crazy. I was glad we were both able to attend, but I just had no idea it would be so soon. I'm glad that Grandma and Grandpa McMullin only had to live without each other for 30 days. I know the above picture totally doesn't go with the funeral theme, but the truth is, I've been slacking in my picture taking. My memory card is full, and I just barely sent the pictures in to be printed, and I should've done it like a month ago...but I'm too cheap to buy another memory card...and yeah. So this picture is documenting Emerson at my brother Brad's play. Brad was Jukes the pirate in Peter Pan, and may I just say he was definitely the best one! His girly scream was by far the best...and certainly painted a picture of impending doom for the audience when he was attacked by the lost boys.

Emerson traveled the best he could on the airplane for a 7-month-old. I'm not looking forward to the plane ride home for Christmas though, to be honest. The rest will be really fun, but blah to the plane ride. As I said before, we were glad to be able to go to Grandpa's funeral, and it was good to be back in Utah and see the fam. To those of you who are pondering death: just hold off and stay alive, because we can't make any more trips home for awhile. :)

Visitors!

All 3 cousins riding the tiger (Alli, Kennedy, Emerson)

Emerson and his tiger friend

Our niece Alli

Emerson-bear all snuggled up

I'll give you one guess who put E on the train tracks....

Emerson-bear and the lion have the same expression

We had visitors in Columbus! Ben's sister, Brooke, and her family drove out to visit us from Virginia. We had a fun 4 1/2 days of adventure. We went to COSI, the zoo, Bob Evans, the Waffle House, watched 24, played games, and watched in amazement as our niece, Alli, ran around nonstop with Tim chasing her. It was so fun for Emerson to have his little cousins around (even if he did have to share his toys). Thanks for coming Alli and Kennedy (oh, and Brooke and Tim!)

After-Halloween Party

Emerson and Tucker (it was past Emerson's bedtime)

Our little family of candy (I have a Reese's shirt on, and Ben was a dum-dum sucker, but he took off his hat)

The night after Halloween, we went to a party at the Bowcutts' house. We went as candy to match E's costume. It was a fun party with lots of good food, a pinata, games, and pictures. Thanks Kevin and Allyson!

Happy Halloween!

My little tootsie roll

Emerson sucking on his tootsie roll. I didn't give it to him to eat, but I let him hold it for the picture and then got distracted by trick-or-treaters and he went to town drooling on it and dissolving the wrapper. He cried when I took it away...it tasted so good!

Doing a scary face

Helping mom pass out candy to trick-or-treaters

Emerson and his "cousin" Taylee. Candice and I decided that since neither of us have family in Ohio, we'd just create our own here to supplement.

Halloween is my favorite holiday...after Christmas of course. I don't know what it is about it, but I just love it. I'm always a little disappointed with Halloween as an adult though because I remember it being just awesome as a kid. We'd have the fun parties at school that the room mothers would put together and we'd get to play games, touch gross stuff, and decorate sugar cookies. We'd have the traditional Halloween dinner, and then my dad would always take us trick-or-treating. It was always so dang cold, and I hated wearing my coat over my costume because it totally ruined the effect, but every year my mom made me. (Love you, mom! And I'm sure I'll do the same thing to my kids.) Then we'd always visit the grandmas when it was either really early or too late to do regular trick-or-treating. They always had the best candy, and Grandma Johnson always had something extra special for us.

Halloween is a little different here in Columbus. The city assigns each area a specific night and time to do trick-or-treating. And they don't even call it trick-or-treating....they call it Beggar's Night. (What?) So pretty much everyone in our ward lives in Hilliard, and their assigned time was the 30th from 6-8 p.m. And we technically live in the Columbus area, so our time was on actual Halloween from 6-8. They also don't ring doorbells. If you are participating then you sit on your porch to pass out candy. Man, talk about efficient. Just think about all the extra houses I could've hit as a kid without ringing the doorbell and waiting for the people to answer the door! Maybe I'm weird, but I made every kid say trick-or-treat when they walked up to me and opened their candy receptacles. Especially the teenagers. I picked out the hard candy to give to them. Hee Hee. I just figured that since they don't even have to ring a doorbell, the least they could do is say the words. We didn't take E trick-or-treating for real, but we took him around to a few ward members' houses mostly just to show off his cute costume (which I did not make...). Ben went to the McCain rally that night, so he missed most of the trick-or-treating stuff :(. We finished out the night with a Little Caesar's pizza and an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I wish I could tell you how it went, but I fell asleep. This Halloween was pretty good, but I can't wait until next year when we can take Emerson trick-or-treating....or begging....or whatever you want to call it.