Happy Halloween

I love Halloween. I’d say it’s my favorite holiday except, I love the Christmas season too. The best part about Christmas is that it is more than just a day. So back to Halloween, I think I love Halloween because people dress up in costumes and just have fun being something they aren’t or wearing something they only feel they can ware as a costume. It is so much fun making up costumes and putting them together. Every year I make myself a new costume outfit. This year I didn’t make a new costume for myself. That’s because I was making other costumes. This year I made the Halloween costumes for my mother-in-law and her friend. Every year they throw a Halloween party and do fun costumes as the host. This year they wanted to do and old west theme. They wanted to go as Saloon girls and their husbands wanted to go as cowboys. So a few weeks ago we took a trip up to Tucson to buy fabric and patterns. I enjoy putting things together and imagining what they will look like. One thing I learned working in a fabric store is that very few people have the ability to look beyond the picture on the pattern. If they can’t find the fabric that is on the picture they are completely at a loss of what to use. Helping people see what else they can do is something I enjoy. Brenda (my mother-in-law) and Karen (her friend) were really open minded when it came to ideas. Brenda chose for her costume to be purple and black and Karen chose orange and black. The both turned out darling. I wish I had pictures of them in their final costumes to post. For the Men’s costumes I made vests out of faux-leather suede. They then wore black jeans, black shirt, and cowboy hats.
For Cory I made a black pin-strip zuit suit. He was going as a 1920’s gangster and I was to go as a flapper. I made a flapper dress-red with black fringe) when I was just starting college and figured I would ware it again. While in Tucson, Brenda bought me a black finger-waved wig. It looked really wiggy on me, but oh well at least I didn’t have to finger-wave my own hair. Well by the end of the night my dress was falling apart. The seams were really coming undone. By that point it was time to go home before I flashed someone. We had fun and was very happy with how all the costumes I made turned out.

Primary Program & Haunted Houses

This week was the primary program. I am so glad that is over. The children did very good. Normally, I loath watching primary programs because it is chaos on the stand. Its painful to watch. But I think being a part of the primary program I was able to appreciate it more because I knew that it was nowhere near the possible chaos that could be existing.

I have been sick all week, I have a sore throat, lost my voice, I had a fever, not fun. So I was mostly feeling better by Saturday but not perfect. But I still didn’t have a voice. What made the whole thing really funny was that the children followed me- so when my voice went out and I was mostly lip singing, the children would bring their volume down to nothing too, but when I could get sound out, their sound would go back to normal. If it wasn’t so frustrating, it would have been entertaining. At least the children follow me. Thank goodness the children sang just fine on Sunday.

So for my visual on Sunday I wanted something just fun for the children- sort of like a celebration. I made a scary house (like a haunted house but I didn’t want to call it a haunted house). Now there was a concern about it not being appropriate for church. So I did check with the Primary President prior to making the house, to verify that it was okay. I would recommend doing that. I made the house so that the windows open and the door too. I wanted to make the house less scary after we had sang all the songs. I made these little cutesy ghosts and wrote the songs on the ghosts. Then I put a ghost in each window. All the songs we sang where picked by the children or were just fun songs. Both Jr and Sr seemed to really enjoy the house and the ghosts.

We Love Visitors

Last weekend Lisa and Rial Solomon came to visit us. We love it when we have visitors. The last visitors that we had had were a while ago when my parents came down.
So Saturday while Lisa and Rial were here, there was our Stakes Fall Fun Festival. Cory made chili for the chili cook-off. There were lots of fun activities going on. One was the talent show, Lisa and Rial got roped into do a Philippino stick dance. Cory wanted to get involved too. Cory's chili won 2nd place in his chili's category (beef with no beans). It was fun, except that we all got a little bit of sun.
After the Fall Fun Festival, we took a drive up Carr Canyon. You can see our house from here. It is so nice up there. All the pine trees and plants, its hard to believe you are still in the desert. Going up the canyon you can also see how close to Mexico we live. Rial said he had never before been this far south in Arizona, well you can't get much further south, you won't be in Arizona much further.
We love visitors. So the next time you want to take a trip to almost but not quite Mexico think of us.

6 inches doesn't seem to be much

So yesterday, I went and got 6 inches chopped off my hair. I was ready for a change, but I didn't know what I wanted. I looks a lot like other hair cuts I have had in the past. I guess I like it. I don't not like it. The lady used a razor on the ends and I like that. It feels different when I touch in, but looking at it doesn't seem like much is gone. Its just something new. It had been since when my sister's wedding March 2005 since I really cut it off.

Most Resently Tried and True

Singing Scientist

A few weeks ago I used the Singing Scientist suggestion that I found on the internet. The site I found the idea on, suggested having some jars with some with baking soda and food coloring in them. Then having a cup for each jar- some cups just have water, and some cups have vinegar. I instead decided to make it the jars that varied and filled an old 2 liter bottle with a 1:4 vinegar water mix. I had 6 jars, each jar was a little different with what was in it. Some jars had baking soda, some baking powder, some had flour. The food coloring was hiding under the powder. One jar was really special, it had blue food coloring with baking powder, then red food coloring with baking soda for a top layer. It was really cool. Baking soda reacts quickly with vinegar and then the reaction in over. While baking powder still reacts but it is a slower reaction and it goes much longer. Just for the record, flour does not create a reaction with vinegar, it only dissolves. So this special jar started by turning red and then when it got to the blue and the baking powder it stratified and stayed in layers. The kids thought it was so cool. I have been asked by parents what it was that we did because their children haven’t stopped talking about it. For how I did it with the children we would sing the son I choose for them to work on, since we are preparing for the primary program I choose songs they were weaker on. We sang the whole sang, then re-sang a part of the sang they struggled most (sometimes 3 or 4 times), until it was good, then re-sang the whole song, and if they did well I had a child who had been singing really well to pick one of the jars to see the reaction. I wore my lab coat from college, and my safety chemistry goggles. I also wore a pair of gloves. Again the kids loved it. If you do this don’t forget a spoon to stir it up with because the food coloring sticks to the powders.

Mr Pumpkinhead

Last week I made a giant pumpkin. I had wanted to use an actual pumpkin but instead I was unable to find one that I felt like spending the money on. So as with almost everything I made it out of construction paper. I made it three tall pieces wide and two pieces tall. I then used a green for the stem and had it curly-q. For the activity I had varies facial feature cut out of the black paper. I had eyes, noses, and some mouths. From here you can do it two ways 1-(since we are still preparing for the primary program) I picked the song, when they sang well I had multiple children come and pick a facial feature, if they only sang the song so so, only one child came up to put up one facial feature. When the face was all together we sang the next song we needed to work on and we started over on the mix and match face. 2- have each facial feature matched to a song. I didn’t do it this way because I only had three songs I wanted to work on, and I had a lot more facial features than I did songs to practice. The children had fun, they really enjoyed giving the pumpkin two different eyes and putting them in a non-eye place.

Perfect 10

To prepare for the primary program I used the personal chalkboards that were found in the closest. But you can have your judges use any notepad, whiteboards, magic board. I invited three judges for each primary to come listen and judge the children’s performance. I wrote on the front board the things for the children to know what they were being judged on: 1-Presentation: standing together, attentiveness to me, smiling while singing, looking like they are singing. 2- Performance: understanding the words, hearing the words, knowing all the words and verses, singing the notes. I explained this to the judges. For Junior primary I had the counselor in the bishopric and the Elders assigned to the ward. For Senior primary the judges were the former primary president, one of the current primary presidency, and a brother who use to be their teacher. We kept tract of their best scores. For Jr., the judges were instructed to give a lower score the first time and if they did better a higher score the second. Sr I was harder on and the judges were really honest with the children each time telling them how they could improve. I learned that the younger the child is the more they cared about doing it perfect for the judges. But the boys and girls almost going into ym and yw didn’t care and were ruining the score for all the children who were trying. What really worked with doing this, is that they got good feedback- that wasn’t from me, sometimes I think that they are doing great and I don’t know how honest I’m being with myself.

Here is the Watermelon that I made a couple months ago. Its two red papers wide. Each seed has a number on the back and a magnate, there are also magnates on the back of the Watermelon.

Mutal Respect- Obviously Some People Find it a Joke

This vandalized poster was sitting on my parent's front yard. My parent's house is in the back of a neighborhood, in the back of a circle. Someone went out of their way to vandalize their property that was on their property. It sickens me.
The same people who did they are claiming they want equal rights, when obviously they don't. If they honestly believed in true equal rights they would respect people's rights to express their beliefs. They not only committed a crime by vandalizing and disregarding personal property, they are violating the rights of my parents (who are law abiding citizans) to have the right to express themselves, their right of free speach, their right to own person property and so much more.
I want to be able to respect peoples rights to choose how to live their own lives. If you read my past blogs you will see that I support many rights that indivdules arguee that they don't have. I just can not support the right for them to marry someone of the same sex. They still have the right to marry, they could still marry- but someone of the oposite sex. I have done many things to fight for those other rights, but whey they continue to disregard the rights of others- I no longer want to help fight for their rights.
When I lived in Utah, people who did not support rights for gay couples, lived quite lives of unsupport. They have that right, but those who lived that life style would constantly be in my face and other's faces flaunting their right to live how they want. I hated it. They were a small but in your face minority. In Arizona that minority is much larger, but most live quite lives. I can respect that. It is those people who live a quite lives makes me want to leave them alone and let them do so.
But by insulting and insurting their lives into mine- by infringing on my rights and the rights of those around me. I will fight! To those individules I ask you to STOP infringing on our basic rights, you can't say you are truely for equal right if you are not allowing the basic rights of life to those who do not think the same way you do.