Happy Halloween, partner!

Analee, the cutest cow on the block.

Bekah running down the driveway in her cowboy costume. We almost forgot her trusty steed at home.

An action shot of Bekah with her horse. "He doesn't have a name because he isn't real," according to Bekah.

Months ago, Bekah determined that she'd be a cowboy for Halloween (not a cowgirl, mind you). So we decided that Ana would follow suit with the theme and be the cow. Thank heavens for secondhand stores; every single piece of Ana's outfit came from my favorite place to shop for the girls, and all of Bekah's outfit minus the boots (borrowed from a neighbor) and the horse (made by yours truly) came from there as well.

We had dinner in a pumpkin, then set out in our neighborhood to knock on doors. Afterward, we ran the gamut of grandparents in Idaho Falls: Seth's parents, my grandpa, Seth's grandma and my parents. The girls got to bed a little late that night, but it was worth it. Between the girls' two buckets of candy, I'll have a healthy amount of chocolate to snitch for weeks.

Grandpa Dennis, Analee, Bekah, Calvin (the girls' cousin) and Grandma Susan.

Grandpa Wirkus dishing out (and dishing out, and dishing out) the candy to Analee and Bekah.

Great-Grandma Grover (or "Old Grandma," as Bekah calls her) with Analee and Rebekah. Bekah is eying Patches the dog who is out of the camera's range. She's not too comfortable around people's pets, if you couldn't tell.

Bekah, Analee and Seth with Grandma Scott.

Bekahism #4

(After talking about the movie Aladdin)

Andrea: If you could have three wishes, what would you wish for?
Bekah: I would wish that I could go to the temple with a nice boy I found.

(Andrea swells with pride that Bekah has paid attention to the FHE lesson Seth gave an hour before.)

Andrea: What would your second wish be?
Bekah: That I could watch TV all day and not have to go to sleep.

(Andrea thinks, "That sounds like a three-year-old, all right.")

Andrea: And what would your third wish be?
Bekah: Ratadatdatdat.
Andrea: What?
Bekah: Ratadatdatdat.
Andrea: I don't understand you.
Bekah: "Ratadatdatdat" means 50 hundred twelveen nightlights. Twelveen is a REAL number!

(Andrea is utterly perplexed.)

Photo tagged

Brooke tagged me. I am supposed to post the fifth picture from the fifth folder and blog about it. This proved to be harder than expected, because I have MANY, MANY folders with MANY, MANY pictures. Do I go to my "camera downloads" folder and select the fifth folder and picture from there? Or just the "pictures" folder? When counting down to the fifth folder, do I include the TIFs AND the JPGs? Decisions, decisions.

Anyway, I made an executive decision and came up with this lovely nugget:

This is part of a series of family pictures we had my dad shoot last March. (This photo is the pre-color enhancing version, by the way.) The girls looked adorable in their matching Nemo dresses (gifts from my mom), hair bows and red toenails. It's hard to imagine that Analee actually needed to lean on that rocking chair so she wouldn't tumble over; nowadays it's hard to keep up with her running all over the place.

Another executive decision: I tag Leah, Ethan, Taralyn, Lindsay and Jade.

you know you'd fall for it

My wife wanted me to make it known that she had nothing to do with this week's post.



covering The Flight of the Conchords' "The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room"

Cute girls

Aren't these girls adorable? You would never have guessed that in less than 5 minutes from this moment, they were fighting over a stick, which resulted in Bekah having a timeout.

パックマン (pakku-man)

It's that time of year again, when we cover the table in the Classifieds section, pull out the knives, and string pumpkin guts across across our kitchen in an attempt to make a gourd look cool. And, if we do say so ourselves, they do look cool. Pretty danged cool.

We've been doing this for years, and most years we try to pick a common theme for both of our pumpkins to share. Some years, not so much.

This year we decided to go 8-bit retro and do a Pac-Man theme. I think it looks pretty flippin' sweet. We tried some new techniques this year. I think it was chiaro-scurro or graffito or something.


Pakku-man with Cherry (Seth's masterpiece) and his arch nemesis, Blinky (Andrea's even more masterful-piece).

The family after Pumpkinfest 2008. Bekah is eating Crunch Berries. Ana is eating a teddy bear.


For more Halloweenie fun, click here.

old people are funny, 'cause they're old

does he just get confused about when the song actually starts?

I've sort of been a slacker.



(cover of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful")

The Road

I always have a novel that I'm working on, but the one I finished last night deserves some sort of elite status ... like Supernovel. Seriously. One of the best books I've read. Period.

So if you haven't yet struggled with the man and his boy (they remain nameless throughout) along the road in a post-apocalyptic world, you should.

I actually told Seth last night that I wish I had an English class I could discuss this with. He reminded me that there are groups of people who read and discuss books together all the time ... and they're called book clubs. But I have yet to join one (who has time with two rugrats to chase all day?), so instead I'll give you my two cents on Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Some authors write about depressing subject matter for the sake of being depressing (Ernest Hemmingway is that way for me). But other authors (like John Steinbeck) take their characters through difficult, seemingly hopeless situations to show that no matter what the circumstances, there is always good in the world. This book does the latter.

The man and his boy wander through a desolated world that has suffered a nuclear attack or something of the like (the book never specifies). All their food, clothes and possessions they have had to scavenge. They travel along the road on the way to the coast, but they must be careful of other travelers and survivors of the mass devastation; some people have resorted to cannibalism and other atrocities.

I won't divulge any more details--I wouldn't want to give anything away--but I encourage everyone to read it! So many incredible themes: the contrast of the man's extreme caution with the boy's unfaltering hope in mankind, the boundless love between a father and child, the battle between our travelers and all the horrors of man ... I could go on.

And I just found out from my dear friend Google that they're making The Road into a movie. Before this discovery, Seth and I had speculated on who could play the man "if" they were to make it a motion picture. I couldn't think of anyone. Seth suggested Nicolas Cage. I gagged. Turns out it's Viggo Mortensen. A respectable pick, we think.

Interested in what others have to say about the book? Check out this link.

today's bekahism

"Mommy, before I was a baby, how did I get in your tummy?" (thinks a moment...) "Did you eat me?"

Pictactures

The other day, I was looking through the summer's photos so I could get prints made. There were many that were super-cute, of course, (when you have two adorable girls, the pictures ALWAYS turn out super-cute) so I thought I'd share a few with the world. Enjoy!

This is Bekah jamming on the recycled percussion booth at the Snake River Roaring Youth Jam. The Jam is way cool. Different organizations put up booths and let the kids go willy-nilly for three days. This was our first experience attending the Jam, and I have to say we'll definitely be there next year. See the other girls in their cutesy outfits? I felt like a delinquent mom for dressing Bekah in her hand-me-down Muppet Babies shirt until ...

she got started painting. There were at least three booths where they just hand the kids paints and brushes and let them go to town. You can see that Kermy has an extra coat of green by this point. Here is Bekah playing the giant xylophone she has just painted, with Analee watching in the background. Poor Ana ... at several of the booths I wouldn't even let her out of the stroller. I didn't want her eating paint.

And here is the aftermath of the Jam. I had asked Bekah if she wanted to go to the face-painting booth, but she took that to mean that she should take the brush that was laden with black point and paint her own face.

Analee doing Wii Fit with her daddy. I think it's supposed to be some yoga pose.

This is how Ana gets up on the couch--she leads with her head.

Llama, Analee and Seth at the petting zoo at the Eastern Idaho State Fair.

Seth and Rebekah inside the giant kaleidoscope at the EISF. This is the only picture in the batch that includes me. Look to the right of Bekah.

Analee enjoying a spoonful of gingersnap cookie dough.

Bekah in the tub showing off the shiner she got from falling off the back of the couch.

Rebekah enjoying an apple on the couch before church last week. Both girls have been living up to the "apple a day" adage because of the fall crop.

Analee eating her pre-church apple while watching TV.

To see more such pictures, kindly click here.

Braces tightened & surgery scheduled

I had my first post-braces-installed orthodontist appointment. Again, not fun. But not nearly as bad as the installation appointment. We're hoping that in five weeks my upper bicuspids will have rotated back to where they belong. Then I'll get a stronger wire.

And I have a surgery date--June 8, 2009! It's tentative ... but the orthodontist thinks I'll be ready to go by then. Poor Seth will have to spend his 27th birthday at the hospital with his doped-up wife who won't even be able to talk to him. Maybe he can pick up a piece of cake from the cafeteria. No candles, though. I doubt the hospital staff would appreciate their fire alarms going off.

I picked up a helpful little pamphlet called "Orthodontics and Surgery" from the ortho's office when I went last week. I thought I'd share a few choice selections:

#1--"In addition to affecting a person's appearance, an improper bite can lead to serious problems, such as abnormal tooth wear, periodontal disease, and possible joint pain."

Abnormal tooth wear. Check. The teeth on my right side are worn down a LOT more than those on my left.

Periodontal disease. Check. I had to go to the dentist several extra times so they could treat my gingivitis while I was pregnant with Bekah.

Possible joint pain. Check. Some days my jaw hurts from chewing/talking/singing too much.

So, again, I'm very grateful to be able to have the surgery. Thank you, Seth's insurance, for choosing to cover it!

#2--The four pictures on this page depict the types of problems that can be corrected by surgery and orthodontics. (Click on it to see a larger version.) Lucky me ... I fit into three of the four categories! (The lower three, to be exact.)

Anyway, those are the jaw-related updates. Goody!

lost but now found

While on my mission I was able to obtain a highly delicious but highly secret and well-guarded recipe for Italian dressing. I thought I'd lost it, but apparently I sent a copy to Andrea for safe-keeping. In the spirit of blessing the human race, I am posting that recipe here, although I am changing the name so as not to incur legal retaliation. If you like Italian dressing, welcome to Shangri-La.

"Adurtla's" Italian Dressing

1. Mix the following in 3 ounces of red wine vinegar:
   
   
   
   • 3/4 teaspoon of sugar
   
   
   • 3/4+ teaspoon of salt
   
   
   • 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper
   
   
   • 1/8 teaspoon of ground mustard
   
   
   • 1/8- teaspoon of celery seed
   
   
   • 1/8+ teaspoon of thyme
   
   
   • 1/8 teaspoon of oregano
   
   
   • 1/2 teaspoon of cilantro
   
   
   • 1/2 teaspoon of tarragon
   
   
   • 1/2 teaspoon of basil leaves
   
   


2. Add 1/2 teaspoon of lime juice and 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice. Mix thoroughly.


3. Peel garlic and press about 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of garlic (w/juice). It is okay if you add additional amounts in small increments to taste. Make sure your garlic is white or light beige with no green stem.


4. Shake the dressing vigorously and let site for approximately 30 minutes before adding 3 and 1/2 to 4 ounces of 100% vegetable oil.

who hasn't covered this one?

Today was killer at work, so I decided to unwind by slamming out a cover of Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower" for my weekly offering to the intertubes. Everybody and their dog has covered this song, from Jimi Hendrix to Dave Matthews to Devo. (Okay, probably not Devo. Maybe, though.) Probably not my most refined work, but good for blowing off steam.

Instead of taking up precious blog real estate, click here to watch.

Da Bears

While Seth was cavorting in the Island Park wilderness searching (unsuccessfully) for the elusive wapiti, the girls and I decided we needed to have an adventure of our own. So we packed our bags and headed off to Yellowstone Bear World's free kids day.

The girls enjoyed seeing the animals as we drove by, and they even made sure to make the appropriate animal noises. Bekah's "eagle eyes" even spotted an animal I didn't expect to see in there: turkeys. I'm surprised at how many animals they have. We saw mountain goats, deer, bison, elk, turkeys, grizzly bears, black bears and wolves.

This wolf was missing an eye. Bekah was very concerned about it. "Why is the mommy wolf missing an eye?" (Who knows if the wolf was actually female; Bekah had seen a "daddy wolf" earlier, so this must have been the mommy.)

One of the many black bears we spotted on the drive.

After the drive-through, we stopped the van and saw the bear cubs:

Bekah and Ana at the bear cubs' fence.

Then we checked out the petting zoo.

Looking at the deer inside the petting zoo, although these in particular were obviously not there to be petted. Fences kinda prevent that.
with holding Ana.

Then the last of our 45 minutes at Yellowstone Bear World were spent riding their amusement park rides. Over. And over. And over again. Ana was a good sport, which was quite a feat for a one-year-old, especially because Bekah insisted that we ride the roller coaster three times in a row. Followed by the train. And then the roller coaster.

Sorry ... no pics of the rides. I had my hands full with holding Analee. But if you're interested in seeing more pictures, click here.

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