Halloween

I've mentioned it before, but the sucky thing about blogging six months after an event is that you really remember nothing.  Thank goodness I like to take pictures, so that helps.  I can look back at the pictures I have fairly faithfully organized, and do my best to remember what happened.

We decorated pumpkins.  The Anderson's invited us over.  They are awesome like that.

Christopher decided that both he and Zach needed to dress up as scientists for Halloween.  That's what Zach was last year, and Christopher likes to be like Zach, so he dictated the costume choice.  Fortunately Zach is super easy going and is a super good sport when it comes to these things.

But Maddie had a plan.  She carefully thought it out and designed it.  She even drew and painted an inspiration picture to go from.  And then we went from store to store to purchase the items needed- leggings, a long blue ribbon, and strips of colored tulle.   Sadly, I don't have an actual picture of her dressed up.  She was up curling her hair while I was photographing the boys, and then time just got away from us.  She was a girly R2-D2 in converse and a tulle ballet style skirt.  She found a cute shirt on Amazon.  Of course most people were generally confused or had no idea who R2-D2 was.  AND her clever and cute idea must have come subliminally from Pinterest or something, because there were so many other girly superhero characters in tulle ballet skirts.  But she was still the prettiest. (sidenote- seriously though.  It's not as if she was dressed up as some obscure character from a video game or Anime or something.  We're talking STAR WARS here.  How do kids these days really not know who R2-D2 is?)

And I am not even sure if Nick dressed up.  He might have thrown on his 4th Doctor scarf at some point and called it good. I do remember that I let him have a party here on Halloween.  At one point it was just he and like 10 pretty girls watching a movie and racing each other to the door to pass out Halloween candy.  I remember thinking he was genius for having so many friends that are girls. Seriously it was like a 10 to 1 ratio. I wish I took a picture.

Fall Break

I can't remember what the rest of us did for Fall Break, but Nick got to go to Arches National Park in Utah with his other family, the Andersons.

From the pictures it looks like he had a good time.

They hiked a whole bunch,

And took in lots of beautiful scenery.

They saw things like Balanced Rock,

And Delicate Arch.

And I think he fits in with their family pretty well.

I don't really know what else to say.

I know he had tons of fun, and was so grateful and touched that they would want to share their family vacation with him.

And they made a quick stop at the Monticello temple because they were in the area.

Finally to end off the trip they made a stop at the Four Corners area.  I've never actually been there.  I hear it's over priced, underwhelming, and is a bit of a drive out to literally the middle of nowhere. But how often can you say you were in four states at the same time

Homecoming

Nick and Maddie both went to Homecoming.

Maddie went with some orchestra friends (no dates)

And Nick asked Dani.

Maddie had fun picking out a dress.  We "borrowed" one from a girl who sort of runs a business lending out dresses.  I think there was a nominal fee associated with it, but mostly we had to return the dress clean and modest.  Which in our case meant adding sleeves as the dress was completely strapless.

I know in 10, or 5, or even 2 years the meaning may be lost, but the cake thing was pretty clever. (Of course it was, it was my idea.)  It references a video game they liked to play together.  And we put a firecracker in the lemon cause it's supposed to be a "combustible lemon".

Of course I think the firecracker soaked up too much lemon juice because it was a total dud.  At least the cake was good. (Of course it was, I made it.)

During the day they came over to our house and decorated haunted gingerbread houses.

Kinda lame, I know, but I think time was an issue.

Would you believe the girls did not want to take home their houses?

But I hear dinner was fantastic.  Nick said the other guy's parents are professional chefs and they were all "Would you like to choose how well done your steak is, or would you like it cooked the correct way?" (or something to that effect.)

Being friends with Dani's parents, I got to go over before he actually picked her up to get some pictures.  Granted this first one is a terrible picture, but it's not every day you get to be witness to your kid picking up a girl for a date.

Truth is...

Every once in awhile I see kids on facebook playing a game of sorts.  I don't pretend to actually know the rules, but my understanding is one person starts off by saying "Truth Is..." and then other people "like" that posting and the person who started it has to tell them a truth or something.  I don't pay too much attention, but mostly they say stuff like "Truth is, I think you're awesome!".

I'm not attempting to play any kind of game here, and the truth is, I don't know if I will actually publish this, but the truth is I'm sad. Like, really, really, heartbrokenly sad.

This is not the place for the "why's" of it all, so I won't go into that.  But it's still my blog, and people occasionally ask me when I'm going to write again, but I haven't been able to write in weeks because there is only one thing on my mind at any given moment, and even though I have had a blog post mostly written for over a month about our trip down the Rhine river and hanging out at the Rheinfels castle, I just can't deal with going through all those pictures.  I took tons that day. Possibly hundreds.

And I just can't deal with it now.  Any of it.  I'm sure some day I will, and I am trying to keep track of what else I am not blogging about so that hopefully one day when I can deal with it, I won't forget anything.  Which, as we all know is a crock, because I know better than anybody that the truth is my mind is like a sieve and the details escape me more and more each day.

And the truth is I really, really want to get back to a place where I can write, but everything is so tinted with sorrow and despair and heartbreak and anger and I'm just so tired that it's not something I can do right now.

I am getting help though.  I promise.  My kids are the best, and my friends are amazing.  And I'm working closely with my bishop, and I'm seeing a doctor, and am on pills for anxiety and depression, so hopefully those will kick in in a few weeks, and I will probably add counseling and/or a support group to that mix.

And then I have my Savior.  And Christopher reminds me of that daily.  "Your heart is broken?  Jesus needs to fix it.  He will come and fix your heart."  Sometimes I think he understands more than I give him credit for.

So there we have it.  Please be patient with me.  Jesus is fixing my heart, but the truth is, I think it's going to take awhile.