Nicolas at the Capitol

I love the cub scout leaders in our neighborhood!  They are fully invested and give the boys opportunities to have some great adventures.  Their most recent venture was to the Utah State Capitol so the boys can get a "behind the scenes" look at the legislature at work - well it was after hours so I don't know how much work was getting done.  Elena took this picture of Nicolas in the Supreme Court.  I wonder if he is the lead for the prosecution or the defense . . .  I know he had a great time though!  Thanks Elena and Erin!

The Game Closet

As you can see by my bio to the right, I love games.  Board games, card games, video games, computer games and even party games (some of them).  I could just play games all day long and be perfectly happy - well, as long as I have a bowl of M&Ms at hand.  My brothers and I grew up playing games (I don't remember playing games with Leah or Tim unfortunately) and I always lost.  Always.  But I still loved playing.  We played Monopoly, WaterWorks, Careers, Scrabble, Boggle, checkers and chess, etc, all the old stand-bys.  I remember playing HuskerDu and mancala with my neighbor friend, Julie Nelson, too. 
So, now that we are all growed up (:-)), what do Jeff and Mark and I do when we get together?  We play games, of course!  Even Mom and Dad join in when they are here.   So, since we are such experts, Jeff and Alison came up with the idea of creating a game review website.  We are hoping people will go to our site to check out what games are fun and they will buy them off of our links to Amazon and funagain.com.  But really, truth be told, it just gives a reason to get together even more often to play games - "work meetings" we call them.  What a great life I have!  Here's the link to our site under construction - http://alisonlrandall.com/gamecloset/ourgameclosethome.html

Sweetheart dance

Markee invited her friend Chandler to the Sweetheart dance. He is one of that group of friends that I love; one that went to the top of Timp with us last summer. She had her group come over to play games and watch a movie on Saturday afternoon and then they all went home to get ready for the dance before going out to eat and heading to the school. Markee had a great time and she looked so pretty all dressed up. They made a cute couple ("Mooom!" says Markee). :-) This was her second "date dance" but first semi-formal and she did it with flair. She picked the perfect dress - you can't buy a modest semiformal dress we discovered - with a little jacket to go over it and the perfect heels and tights. Loved it! And she and Marin did her hair curly cute. My little girl is all growed up.

Birthday!

I had to blog about it because this is, by far, the best birthday I've had for a long, long time. It actually started last Sunday when Jared brought me breakfast in bed to start my birthday week since he knew he wouldn't be able to do that on the actual day. :) Then it continued on Monday night at family home evening when Daina surprised me with a birthday ice cream cake for the family home evening treat - in case there was too much going on on my real birthday. Nice!
And then NuSkin surprised me with the day off - not on purpose; my day off this week just happened to fall on the right day!
So today Jared and I went out to a game store and bought Dominion and Qwirkle, two of my favorite games from New Years. After that we went to the theater to see Tron. Not something either of us particularly wanted to see, but there wasn't anything better. Turned out to be quite a good movie! When we got home Marin and Nicolas were already home from school and they surprised me with a big birthday banner that they had made (they had given me handmade cards earlier) and a bag of candy. Marin wanted to go to the store because we didn't have any balloons. She bought me a chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream cake too - with her own money! She is SO sweet!
Jared went out to get tacos for dinner and we ate tacos, played Qwirkle and had birthday cake. It was a lovely day and I feel so privileged to have this wonderful family who cares for me. Thanks to all!

Disappointment

1/13/11. That date has been highlighted on the calendar for almost 2 months now. The day Markee would have a metal-free smile. But alas, Dr. Payne found 2 little teeth that didn't quite meet his level of perfection and recommended another month or so. Markee handled it like a trooper, smiling and saying it was okay. But I could tell she was pretty glum the rest of the day. We now have 3/3/11 marked on the calendar and are hoping that is the lucky combination. I know the finished product is going to be worth it!

New Year's Eve

One of our favorite and longest running traditions is that of New Year's with the Cooks. Back in 1996, when we moved back to Utah after a 9 month trial run in Connecticut which didn't work out, we lived with Tricia and Craig for a couple months until we found a house to rent. We had the greatest time living all together and decided to do an overnighter for the whole family on New Year's Eve, ringing in 1997. I believe we have been together every New Year since then. In fact, when we built this house it wasn't quite done on New Year's Eve of 1999 (we officially moved in in January) so we made sure we had flooring in and at least one toilet and rang in the new century in our new, almost finished, house. Since we have had this house we have alternated in which home the New Year's festivities would take place. Thanks to the calendar, the last few years' New Year's Eves have fallen around a weekend and we have had several days of game-playing. Along with the game playing is the eating of more food than a human should conceivably eat in a 24+ hour period, which does lead to some odiferous consequences. This is how we end up playing quite often . . .This year was no different. This year New Year's Eve was a Friday night so we played until late Saturday evening, went home to sleep, went to church and got back together again. Yes, we are die-hard gamers. It has been nice to see the kids getting involved as well, playing games together or playing with us at times. Maddie and Cameron are big-time gamers like their parents, but Peter and Markee aren't so much. Peter has some favorites that he will play, but Markee is content to just watch movies or read while listening to our banter. Erik likes to play, but Marin and Kate will usually have other things to do and don't often play with us. Nicolas does, well, Nicolas things. For the record, the favorite games of this New Year's Eve were Dominion, Qwirkle, Small World and Who?What?Where? and it was the first time we did NOT get Risk out. Sorry, Craig.

The games are always put on "pause" just before midnight while Craig gets out his arsenal and he and the kids set off fireworks long enough to wake up everyone in the neighborhood before we all trundle back inside, freezing, to get back to the games.

It was so cold this year that when the girls came in their glasses immediately fogged up and we caught this great photo!We can tell that age is starting to factor in as the last few years each of us has had to have a little power nap sometime between 4am and 7am before getting back to it. We can't just play straight for 24-30 hours any more, unfortunately. :-)

Thanks, once more, Cooks, for making the best New Year's Eve celebrations ever and thanks for being our best friends!

Ouch!

Is it an eggplant? Is it a funky genetically created purple watermelon? No, it's the gnarliest bruise I have ever had in my life. I was putting up the bulletin board in the Primary room for the new year and was standing on one of the folding chairs that was pushed up against a stack of folded chairs against the wall. Yes, I lost my balance and the chair tried to go over, but couldn't because it was tangled with the others, and so I was the one to go over and over. My feet, my hand and my leg were all the victims of my carelessness. I am now sitting on folding chairs, very tenderly for a time. The bruise was the size of a softball, felt like a fist, and has fashionable stripes (!?).