we're here...

all of us are accounted for:
1 husband back in school after a nice little trip to cali-although the girls were a little crazy being cooped up in the car for hours on end, at least he wasn't dealing with angry patients and COLD weather! :)
1 crazy wife trying to finish Halloween costumes and family picture outfits and wondering why she feels the need to MAKE everything...CURSE THE SEWING ABILITY...whatever happened to a good old PURCHASED costume??????
1 DANG CUTE Strawberry Shortcake daughter1 psycho daughter waking up every night at 9pm to talk for a couple hours (or scream, but usually talking-she's getting pretty chatty) before calming down, then not waking up until 10am the next morning, therefore continuing the cycle...and not cooperating with the CUTE CUTE Blueberry Muffin costume mommy spent hours slaving over...WHY WON'T THIS ONE BEND TO MY WILL???? just kidding :) I'm really trying to work on "embracing" her defiance b/c I know it'll be a blessing down the road when people are trying to pressure her into doing things she shouldn't be :)



STAY BACK CRAZY LADY! She actually looks AFRAID of me!
Trying the little piggy-tailed blue wig. Nope...not working either!

Why is it so hard to adjust back to life when you go from west to east? Is it because you lose 3 hours? All I know is that I rely on my girls for my 7:30am alarm clock, and if they aren't awake, I'm not either! And that doesn't bode well for trying to get to a 9am gym class! Seriously, I'm all for sleeping in, usually, but I need to get back into some habits and these girls just aren't getting back into the groove! What works for everyone else?

But, we did have a successful trip to California. Of course, we'll still pray about everything to figure out where we need to be. There is one thing I think we had forgotten-the West is one big DESERT. We're so used to everything being so green and lush out here that we assumed that it would be like that out there. We KNOW it's a desert. I don't know why we expected anything different. It's reassuring to know that it's a little brown (okay, a LOT brown) out there b/c the hot summer just ended and come spring it'll be beautiful and green again. But we have this "dream" in our minds of what we want our ideal home to be and we were having a hard time finding it in California. Then as we were driving around today I was looking at all the houses and told Dave that I think our dream home exists in Ohio. Shucks...it's just too far away from family. Guess we'll have to re-think our dream home. We did find some things pretty close, though, so I'm sure we'll be all right :) Dream home is pretty far off anyway. But it's always good to dream, right?

This afternoon was the Leadership meetings for our Stake Conference. The Stake Primary President was speaking to us and began her talk telling us that while she was preparing, she received inspiration about what she should speak about. She said she was a little confused b/c the inspiration had nothing to do with Primary, but decided to follow through anyway. Then she proceeded to talk to us about the need for US to have family scripture study. I KNOW I'm not the only one to ever experience the feeling that someone is speaking directly to you! She told us some personal experiences and read us some quotes from President Benson's talk about the different blessings scripture study will bring to our lives. So I'll be honest and admit that family scripture study isn't quite working at the Latham household. I've given up trying to read books to Bree b/c she either gets mad and throws them at me or takes them away and won't let me look at it so I can read it to her. And then half the time we ARE all together is spent trying to get Bree fed and into bed b/c she has had it for the day. I REALLY want to make this work! I really felt motivated and inspired by the message today.

So here's my request for help--How does your family work in family scripture time? How much time do you spend on it (especially with younger kids)? Have you noticed systems that work? Any thoughts or advice are welcome!

And then tonight was Tia's annual Halloween party. We forgot our camera-like we do every year. The only reason I can think of is I'm usually getting back from our leadership meetings (it's always the same weekend as Stake Conference) just in time to throw on a costume, get the girls in bed, then get out the door. So hopefully the others will be so kind as to share pictures. Dave and I FINALLY won an award this year-Most Original. I was a Whoopee cushion and he was...a bum. He just wore scrubs and a long sleeve shirt, then some shorts that had a fake bum showing out of it. We're usually not very creative, so I was quite impressed that we came up with that. We were also thinking of a fireman and damsel in distress (burn marks on some jammies, soot on the face, etc), but I just don't know if I could have handled how hot Dave might have looked in a fireman costume :) It was a lot of fun. We tried a new game this year. Everyone drew a number then put it back in the bag. Then Brian drew out 2 numbers and those people had to go sit next to each other and come up with pick-up lines for the other while staying in character. Let me tell you, that was HILARIOUS! The best was when the 2 numbers drawn were 2 guys. And man, was it weird to notice how easily pick-up lines come to a guy, but not to the girls. We were STRUGGLING. But those guys kept coming up with things that had us rolling. Good times all around-I'm sad this is the last year for that party!