Up to my ears in projects.

This has been the L O N G E S T year.

I'm attributing it's length to the number of house projects I have worked on. I am not one of those people who loves to always have a little something to work on. Nope, that is NOT me.  I love having completed projects done... and well behind me. I'm holding out hope for next year.

The good news is:

IT'S FRIDAY.

My seminary class went well today, and I don't teach again until next Thursday. Not that I don't like teaching -- I love it (most days)! -- it just takes a whole lotta time to study and prepare a lesson, leaving me limited time to do the less-essential-yet-necessary things (laundry, anyone?), let alone make progress towards the completion of my many, many house projects.

Fall Break is coming soon.

The weather has finally turned cooler, and the leaves are turning brilliant shades of red, orange, and yellow. You can SMELL Fall. I love it.

It's Conference weekend!! 

I wish I could just lounge in my pjs all day Saturday and Sunday, soaking in the good news of the gospel, taking notes, reflecting and pondering, but I will be spending much of my day today (writing this blog post may be a brief diversion), and all day tomorrow, priming and painting our basement. I'll be tiling the bathroom throughout next week. And still painting, I'm sure.

Here's a couple of quick pics of how things look right now (minus the wall texture, which is now complete, but I'm using the pics I already have in the interest of saving time today). Note: up to this point, we have not done any of the work finishing the basement... but now, we're up. In an effort to save some dinero, we are priming, painting, and tiling.

 sofa wall

 small wet bar area (to the right)

 bathroom

 bedroom

built-in bookcase area 

toy room under the stairs

(another angle of the wet bar wall...this last pic is post-texture).

And that is not all, my friends. No, that is not all.

I started in on this little project this week:

 Mauri loved playing it disassembled... until I taped it up haha.

I don't know what I'm thinking these days to tackle a bunch of projects all at once. 

I'm impatient. I want them finished. Now.

I've wanted to do something about my "golden oak" piano for a long time. My initial thought was to trade it in for a beautiful satin black one, but once I started shopping around (and told that it would be an additional $4000), I decided that I would "use what I have, and do what I can." Besides, I told myself, this piano has sentimental value. All of my children have practiced the art of music on it. It's in great condition for a 20+ year old piano, even if "nobody wants oak anymore" -- a statement from a sales guys when discussing a trade-in. (I don't think Yamaha even makes oak pianos currently.) It's been a project I've kept on the back burner because... well, I hate projects. And in my old house, this baby was up in the loft, so not something most people noticed. (Not to mention I had oak EVERYWHERE in my old house... until about a year ago... which is one of the reasons -- and projects -- making this year one of the L O N G E S T ever). In my new old house, the only place for this sweetheart is in the small front room (previously an office, now a "parlor" haha), and is the first thing seen upon entering the door. 

The golden oak simply must go.

I will post finished pics... hopefully by next week.

I AM motivated by the fact that MY ENTIRE FAMILY IS COMING FOR THANKSGIVING.

Motivation like that... motivates me hahaha. I'm git'n it done.

Other quick news:

Mauri got asked to the Homecoming dance by her... {boyfriend}.

(these were screenshots from a video, so a little fuzzy)

 That is quite the excited hug, there, girl.

She performed at the Spaghetti Dinner Choir Fundraiser for her school, and did such a good job. 

 Bill and I attended and felt like strangers in a strange land. It's weird knowing so few people at school functions. We were pretty comfortable after 15 years in Parker, so we've I've had to stretch a bit. Why is stretching so hard? We chatted with the mom and dad sitting next to us, I spotted one of my seminary students and said hello, and we saw two families from our ward.

 And this week Mar went from a golden blonde ombre...

 ...to a dark brown (so she can "fit in" with her older sisters)

 (or was it to twin with her favorite guy? hahahaha)

This was "Dad Day" for hoco week. Mar told me Gavin twinned with her, she didn't twin with him. Hmmm... I think she's twitter-pated.

She was reppin' her dad from this day:

Aaaaaaaaand I have the cutest grandkids around. That's all.

Wish me luck as I project like a madwoman.
(And Happy 24th Birthday, Lex!)

Honorable Mention.

Just a quick post to share that there is a {high} possibility that our Call Family Reunion may be mentioned by ELDER BEDNAR in his Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults tomorrow.

Streaming live at 6pm tomorrow at lds.org.

Be sure to check it out!

Post post: So it wasn't the reunion (although Sister Bednar shared a picture from a reunion about 6 years ago... yep, I was in it. Did you see me?? hahaha), it was about the Call FAMILY. I loved the devotional, and am determined to not be a weak link!

FYI: I am grandchild #19

Split loyalties, park dates, and old yeast.

A couple Mondays ago we had the Facundus/Syddall and Weed families over for dinner and the park. Note: since our backyard is not currently in any condition for entertaining, we've deferred to the park more than once, as you will see later in this post :-) 

I love this park because it has a lot of fun things for young AND older kids.

We are super excited to FINALLY have cousins that live close by, so it was a bit of a Welcome-to-Colorado party for Robyn, Kade, and Cole.

Mace was heading to BYU the next day, so it was a bit of a Sayonara/Adios/Farewell party for her.

It was a perfect night and such a fun time!

Last Friday Bill and I attended the CROSS-TOWN SHOWDOWN.

CV and DC (the 2 high schools in our new town of Castle Rock) were having their big rivalry game, and since Mar was going, Bill and I thought we would go check it out, too.

We couldn't help but reminisce a bit, since this is the very stadium we supported Taylor (marching band) and Britt (cheerleading) at. It was so weird. Weird that we were back there and that so much time had passed (where did it go??). Weird that we were rooting for a team that wears black and red (it was a "black out" game for CV, which I am happy to oblige since black IS my favorite color haha). Weird that the opposing team belonged to the kids I teach in seminary. Weird that we only ran into one family we knew.  Weird that we were outsiders trying to learn how to be insiders.

The stadium was overflowing, and we were lucky to find a spot on the ground on the CV side (this is a strange stadium set-up that only has bleachers on one side... I've always thought it was dumb).

 I believe this stadium serves as the HOME stadium for both teams... so the Cat Country on the locker room building is removable, as this happened to be a home game for the Sabercats. I found it funny that the game was between cats and dogs (DC are Huskies) hahahaha.

Bill and I sat right on the edge of a lovely red ant pile.

 I don't think you can see them, but they were all over the place. Luckily we brought our {Titan} blanket to sit on (black side up, of course), and Bill took the side closest to the ant pile. I believe he only received one bite. I was on the side next to a group of high schoolers, which were calm and fairly quiet the first half of the game, then started getting rowdy (or is R-O-W-D-I-E?? haha) in the second half... encouraging me to encourage Bill to exit a bit early.

 I tried to snap a good pic of the Sabercat mascot...

...this was the best I could get.

The Huskie mascot stayed at the opposite end of the field and did not interact with the crowd. Weird.

The mascot outfits were awesome, but the people in them could use some serious training.

(As far as Bill and I could recollect, neither CHAP nor Legend even had a mascot...? My kids might correct me, though. **Note: I had a sudden burst of memory and methinks I recall CHAP had a Wolverine mascot... but I still can't remember ever seeing a Titan...)

And here were a couple of snaps that Mar sent out.

At least she fits in {wink}. The Sabercats won the game. Since the first CROSS-TOWN SHOWDOWN, DC has won 3 games (the first 3), and CV has won 3 games (the last 3). In the little local paper, they said maybe this game is worthy of a trophy. They must be a little slow around here.

Bill made a person.

 I can't remember what they're really called, so person works.

For Labor Day, we had our friends, the Cobbs, over for lunch and... you guessed it, a park date.

There's those 200 stairs again.

One of these days I'll go up those without stopping.

 Mauri's got skills climbing that rope.

 Bill climbed it twice (since I missed the picture the first time). Yesterday after work he was super concerned that his shoulders, arms, and upper body ached. He has a funny habit of assuming he has something terrible when he gets a few body aches. He wondered why he would be feeling so... sore. He had totally forgotten about the double rope climb he did on Monday hahahaha.

Don't worry, I reminded him. I think he was quite relieved {wink}.

On Wednesday this week, Bill and I were back at Legend for their Homecoming parade.

Bill's company is still one of their big sports sponsors, so it gives us a good reason to go back.

 I drove the car while Bill and one of his employees handed out candy and flyers.

It was a pretty hot day, and it's literally ALL UPHILL.

This was the view from my comfortable, air-conditioned spot behind the wheel.

After we finished the parade route (we were more at the beginning of the parade), and started heading out, we saw some emergency vehicles coming the opposite direction. I had wondered at the time if something had happened along the parade route. As a driver, I was so surprised at the amount of young children running between cars to grab candy, with nary a parent in sight to warn them of danger. I took my job as a driver very seriously as children were running RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME to grab mini footballs that were bouncing all over the street. 

Bill found out the next day that a high schooler riding on one of the trailers had his leg caught in the wheel-well, which pulled him off the trailer, running over his leg. When the driver realized something happened, he stopped, then backed up, stopping right on top of the kid's leg. Apparently it was a gruesome scene, but the kid will be okay (after a long recovery, I'm sure). I'm thinking they'll implement a few safety features in the parade from here on out.

Yesterday I spent a chunk of my day making cinnamon rolls for my seminary class.

This was the first time I have attempted any sort of bread since we've moved, and I learned a valuable lesson about old yeast and new ovens.

I made two double batches because I was worried about the yeast from the get-go. It didn't foam like it should have, but it was doing... something, so I went ahead and used it. Then I started a second double batch with a new old bag of yeast I had in my freezer (expired 2005 haha), and it was doing the same thing.

THEN I popped them in the oven, only to discover that the mini oven on top bakes much differently than a regular oven. AAAUUUUGGGGHH. You would think I could have made some of these deductions BEFORE spending my day on it.

So I still took some to seminary, but they were sad little hard, tough cinnamon rolls.

I'm determined to prove I can do better.

(I've tossed all my old yeast, btw).

Icing covers up the over-browned tops of these rolls, but now we have boatloads of rolls not good enough to share with others. I think I might freeze them for an object lesson in seminary on leavening in the future haha.

Here's what my favorite peeps have been up to:

Love them.

I've spent my day today doing this, that, and the other, when I should have been studying and pondering and preparing for my talk in sacrament meeting Sunday.

I hope I can pull it together tomorrow.

Wish me luck.