Friends Helping Friends

September 19 was International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Often we'll do pirate themed food but we didn't this year. Instead my friend, Stephanie, and I got together to make a meal. I supplied ingredients for making an Instant Pot dish, my go to honey garlic chicken from sixsistersstuff.com because she wasn't as familiar with using the Instant Pot as I am so I wanted to teach her. She supplied ingredients for making cauliflower rice. 

So we each learned a new recipe, had great bonding time together, and each went away with a meal for our families.

 

I did celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day by putting on some Monkey Island music.

 

September 19 was also Slimey the Worm's Birthday. This is how Jr. celebrated when I reminded him who Slimey the Worm was. 

Jr.: Oh, I love trash. I love you, Mom.

Then he realized what he said and corrected himself.

Jr.: AND I love you, Mom. AND I love you.

 

September 20 was Pepperoni Pizza Day, String Cheese Day, and Fried Rice Day. We didn't have string cheese but had shredded mozzarella cheese (string cheese is usually made of mozzarella cheese) which we put in the pizza crust. For the fried rice, I threw together whatever stuff in it. We had lots of frozen corn that needed to be used, etc. #shelftember

Do you remember... the 21st night of September? I went around singing that song that day.

Hungarian Pirates or Pirate Cube?

May 19 was the anniversary of the Rubik's Cube, which we all know was invented by a Hungarian.
What better way to celebrate than to eat Hungarian food, twist Rubik's Cubes, and watch... The Pirates of Penzance?
The kids once again got creative with rationalizing movie watching. Jeremy made us rokott krumpli and the kids wanted to watch that movie so here's what we eventually came up with.
Originally it was that Hungary is a European country and so is England where Penzance is located. Meh. Too much of a stretch for me. However, May 19 was May Ray Day and the pirates wanted to may-ray the major general's daughters. The pirates could also be described as devils and there may be food and cake served at the wedding. May 19 was also Devil's Food Cake Day.

We saved devil's food cake for a later date, though, to celebrate my birthday along with homemade alfredo pizza. Mmmm. Craveworthy.

Like with Jeremy's birthday, Lucky made me a present of a LEGO character. This time it was Guybrush Threepwood doing his Guybrush Threepwood dance. What a sweetie.

Balloon Heads

Jeremy made those balloon heads for dancing but we had more fun with them than just dancing. The kids are involved with various video conferences so they were able to share their balloon heads with others.
Nichole wore her unicorn head for the beginning of her seminary class.

For Deacons, Jr. was supposed to bring something weird from around his home for a game. He chose to share his tofu head. Tofu head, you ask? From The Curse of Monkey Island, I reply. Guybrush Threepwood disguises himself by wearing a mask made out of tofu. That way he is able to walk amongst the vegetarian cannibals undetected. I love Monkey Island.

Jr. even treated us to the Guybrush Threepwood dance.

Lucky wore his penguin head when he met with his teacher to be tested for the things he learned in kindergarten. I could hear the teacher's laughter on the phone from across the house.

Jr. Jr. was going to wear his bear head for a meeting with his teacher and classmates but we had trouble with communication and he ended up missing most of the meeting and when he finally got on, we weren't thinking about balloon heads.

 
And Jeremy and I are just cute.

And so is Jet even without a balloon head.

Catching Up on the Last Five Months- 6

Let's talk about October.

Toward the beginning of October was General Conference.  The kids played Conference Bingo and we had our traditional nachos.  We also took some time between sessions to play a game as a family and eat jelly beans.

During the Women's session of Conference, we watched at home and Nichole decided to pick up some cardboard and make it into a music box with gears that make it turn.  I tell you, "If you give Nichole a medium."  Right?

Another one- Nichole's been into making cheeseball lately so she decided to make one in the shape of a sugar skull, then on the back wrote, "I am Murray, the demonic cheeseball."  It was based off of Murray, the demonic talking skull in the Monkey Island games.

And because she loves dragons, at a Young Women's activity, she painted a pumpkin based on a book series she likes, "Dragon Slippers."  The boys also got pumpkins from school but I never got a picture of those.

Our talented daughter also had an orchestra concert that our whole family went to.  She is now in advanced orchestra.

I joined in with other birders who were doing a Big Sit in October.  Basically it's how many species of birds can you see in a 24-hour period from a 17-foot diameter circle?  Birders were coming and going throughout the day.  I was there for a few hours.  Jeremy came and stayed for a bit when he came to pick me up.  Good socializing time with other birders and getting to see birds.

Our ward held a Fall Fest and Chili Cookoff.  They had a few different forms of entertainment.  One was Jeremy doing a juggling/magic show then twisting balloon animals later.  This is a new ward so they're still learning about us.

Several of us want to do some writing, so we had our own family writing workshop.  I made themed treats.
Gummi bears because Jr. has a gummi bear pencil topper, pencils made from pretzel sticks dipped in chocolate or butterscotch or whatever for erasers, book worm brownies.  I should have waited longer for the brownies to cool before putting the gummi worms in.  And a breakfast casserole, because I was hungry.

During Fall Break, we brought a friend along and went to Goblin Valley.

click on the pictures to see them bigger (especially the second picture, you really want to get a bigger look at the second picture) 

We celebrated Jr. Jr.'s birthday in October.

Jeremy took Nichole and Jr. to a book signing for Brandon Mull's latest book.

We again spent time at the Orem Library and met the libary's newest resident, a tarantula.

Some nice neighbor kids came over with rakes and raked leaves on the front lawn.  The boys enjoyed jumping into the pile of leaves.

We also spent some late nights working on costumes for Halloween (especially October 30).

Here's what we ended up with.
Nichole was Kendra in her Knights of the Dawn outfit from Fablehaven (book series by Brandon Mull).

Jr. was the Skull Kid from the Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Jr. Jr. was bubble wrap curser.  If you came up to him he decided whether to let you pop some bubble wrap or curse you to become bubble wrap.

Lucky was a ghost.

The kids had fun trick-or-treating in our neighborhood and we also joined in at a neighbor's bonfire to hang out and hand out candy there.

That's how our October went.  I'm sure we celebrated some holidays from our Calendar of Celebration, but it doesn't look like I took pictures specifically of those so... oh, well.  I don't always remember from that far back without pictures?

I'll talk about November later.