It's a .....

I haven't posted in a while. My excuse is an internet connection that isn't totally reliable, but it does work, so my other excuses include, being engrossed with the 3rd book of the Inheritance series, Brisingr. This one got a little long and a little gory. I made it through because I thought it was a triology and I would be finishing the whole thing. What a rude trick, the last page says to look for the concluding story in the 4th book. Oh well. I like reading easy novels every once in a while to lighten me up a little. Now, I'm starting on "The Year of Living Biblically" by A.J. Jacobs. So far it's pretty interesting. The author is an editor for "Esquire" magazine and lives in New York. He attempts to live the Bible as literally as possible for an entire year. It's interesting to see him trying to interpret what the bible says. I think I'd have some real difficulty. Robert and I have been reading the Old Testament together. I told him the other morning that I think the Old Testament was totally fabricated because I just can't believe some of these stories in it. We just read a story about some guy who has a concubine. He stays with her family for a few days, then they decide to go home. It's pretty late, but they find lodging in a city held by the tribe of Benjamin. Well, the men of the city come to the house and want the guy for their own pleasure. Well, the man of the house tells them not to take him, but gives them his concubine instead. They rape and ravage her and send her back nearly dead. The guy wakes up the next morning, finds her dead on the porch, so he cuts her body up into 12 pieces and sends a piece of her to each of the 12 tribes at which point they go and annhialate the tribe of Benjamin. Well, 300 men escape and suddenly the other tribes realize, "we can't totally kill off an entire tribe," so they go to a nearby country, kill everyone except the virgins, and bring them back to the 300 men and give them to wife so the tribe can be propagated. True story, found in the final chapters of Judges. Now, somebody explain that one to me.

Well, enough on the bible. I'm kind of rambling. The other thing I've been working on is a desk for Ashlee. We bought a roll desk from my sister and brother-in-law which I have been refinishing. I thought woodworking might be sort of fun. Well, I decided today, it's not... I am not having fun sanding this incredibly stiff stain off this incredibly old desk. I guess it may be worth it when it's all done. I'll post some pictures when it's done. At least Ashlee will have a place for all her little things that are currently taking up residence on her floor and in her closet.

The other little bit of news I have is that I got to see our baby on Tuesday. It was a little shy at first. We had to shake and poke it quite a bit to get it to let us see anything. Well, the good news is, it's healthy and growing as it should. I had her take a real close look at the umbilical cord and no problems thus far. All the fingers and toes appear to be there and no extra limbs, so that's good. Well, to make a long story longer, it's a boy! Yep! I get to raise 4 boys and 1 girl. You can imagine that the girl was a little disappointed. When I told her, she went in her room and sobbed. I tried to comfort her. I told her that since she's the only girl, she gets to inherit all my girly things when I die. That kind of perked her up a little. I also told her that we can spend some quality time together since we're the only girls doing girly things. Well, she's sort of over it now I think, and we're all excited to welcome this new little one into our home. Somehow, I know this is our last one, so I'm really savoring all of it and having a wonderful pregnancy.

I love you and hope I didn't bore you to tears with this post.

Busy October

I thought I'd share some photos from this month. The kids had a great time trick-or-treating with their cousins. A couple of my brothers and my sister came out with us. We had a ghostly dinner that was great fun to prepare thanks to Family Fun Magazine.

We also had a fun time at Cornbelly's in Lehi. It's a huge maze of maize. This year's maze was carved in the shape of David Archuleto, Utah's Idol. (Kind of funny, I know.) Anyway, that was great fun. We lost Kyle in the maze for quite a while and I was a little worried about him. Funny story though. I was writing on everyone's water bottle with a sharpie as we were getting out of the car and I thought, maybe I'll just put my cell phone number on Ammon's hand if he gets lost, someone can call me. Then I thought, I'll put it on Kyle's hand too. Sure enough, after a while, he found a nice family who asked if he was lost. He showed them his hand and asked them to call. It didn't take too long to find him after that. I was grateful for that bit of inspiration. It's a pretty big maze and I wasn't looking forward to organizing a search party.

Things are plugging along pretty well. We enjoyed the warmest Halloween night in Utah in a decade or more. I guess we brought California weather with us.

We love you all.