TheHenrichsens.com

Favorite quote from tonight:
Caleb was just getting into the Trick-or-Treating thing. We were walking down the sidewalk to the next house and Caleb was riding happily along on my hip. Out of nowhere he then said, “Thank you so much Trick-or-Treat.”

I’d love to show you mine but I turned it into a pumpkin pie and we ate it. Yum!

Denver and Noah designed and carved their pumpkins all on their own, with only a little assistance from yours truly. And Mark would have made his much more frightening except he was busy packing for a business trip and watching all of the babies while I assisted the big boys with their carving. And Hunter’s–well his pumpkin was rotting from the inside out and was terribly hard to carve and we’re lucky we got what we did out of it. But Hunter was a total trooper through all of the carving disasters and didn’t shed a single tear. And two days later I’m proud to say we’ve finally recovered from the mess. Now. . . let’s go Trick-or-Treating and get us some loot!

Way back before I got married or had children there were two things I vowed I’d never do–marry a man that travels on business and have more children than I could pay enough attention to. Clearly, I’ve done both. Now what?

Since I got back from Colorado I’ve really been trying to get back into the groove of things except I’m not doing a very good job. The house is a mess and the kids are dirty and everything seems scattered and dissheveled. I think it might have something to do with one or all of the following:

Too much Halloween Hullabaloo–we only had three parties this past weekend, one costume to sew, several to mend and a potluck to organize. Not to mention I was in charge of scouts this past week and decided to help the boys pass off one of their religious square knots for Faith in God, and that meant one day spent organizing for Wednesday afternoon and a good part of Saturday making a ton of cupcakes for the cakewalk which the Wolves were in charge of running at the potluck. Both went really well–the Potluck and the Cakewalk. We had eighteen pots of chili and over a hundred people in attendance. We didn’t have enough tables to seat everyone that came which is really great. . . for us that is, not for the poor members who were left standing while they ate. The poor missionaries were the judges and had to taste all eighteen chilies and pick the hottest, the most original, the one with the best appearance, the most flavorful and the best overall. They did a great job, those Elders. We also had a People’s Choice category and everyone had a chance to vote for their favorite. My chili (which was really Chris’s white chili) was good and I actually got a couple of votes but didn’t win. There were so many really good chilies, I’m thinking now we need a Ward Chili Recipe book. I made some Jello-beans with blueberries in them for our sidedish that totally looked like eyeballs but tasted really good–if you’re looking for a scary halloween snack minus a lot of work you should try it. Of course for that you need a jello bean mold and it’s probably too late to get one by Halloween. I used some of the eyeballs on the cupcakes to make monsters but it was really humid that day and they kept sliding off. Next time I’ll use cool whip to frost the cupcakes and I think that might work better. I also made ghost cupcakes with nutter butters frosted with white frosting but that was a lot of work. Next time I’ll dip them in white chocolate and use mini chocolate chips for the eyes and mouth–much easier I think. But they still turned out cute. I didn’t manage to snap any pictures since I was running around like a lunatic trying to keep the party running smoothly, but Sam Cousins snapped a bunch (like the ones below which I totally stole off her website) so you can visit her blog and check them out.

You already know about my leaf addiction which is definitely making it hard to focus on more important things like is there any clean underwear in the house and what are we eating for dinner? I mean, hello! I’ve got dead leaves to preserve here. And let’s not even start with the leaves we’re not preserving that are overtaking the entire back and front yards.

Then of course I only have like half a million sick kids here and just trying to remember who’s who and what drug’s belong to which who is kind of frying my brain. I took the twins in for their Well Child visits and Doctor informed me that both babies are wheezing and both have ear infections and I need to give them two puffs of this inhaler once a day and two puffs of that inhaler three times a day and a teaspoon of this medicine twice a day and this creme applied three times a day. And Caleb and Denver need this cough medicine once a day. And Denver has four cavities that need filling and I have one and the twins have to go back to Doctor in two weeks for their immunizations that they couldn’t get today and could we please all be healthy just for one second. . . please!

And then there’s Mark leaving for Mexico again and that makes three weeks in the past five that he’s been gone only guess what? I don’t have a family member coming to stay with me everytime he leaves. And while we manage just fine when he leaves it’s still not fun, especially trying to get six kids costumed and trick-or-treating all by yourself–that should be all sorts of fun. Luckily Chris has invited us over for Halloween but still. . . .

Parent/Teacher conferences X 3, Halloween parties and parades, visiting teaching (only three more days left in the month), the twins turning one, mystery reader for Hunter’s class, pumpkins to carve and on and on. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever get back into the groove of things but I have a feeling with the holidays just around the bend I’d better quit blogging and do something productive like tape garbage bags on the kitchen table and carve some pumpkins and cook us some dinner and fold some laundry and wash the dishes. . . .

We went for a walk this afternoon and I immediately found myself casting my gaze downwards, looking for the most perfect autumn leaves. And I thought I could make it the entire way without even looking. But I couldn’t. And it wasn’t long before all of the kids and even Mark had joined in and what should have been a twenty minute walk turned into a two hour mission to find that one special leaf. And when it was all said and done I think we ended up with over a hundred leaves and now we’ve got to press them all and turn them into a leaf book because none of us can bear to part with our collections of autumn splendor. And that’s about when I realized that this leaf thing is way more than just an appreciation for Connecticut’s foliage. It’s an addiction.

Okay. . . so I’m home and trying to settle back into the daily grind only I’m finding it a little hard. I guess for the past, oh, eight and three-quarter years I’ve had nothing to compare it to–the daily grind that is. It’s just what I’ve done nonstop ever since Hunter was born. Everywhere I’ve gone and done, I’ve had a kid with me, except for the occassional girl’s night out which isn’t usually long enough for me to relax and really enjoy my freedom. So this four day excursion to Colorado without a single kid has really done me in. For four days I felt like a human being again. My clothes stayed clean and my hair stayed nice and I had enough time to actually apply makeup and lotion and perfume and dress actually nice and not frumpy or practical. And I had adult conversation all day long and even into the night. And I didn’t have to lift a finger–no cooking, no laundry, no dishes. I didn’t even have it constantly nagging me to do it either–it was completely out of sight and out of mind. But now that I’m home I’ve got lots of work nagging me and my cute outfit is covered once again in dirt and boogers and poop and slobber and my hair has gone flat and I haven’t had time to apply even lip gloss, let alone brush my teeth. And the kids are noisy and I haven’t talked to a single adult except to express my frustrations to Mark (poor Mark) and instead of feeling like a human being, I’m feeling like a robot or a machine. And I know I’ll forget again, how nice it is to feel like a real person and I’ll get back into the grind of things and I’ll be good at it again, but for now can I just say. . . ugh! Reality totally bites.

1. Sopaipillas
2. Going through the haunted house with Kathy and Melanie at Casa Bonita
3. Watching Failure to Launch and Hairspray
4. Raspberry White Hot Chocolate from Starbucks
5. My new coat and my new crocs
6. Laughing through Time Out for Women with Kathy and listening to Mary Ellen Edmunds speak
7. Sleeping through the night without any interruptions
8. Shopping and finding Melanie a good pair of jeans
9. The scenery and the first snow of the season and the open sky
10. Being with my Mom and sisters

I could list a million other things but I hate to bore you. But I sure had a wonderful mini vacation and really enjoyed being with the girls for a little while. I only wish it could have lasted longer. But I’m needed back home, or so I like to think, and have a busy week ahead of me. So off I go back to real life but Mark tells me I have another mini vacation due to me sometime before March and I think I’ll start counting down the days now. Whatdya girls say? How about a party in Utah this time, sometime before the end of March?

To be on vacation with no kids and no husband and to be awake at 5:45 am. I should totally be sleeping in, catching up on the past eight years of little or no sleep. But no, I’m wide awake with nothing to do because everybody else is sleeping in, like normal people do when they go on vacation. And the other strange thing is that I spent a good part of the night sleeping sitting on the couch because I have stupid Bronchitis and I can’t stop coughing and my normal sister is trying to sleep. I have this beautiful hotel bed with all the space I could possibly need and six super fluffy pillows just begging to support my sleepy head and I’m sleeping on the couch. Maybe I should check out the fitness room. How weird would that be? Exercising on vacation! Now who does that?

Since we got the sun back after a week of rain and Daddy back after a week in Texas. And because this weekend I’m in Colorado with my Mom and sisters and next weekend is booked solid with Halloween celebrating, we decided to go pumpkin picking last weekend. Of course I forgot the camera but luckily we had the cell phone and managed to capture a few hay-covered, pumpkin-patchy pictures of the kids having fun.