Are You Kidding?

We woke up this morning to two inches of snow on the ground. It wasn't even close to the city of Roy where they got over a foot, but still, IT'S OCTOBER! A week ago the swamp cooler was running, and today, the furnace went on. And wouldn't you know, by this weekend it will be back in the 70s. Ah, fall in Utah. I can never get enough of those 50 and 60 degree days. It's always one extreme or the other.

Two Parties + Two Days = Too Much! (October 11)

I woke up at the crack of, well 8 a.m. to start working on Griffin's birthday cake. He wanted a Wall-E party, so I baked his cake the day before, then set aside the time this morning to decorate it. I have a great picture of it, but Griffin misplaced my camera, so I can't show it to you. That also meant that I didn't have a camera to take pictures of his party, so we had to rely on cell phone cameras and our Flip video camera. (The only problem with that was that the batteries were dying about 30 seconds after I started filming.) Because John came up with the idea of playing Wallyball at the local rec center for the Wall-E party, we invited a few more kids than we usually would. So instead of 4 kids, we invited 8 and then with Griffin and Ellie, that made 10. Maggie invited her friend, Anna. 12. John and I made 14. Happily for us, three of the kids weren't able to attend. That took the number down to 11. We left for the rec center around 2:20, and then were in the court by 2:30. (A side note here: the picture at the start of this is Griffin walking around saying, "Caps for Sale! 50 cents a cap!" This is from a well-known child's story and I thought it was so clever!)

This is the most important thing to remember when you are planning a party for a boy with Aspergers that doesn't like loud noises. DON'T TAKE HIM TO PLAY WALLYBALL!!! The court was so loud and echoed every scream that nine-year-old girls make. One of the other boys in attendance seemed to have the same reaction, but in an opposite side of the room. We tried to stuff their ears with toilet paper to muffle the sound, but they spent the majority of the time sitting in corners. The other kids seeemed to have fun as we decided to play with beach balls so it would lessen any potential injuries. Warning: Watch the video at your own risk. It will really pull at your heart strings.

After wallyball, we returned home for cake and presents.

The other little boy found a friend in Snowflake and Wilbur and was happy playing with them in and around the house. Griffin received an assortment of Wall-E toys and pillows, some candy, a Pokemon game, and $10 from Grandma Hopkins.

Unable to collapse due to a house that required upkeep and some work that needed done for John's company, I sat down for a few minutes before recording a couple of pages of prompts for Smart. Maybe someday you'll call a pharmacy and hear my voice!

Needless to say, I realized by mid-afternoon that two parties in two days is too much. I decided to reward myself for all my hard work by playing Guitar Hero for an hour before falling asleep. I figure I earned it.

Welcome to Italy! (October 10)

Every year or so, our ward has family dinners where a few people volunteer to host and then they are assigned other families to invite and help bring food. This year, we hosted and were given the names of five other families. After contacting them all, only one of them was going to be able to attend. I invited my friend, Carma, since she wasn't able to attend hers the night before because we were running the book fair. We decided to do an Italian dinner since it's a great excuse to have a fantastic meal with tons of calories and share it with friends. My day was scheduled in 15-minute increments with part of the morning being spent cleaning up the book fair, two hours at work, one hour to hit six different stores, an hour to count up all the money and finalize the book fair paperwork, two hours in the classrooms (one in each for Ellie and Griffin), and then back home to cook and clean. We enjoyed caprese, pasta bolognese, Italian sodas, a green salad, bread, and panna cotte. The Gray's brought their daughter, Naomi, and she was intrigued by the Ventian masks.

We asked questions from "Would You Rather?", Carma helped me clean up a bit and I collasped, exhausted, into bed by 10:00. I was so happy for Carma's help since the next day was to be spent prepping for Griffin's birthday party.

The Dreaded Semi-Annual Parent-Teacher Conference (October 8-9)

This week in October is always nuts with the book fair and parent-teacher conferences. On Wednesday, my schedule was bordering on insane (only to be outdone by Friday's schedule). I helped at the book fair in the morning and again a little later in the afternoon, ran home with the little ones around 3:45, took Griffin to scouts at 4 where they were going on a field trip to the fire station, stopped at home to make sure dinner was almost ready, left for the book fair at 5, waited for Ellie and John to come for hers at 5:40, then Griffin's at 6. John would take Griffin to swim lessons at 6:30, and Ian and Mags had mutual at 7.

Ellie's conference was great. It didn't start with, "Well, she's a great girl, but she talks all the time." It was, "She's trying so hard to not talk so much and I'm so proud of her." She's proud of her accomplishments and excited for the year ahead. She does have one of the absolute best teachers in the whole school who was also one of my assistant camp directors for the stake. If I had to fifth grade over again, she's the teacher I'd want to have.

Since Griffin's teacher was running behind, I took the time to speak with her off and on through the night. We've had problems with Griffin running away or hiding during school and it's reached a point where it's almost a daily occurrence. I came up with a plan where, each time he comes in from the afternoon recess (my two best friends are the recess monitors during lunch, so it's never a problem), he earns a punch on a punch card I designed and after he fills it (5 punches), he gets to play a board/video game with me. So far, so good, but I'm hoping it deters the behavior. Otherwise, he's hanging in there. I knew third grade was a huge jump from second. It involves a lot of writing, multiplcation and division. We'll just do the best we can!

Now it's just seeing if I can hold up through the rest of the week.

Griffin Turns 9! (October 7)

Griffin is 9 years old! We gave him a couple of his presents in the morning (a Star Wars Jedi game for his Leapster) and told him he'd get a couple more that evening. After choosing his birthday dinner (McDonalds, of course), he got to have his other present, a new light saber. Ian got one as well so they could do battle. His birthday party wasn't until Saturday, so it was a pretty low-key day.

We love you, Griffin, and are so lucky to have you are part of our family!

The Blockbuster Dance is Back! (October 6)

In 2006, Griffin and I went to our local Blockbuster maybe twice a month to rent movies. Each time, he would jump up on this cement block and do what we affectionately called "The Blockbuster Dance." It was short and sweet, but always ended with a deep bow and a "thank you, thank you." It was one of my favorite parts of the month.


With our schedules getting busier and Griffin spending all day in school, our trips to Blockbuster have been fewer and farther between. It's even more rare for him to be with me when I go. Last Monday, we asked if we could go again so he could get a couple movies (Speed Racer, Alvin and the Chipmunks) to watch. I reluctantly agreed, but we took off for Blockbuster. I was happy to see as we were leaving that he ran over to the cement block again to reprise his Blockbuster ance. This time, we got it on video. Enjoy!

What? Where is it? (September 30)

On the 30th, we went to find our next cache by Best Buy, about 1/4 mile away. Even though it was the end of September, it was still in the 90s! The best thing about my club, as I may have already mentioned, is that I have two boys who have already found most of the caches around the school. When we struggle to find something, they've typically already found it and can steer us in the right direction. The weekend before, Ellie and Griffin and I went to the coordinates, looked all around and found nothing. Thinking I was just not seeing it amongst the bushes or something, I figured my "wonder boys" would be able to show me where it was. Ellie talked to one of them during school and gave him the heads up that we couldn't find it. He assured her that he knew where it was and that he'd be able to find it during the club. So off we all went. We arrived at the spot, looked all around, and after pulling him aside to ask where it was, he pointed out that he couldn't find it either, that it wasn't there. So we had the opportunity to look everywhere, clean up trash, and talk about what to do if we couldn't find it! They pulled out their log books and marked "Didn't find." That was one disappointed bunch of kids.