The Woman in Black

Several months ago, Izzy and I went to a play at the Covey Center, Daddy Long Legs, with Ashley and Lizzie Jensen. It was a romance and I'm not sure how much Izzy liked it. Ashley invited us and I had a nice time.

This month, the Covey is doing The Woman in Black, a gothic mystery that sounded like just the thing Izzy would enjoy. She loves creepy, scary stories, and I figured we could give it another go with Ashley and Lizzie. I invited them, we agreed it would be fun for Halloween, and I got tickets for this evening.

In the end, Izzy decided not to come. Kent, however, was happy to take the spare ticket and together we collected Ashley and Lizzie. The play was performed in the Covey's Black Box Theater which is small and intimate, only three rows of audience members in the round. It feels like you are on the stage. For The Woman in Black, it made it all the more creepy because the action was RIGHT next to you. This mysterious, frightening figure of a tall, gaunt, ghostly woman all in black can materialize out of the dark right next to you and it's freaky! We all loved it! Just right for October!

Saturday Evening

We had a nice Saturday afternoon after spending the morning and early afternoon cleaning the house. Brick had a soccer game which I went to watch and to help wrangle children. Guy has gone to Moab, so Mikayla is being a single parent but needed to be able to focus on coaching the soccer game and not on her children. Mom came to watch and wrangle too. Brick's team won, five to three.

I suggested everyone come to my house after the game for dinner and game playing, and at 9:00 we would burn the last of the Christmas trees that have been drying up by the side of the garage. It was time.  That all sounded good, so I sent Brandt for pizza while I walked home with the children. Mom came for pizza and games, but she left to go to Ava, Crew, and Griffin's promenade. The girls did coloring and cutting on the family room floor, Kal made me the most delightful paper hippo dragon with large mouth and teeth and wings. Mikayla, Mom, and I played a card game before she left, and then I played a couple of games with Freya and Thea. Freya always likes to play Snug as a Bug in a Rug and Count Your Chickens. 

Part of the craft wound up glued to the back doors.

As 9:00 approached, Kent came in and said we couldn't burn trees because there were too many cars in the cul-de-sac. There were many cars, and I surmised they were there for the Oylers. I went over and sure enough, Sam had the whole ultimate frisbee team at his house following a tournament. When told that a tree burning would happen if they would move their cars, and that they could all watch, cars were quickly relocated and the tree burning was back on.

Brandt, ever the entertainer, brought out a speaker, his mixing board, and computer, and began playing music, loudly, as Kent set up the trees. The frisbee team gathered, several neighbors came out, and Mikayla's children were excitedly dancing around. We had three full, pretty tall, incredibly dry trees to burn. Kent secured one in an umbrella stand, then rested the other two against that one. He brought out the fire extinguisher because he was worried they would fall over or the heat would be so tremendous something else would catch fire that we really did not want to burn.

Brandt is out of focus because he couldn't stop moving to the music.

With music blaring, Izzy and Kent lit the trees. They went up spectacularly! The flames were high and hot, and with three, it was quite a show. We heard the following from Mikayla's children and the frisbee team.

Cora: "Let's do another one!"

Kal: "I just to light things on fire!"

Brick: "I want to see something explode."

Kal, said in a monster voice: "I want them to burn!"

Frisbee player 1: "We never do this kind of thing in my neighborhood. I want to move here."

Frisbee player 2: "That's the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life."

It was a terrific final tree burning and a fun Saturday evening all around.

Click here to see video of the tree burning.

Halloween

Now that I work and the kids are older, Halloween has lost some of the fun. I don't decorate the house like I used to, even though Blythe would like me to. It's too much work and takes too much time. The kids don't dress up or trick-or-treat, so I'm largely involved with Mikayla's children if I do anything. 

This year, in an effort to get with the holiday, I went to worked as milk and cookies. Mikayla and Guy went as milk and cookies to a Halloween party thrown by friends, and Mikayla generously let me use the cardboard milk and cloth cookies she had. I pinned the cookies to my back and had the milk hanging in the front. It was something of an inconvenient bother and by early afternoon, I had taken both off and left everything by my desk. No one else had dressed up at work. Party poopers.

Our neighborhood is big into Halloween and for the hot dog party hosted by Nelson and Hilary Davis, we normally make homemade root beer. It's hard to do that when I work, so I bought all the ingredients and asked Mikayla if she would make it. She did, so all I had to do was deliver. When I made it over to the Davis', I found the root beer to be as delicious as homemade root beer always is.

Kent cooked hotdogs with Mike Phillips all night. He visited with all the neighbors who passed by, and I warmly greeted all the neighbors with children who knocked on the door while trick-or-treating. It wasn't too cold so the whole evening was much more nice than spooky. 

 The only picture I took all day.

Children's Entrepreneur Market

This morning was the Children's Entrepreneur Market in our neighborhood. From my perspective, it was a fantastic success. Mikayla and her people had a sucker booth, others sold cookies, Brazilian lemonade, shaved ice, jewelry, barbecue spices, sodas, jam, salsa, and all sorts of other stuff. I got $100 in one dollar bills and spent all of it as well as using Venmo more than once. I walked around with Freya and Thea and did shopping at every stand. Kal and Cora would often appear to ask me to get them something, and Brandt and Blythe came along to buy and help in the booth respectively. There were lots of people, many of whom I did not know, which seemed to indicate that the word got out. Sales were brisk. It was so fun and I hope they do it again next year.

Mikayla was extra, as always, and made a darling balloon arch to go at their booth.

The Johnsens sold most of their inventory and made $120 bucks!

Neighborhood Culdesac Party

This afternoon/evening we gathered with many of our neighbors for the Drake Family hosted Culdesac Party. This year was the 9th year it has been held. It should have been the 10th year, but sadly, with Covid preventing gatherings last year, it was the 9th year. It is always a pleasure and delight to be with our good neighbors, to catch up, to laugh, to eat, to watch the children run around wildly. In addition to wiggle car races, water balloon toss, dunk tank, and rope pull, this year there was a karaoke machine (VERY popular with the kids) and a group dance. I didn't see the kids all evening because they were off doing their own thing with their own people, so no pictures of them. It was fun, fun, fun!

Night Games

 

Brandt playing night games in the culdesac.

He's with Luke Stovall and Same Oyler.

So fun to run around the neighborhood with friends!

Release The Hounds

Tim LaComb, our down-the-street neighbor, has been off-and-on in a band, The Party Hounds, since high school. He’s the lead singer. He’s going through a self-described mid-life crisis, and has brought the band back for a weekend of concerts. They are a cover band, playing stuff from the 70s on, and when he posted on Facebook that they would be performing at Velour, I asked Kent if he wanted to go, you know, for a date. He said yes. Doesn’t that sound young and hip? A date to a live band concert. So we went tonight (after a lovely dinner with Tess and Jace Brinkerhoff at our house when I should have taken a picture and didn’t). Quite a few fellow ward members were also in attendance. Velour is very small and has very limited seating, but we found a spot on a bench against the wall and visited with Matt and Kim Eastman before the music started and in between sets.

At the end of the first set, Kent turned to me and said, “I recognized three songs.” I had recognized one or two more. We recognized more songs in the second set and sang and “danced” along. The Party Hounds rock it! We had a good time, a fun date, and were delighted to be able to support Tim.

Independence Day Celebrating

July 4^th was on Sunday this year, which means the whole weekend was celebratory which, in some ways, makes it less exhausting, but in other ways, more exhausting. We did swimming on Friday and Saturday because I didn’t work and it was hot, hot. The Stadium of Fire was on Saturday night, so we had dinner, avoided going out during high traffic time, then headed over to Sertoma Park as it got close to 10:00pm. We thought fireworks would start at 10:00pm, but it was more like 10:30.  They shot off some, then had a big break which many of us thought was the end, so we started home. They did some more, but by that time, we were done and so missed the grand finale (if it even was grand). Blythe got into the spirit of the evening, dressing up, making-up, and then playing in the park with Lily Lusvardi and her brothers and cousins. She probably had the most fun of all of us.

 

As we were all in the pool, my phone rang. I didn't worry about it, but Freya did. She got out of the pool and picked my phone up off a side table, then turned towards the pool and wanted to hand it to me. AHHHHHH!!!! I freaked out, not wanting her to drop it in the water and ruin it. I "raced" as quickly as I could through the water, saying, "STOP! NO! NO!! STOP!!" I freaked Freya out, who was only trying to help and was then hurt and offended that I was upset. I wasn't mad at her, just desperate to save the phone. I had to snuggle her for quite a while to apologize.

So festive!

Sunday, we had a lovely church meeting, then returned home and began making homemade ice cream. Lots of homemade ice cream. We made vanilla, chocolate peanut butter brownie, and lime sorbet. We invited Brenda (just arrived in Provo), Lee, Cammie and Aaron, and David and Sharon to come to dinner. David and Sharon didn’t make it to dinner, but they came for dessert along with Seth and Noelle. It was so nice to visit and talk and eat yummy food. Does it get any better than that? Good conversation and food + people you love = the BEST!

 

Today, the 5^th, was the parade and as we wanted to attend said parade, I sat out at the Davis’ business as I have in the past. Normally there are several women who do it, but last night, it was just me and Mikayla. It was wonderful. I picked her up shortly before 11:00pm, and we were there until 3:00am. We played some cards but mostly talked and talked and talked. We are so often interrupted by our children and life responsibilities, but when our people are sleeping and normal demands are not calling because it’s the middle of the night, we were able to share and laugh and cry a bit, too. I loved it. I also loved the terrific seats we had, right along the gutter.

The parade was alright. They were slow between groups and didn’t move very quickly, but it was fun to watch the kids love it all. The Davises had shaved ice, we visited with neighbors, we cheered and sang and did a bit of dancing. It was all terrific. 

Horses are coming!

They've spotted Luke

We went home, I took a short nap, and then we gathered foodstuffs and swimming gear and headed over to my mom’s house. We swam and ate with cousins and celebrated the joys of living in a free country with all the good things, like homemade ice cream and cookies. We got to swim with Bryan and Melissa’s kids, and we played a fun new game. It was sort of like musical chairs, but rather than trying to grab a chair to sit in when the music stopped, we jumped in the pool for a noodle. Luke won, but it was a hard-fought battle. Because we had Bryan and Melissa’s kids, we also got a picture of ALL the grandchildren, a true Independence Day miracle.

 

Here's to freedom and the Fourth of July!

"Matching" jumpsuits

The end of Musical Noodles

Luke clearly leapt well before Brandt