Weekend Update

October has been quite the social month for us. In the last week we have: attended a friend's surprise birthday party, had a play-date with Will's friend Lily Mae, had Sunday dinner with some people in our ward, and don't forget date night. And in the next two weeks we have three or four more parties to attend. My, aren't we popular. But really, that may not sound like much, but its hard for me to get my life in order enough to get out the door to do something that's NOT an errand. Amazingly, I got almost all my stuff done this week, although the vacuuming always seems to be the thing that continually needs to be done and frequently gets neglected.

Aaron has been plugging away at school, getting really tired of doing tons of studying every night, and still feeling burned out from not having much of a break between graduating from BYU and starting dental school. He's looking forward to Thanksgiving Break a lot. But in a surprising turn of events, he got called to be a primary worker in our ward. He has never served in the primary, and today was his first day. He came out and said to me, "Well, church just got a lot more fun." I'm excited for him to do this calling, because he's never really been involved in a job or calling that involved little kids and he's the youngest in his family. So he doesn't have that much experience around them, although it seems that he has a lot in common with them (his love of cartoons, toys, days off from school, and not picking up his socks) so I am excited to see how this calling will affect him.

Will is better than ever. It's amazing to think that he's already 6 months old. He's my best friend these days, and we have a blast hanging out together. He is quite a stud and, biased or not, I happen to think he's a very good looking baby. In fact, he already has a little girlfriend. I told him not to date until he's 16 and he said, "don't worry mom, we're just friends." And I believe him, because whenever he sees the beautiful Lily Mae, he is much more interested in chewing on her toys than her, although he will occasionally blow raspberries on her arm. This is Will with Lily Mae. She is the daughter of my friend Tiffany, and she was born only 2 days before Will. They are very similar in sizes, but I think Lily's a little heavier than Will. Will weighs over 19 pounds now, and I have to accept the fact that he needs to move up to size 4 diapers, since he leaked through his pants today at church. I hate it when that happens and you still have a lot of diapers left that are too small. But I think I'll just deal with it, because diapers are so expensive and he could probably last through the last few.

Anyway, he is getting a lot better at sitting up by himself, but even more than that, he seems to be getting very skilled at playing with toys. He is so good at grabbing pretty much anything in sight and shoving it in his mouth. And when he drops it, he looks around and picks it back up, switching it from hand to hand. He's eating more solids now, but one of the reasons I have been so slow about it is because we don't have a high chair yet and Will is an extremely messy eater. He sits in his bumbo and eats, getting food on every inch of his clothes and the bumbo. So it's a huge hassle to have to pretty much bathe him after I feed him. And speaking of baths, he is outgrowing his little tub, but I am not really ready to put him in the regular tub yet, since he's quite slippery with the sitting up. Maybe I'll experiment with that this week. He gets so excited after his baths, when I'm drying him off and rubbing lotion on him. I am so glad that he's a very happy baby. He smiles at people all the time and gets a lot of attention. It's fun to have the first baby, when you can devote your attention to just them without worrying about what your toddler and other children might be up to.

I'd like to say the weather here has cooled off. And technically it has, if you call the lower 90's cool. We had one glorious week where the temperature was in the low 70's to high 60's and I actually wore a jacket NOT by choice. And I bought Will some cooler-weather clothes, including some much needed Sunday clothes. Here he is looking a little sloppy, true to the memory of my brothers' two-seconds-after-church look. But then the weather went back to normal. Nice and hot. One thing that is weird about Arizona is that there are two grass 'seasons.' They plant a more hardy grass in the summer and then let it die in August. Then they re-seed the grass areas with a different grass and water it like crazy. So right now the grass is actually greener than I've ever seen. And Aaron was out for a run the other day and saw the mystical stork or crane or whatever this bird is: I've seen it before one time, early in the morning. Our lakes have a bunch of ducks, including some big white ones, which may actually be geese. But this is the only stork/crane we have.

As for me, I've just been running around trying to get my errands taken care of and keeping my house clean. Not much to tell on my end. I did burn myself on Friday when I was carmelizing almonds, even though I was trying to be very careful. So now I have a giant blister on my left pointer finger. I've also been reading "The Host" by Stephanie Meyer. I had a hard time getting through the last of her vampire series books for various reasons, but the main one is that her style of writing tends to be way too descriptive, to the point of getting tedious. But I like The Host better so far, it's an interesting concept for a story, and although the descriptive writing continues, it's not bugging me as much. I think she has gotten better as a writer, although maybe it's just that her audience for this book is older in general.

So life goes on, we're doing fine, and I just have to say that I am not really looking forward to November 4th, when we find out which not-so-promising Presidential candidate will be in charge of our country for the next 4 years.