I've been tagged

I've never done a tag before because I have a hard time thinking of these kind of things, but I enjoy reading other people's lists so much, I thought I'd give it a shot. So here it is:

7 Things I plan to do before I die
1. Learn how to oil paint
2. Sing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
3. Tour Europe
4. Get all my pictures into a nice album with commentary
5. Have at least 4 kids
6. Eat something that costs over $100
7. Go on at least 2 missions with Torry

7 Things I can do:
1. Make fancy wedding cakes
2. Pick up things with my toes
3. Make, like, a 100 different kinds of soup
4. Survive a Chicago winter
5. Create desserts out of my head
6. Make Torry mad (trust me, it's hard)
7. Plug my nose with my lips

7 Things I cannot do:
1. Learn right and left (seriously - why can't I get it?)
2. Lead a well-balanced life (I tend to focus too much on one thing in a day - I'll get a lot of it done, but nothing else)
3. Wait (I'm terribly impatient)
4. Dive
5. Drive (with a stick) downtown Seattle without getting an anxiety attack (have you seen those hills?)
6. Program my oven to timed baking, so I'll quit burning things
7. Read enough to Elaina (we read for at least 1-2 hours a day, but she is always asking me. I am always feeling guilty when she asks and I have to say "Not now")

7 Things I would have on a deserted island:
1. Torry (Not only is he my best friend, he knows something about everything and would definitely come in handy)
2. ipod full of movies and music
3. solar ipod charger
4. my bed
5. fishing pole
6. salt (for all the fish I'll be catching)
7. matches

7 Things I say most often:
1. "Is that so?" (To Elaina)
2. "I Love you" (I'm afraid it's become a default when I don't know what else to say, although I always mean it)
3. "Just a sec" (Elaina is constantly asking me to do things while I am doing something - she hears that a lot)
4. "Hey" (It's how I answer the phone - polite, huh?)
5. "That's right" (I say it so much, Elaina says it all the time now)
6. "Good job!"
7. "I'm hungry" (Nursing mother syndrome)

7 Celebrities I Admire: Yuck, I don't really admire any celebrities - but here's some I enjoy watching
1. Reese Witherspoon
2. Nicole Kidman
3. Hugh Jackman
4. Matt Damon
5. Daniel Craig
6. Mark Ruffalo
7. Meg Ryan (prebotox)

7 Favorite Foods
1. King Crab with butter
2. New York Strip medium rare with butter
3. Homemade, white yeast rolls with butter
4. Hot Chocolate and popcorn with butter
5. Hearty Winter-time soups (often with wheat-sourdough bread and butter)
6. Lindt Creme Brulle Petit Dessert chocolate bars (not with butter)
7. Ice cream

7 People I Tag:
1. Kristen
2. Lindsey
3. Audrey
4. Wendy
5. Amy
6. Lyndi
7. Anita

My new favorite Holiday

Okay, so I think Halloween is the coolest. I don't feel any stress, and it's just a ton of fun - candy, costumes and cute kids. Elaina had a blast trick-or-treating. The first door we knocked on, she walked right in and started petting the dog. We had quite a time trying to get her to leave. After that she got the hang of it and loved it - also we went with some friends which added to our fun.
We always have fun carving jack-o-lanterns. Torry did Jack and I did Mr. Cyclops. We tried to involve Elaina, but after a couple of handfulls of pumpkin goop, she decided (correctly) that watching "Nightmare Before Christmas" and eating candy would be more fun.


So, we've had the Tinkerbell costume for almost a year now, so in order to make it a little more special for Halloween, I found some glitter stardust stuff to sprinkle in her hair. She loved it and went around showing everybody. It also made a mess of our house. Her enjoyment of it was well worth it though.
For one of our pre-Halloween family home evenings we made shaped sugar cookies. True to Elaina form, she dumped colored sugar all over them. The black sugar on her cookie was so thick that it turned her tongue black.


On another Family Home Evening night we made a haunted halloween graham cracker house. Although Elaina enjoyed helping out, she spent most of the time just eating the candy.




Torry here - Heather's tired and fresh out of caption ideas. So, here I go:
One Saturday we took a drive to a pumpkin patch. In addition to thousands of pumpkins in a big field, they had a big wagon and several bins full of pumpkins. But wait! They also had an area where you could use large slingshots to launch small pumpkins at targets.

On the non-pumpkin front, there was also face painting - Elaina loved her ladybug.










For those who don't know, we live in a planned community called Issaquah Highlands. As required by law in all planned communities, we had a fall Halloween festival in the neighborhood. Also mandated: a "green" theme. They even had all-natural gum flavored with mint extract and cane sugar, made of naturally occurring gum bases (tree sap I think) and colored with--get this--chlorophyll. It tasted vaguely of a lawn mower grass catcher. For those who didn't want natural mint tainting their consumption of chlorophyll, there was even a booth handing out free samples of wheat grass juice.

However, the green theme was contained to the gum and a few small signs. Everything else was pure old-fashioned Halloween fun. A costume parade, plenty of candy, pumpkin-carving contest, giant inflatable funhouse toys, fresh cider and pony rides made for a fun afternoon just blocks from our home.

That's not very nice

So, Elaina loves the story of the Gingerbread man - what child wouldn't? It's about a cookie that comes to life - cool, huh? Anyway, I thought I would be a super neat mom and bake a gingerbread man/woman with her. We had tons of fun and she loved dumping pink and purple sugar all over it. After it came out of the oven, I asked if she wanted to eat it and she said "yes", but she didn't watch me cutting it up. So she ate a little of it and went down for a nap. Meanwhile I cut it up and put it on a plate because it was so big. When she woke up she wanted to see the gingerbread woman and I showed it to her all cut up on the plate. She was not very happy with me. "Mommy, you smashed it! That's not very nice." She proceeded to tell everyone we ran into the crime that I had committed. She made me feel like a villain - not really. It was really cute.