Random September Happenings

Here are a few fun things we did in September, after our cruise:

Sept. 8

Hurrican Ian! Really though, why would they name a destructive hurricane after this sweet boy??

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Sept. 9

Ian is just so adorable, even when he sleeps!

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Sept. 12

Ian wearing a new shirt that I made him from some knit fabric I found at Walmart. I still have lots of this fabric left, so there will most likely be some other projects made out of this same material. 

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Lining up. The red circle is Elisa.

Can you spot Elisa? I sure can't!

Sept. 17

Erik took Elisa to her Phoenix Children's Choir performance at the baseball stadium. Tickets were not cheap; I don't see why we had to pay for tickets at all since she was singing. Or at least get some sort of discount. The kids (there were so many of them!) sang the national anthem. Erik and Elisa stayed for a bit after the performance but left after not too long. I guess Elisa got bored, I can't say I blame her though! 

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Sept. 19

I made Elisa some pajamas out of some satin pillowcases I found at Goodwill. I had just barely enough fabric from those pillowcases! Phew! I think they turned out really cute. Elisa seems to like them enough.

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Sept. 24

Erik and I went to Humble Pie for the first time since we've lived here, even though it is just around the corner from our house. I thought it was pretty good, I hope we can go back and try some other of their menu items. Elisa was at her Stake Broadway practice, Ian was at a friend's house (I think!), and Gabe was home moping around, so it was nice to go out just the two of us.

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Towards the last few weeks of September, Ian somehow got the idea to do drawing contests! He was pretty specific and adamite about doing these drawing contests.  Ian would try to have them with anyone that would join (even friends that came for piano lessons) and whenever he could! He'd pick out a few cards from the game Apples to Apples and the drawings would draw what the card said (usually nouns). We would pass around the drawings and rate out of ten how good we thought each drawing was. At the end, Ian would tally up the scores and make and give ribbons for everyone!

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Sept. 27

Gabie-roos snoozing on the couch. He likes to go downstairs and sleep on the couch.

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Sept. 30

I finally bought a life-size skeleton this year for a Halloween decoration, and of course for fun! I found it on sale at Fry's. Erik thought it would be fun to stick it in Elisa's bed for her to find when she got home from school. I'm pretty sure she wasn't scared, but she sure had fun dressing it up, she even put a wig on it. We eventually put it outside to sit on the bench. I had Erik zip-tie it to the bench because I was paranoid someone would steal it. At the very least, the kids couldn't mess with it too much.

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Sept. 30

While Elisa was at her sleepover with her newest BFF Jayde, we took the boys out to try a new ice cream place, called Maya Ice Cream Rolls. The ice cream wasn't anything too special to me but at least the boys enjoyed it, and we enjoyed going out!

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Kid's Halloween Paintings

 After the craft room was 90% cleaner (yes, I even steam mopped the floors since there was sooo much paint on them), I allowed the kids to do some Halloween paintings, on the condition they did some chores:

I let them choose their chore and their painting. Elisa did two of them! Gabe has decided, after doing one painting, that he does not like to paint very much. But like Elisa, Ian likes to paint! I found him the next morning making the same painting he made with me on a tiny little canvas he found. Instead of having the kids paint the spiders and bats, I thought it would be easier and look better if I just cut them out on black construction paper and have the kids glue them on.

 

Painting with supervision

Ian hung his spider painting in his room

Ian's mini painting. This pic doesn't show just how small it is...about 2" wide and 1" tall.

Elisa's bats turned out pretty cool!

I helped with the boogie man, but she did most of it on her own!

Gabe painted bats too but used blues so we don't have two of the same painting

Craft Room Makeover!

Towards the end of September, I deep cleaned, organized, and rearranged my craft room. It was a lot of work to clean up! And one thing seemed to lead to the other too. I had done a few sewing projects that messed up the craft room, not to mention the kids love to go in there and make whatever their little heart's desire. Apparently, no one likes to clean up after themselves. Erik bought a new computer since the old one (about 5 years old) was annoyingly slow. At first, all I wanted to do was to put the old computer in my craft room since Erik bought a new one, but my craft room was a huge mess. I cleaned the stuff off the floor, but then I saw that the scrap bin was overflowing so I thought I should organize that, which led to organizing all of my woven fabric, which meant I had to buy some fabric bins on Amazon, along with a small desk and chair for the computer since there wasn't any place to put it.

 

I organized my fabric by knit vs woven, and then by color.

I also ordered some floating shelves, which initially were meant to be more practical than decorative, but when I went to put stuff on them, it looked really bad and sloppy so instead I'm just using them just for looks:

 

 

 I still need to find things to put on the other shelves.

Then I took out all my knit fabrics in the cabinet since there were some wovens in there and organized those too!

 

Just when I thought I was getting somewhere....I just had to put out all my knits!

I even cleaned the surface of the tables using rubbing alcohol to remove the acrylic paint. It took some time and a little scrubbing, but in the end, it worked pretty well! I guess I forgot to take a before and after pic, but this one was taken in the middle. Imagine all the paint gone! 

I was able to get off almost all of the paint. It looked like a new table after I was done.

Along the way, I got a bit sidetracked and made a flag with some old fabric for Ian's room:

I duct taped this to Ian's closet door, but it keeps falling off. 

I also organized my beads, bought a new ironing surface (a wool mat) since the computer was going in the corner where the ironing board used to be. I planned on getting rid of the ironing board, but it is currently sitting in the middle of my craft room, collecting junk. I still have yet to try the ironing mat out. I have been just too busy to do much sewing other than what I have posted for September! My desk and chair finally came, but I haven't even been able to use the computer as of yet and one of the kids already put a hole in the fabric of the new chair I have yet to even sit in!

My new desk and chair with the old computer and printer.

Church Activities

I didn't take too many pictures in the month of September, but I sure got a lot of pictures of church functions, enough to make a post out of!

First, the primary program. This was Elisa's last year being in primary and participating in the program. She was asked to play her clarinet, but it didn't work out. So, she just said her line and sang. Here are some pictures of the program practice, held Sept. 9. I had to be there since I'm the pianist. The kids are asked to come up with their own lines from a prompt.

Ian's speaking part

Elisa's speaking part.

Some games after the program and pizza

Ian had such a fun time!

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I'm not supposed to take pictures in the chapel, so I didn't get any of the actual program (not to mention I was at the piano the entire time) but here's a few of Elisa in primary singing time happily cutting one of the teacher's ties in half as part of a singing activity:

September 11

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September 16, the ward campout. This year the ward had the campout in just about the same place it always does. Elisa really wanted to go even though it conflicted with the Stake activity girls event the next morning. I made hobo dinners earlier in the day and we left as soon as Erik got home. I didn't have too much fun and I slept poorly (if at all) but Ian and Elisa had a great time! I'm not sure about Gabe. He kinda just wandered around most of the time. The hobo dinners turned out well (the kids actually ate most of them!), and I liked making the fire but other than that I probably would have enjoyed staying home much better. We tried to leave the next morning as soon as we could so that Elisa could get going to her Stake activity. For breakfast we had breakfast tacos, which weren't too bad. Elisa was late for her activity, but at least she got a few hours in. I picked her and another girl from our ward when it was over and we stopped by Bath and Body Works to catch their $3 wallflower sale before going home.

The kids eating the hobo dinners

Gabe was mesmerized by the fire! 

Ian ran around with this pack of wild animals  boys most of the time.

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A few more primary activity pictures of the kids participation (Sept. 18th). They were learning the words to "Follow the Prophet":

 

Cruise to Cabo Days 5 & 6: The Last Day at Sea and Leaving

Tuesday September 6, 2022

By now, we had established our daily routine for sea days. Go to the dining room for brunch. Check the kids into their clubs versus letting them roam around the ship. Check out shopping events or trivia competitions on board. Eat a light lunch. Sneak in some ice cream. You know, the usual.

Erik and I played "scattergories," which turned out to be "list-as-many-things-you-can-think-of-to-win." We didn't win.

Goofy Ian kept a daily journal of what he did on the cruise, mostly about what he ate.

Elisa and her new friend got soft serve ice cream...again...for the 27th time.

Ian and Elisa invented a dance for when no one else is in the elevator.

Elisa did a better job than Gabe on the flow rider, but she did have a little more help.

We went to the Cosmopolitan Club where the kids decorated paper crowns. Elisa wrote "end me" and we didn't like that, so Erik wrote in an "S" at the beginning. The adults enjoyed the view of the ship and the ocean.

Elisa had a morbid sense of humor and wrote a goth message on her crown.

Ian had the most fun decorating his crown.

Erik went to pick up Gabe and found him playing a bowling game.

Next, we went the to the Star Lounge for Harry Potter Trivia. We were afraid that we might not do very well, but we actually got a perfect score (with some internet help) and qualified for the final round. They asked one person from each of the six teams to come up. We sent Gabe up, but he froze when they asked him his name and hometown. Erik had to rescue Gabe and help him cast his favorite wizard spell (expelliarmus). The audience cheered loudest for Gabe and for another girl who cast expecto patronum, so they said we both won. No prize this time, not even "winners" written on our paper. Maybe they figured out that we got some help from google.

Ian and Gabe took turns as scribe. Gabe actually knew several answers.

Gabe was pretty confident until they put the microphone in his face.

After the Harry Potter stage fright, Gabe got a little upset and took off on his own. Luckily, we found him in the stateroom, and we all sat down for dinner. The waiter recommended the coconut shrimp, turkey dinner, and some other things. I should have written this down because I can't remember now. 

Coconut shrimp. It was fine, but they reused the same sauce from the Thai appetizer the night before.

I was too full to enjoy my lamb shank.

Erik got the turkey. I think he said he was too full to finish it.

An interesting dessert--baked merengue with strawberries. It might have been good if it weren't so over-the-top, nauseatingly sweet.

We watched the comedian Phil Tagg again after dinner. He told more jokes about cruising. I thought he was funnier this night than the first night. Too bad Gabe missed it.

After the show, everyone else went to the Royal Promenade for the 80s dance party. We went to bed.

The next morning (Sept. 7th) was time to deboard the ship! They weren't shy about telling us to get out either. We were hoping to be one of the later groups to leave since our flight didn't leave until later that day, but we got one of the earlier groups. We got up too early and went to eat breakfast for the last time in the dining room. We made sure to take our time. After sitting in the dining room for a while, we wandered around the art gallery one last time before slowly walking off the ship around 9:30am.

One last picture on deck 3 looking all the way up to the twelfth deck.

Our shuttle was able to pick us up about an hour early, since we were just sitting around outside the cruise terminal. We checked our luggage at the airport about 3.5 hours before our flight. Grandma and Grandpa had to wait another hour before they were allowed to check their bags. We ate lunch at Chik-Fil-A and Panda Express, wandered around the airport shops, and sat waiting for our flight.

We just finished lunch when Grandma and Grandpa met up with us.

When we got back to Phoenix, we picked up our luggage, walked to the van in the terminal parking garage, drove home, and went to bed for a 2-day work/school-week.