Halloweenie Season

Saturday morning we went to the temple. Honestly, it's been a long time since we've gone. When we move, we'll be in the Chicago temple district. We've really taken having so many temples so close for granted. It was great to go again. While there, Ross and I had the same thought about time. How we spend it and what message we are sending to God with the way we use our time. We decided upon a new schedule. At 9 PM we go to bed, planning on actually GOING to bed around 10. And we wake up at 6 in the morning. (By the way, it is REALLY dark at 6, and you can see so many stars!)

We started this new schedule today. This is Ross' last semester at BYU. Every other semester, he's started either class or work at 8 AM. I was excited about this semester when Ross said he only had work at 8 AM on Fridays. The other four days, he starts somewhere between 10 and 1 PM. I immediately thought of sleep and sleeping in. I was singing praises.

While it was great to catch up on sleep, I felt LAZY. I wasn't getting my work outs in that I wanted, and was just dragging the rest of the day.

Back to Saturday. I thought about this idea of time all day. By evening, I felt like the worst mother, wife, and person on the planet.

Today we started our new schedule. I went running, grocery shopping, showered, and played with Claire a bit before we had to take Ross to work. It was fantastic. I've been feeling like I don't play with my kids enough. I was the perfect Holly Housewife. Dinner was cooked and on the table, which I actually set right when Ross got home, the house was always spotless, and I did spend time with the girls, just maybe not as much time as I would have liked. (No, I don't neglect my children, and I'm actually a pretty good mom.) Today, I decided to dedicate the rest of my day to Claire and Aoife. Claire started the morning making cookies with Ross. It was cute and they had a lot of fun, we also colored Halloween pictures I had printed.


After nap time, we made caramel apples, listened to Halloween music, colored more, and just played. I am completely exhausted, but it was fun. It was good to have a day focused solely on the girls. I didn't clean, and we had leftovers for dinner. On the couch.

Claire loved pulling and pushing the caramel around the apples.

It was impossible to get her to leave the apple on the baking sheet.

Proud of her hard work.

Loving the caramel apple.

We took no survivors.

With moving only 76 days away (74 till our stuff moves), I don't really feel like breaking out the cute decorations. I don't think we have any fall ones, despite it being my favorite season. So we just taped our pictures to the window. It's actually really nice not having to be perfect 24/7, or ensure that our little home could be a page in Better Homes and Gardens magazine. We had a really good day.

Excuse the flash, but you can see the pictures really well!

Claire waited by the window chanting, "Daddy" for a long time. She was so excited to show Ross what she had done today.