Trunk - Or - Treating!

We had so much fun at the church last night trunk or treating! And the kids had a GREAT time eating (and sharing!) all of their candy! I really love this time of year - when people seem to be getting together more for parties and just plain get togethers.

Mike and I talked about our favorite church gatherings / parties that we have been to in the last few years. He decided that his favorite is the New Years Eve party where we all get together and play games, dance snack and ring in the new year with breakfast at midnight. I really love all the time we share together with our ward family. It's hard being out in the middle of nowhere without a church building in our town.

So, back to the kids - Kali was a fairy, all dressed in beautiful pink. Abby was a witch - good thing she's not every day! Adrian wore a black gown and had cuts, scratches and scars on his face. I was the lunch lady. (I figured it was fitting...) Mike wasn't able to go this year, but we took a couple of friends in his stead. It all reminded me of how comercial things have gotten, and I can honestly say that it was great to let that go for this party.

I Forgot To Tell You!

Sorry to post twice in one day, but I forgot to tell you about this really cool idea I got from a friends blog! I made a mosaic of pictures using the answers to the twelve questions below. I had a lot of fun, and when I was done we did my kid's mosaics. It makes me smile just to look at it! Thanks for the idea, Ashley! (http://blessedbarnharts.blogspot.com/)

To make your own:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.

b. Using only the first page, pick an image.

c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php.

The questions:

1. What is your first name? Erika

2. What is your favorite food? vegetables

3. What high school did you go to? ccdhs

4. What is your favorite color? purple

5. Who is your celebrity crush? billy corgan

6. Favorite drink? soda

7. Dream vacation? ireland

8. Favorite dessert? cream puff

9. What you want to be when you grow up? old

10. What do you love most in life? family

11. One Word to describe you. LDS

12. Your flickr name (or your blog name or handle or whatever) better-than-ewe

I'm Back

Wow! It's been a long week! I can't beleive all of the car business and family "stuff" that has gone on!

My aunt Cindy in OR got ahold of me yesterday and we were able to visit for a little while. It was awesome to hear from her, since we don't get to see eachother very much. (It's been a couple years...)


I've been trying to work with my guitar a little more - progress stalled a couple months back, and I have since decided that I need to get back on the band wagon. I bought the "Learn and Master Guitar" series from Legacy Learining. VERY worth the money. Steve Krenz is AWESOME to learn guitar from. My falling off the band wagon was NO fault of his, or of the instructional material. I just got lazy...

Tommorow is "Trunk-Or-Treating" at church, and I'm really looking forward to taking the kids. I have to get their costumes ready tonight, so I guess that means it's time to commit to something.

Work, family and friends.

Well, on my way to work this morning, the car overheated. This was of course due to the loose radiator hose which I had assumed my hubby fixed yesterday. (He did spend half an hour with the hood up on the car, after all...) Guess I was wrong! So, after I finally made it to work, the day went very well. I finished the things that needed to get done, with time to spare! I spent an extra hour there to make up for the time I missed yesterday when I was at home, sick. So overall, things went very well!

Fast forward to after school, my daughter got a ride home from her friend and her parents, which left Adrian alone at the afterschool program. On the ay home, he stopped at a friends house to see if he could come over. The friends older brother and the older brother's friend proceded to repeatedly hit my son. Then then convinced two other boys, including my sons friend, to hit him also. We had a problem last year with one of these boys, but now it seems to have progresed. So now I have to call the school and make them aware of the bullying that has been going on. I am not writting this to proffess his inocence, but rather to ask, what would you do if it was your kid? I know that my son is different than the other kids. I know that he is one of the "newer" kids here, even though we have been here two years. But is that enough reason for the parents of these children to turn their heads while their children bully others?

(This goes as far as the parents of one of these children telling my kids that she was going to call the cops on them for walking on her sidewalk.) What kind of world are we living in?

MY CAR IS FIXED!!!

So, I was driving to work on Tuesday when my car died. When I got into the car, I knew something was wrong. When I started the car, the low charge light came on. I didn't think anything of it since it was only in the thirties that night. Maybe the battery didn't have much of a charge since it was cold kinda thing. So SURELY I could still drive to work, right? The alternator would just charge the battery while I drove, right? Except, I had lost my belt that makes the whole alternator business work.

Long story short - it's 8 miles from my house to my job. I made it 5 miles. So, at 5 in the morning I got to walk 2.5 miles before someone stopped for me. Luckily it wasn't to cold - a nice balmy 36 out that morning. Since we had our big snow storm the Sunday before, I was feeling lucky that the skies were clear. And it was very peaceful.

Back to the car, it only cost about $45 to fix it. Considering I thought it was going to cost about $200 for a new alternator and installation, I feel very blessed that it was something so small.

On another note, I am now certified in the state of ND to distribute meds! I was walking to work that morning to do the first half of my med certification - finished the second half yesterday! (I do have to do clinicals, but that is going to happen in the morning, and is a technicality since we did do clinicals during class... So my new title is.... "Erika Billedeaux, CMA." Hooray for me!