Garrett's Birthday and Halloween

Okay so this is really late, I realize, but I wanted to make sure that I got something on here for last month. First off just let me say that my last post talked about how crazy work has been with the stock market and the economy being so volatile. That was nothing. It continues to just tank and people are freaking out even more now. I can understand the older folks who are depending on this money lasting the rest of their lives worrying and bailing out, but what gets me is people who are 35 years old, already riding the market down 45% and then deciding to bail. They have 30 years to recover, they'll get their money back. Anyhow, that's boring stuff nobody really cares too much about.

Last month, on the 14th, was Garrett's birthday. I can't believe he is already six years old. I think he thinks he is sixteen. Now, if you ask him he didn't get nearly enough presents or get to celebrate enough, but he had three parties. On the Monday before his birthday (his birthday was on Tuesday) we went over to his grandma and grandpa's house and his aunt and uncle were also there and he got presents from everybody.

Then on Tuesday, his birthday we opened some more presents with just the four of us.

And then finally on the Friday after his birtday he had another party at our house with all of his friends. He didn't have school that day so Kristel had them all make their own little pizzas and they ate that for lunch, watched "Monster House" and then everbody gave Garrett MORE presents.So after all of this he still wished he could have gotten more. I guess it's tough being a kid.

Of course, Halloween was only a couple weeks later, which he was almost as excited as his birthday about. But for him I don't think he gets all excited for the same reason as most other kids, you know, the glut of candy that they are going to all get. He was excited because he got to dress up a super hero. This kid loves to pretend. This year he was Robin and Jackie was an adorable little cow. This was her first Halloween where she was actually aware that there was something going on. Last year she was only about 4 months old and so she could have cared less. But they were both adorable and had a great time.

They both made out pretty well. Jackie couldn't wait to get into though and proceeded to dump all hers all over the floor in the front room and just started opening everything she could. She didn't really eat any of it. She just wanted to open it. She's funny that way. The night ended really good for me as you can see......

Quick, Sell EVERYTHING!!

This was by far the craziest week I've ever seen since working in the financial industry. Wednesday it seems like everyone was calling to close their accounts and put everything into cash after the second day that week the market had dropped 400+ points on the Dow. We tried to tell people that the market can go up just as quickly as it drops and if that happens they are going to miss out if they are just sitting in cash. The next two days the market was up about 8%. Compared to that they got .01% sitting in money markets. Who knows whats gonna happen going forward but I know I'm glad I didn't cash out. I didn't really talk too much about Garrett's first day of school. The funniest thing about was Kristel totally stressing out about what he was gonna wear but I think he ended up looking pretty cute...

How do I look, Mom?

Watch out, ladies, here I come.

Garrett's never been shy of the camera.

Sister has to be in on the action too.

Garrett and his friend, Luke.

So after being in school for a few days I asked him what he has been learning. He said, "Nothing, the teacher just stands up and talks all day, she doesn't teach us anything." Yeah, I had a few of those too!! But he seems to be doing really well. He reads anything he can get his hands on. His teacher even says he is a very good listener. At least he listens to someone. Jackie is jabbering like crazy, it is so funny. You know she is saying something, we just have no idea what it is. She does say "mom" and "uh-oh." The latter phrase comes in handy all the time.

I'm glad I got up this morning...

For those of you who are not LDS, this entry may not interest you too much but I wanted to make sure that I made mention of this morning. I had to get up early (early for a Saturday, anyway) to go the Conference Center in SLC for a regional priesthood leadership meeting. It was an excellent meeting. President Hinkley's son Richard was the first speaker and he talked about the need for more missionaries throughout the world. There are about 8000 less missionaries right now than there were a few years ago but he said they are going out much more prepared and so are more effective in the mission field. He did give some caution to local leaders though to not impose stricter standards than what the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve have set, as I guess this has been somewhat of a problem. I was surprised by how much he reminded me of President Hinkley as he spoke. Next Elder Ballard from the Quorum of the Twelve spoke. He talked about the need to be more spiritually converted. He said too many are convinced of the truthfulness of the gospel in their minds but don't have a really strong conviction in their hearts. It really made think of myself and how converted I am to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Finally we got to hear from the Lord's Prophet, Thomas S. Monson. He spoke of the need to be diligent in caring for those around us who need it the most and to always do it in the spirit of love and compassion. As he spoke I could not help but feel so strongly that this man did indeed speak on behalf of the Savior and that he is as much as a Prophet as Moses or any other of the ancient Prophets. So, I am so glad that I resisted the temptation to just shrug this meeting off and get a few extra Z's this morning.

So, I'm not really sure how I am supposed to start this thing but I figured (or rather was forced by my sister, Carly) to step into the 21st century and do a blog. Last week Kristel and I celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary. I can't believe somebody actually has put up with me for that long. I didn't do a great job of planning it so everything was pretty last minute and so we decided to just take a drive up north. It's peach days in Brigham City and so we drove through there and got a bunch of peaches that Kristel wanted to jar up. There was a fruit stand about every 1/4 of a mile and so we just picked one and then kept going on up north. We stopped in Logan for a couple of hours, went to an antique shop and a couple of other cool sites there. Logan is a beautiful town. I wouldn't mind moving up there but I don't think I would be able to find work. From there we went up into Idaho. I don't know why, we had just never been there before so we figured, "What the heck?" We stayed in a small town called Soda Springs in a really cool, old hotel. It was built in 1917 but was restored in 2001 and so was in great shape but had a very vintage feel about it. Just behind it was the only captive geyser in the world. Don't ask me what that means but they were quite proud of the fact. We went out and saw that in the morning before heading back home and boy did that thing stink. We had a nice scenic drive back home, we even saw some buffalo. I had to go back to work the next day but that was Friday so after one day of work I got another two off. I could get used to that schedule. On Monday, Kristel sent me a picture of Jackie that was hilarious. I guess she decided she wanted to start learning how to swim and did not want to wait until we got a pool. She is obsessed with the bathroom and loves to play in the toilet and unravel all the toilet paper. Garrett just started kindergarten and is doing very well. The week before they start class they have to go in for some assessments and one of the things they do is read a story to the children, one on one, and ask some questions to see how well they listen and absorb it. Garrett decided he should read it to the teacher and so he took the book from her and read it to her. She was pretty impressed. He is still a total ball of fire and never seems to run out of energy. The kids are actually our whole life. They wear us out but it is a good kind of worn out.