Holidays

Rather than wait all the way to Christmas to put all the year-end holidays into one post, I thought I'd stick in Halloween and Thanksgiving.

First, thanks to Grandma Marquardson for sewing this adorable clown costume. True to the male gender, it was not enough for Dallin to just be a clown. Check out what's in his left hand. Boys!!

We ended up sticking around home for Thanksgiving. Our friends the Stovalls threw a great Turkey Trot the morning of Thanksgiving. Nothing like running 3 miles before the feast! Our kind friends the Bennetts invited us over for turkey. Thank you Camille!

Hey, we're just going running and it's early...I borrowed Dallin's turkey hat. Isn't it sooo cute? $1 at Target! They sold out before Halloween. Consider yourself warned: you've got to jump on the dollar bin bargains when you see them!

Dallin with his best buddy.Dallin just looks too cute here.

While moms away

I headed to Newark, New Jersey and Manhattan, NY last week for a brief business trip. I got to meet up with my in-laws who are serving a mission in Manhattan. They're doing great. The trip was a whirlwind but I did manage to finish the third book in the Twilight series on the way home! I was attending a conference on continuous auditing. We can talk about continuous auditing sometime if you're really interested:) Check out the beautiful fall leaves new the Gilstraps home.

We headed to dessert at a hip place in Greenwich Village-yummy!

I arrived home to a pretty grumpy toddler. He's been fairly difficult this week. It didn't dawn on me until my friend Lina said this is typical for kids when their moms leave. ah-hah! I'd forgotten. Last time I left for a few days Dallin sure made me pay for it! Has anyone else experienced that?? Maybe it's a function of him being the numbers of fingers he's holding up?

Wednesday afternoon I decided to do something fun. Dallin is always wanting to take a train ride so we went to the nearest light rail station and headed to downtown San Jose. We packed a picnic and took the train to park downtown. After eating outside we headed into the Childrens Museum. This place has got to be one of the coolest places for kids: art projects, water station, face painting, fire trucks, pizza creations, etc. We had a great time and here's the pictures to prove it. I may have almost made up for being gone for 3.5 days!!

I followed instructions and let Dallin paint his own face:

My little pizza maker:

Prop 8 Results

It's late on the night of November 4th and the prop 8 results are still coming in. As of midnight, it's 53% yes, 47% no. Let's hope this continues through the night.

I held up signs for a couple of hours today. Tonight I held a sign outside of my polling place. There were four no on prop 8 people handing out fliers just outside the door of the polling place. I had several people stop to thank me for what I was doing and commented on how courageous I was. It felt great...maybe this is the beginning of my political career? I doubt it, but I do believe strongly on this topic so involvement is easy.

Halloween pics to come...

Vote YES on Prop 8

On Saturday Dallin and I stood in the rain to hold a "Yes on Prop 8" sign at a very busy intersection that connects two freeways here. For the most part I didn't get too many middle fingers or thumbs down and got several honks and thumbs up.

What I didn't expect was the reaction I got when I told some people at church what I did. "That was really smart of you to bring Dallin along so you didn't get attacked." or "You shouldn't do that at an intersection because people will get out and hurt you."

Seriously it didn't dawn on me that people would physically hurt me!! Well, lucky me that Evan was taking a nap so I didn't have a choice to bring my little guardian with me.

Vote yes on 8!!

i love fall

No fall in the bay area is complete without a trip to Half Moon Bay. Tuesday we met up with some of our Palo Alto friends at Lemos farm...Doesn't everyone agree that pumpkin farms make for the best pictures?? Cute Dallin and I rode the train and I tried to take as many pictures as I could.

Vote Yes on Prop 8

http://www.preservingmarriage.org/

http://www.protectmarriage.com/

Harvest Festival!

Saturday marked our second-annual trip to the Harvest Festival in Fremont. It's this great farm that's still operating. We picked popcorn and indian corn, rode the train, and sampled homemade ice cream, popcorn, and cookies made in a fire-burning stove. The magic show was also really great. We learned Evan was made to work on a farm; he picked about 60 ears of corn in about 10 minutes.
To prove I was there, I had to do a self-portrait...

Dallin was a good helper shucking the corn. The rule is you can keep half of what you harvest so we've got a nice supply of popcorn. Don't be surprised if this is your Christmas gift this year!!

Notice D's new do? I cut the top last Sunday night so all day Monday he was running around with a mullet. I was so embarrassed. I met a new mom at the park Monday and instantly I felt I needed to explain that his haircut was a work in progress. Evan on the other hand couldn't wait to take pictures. I was sure to cut the rest of Dallin's hair before a single picture was taken! Dallin will thank me one day for this.

On another note, this morning I was getting ready for an early church ward council meeting. Sweet Dallin was up at 6:30 and helped me get ready (he stands on the toilet and brushes his teeth for about 15 minutes, putting the toothpaste tube in the water, squirting toothpaste everywhere. No matter how much I talk about wasting water that water does not go off full blast). When I went to leave at 7:15, Dallin turned hysterical "Mommy, I want go church! I want go!" Isn't that what every mom wants to hear?! What a sweet boy. I hope he says that when he's 15.

Dallin LOVES church. In fact, we cannot keep him with us. He spends the majority of his time bouncing between Logan & Toby, Maya & Ella, and Brent & Emily (all of his friends). When the first hour is up, he is off RUNNING up the stairs to nursery.

Smooooth Jazz

I'm still new to blogging, so I'm going to try to be less of a travel log this past week...Here goes..

Chris Botti, jazz trumpet player, performed Friday night at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga. Amazing doesn't begin to describe it. We grabbed our friends Joe & Alecia and headed to the hills to enjoy some relaxing jazz. Something about it being the end of a very crazy week, jazz music, warm fall night and being under the stars made it just perfect. Chris was a great entertainer and we all felt like we learned a bit through his dialogue between numbers. With Uncle James still in town we didn't have the pressure to return home immediately (free babysitting!) after the concert so we went crazy at the Cheesecake Factory. It was so nice to have a date with Evan.

I always love the Relief Society broadcast and this past Saturday night was no exception. I felt inspired to create and Elder Uchtdorf's (sp?) message on creation and compassion helps explain why I love decorating my house. I'll just remind Evan I'm creating beautiful places where angels can visit when the pottery barn package arrives sometime this week.

Today it was my turn to teach the Young Women...You gotta love lessons on dating! I felt them all squirm when I defined necking and petting. What's a leader to do!? :)

We had a couple of changes in the nursery staffing at church today. It turns out that even though they're little kids and they don't speak that well, it's very difficult for a Chinese-speaking couple to run nursery. And we were hoping Dallin might learn Mandarin and rule the business world.

Evan returned back to school Monday and we're all feeling the stress level notch up a bit. It's a demanding schedule to say the least. In another two and a quarter years we are going to have one seriously big celebration. I've already begun the planning so save the date. June 2010!

Home Improvement

Dallin's room--me in the window

With Evan's return to school this coming Monday, there's been a made dash around our place to finish up some projects. With Tom and James' help, we cased four windows and a bunch of other little things. I'm still deciding on window treatments...Let me know if you have any suggestions. I found some super cool light filtering that also have a blackout option (designed for husbands who do not want ANY light at night) but Smith and Noble was selling the one to fit our bedroom for $500: no thank you. So if we look a little tired it's because we'll be waking up with the sun for a while.

I don't know why our khaki walls show up as a little more puke-ish!

Thanks Uncle Tom

Oakland A's Fireworks (and baseball)

It was LDS day at the Oakland A's Friday night. Evan's brother James came into town so we all headed to Oak-town for the game. Who knew it rained in the bay area in September? Not us, but fortunately it stopped by the time we made it to our seats. A's beat the Mariners 2-0 (sadly--I am from Seattle). But I tell you, the real show was AFTER the game. It was fan appreciation night and the fireworks were awesome! We all agreed this was better than any fourth of July fireworks we could remember.

Maui

Just back from Maui...Can I just say that rarely do I feel like I could extend vacations, but this one...four more days would've been perfect. I've resolved to incorporate more vacations into everyday life. Instead of doing the dinner dishes tonight (thanks Ev) D and I went swimming, just like our Maui days. We'll see how long my Maui fever continues before the get-it-doneness in me wins out :)

D's cute footprints like my turtle? at our fav beach--Big Beach (or Makena?!--long story involving lots of u-turns)

Daddy and Dallin being silly at the Garden of Eden along the road to Hana. Poor Dallin was the only one to throw up on the crazy, windy road.
Thumbs up for chocolate (cocoa tree!) I doubt there's a two-year-old out there who likes chocolate more than this kid.