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A Fun Week

Weekly Happenings: We had a relatively fun week, last week. We had friends over for dinner (and playing afterwards), we went to Story Time, we had an adventure at the grocery store (more about that later), we played at the park, we decorated for Halloween, we introduced Joseph even further to the wonderful world that is LEGOS, and we have enjoyed (and are still enjoying) General Conference.

The Weekly Weather: It’s been relatively nice. The weather (especially the last few days) is slowly becoming milder. I think we’re only supposed to be getting into the very low 90s over the next little bit. I’m hoping that it will cool down even more before Halloween because it will just feel more…Halloween-y. 🙂

What Paul’s Been Up To: His first week with the IT department at work has gone well. We’re grateful that the government did not shut down, because that means that he’ll still be working and also still be getting paid. He also is doing well with his college classes. We did go and find him a used computer monitor so that he could have the benefit of two monitors (making it possible for him to have multiple programs open and visible at the same time). We think that it will be a good thing that will make things much easier for him.

What Sarah’s Been Up To: Now more about my grocery store adventure. I had been noticing that the Mazda had been acting a little rough when starting, but I had not had the chance to think about possibilities of why it was doing so. Well, on Wednesday morning, Joseph and I loaded up, got to the store, got our groceries, paid for them, loaded them into the car…and then the car wouldn’t start. To its credit, it gave a few valiant efforts, which led me to believe it was the battery, and not the starter (especially since we just surpassed the three year mark with it and batteries usually last between two and five years). I called Paul at work to, more than anything, see if he could come rescue the groceries (and us, since I always feel better when he’s with me in those situations). I then called the roadside assistance for our insurance (since I was pretty sure that jumps were covered and would not be an additional cost). The guy got there pretty quick (which was good since Joseph and I were already kind of sweltering in the Texas sun) and was able to start it right away, so I had Paul meet me at home. We unloaded the groceries and headed over to Walmart to get a new battery installed. Luckily, they were able to do so quickly (about thirty minutes), so Paul didn’t have to lose too much of his work time (he mainly followed me to Walmart to ensure that the car made it there). After that adventure, the rest of the week was pretty tame.

What Joseph’s Been Up To: He enjoyed playing with friends and going to Story Time, but he really enjoyed putting up Halloween decorations. While we were hanging up lights, he was out with us, wearing a witch’s hat, swinging around a plastic jack o’lantern bucket, hollering at the top of his lungs that Halloween was here. 🙂 He also really enjoyed getting some more LEGOS to play with. The LEGO store was having a deal where you could fill up a cup with an assortment of random LEGOS for a certain amount of money. We’ve been wanting to get him random LEGOS that weren’t part of a certain kit so that he could use his imagination to build stuff (instead of an instruction booklet…especially since those are still a bit out of his comprehension). He has been playing with them for the majority of the weekend. It’s been great! He also enjoyed watching the Mormon Tabernacle Choir during conference today. He noted that “the guys are singing the low notes and the girls are singing the high notes.” Smart cookie. 😉

This Week in Pictures:

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Playing dress-up in old uniforms.
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When on the construction site, one must always be wearing the correct head gear.
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Jason and Saira got me an Amazon gift card for my birthday, so I used it to get a hand held grater/zester (not pictured, obviously) and this cool contraption, a salt cellar. It makes it easier for me to use kosher salt and besides, it’s just plain fun. 🙂
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Joseph dancing to the “days of the week” song at Story Time.
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The spinning part is his favorite.
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Doing the “months of the year” song. It has hand movements that are similar to the Macarena, lol.
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A sign I made for our downstairs powder room (making it easier for guests to find it without needing to ask). I really like how it turned out. 🙂
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Wearing his witch’s hat and some “scary” teeth that Paul got out of a coin machine years ago.
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Momma and Daddy splurged and let him ride one of the coin-operated rides at the mall.
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The fact that this one was interactive kind of made it worth the $1.00 that we spent.
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Playing with his LEGOS.
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Showing off some of his creations.
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Momma and Daddy helped a bit with design, but Joseph showed quite a bit of his imagination…especially with the robot that he made (the one that is mainly blue, in the center of the picture) all on his own.
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Pretty soon, walls were erected, guns were mounted to cars, and a massive battle ensued (if you look closely, Joseph’s Kinex Mario figure joined the fight…Joseph was pretty happy to see that it fit on his LEGOS, which makes sense, since Kinex is part of the LEGO family).
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I tried a new recipe: chocolate chip blondie bars. I basically wanted chocolate chip cookies without having to scoop them out individually, so I decided to Google it and this was the first recipe that was suggested. As for how they turned out…well, let me quote Joseph: “I like it…it’s delicious! Can I have some milk to dip it in?” I doubled the amount of chocolate chips since we like chocolate in our house…but I’m not sure if I added too much. Milk was definitely a necessity, hahaha.
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He made a Play Doh cake and was in the process of pretending to eat it. I’m glad that I had Paul give me one of his old shirts to put on Joseph, since we don’t really have any “messy” clothes for him to wear when playing with stuff like this (mental note to hit up the thrift stores for some junky shirts). It was nice that the shirt was able to go all the way past Joseph’s waist, though.