An Apology

I spent a fair amount of time writing out a post about living with Brother Brown last night. And then I read it. And read it again. After talking with Mat, we both came to the realization that living with Brother Brown won't be funny for a few more years--possibly twenty or more. My best line was something like "Brother Brown breathes like Darth Vader having hysterics." Which is completely true! So we'll leave it at a necessary, though frustrating, five months of our life that is best not mentioned.

The same can be said of managing apartments. The eighteen months we spent there were spent in battling the owner's unreasonable expectations, evicting people, collecting late rent, and getting to know the maintenance guys better than the residents. We felt isolated from the rest of the ward and rather lonely. But it was what we needed at the time while we worked on getting Mat into school. So there you go. Many thanks go to Anna, our friend who talked the manager of our current apartments into letting us in. We miss you! Lucky woman lives in a house now.

So I'll leave you with a picture of Annika's latest escapade involving a dry erase marker and my favorite quote:

Afton-isms

Here's a vignette from a couple of weeks ago.

SCENE: Our kitchen/office. AFTON is spinning around and bouncing off the fridge, laughing every time she does so. We watch and laugh.

AFTON: Will you give me maggot (her word for magnet)?
KARIE: No.
AFTON: Pleeeeeeeeeeease?
MAT: Why?
AFTON (with great confidence): Because you want to!


That's all for today. Tune in next time for "Memories of Brother Brown"--a brief recap of the five months we spent living with an elderly man in our ward. He was . . . unique.

Halloween!

We did it! We survived Halloween! Here are the few pictures we took:

The girls love being fairies for Halloween. I think they love the wings. Anyway, Annika is Merryweather--thus the all-blue outfit. Afton is, well, Afton.

The Afton-ness really comes out here. I wish I'd gotten some photos in the daytime, like my friend Anna did, but I forgot the camera and I had to wait for Mat to bring it and the sun set pretty quickly and yeah.

Here is the trunk that I lovingly labored over this month. I even imported a cobweb artisan! Ok, maybe I handed the bag of cobweb to Mat and said something like: "Now it's your turn!" He was on hand to tie secure knots, figure out my rope problem, and successfully hang the pumpkin paper lanterns. Here's to having handy husbands!

We skipped dinner at the activity because we ate beforehand--the kids hate chili--so there was a lot of waiting around while Mom decorated the trunk, but the girls were fairly well-behaved. Afton made the Trunk-or-Treat circuit numerous times, but Annika got the most joy out of handing out the candy. She thought it was a blast!