Dad of the Year Goes to...Billy Ball!

I'm am thankful for so many things in my life. I have a lot to be grateful for. As I sit here typing this I am especially grateful for the man I married 22 years ago. He is unselfish, smart, caring, loving, unselfish, helpful, kind, and, did I mention that he's unselfish? Right now, at 8:50 in the PM, he is in the Salt Lake Airport waiting for a 7 AM flight back to Boise. Why is he in the Salt Lake Airport without any personal necessities besides his coat, wallet, phone, and winter gloves you might ask. Well, let me tell you. It's because he's such a great dad.

We haven't seen such yucky weather conditions around here at Thanksgiving in a loooong time. And we definitely haven't had a college student who has to drive home for Thanksgiving in the yucky muck either. Well, when you put nasty Old Man Winter, and mix him with 2 college young ladies driving right in the middle of his masterpiece of a blizzard, you get two nervous parents who don't want their daughter to drive back to college with any flakes falling from the sky.

Here's where Bill gets nominated for father of the year in my eyes: He called me on the phone Friday morning and told me to book a one way flight for him on Sunday evening. He was going to drive those girls back to school himself and fly home Sunday night. The plan fell into place. The car was readied with new windshield wipers, washer fluid, a niiiiice new scraper, a shovel, an emergency kit, and a tank full of gas. All ready for the treacherous trip to Happy Valley. Well, that cranky Old Man Winter took his wrath out on the stretch of I-84 from Tremonton to Burley and the road gods decided to close the road. Add on another hour and a half, mix it with icy conditions, stupid cold weather drivers, an accident, and more snow falling, and you get a dad who misses his flight back to his warm house, the rest of his family, Sunday dinner, a football game playing on the big screen tv, and, best of all, his nice warm bed complete with all of his pillows.

Yep, as I write this, the Father of the Year is trying to make himself cozy on an airport chair with his coat as a pillow, and some yucky fast food for dinner. Hopefully there is a nice Southwest employee who will loan him a travel pillow so he can rest his head until he gets the boarding call tomorrow morning at 7.

Your trophy will be waiting for you when you get home.

Love, your other half who is not nearly as unselfish as you are.

Halloweird This Year

Oh, Halloween, 2010. Where did you go?

Was it because I had the world's worse head cold and laryngitis last week that I didn't even know you came and went? Was it because most of my kids weren't too concerned with dressing up and trick or treating this year? Was it because you fell on a Sunday that I really didn't pay too much attention to you? Maybe it's because only one of my children expressed interest in buying and carving a pumpkin? Sorry, Halloween, but you seem to have lost your allure in our household. Gone are the days of planning, sewing, driving around town, hot gluing, and sequining those costumes of my children's childhood. This year we resorted to this:

It's called: "dump out the Halloween boxes on the kitchen table to see if there is anything we can throw together since we've been invited to a party on Halloween and even though no one else is going to dress up we need to be different and show up in costume." Whew.

Here's what we threw together for our party at the Hruby's:

Yes, I actually did wear those overalls in the 90s. Good thing I kept them for future use as a farmer's daughter costume. Yeah, wore the shirt too - hey, it's from Eddie Bauer!

Yep, Lindsay actually wore that witch's dress when she was 7 or 8 years old. Oh, the tights, too.

Did you recognize our youngest basketball playing child? Thank goodness. Hard to tell what look he was going for - all I know is that I refused to spray paint his hair neon pink one more time. Sorry, Pate, pink hair is NOT a costume to your mother.

Me. As a first grader. Or Minnie Mouse. Or a crazy runner. Or a stressed out, laryngitis stricken, report cards on the brain first grade teacher. Whatever you want me to be, I'm there. It was a ROUGH week! Blech.

Thanks to my ingenious brother, we threw this beauty together for a hilarious fit of laughter from everyone in attendance! Yeah, betcha didn't know that Bill got his Secondary Ed degree from BSU with an emphasis on Physical Education did ya? It's his inner gym teacher coming out in FULL FORCE!

Of course we're missing one child who actually did have a ball celebrating "Halloweek" down in zoobieland. She was a Blackberry and an Indian (From India). I was so impressed with her Halloween skills. Sorry, Lyss, you would have been either extremely disgusted with the rest of your family or highly impressed with our recycling abilities! (And try as I might, I could not download any pictures of you from your FB album in costume onto this post. Sorry, honey.)