Nauvoo and the stinky cheese van

Cousins at the pumpkin patch! Trent & Sandy have five children, we have our five, and cousin
Lukas (front row right) is Samantha's son.

Watching the Nauvoo Halloween Parade. It lasted exactly five minutes!

The Willard Richards Inn. This is the original home of the apostle, and the location where Joseph and Hyrum's bodies were cleaned and prepared after their deaths. It was also the

place where the twelve held meetings. The original wine cellar in the basement (build after

the Saints left Nauvoo) has an original piece of the sunstone from the Nauvoo temple.

This is an exciting and beautiful temple to visit. It is exciting because it was built to exactness

like the original. It towers over the small town of Nauvoo and is a beacon over the Mississippi river.

This past weekend we drove 15 hours each way for a 24 hour family reunion in Nauvoo! Since the last reunion ended up with a family member in prison, we had low expectations coming into it. Our kids crammed into the van and I realized that Garrett is a very large person with long legs and huge feet that like to reach up from the back seat and tickle the people in the front seat!

We were saved by the laptop with movies. We drove through five states to get to Illinois. Becca said "Are we in Illannoyed yet?" Yep - that about summed it up for all of us! Madison drove for a while while Rhett yelled up corrections on her driving from the far back seat until Madison was in tears, and I was yelling at Rhett. On the way home, everyone had gas as a result of the chili cookoff we had eaten the day before. At first it was "Okay...that was just nasty...who did that.... WHO was that?... somebody better own up...." then after several hours, when a "fluff" would go off, we opened the windows in unison and quietly waited for the chilly wind to fumigate the van, not saying a word.

On a higher plane of thought, the Willard Richard's Inn, that Rhett's brother Trent owned until a few weeks ago, was beautiful, and we had the entire Inn rented to our family for the weekend. We could come and go as we wanted, and the families with children stayed at a nearby home that allowed children. Rhett's three sisters, two of his brothers, his mother, dad and his dad's wife Betty stayed at the Inn. It was really good to sit and talk, to tour beautiful Nauvoo, and to take the cousins to the pumpkin patch. I can't think of anyplace in the United States where you can learn so much about life in the 1840s where kind senior missionaries bring that era and it's history to life. Our kids were really thrilled with the whole "hands-on pioneer experience. Rhett and his mother went through the temple together, and she enjoyed having some time with him before his deployment. I joked with Rhett's sisters from California, who came dressed to the nines in their winter designer clothes, shoes, and sunglasses. They looked beautiful, but were WAY overdressed for Nauvoo. I think that no matter how fragmented a family becomes, in this case because of divorce, there is still so much love and common ground to be found.

Homecoming & Field Hockey

The field hockey team is finally playing their best game and won their regional final last night
5 - 0! Tomorrow night they play at home, and if they win, they will go to state next week! Madison was able to play in each game, and did really well. This team has had a rough year meshing and getting along with the coach, but things hopefully will turn around for them!

Madison and Patrick spent a lot of time discussing what color green they were both going to wear so they would match. I think they looked really nice! The couples went to Red Lobster

and said that dinner was much more fun than then the dance. I guess the music was pretty lame, the lights were on, and teachers moved around the dance floor cutting off wrist bands if anyone danced with too much whatever! Madison's favorite teacher kept making threatning scissor gestures to various couples, and had everyone laughing. Mika and Madison have best friends since we moved here five years ago!

Mika and Madison doing the foot pop

Patrick looked at one camera that the others were facing the other on a few of the pictures. Pretty cute!

Okay, enough already!

Happy Birthday Dad!

One of the fun things that dad does when he comes to see us is play a concert! We love it! Noboday can play the piano like dad. Dad - The Virginia Family loves you and wishes you
a very happy "40th" birthday. We are VERY excited to see you on Thanksgiving, and hear
more tinkling of the ivories. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Rhett's Farewell Lunch

Though Rhett's not leaving for a few weeks, his farewell lunch was held today. Cecily and I drove up! The office set up a delicious potluck Thanksgiving buffet in our honor. Cecily was well

behaved and was the center of attention - except for Rhett. Rhett showed us around his office - really in need of a decorator.

Dr. Godfrey honored Rhett with a plaque and we got some gifts. While Rhett was thanking everyone and giving a speech, I began to cry, then Rhett cried. Finally I was able to turn off the faucet when someone told a joke to lighten the mood - thank you!

The lunch was packed, and people came up to me afterwards to tell me they were here if I needed anything at all. They also had the most wonderful things to say about Rhett as a person and as a worker. In a fairly short time, he was able to touch a lot of lives! Rhett craves peanut M&M's and Carmelita, and older woman across the way give him a huge bag of M&M's "for the journey". She said the carpet is worn between her office and Rhett where he came to visit her and get M&M's. I was really glad to be there to "feel the love" in the office, and to meet Rhett's coworkers and friends. We'll be using this blog a lot more now that Rhett is leaving, and I think he'll get one too.

I'm thinking about this phase we are in life right now - how much fun it is, and that maybe we're a little older than we feel. Rhett, Cecily, and I went to the Pentagon yesterday for a briefing called "Hearts Apart", where we met with a counselor who helps the deployed military member and the spouse during the time apart. He was a kind, humorous man with a bald head (Do we know any other counselors like this?) . He asked me questions that I hadn't thought about before, and we went through a check list of things Rhett and I need to talk about and do before he leaves. We've been doing some preparation, but obviously not near enough. Gary (the counselor) will call/e-mail once a month to check on me, and let me know about all of the services avaiable through the military - like 30 minutes a week in free phone calls, free oil changes on base, free childcare, etc. He said "Do you know where your husband wants to be buried in case something happens to him? Have you updated your wills? Do you have all your husband's computer passwords? Do you know how to winterize your home? Do you know where all the shut-off valves are in your home? Who does the finanaces? Are you going to have separate accounts during your separation? Do you have power of attorney?" These questions were over the two hour period we talked. He offered lots of help and suggestions. So now all of a sudden, I have been snapped out of "la la" land and into the land of "Oh my gosh - we have like three weeks! Teach me everything you know!" I brought home a stack of books about ideas to keep your love alive during deployments and ways to help the kids. I laughed out loud during the book of ideas - Like "Eat together over the phone once a week... Watch the clouds together and talk about what you are seeing... decide you are going to meet in your dreams tonight - whether on the beach, wherever... Wear the same outfit on the sameday .Make a color copy of your face for your husband's pillow case." I thnk a Mormon wrote it - the same one who wrote the book about how to ask for /answer dates at BYU. Anyway, there were some good ideas too - do you have any?
I'm also totally in teen land. I have become one of those mothers who shop at Costco and Sams, who buys six gallons of milk for the fridge in the garage and hopes it will last the week, who packs two of everything in my son's lunch - and he's still hungry. I hear a lot "I hate my life" or
"I'm so tired". I also hear a lot of funny stories. Madison made some new friends in her drama class - one a large white rapper named "Stack Money". He likes Madison, so he wrote a rap about her, and ricknamed her "baby M". Now a group of black rappers see her in the hall and say "Yo Baby M, what's up with our boy Stack Money? You gonna give him your number or what? " She is not interested, which I'm happy about, but every night around the dinner table we hear about different people, and Becca calmly says, "So... how is Stack Money today?"
Rhett and I joke, so if things don't work out with Patrick, Stack Money is always around.
On the totally opposite side of "teen land" are the "three littles" . I need to remember that it's all new to Cecily, who loves to go to the library, watch Caillou, and have mom enjoy these activities as if it were my first time seeing them too! It is all mostly humorous.
I took a break from cleaning to write this, and I am also going through a phase about needing to listen to country music while I'm cleaning. Something about being a down home girl from a small country town wants me to scrub the bathrub harder, I guess. I just think I'm really wierd. I'll send more pictures of France soon!