Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Greenbluff!

Well, we had another whirlwind of a weekend.


On Friday Camden had a Halloween party at his friend Gavin's house. So he got to try out his Halloween Costume, he had a great time! Lauren had a birthday party at a friends house. She was supposed to dress in a formal and when she got to the house, was greeted by a guy in a Tux. It ended up being a murder mystery. She had a great time! And Josh and the boys went to a church Chili cookoff. I made Moose Chili, and won best overall chili! And I was working...So Jarett accepted the award. (Thanks for the moose meat, mom and dad!)


On Saturday, I worked in the morning (until 1pm) Zachary had to be up early to clean the church with his group of boys. Lauren had a Volleyball tourny from 9am-12n. When I got home at 1pm, we headed up to Greenbluff! It is our fall tradition. It was great fun! We started out by going through the corn maze. This corn Maze has a castle in the middle of it. So the first task is to get to the Castle. This part we split up, girls against boys. Ok so the girls are waay outnumbered in our family, but we still beat them! The whole time Josh and boys are teasing us and making lots of noise about how they are ahead...but it only takes one dead end apparently...(hehe) Somehow, Camden ended up with us, so that put him on the winning team as well! Once we got to the castle, we went up to the 3rd floor landing and helped our boys find the way, by yelling directions to them. So the way out, the boys team took off, while we weren't looking...and yes they beat us out of the maze... Then we went and picked out pumpkins and waited in a really really long line. We ended our short trip with kettle corn to snack on, during the drive home. We had to hurry home, because at 5pm Zack was babysitting here at our house, at 6pm Jarett had a birthday party to be at, and at 8pm Lauren left for a Stake Dance, in a Jailbird outfit. We told her she should be a prisoner of love!


On Sunday, we got up early and got everything ironed, since it was the spotlight for more Hardy's. It our the childrens Primary program at church. This is when all the children, ages 3-11 sit up on the stage and teach us. They say parts and sing songs, it's usually pretty cute, because it never goes as planned. When I was Primary President, I had to pull off 2 of these (one a year) and it is stressful and exhausting! So Camden and Jarett both had parts to say, but then Jarett and Josh both sang solos. It was a song with a child part (Jarett) and a parent part (Josh). They both did really well. Josh was stressed, but Jarett wasn't worried a bit!


We are back to the routine of things, during the week. Josh starts his new job on Monday. It's tough for him, because all the other people that were hired, are in training this week. They brought someone here from Seattle to do the training for all the group, but Josh's current positon will not release him until Nov 1st. So he is the only one missing out on this training. He has been doing some homework in the evenings, trying to do as much out of the class as he can, but everyone keeps coming by and telling him what a great training he his missing out on. His boss told him, she might release him on Thursday, if he keeps up the good work. Then he could get in 2 of 5 days.


For those of you that hadn't heard, Josh is still with Safeco, but moving from a Casulty Adjuster position (automobile, with injury mostly when we are at fault) to Home Adjuster (deals with our insured, rather than people that are not with Safeco, and doesn't have to deal with Attorneys (no offense Dad)) People say Home is the place to be. It is a great job, because for the most part, you are the good guy and just making sure all the repairs the Insured homes go as planned. I'm sure we'll learn more about it as time goes on. Also, Safeco was purchased by Liberty Mutual. So we are now going to be going through lots of changes. We will be keeping our Safeco name, in fact, all of the Liberty Mutual customers in personal lines will now be changed to Safeco. But they will be realigning our pay, and we are changing to their benefits, which are not as good as Safeco's. All of that will happen on January 1st. At his point, it sounds as though our jobs are secure, but who really knows! Liberty Mutual is still re evaluating everything to determine where they will be cutting back and what they want to keep.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

First Timer

Ok, I'm giving this a try!

This week has been hectic! We have Jarett's birthday on Wednesday! He is now 10! He went to school, and I made the traditional birthday school treat of Icecream cone cupcakes. Then when he came home Jarett was off the Cub Scouts. While he was gone to cub scouts, we opened up one of the gifts we got. We bought a Gamecube on Ebay. It came with 7 games and 2 controllers. We hadn't yet opened it and none of the kids knew about it. So while Jarett was gone, we opened up the gamecube and hooked it up. When Jarett came home from Cub Scouts we gave him a game he wanted all wrapped up. When he opened it, he looked at it for a minute. He said "I can't play this!" We looked at him and asked "Why?" he said "It's for GAMECUBE!". We apologized and told him we would try to make it up to him. Then after a few minutes, we said "maybe you should try playing it on the GAMECUBE then!" All was happy after that!

Then we took everyone out to dinner. After dinner we made a trip by the used game store to pick up a couple more controllers and another new game, with Jarett's birthday money. Then home to play the whole rest of the night.

Then on Friday night Josh and I DJ'ed a wedding reception. That was fun and different. We are the DJ's for church dances for kids ages 14-18. This group had different needs that what the youth want. So we played lots of ABBA, Michael Jackson, and line dances, such as Cotton Eye Joe, chicken dance, Popcorn, Macarena, Electric Slide, and what is a wedding reception without the bunny hop and hokey pokey?

On Saturday, the kids had a temple trip with the church planned for 7am, then after that, Zack came home, Lauren went to Volleyball until 12:30p, I got home at 1:30p from work. Lauren had a haircut appt, during which time I was running around for last minute party stuff. Then the party started at 4pm.

This year Jarett's birthday party was a Star Wars party. So Lauren's hairdresser did her hair up like Princess Leah. (I'll attempt to attach photos). Zack was a dark Knight from the Dark side. All the games we played were to test the force within them. We did:
Jedi Saber training, keep a balloon up with your light saber
Light Saber Match, Pin the light saber on the Jedi
Darth Zack attack, They have to run past Zack to get parts for the broken starship, without getting tagged.
Jedis, Robots, and Stormtroopers, like rocks paper scissors, only large scale!
Shooting practice-using Nerf guns had to shoot bad guys off the table
Jedi Shuffle-10 little boys dancing...picture that!
Yoda Says- ever heard of Simon Says?
Vader Slayer-Darth Vader on a pinata...he went down!

For food we had:
Pizza the HUT
Yoda Soda
and Wookie Coookie's

It was a good party, There were a couple little boys we hadn't met before, and I don't know that we will ever have them back again, but it was fun!

Whew! So we made it through the last couple days. Onto a new week. Only a few things on the calendar, so I'm looking forward to it being a little bit slower! We need a day off!