Chloe the Anchor Woman!

Chloe was the star of the show today at

 Junior Achievement's BIZ TOWN

Here she is warming up for her job as TV ANCHOR WOMAN at Cox Communications. The entire 5th grade class of Sonoma Ranch had a field trip today where they ran a city, Biz Town

There were every kind of business (Newspaper, where I helped, Wells Fargo Bank, Insurance Co. shops in the mall, an airline- Chloe and I took a trip to San Fran.- Radio station, print shop, and much more) and all kinds of jobs from Mayor, to mail carriers, even an attorney!

 

Chloe spent most of her time on camera. Each business had a big flat screen TV in it so she was literally everywhere letting us know when the different breaks started, giving us weather reports and interviewing people. She even interviewed me! Best pretend 5 bucks I ever spent.

 

Each business had to take out a business loan to cover their rent, payroll and other expenses and then spent the rest of the day trying to make enough money to break even. The kids each got a pay check right before their first and second break and headed to the bank to make a deposit. They got $2 in cash, $1.50 went into saving and the rest into checking for them to spend.

Chloe had to wait in line at the bank just like a grown up. She is getting help from Jessica Slade, her friend's Mom.

Chloe and anchorman, Brycen Palmer just finished a report. I took this picture of the TV in the newspaper office where I was working. We sold over 28 papers and enough personal ads helping us pay back our loan to the bank and come out $10 ahead!!! Chloe's company didn't quite make it. Where is a government bail-out when you need one?!

Carving Pumpkins

Chloe and our neighbor Josie are carefully working on their Jack-o-lantern.

All done! Apparently he was nearsighted cuz he needed glasses!

Olivia working hard on her guy!

Always being silly!

Olivia's newest buddy!

Crafty Little Ghosts

I got this idea from my crafty friend, Brooke Sampson (you can see hers if you click on Brooke and Dave). When I showed my kids her blog they all just had to make some for our house! 

Just blow up some balloons, tape them to bottles, cut cheese cloth into squares, soak in 1 part water and 1 part glue, wring out, drape over bottles and let dry over night. Pop balloons in morning and viola! Ghosties!

Olivia's and Rustin's are haunting our piano. 

Thanks Jodie Martin for the cute "Happy Halloween" frame!!

Tess's and mine at the piano.

The tall daddy and the baby haunt the kitchen with Chloe's ghost.

A close up of Tess's from the piano. 

Aren't they cute???

Crawford Theater

My brother's wife, Jen Koski, started this tradition in our family of having a 

MOVIE THEATER NIGHT

when cousins come to town, so when the Harringtons visited from New Mexico it was movie time. 

Tess and Rustin were both gone that night so Chloe was the OLDEST and loving it! She was a great helper. May made all the money that we used which was very helpful too!

The kids each got 9 dollars. Five was for the movie and the other four they spent on candy, popcorn and little cans of soda! YUM!

The Harrington and Wilson cousins (Mesa)- Katie, May, Clark, Cammile, Kenny, Olivia, Lucy and Claire getting ready to make their purchases at the candy counter.

Lucy Wilson LOVES MOVIE NIGHT!

BANGS!

Chloe's cousin May was in town and she was in the mood for some long "side-bangs." She even had her mom bring their own haircutting supplies and asked for my help. 

May's turned out so cute that Chloe (who had been wanting bangs for a while) decided to go for it too.

Here she is BEFORE

Here they are AFTER 

Chloe's are harder to see as her cowlick likes to push them to the side and her hair is not as thick as May's.

I couldn't throw the hair away without showing the difference in their hair color. 

Vanilla and Caramel.

"RUSTY, HECK YA!!"

After I wrote my "First Political Blog" I decided to email

Rusty Humphries

He is the AWESOME conservative talk-radio host I mentioned. I invited him to read my blog and see how he had inspired Chloe and I. I also told him I have a son and a husband named Rustin, so we really like the name "Rusty" (that was Russ's name until college) at our house! Well... 

HE VISITED THE BLOG AND WROTE ME BACK! 

Here it is in all it's beauty...

Hi Sarah!!

 

What a fun blog you have!!  Thank you so much for including me.  What city do you and your family live in?  Sounds like you have a wonderful and fun family.

You are truly blessed.  If you would like, I have a couple of extra CD's left from my Modesto trip, (it's a bunch of my favorite "bits and parody songs" through the years).  There's some fun stuff on there, I would be happy to send you guys a copy.

 

What's a good address?

 

All the best,

 

Rusty Humphries

Of course I wrote him back right away with my address and a big thanks for the visit and the email! Wow- What a nice guy! "Rusty- Heck ya!!!"

Don't forget to visit Rustin's very own political blog below 6

Rustin's First Political Blog!

Okay, so today(this is Rustin btw), i was at the skate park with Zack. Then all of a sudden these 2 college ladies walk up and put an Obama and a McCain sign in the ground.With an open can of spray paint!!!!!!!!!! They "hid" a video camera next to them but we could see it. So,(of course this is the skatepark where all the, as Tess would say "deliquents," hang out), everyone is like "spray the Obama sign!!!!!!!!!!!!" 1 kid wrote Osama, another wrote No-Bama, and after everyone finished some of the kids spit lugies at it! Then Zack and I and his other friend covered the Obama sign completely with the spray paint and then beat it up and threw it away! Oh, and one kid drew hearts on the Mcain sign, and I HEART sarah palin. Try and solve my riddle and leave a comment with the answer.  I love to go scootering!!!!!!!

Ahhh, politics!

Life has been a little different lately with the very important presidential election coming up and Prop. 102, which I have been very involved in. It has led to some interesting 

events, conversations and thoughts. 

Not even 24 hours had passed after I put up my Yes on 102 sign in my yard before I got a message from the opposition (in the form of a sidewalk-chalk-wielding teenager).  It reads...

"Gay marriage should stay!

They are human just like you! 

Lesbians and Gays Rock!"

First- gay marriage can't stay because it's not here- yet.

Second- of course they are human but that doesn't mean they have a "right" to call what they do "marriage."

Third- how do you define "Rock?"

I quickly watered the street thus destroying the oh-so clever message and then called the guilty party and told her very nicely that if she wants to put signs about propositions on her yard or write on the street in front of her house she is welcome to. But leave mine alone, please!

The best NO response I have heard from the phone bank about Prop. 102 was a man who told my friend, 

"I am for gay marriage, I think they should be miserable like the rest of us!"

Seriously, I am not kidding! The most convincing argument I've heard!

Rustin's non-white friend said to him at school today that Rustin was a racist because he said he didn't like Obama. 

To which Rustin (13) replied, then you must be a racist against white people because you don't like McCain. The boy just walked away.

Chloe (10) at dinner when we were arguing about which is better, Hamburgers or hot dogs, 

"I bet John McCain likes hamburgers!"

Olivia (8) responded out of the blue, 

"I bet Sarah Palin likes pomegranates!"

While listening to talk radio on the way home from gymnastics, Chloe asked me to turn the volume up so she could hear a recording of Joe Biden's comments about "when Obama gets elected there will be an international crisis to test him and it probably won't be apparent at first that he made the right decision." And then when we got home she wanted to stay in the driveway with the car running because she wanted to hear what 

Rusty Humphries 

(awesome conservative radio talk show host)

was saying about it and hear an interview with 

Joe the Plumber 

(who is a celebrity in our house).

On the way home from the eye doctor (I'll post on that later) Rustin and I heard a talk radio guy say something was "underwhelming" and Rustin asked me what it meant.  I said it was the opposite of "overwhelming" to which he replied, 

"I guess that means 'whelming' is just average then." 

Very funny Rustin.

Then he asked "Mom, are you going to go home and blog that?" Is he a mind reader or something? Then he repeated our whole conversation pretending he was me blogging it. It sounded exactly like what you just read!

When I was canning about 50 pounds of food storage this morning (just in case Obama wins the election)and I was happily listening to Rush Limbaugh - and contemplating. I wondered...

How can I make Russ' medical practice sooo BIG that the government can't afford to let it fail?'

I was trying to picture life with Obama as president, a filibuster-proof amount of democrats in congress, the "fairness doctrine" voted into law (basically the end of talk-radio, the only place conservatives can get the TRUTH now that NBC, CNN, The New York Times, etc. have lost all journalistic integrity in their attempt to get Obama elected) and I was thinking about how "lucky" Obama was that there was a huge financial meltdown just a month before the election (the current administration's party ALWAYS takes a hit for that no matter who is at fault) and for a half a second I thought, wouldn't it be nice if we had an international incident that got people really thinking about who would make them SAFE! And then I realized what I was really saying (in my head) and felt really bad for wishing bad things on my country even to save it from something worse, like an Obama presidency. But that is how much it freaks me out! 

Heaven please help us (and me)!

Fall Break

MONDAY= EARLY VOTING DAY

Fall break started with me voting for Sarah Palin... Oops, I  mean John McCain for president and YES on Prop. 102!! Signed, sealed and delivered.

(NO on 101, 200, 201 and 300 and YES on the rest- if you were wondering). 

 

TUESDAY= LUNCH LADIES

Then on Tuesday afternoon Jennie Blaser decided to get together with some girlfriends to see a movie and go to lunch. The funny thing was that the movie wasn't playing when we thought it was so we went and played Pictionary and Taboo at my parent's house instead. It ended up being TONS OF FUN and way better than any movie, even if it was made by Mormons! 

 We headed over to Wildflower Cafe for a delicious lunch with even more friends! 

(Janae, Ingra, Jennie, Liz, Susan, Becky and Mandy) 

I love the ladies in our ward!!! 

THURSDAY= OUR PRETEND CAMPING TRIP

On Thursday we really wanted to go camping but weren't able to because of football conflicts so we pretended we were camping and set up our pop-up trailer next to our house! 

It was actually really fun. I built a fire and we cooked hot dogs for dinner. 

We went in the trailer and played lots of fun games while Rustin and Russ were at football. Our favorites were the game where you each draw 1/4th of a body and then fold it over so the next person can't see what you drew but has to add onto it. You end up with some pretty funny creatures! 

"Jack-o-lady with weird arms and bow legs"

Then we wrote stories about them in the same way. Each person writes a few sentences and then folds it over and passes it on and the story gets longer and sillier as you go! It's a great family night game by the way. After laughing our heads off at our creations and creative writing we took a small break and watched The Office and then headed out to make S'mores when the boys got home. Yummy! We kinda felt like we were camping, we smelled like smoke and everything! That night we all spent the night in the trailer (except the teenagers, Tess and Rustin).

FRIDAY= DESERT RATS

The next morning we got up and headed out to the desert to do some dirtbiking! 

Rustin on the Martin's Quad

It has been a while since we have gone but it felt great to be out there cruising through the cactus forests. 

Olivia brought her friend, Kaitlyn 

Josie came with Chloe 

We went with our family of friends, the Martins! 

Randy, Riley, Rustin and Cooper tossing the football

We had a great time playing football and cards and killing wasps when we weren't riding. 

When we got home it was still hot and we were exhausted and sweaty so we decided to hop in the pool. It was cold enough to be REALLY refreshing! 

I love swimming in October! It makes the whole Arizona desert thing worthwhile. I feel like I've triumphed over the elements or something. Anyway, it was a perfect combination of desert fun and poolside relaxing to make fall break fun.  

Cooper warming up after swimming with us

SATURDAY= FOOTBALL (OF COURSE!)

Saturday Rustin's team had another football game. Unfortunately we lost to the Outlaws. They didn't have a very good record and we beat them bad last year which caused both coaches and players to be unprepared for a team that REALLY wanted to beat us. 

Rustin on a blitz taking down #75 (who, I swear is the biggest guy on both teams)

The Outlaws scored first and got their two extra points for the kick. We scored shortly after but missed our kick (our kicker was on vacation) and that was enough for them to win. We got down to the 8 yard line in the last 5 minutes of the game but were unable to make it in. 

Picture me on the sidelines screaming "GET HIM RUSTIN!"

Rustin made some AMAZING tackles though. The kind you hear clearer than you see. He just nailed this huge running back, Smack! I was happy about how well he played but what more can you do? There's always next week.