I'm obsolete.

After being in charge of church activities for my ward for nearly two years, I was released from my responsibilities today.  I have mixed feelings about this. 

The LDS church will no longer have ward activity committees.  Instead, the ward council will be in charge of any activities that the ward chooses to host.  In our ward, it means that things like the Christmas dinner would be assigned to the Relief Society and the summer barbecue might be the responsibility of the Elder's Quorum.  Something like that.  

We had our final official ward activity last night.  We had a game night for the grownups, and we had four couples show up.  Admittedly, it was kind of a bad night scheduling-wise because there were so many other things going on this weekend.  And we aren't supposed to use the amount of people at any activity to gauge its effectiveness.  But I was just as glad nobody really cared what came out of the activity because I was being released regardless.  Those of us that came had a lot of fun, anyway.

In spite of being officially released, I haven't been able to completely get out of helping with the upcoming ward Christmas party, in spite of trying my best to not take any assignments for that night.  It sounds like I'm still going to be in charge of the dinner.  Argh.  That will be a bad night for me, especially since Wayne will not be there to help me and my kids will probably be crazy.  And I can't really expect anyone from my committee to help out, unless they are just being especially nice, since they have all been released as well.

It's also unusual to have my church calling swept out from under me because people usually get a new calling at church first, and that necessitates being released from the previous one.  It's weird to know that I'm done with my current one, and I'm just waiting for my next assignment from the bishopric.  I'm sure I won't be waiting long, though. 

Happy Birthday, Dear Daniel!

Daniel turned 9 years old!  And we had a pirate party for him!

Bark Chip (that's the dog) had a pirate hat for the party.

The treasure chest of pirate loot.

No, I didn't attempt to make a pirate cake.  We just bought one.

Daniel had a great party with some of his friends.  We went to Pirate Island!  We had never been there before, and it was an interesting place.  The decor was fabulous.  The arcade was about the same as Chuck E Cheese or any other arcade of that sort, except I think almost all of the games actually worked.  Also, the kids there were a little older than the crowd you find at Chuck E Cheese.  There were even some teenagers there on a group date.  

We did not order one of their party packages with the pizza and everything.  First, Daniel is generally wary of pizza because he doesn't like melted cheese.  Second, some of the kids at school told him the pizza there was gross.  So, we didn't even try that.  We did order ice cream and drinks, only to be told a few minutes later that they were out of ice cream.  We brought our own cake, so we had that covered.  I would say that the restaurant portion of the venue really seems to be more of an afterthought than anything else. Although, the restaurant was intended to be more important than the arcade.  Maybe we'll have to go back and try the food another time because they do have stuff besides pizza there.

We gave each of the kids about 30 tokens.  Some of them burned through those in less than a half hour, and others, including Benjamin, were so cautious in their spending that the other boys insisted on "helping' them use up their tokens so we could go have cake.

This was almost certainly Daniel's best birthday ever.  Usually, birthdays are kind of hard for him.  He doesn't love having a crowd of people around.  But this year, everything went great.  Oh, and his final birthday wish was to stay awake until his "birth minute."  Bedtime is generally about 8, but considering it was the weekend, and it was daylight savings, meaning they could get a little extra sleep in the morning, we let the boys stay up.  Happy birthday, my sweet, wonderful oldest son!  And thank you to everyone who helped him celebrate his birthday!

Happy Halloween

I can't believe that Halloween has come and gone!  Here's some of the stuff we did to celebrate.  We carved pumpkins:
 

 We ate "mummy dogs" and caramel apple slices for dinner.  Benjamin looked a little scared of his, but maybe that's appropriate.

And we took the kids trick-or-treating at Wayne's office and in the neighborhood:

And now it's November!  My dad always says that by the time Halloween comes, the year is over.  Like, if you blink, you will miss Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We love November at our house.  We get to celebrate Daniel and Wayne's birthdays.  And it's National Adoption Month.  So watch for more posts on adoption!