October, the month that was over in 10 seconds...

In the twinkling of an eye I was standing on the Greenbrook black top waiting for the Halloween parade to start.  How did this happen?  Ten seconds ago I was half a world a way in Bulgaria touring a ginormous cathedral.  

October has been packed with travel, family, and adventure and somehow, it all happened in 10 seconds?  Time is a mystery.  

Let's look back at the month that was 10/2022.  We are going to go backwards on this one, I hope you will understand.  It is how time makes sense to me:

Halloween, maybe one of the reasons time is so wonky this month is because we had our ward Halloween party very early this year.  Usually the party is over Halloween weekend but we are sharing our building with a few congregations and we drew the "super early" party date.  It was a good excuse to get our costumes in order sooner rather than later.  

In a move I never thought I would have to take, I found myself in a Spirit Halloween pop up store a few nights before the party to get Colter's costume.  I couldn't believe it.  The woman who had labored, toiled, sewed, and sworn over homemade costumes for the last 20 years was in a Spirit Halloween store to BUY a costume?  How?  When?  What happened?  

I have bought costumes in the past.  Even instituting an "make and buy every-other-year" policy to save my sanity.  But never, did I ever, consider crossing the threshold of a Spirit Halloween store.  Never.  

Alas, since October was 10 seconds long I didn't even have time to order a Bowzer costume early on Amazon.  Spirit Halloween was my only option.

With heavy heart Adell and I stepped inside to look around.  If the ghouls and goblins didn't eat us a live all of the gruesome, blood soaked clown masks would.  It was terrifying.  

Bowzer costume secured and our offering on the joint alters of Capitalism and Chinese Merchandise paid we went home to lick our DIY wounds.  Colter loved his costume so the pain was worth it.

The church party was a hit.  Adell decided to abandon her store-bought-costume (Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas) in honor of her own creativity in becoming a mushroom.  She also did an amazing job running the face paint booth all by herself at the party.  

I had planned my costume months in advance and was delighted with the results.  I should dress like Iris Apfel every day.

 

Other Halloween happenings included: my Mom dressing as Eve of the North and tempting dudes with her apple (she is on the right).  She went out with friends who "trick or treated" where the treat had to be small bottles of liquor.  My mom doesn't drink but she went along with the fun and donated all of her collection to friends.  

Lorien had THREE Halloween events and dressed in a different costume for each one.  She was Alice in Wonderland, Tinkerbell and Rapunzel.  I don't have a Rapunzel picture but she nailed it.  She nailed all three costumes, cute as ever.  

                 

Adell revamped her Mushroom Costume with a red beret and white spots.  Learning the top she first wore to the church party was too cold she upgraded to a sweatshirt.  She went to school in her shroom gear and loved it.

    

I have stood out on the Greenbrook black top to watch the Halloween parade every year for 10 years.  We missed the last two years because of COVID, they didn't have it in 2020 and in 2021 parents could not come (fine with me...).  Colter was super happy to see my face this year.  He is the last kid I have at elementary school.  I was robbed of Adell's last Halloween.  And next year will be my last year ever at the parade.  Sigh.  Time...it is weird.  

Halloween night was a hit.  Adell disappeared before I could get a picture.  She went out with friends.  Clare disappeared too but I knew where to find her.  Clare and her friends were the Princesses at a house that goes all out for Halloween every year.  This year they were Disney Land with the Princesses, the Pirates of the Caribbean, and other attractions.  Clare and her friends were the delight of every little girl in the neighborhood.  It was darling.  

Colter wanted to go out with his best friend, Rock.  Rock was dressed as Mario and Colter was Bowzer.  I drove him over to meet up with his friend.  He told me he did not want me to tag along.  I was a little hurt.  With the girls gone, it seemed my days of going out on Halloween were over.  I told Colter I wanted to check in with Rock's mom before I left.  He wanted a drop and go...good thing we did things my way.  When we got there Colter discovered it would be a big group of kids going out.  Moreover, some of the kids were not Colter's friends and kind of rowdy.  As discretely as possible he told me he wanted to leave and not trick or treat with this crowd.  We made our exit!

We went over to the neighborhood Clare was princessing at.  Colter made his way all around the blocks and gathered pounds of candy.  I think this will be the last year I accompany any kids on their scavenge.  I soaked up every chilly second of this night.  

Some More October Things...

Adell got her braces on.  Her teeth are pretty straight but there is one adult tooth that came in misaligned and her bottom teeth are making it impossible for the adult top tooth to move into the correct position.  Hopefully, this will be a short job and she will have the braces off before her 14th birthday (November 2023).                  

                 

October has been the month of Adell.  She had her school choir concert (Halloween themed).  It was perfect!  The songs were fun, the selections short, the costumes adorable, and the kazoo playing on point.  

Adell dressed as her Dad for the show (a wrestling coach).

Remember how October is the month of Adell?  She also had her last fall swim meet in October.  She only had one other meet she didn't go to because we were out of town.  This meet was a big deal because she is almost 13 so she swam 50's and 100's and did five events!  It was hard but she did it.

                  

She popped her time in freestyle and finished in the top three in a few events.  However, her best stroke (Breast) came after her 100 yard freestyle and she was super tired.  She didn't do well and was so bummed.  It was a hard day (early, cold, long) but she did it!

October marked my 4th year of working out at Orange Theory Fitness.  I love the community and the work outs.  I am glad the me of four years ago decided to be brave and try a class (right before and during Hell Week!) and the me of 3, 2, and last year stuck with it.  Since I joined Will joined, his brother Dave, and several of his other siblings and their spouses.  I am an Anderson trend setter.

Clare was a high school chaperone for a 5th grade out door ed week.  She said it was hard, the kids were terrible, and it was cold.  But she made friends with the other teens and they made the most of the time.  She wants to volunteer to do it again with other schools in the district.  Bless her heart.  

We have a friend who has a vacation home near Monterey.  He offered us the use of his home the last week of October.  We couldn't use it so he offered it to someone else.  They couldn't go either so it came back to us for the weekend before Halloween.  We have traveled so much this month but looking at a few of the fun things going on Will and I decided it was worth the trip down for a couple of nights.

Adell and Clare wanted to stay home so we just went down with Colter (probably for the best since we only have a five seater car and long drives are hard with all of them in the back).  

Colter was good company and we all had a ton of fun.  The weather was sunny and cool.  We biked the 17 mile drive, ate at restaurants, ordered pizza and had a movie night in.  We enjoyed remembering the last time we were in Monterey for the Renaissance weekend event.  All three of us were glad we went!

Two notable events you don't see every day.  At the end of our bike ride we decided to stop for ice cream.  We could only find one place on our path so we stopped.  It was an anti-establishment-hippy place.  The guy manning the counter only wanted to tell us about how masks were government mind control.  The ice cream was bad...but the experience was memorable!  Colter needed to use the bathroom so we went across the street to the Laundry Mat.  It was seriously decorated for Halloween!  Every inch had something spooky on it.  It was great!  

                   

                 

Wyatt is home and Emma's first plane ride...

While I was in Chicago, Wyatt and Emma flew home to California for a visit.  I got home for their last two days in town.  It was lovely to see them.  Emma is 33 weeks pregnant!

I gave Wyatt his baby box and let him choose out of it any momentos he wanted for Baby Oliver.  He took his infant outfit and a baby book.  My heart oozed out of my body and onto the floor.  This is much sooner than I ever thought I would be doing this but I can tell Wyatt and Emma are excited and I am happy for them.

Thanks to the coaching I got over the weekend in Chicago I was able to notice all the good things about this situation.  I could see how much Emma and Wyatt love each other.  I could see how Emma is learning as much as she can about being a mom from a variety of places.  I could see how kind Wyatt is.  I could see a lot of good my cranky attitude had been blocking before.  This is still hard but there is happy too.

Coaching Masters!

I did so many amazing things this year (2022).  So many things I didn't think I could do...or really...wouldn't give myself permission to do.  And I did them this year.  One big thing was enrolling in a coaching mastery program.  It is different than an advanced certification in coaching it is instead a group lead by a Master Certified Coach (Lindsay Doltzaf) where we focus on mastering our coaching skills.  We discover our unique process of coaching and really fine tune our coaching style.  It has been amazing, hard, and wonderful.

The work started in July the week Will and I decided to scoot over to Paris for his work.  I had my first call in a hotel lobby in Paris, France?!?  So many amazing things, right?  We have met over zoom weekly since.  We have been coached and worked on the steps of discovering, defining, and refining our process. 

This weekend was our in person event.  I love in person events and this was the first one my coach (Lindsay) had ever offered.  So, two days after getting home from London I hopped on a plane to Chicago.

My time was mixed up (stupid time again) and I got in later than I thought I would.  Additionally, traffic was a nightmare and the 13 mile drive from the airport to my hotel took an hour and a half!  I abandon my hotel and asked the uber driver to take me to the restaurant where we were having our welcome dinner instead.

Oh boy, did all of my insecurities flare up then.  The old me would have given up all together.  The old me (of a few years ago) would have made up a story and skipped the dinner while being so sad and disappointed I couldn't go.  The old me would have blamed it on "I never get to do anything I want to do" boogie men.  I stressed about my clothes and lack of makeup.  I stressed about showing up with my roller bag and giant plane bag.  I stressed about not having time to go over everyone's names and to be mentally prepared.  Still, I wanted to go and decided my wanting to go was worth the stress.  

More importantly, I decided I would go and be myself.  I would be funny and honest.  I wouldn't shrink into the background because I was embarrassed about my clothes or mess.  I decided I would show up for myself and not be mean to myself before, during or after.  

So I rolled up to dinner (almost two hours late) and joined the party where food and drinks had already been ordered.  I squished in by my new friends and chatted it up.  We laughed and got to know each other. We shared delicious food.  It was lovely.  I felt lifted and comforted by myself and by these women.  It felt good to be my messy self and not try to be something different.  Did I feel embarrassed sometimes?  Yes.  Was it worth the discomfort?  Yes.  It was an awkward start but still very good!

The next day our work began in earnest.  There are ten women in the group.  Eight live in the USA, one lives in Spain, and one in Bali.  Six of us could come in person to Chicago and five joined via zoom.  Lindsay had told us over the two days we would be working on a big project/goal.  On the first day she confidently told us most of our work would be done by the end of the day.  That did not seem possible but we went for it!

I decided to work on a social media system where I picked a topic for the month, taught a mini class (live) and created supporting content to post.  Other coaches were working on group programs, podcasts, and Facebook groups.  It was inspiring and fun...it was also hard.  Nothing like a big goal to bring up all of your stuff.  We laughed and cried, a lot.  We also worked and got coached a lot.  It was amazing.  I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have been there.  

After the second day we had a closing dinner to celebrate our hard work.  By chance I got situated at the end of the table with Lindsay.  She coached me for almost all of dinner.  It was so helpful and kind.  We talked a lot about family drama and how to approach that differently.  I was so grateful.

I left the weekend with new best friends, a solid social media plan, and having my thoughts well ironed out on quite a few subjects.  It was amazing.  I will be forever grateful I enrolled in this program and got to go to a live event!

Bulgaria, Work Hub-bubb, Wrestling, and London?

                 

We traveled for 19 hours or so and arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria.  Immediately, Will pulled out his computer and got on an all-hands company meeting to announce Complete Solar's merger with the panel manufacturing company, Solaria.  

The next day we walked around Sofia and bit then Will went back to work so he could announce at another all-hands duo company meeting that the new company, Complete Solaria, would be going public in a SPAC.  No big deal.  Big deal, it is actually a huge deal.  Complete Solaria will trade on the New York Stock Exchange some time in early 2023.  Bonkers.

Sofia is the big city but not really charming.  Still kind of industrial.  We toured a cathedral and ate the most delicious carrot cake any of us had ever had.

               

After just one night in Sofia we drove out to Plovdiv, the town where wrestling would happen.  The tournament had been moved to Plovdiv from Sofia a few months before because Bulgaria was having an election and the sports arena was needed for voting.

Plovdiv was beautiful, old and so charming!  For the first few days it was preparing for wrestling and wrestling time.

Will wrestled hard and took home bronze.  He won his first and second matches.  In his third match he tweaked his hip and the injury set him behind.  It was his only loss.  He wrestled in his fourth match for 3rd and won.  The guy he lost to won gold and was also on team USA so we were proud.  Team USA ended up winning the whole tournament!

                 

  

It was a stressful but fun day.  We were all relived and proud of Will.  Andres came along to cheer Will on (and help work on the merger/SPAC) it was nice to have some company in the stands.  We laughed a lot about the stuff we didn't understand in wrestling (most of it).

We explored Old Plovdiv and the downtown the next day.  It was beautiful...I love old things and old places.  Plovdiv delivered for me.  And Google Translate delivered on helping me understand signs and things all around town.

We had to cut our trip to Bulgaria short in favor of a hop over to London.  Some of the investors in Will's new company were in London and wanted to celebrate.  They also set up some more investor meetings for Will.  So we packed our bags and scooted over to England.  My brain had no way to relate to or understand this.  We landed, got to the airport, went to Selfridges to buy nice clothes (we only packed wrestling and casual clothes) and went directly to dinner.  

We ate at a Michelin starred restaurant.  It was delicious.  We sat with fancy people down at the chef's table in the kitchen.  We ate fancy food.  I talked comfortably with people it would have given me a self-concious-tummy-ache to talk with four years ago.  I was proud of me.  I didn't cry about it or beat myself up over it.  It was a miracle of self-development.  

        

 

Between meetings Will and I spent the next days checking out London.  London also over delivers in the old-places-old-things department.  All of the roads are about seven feet long and you have to zig and zag like crazy to get anywhere.  We took an uber a few times before learning how to use the Tube.  The Tube was waaaaay better (and cheaper) even with a train operators strike! 

It was an amazing trip.  I cannot believe all we got to do!  I feel like I am living someone else's life...but it is my life and I love it.

We came home to a hero's welcome.  Lorien had taken really good care of the kids and the house.  Truthfully, the kids took good care of themselves and Lorien let them.  Then it was a team effort led by Lorien to keep the house clean.  All good things.  Lorien made this great poster for Will and a gold medal for me.  It was sweet.  

It was fun to be away and to see new parts of the world...but I missed my kids very much.  Home is a wonderful place too.