Elise's Halloween party

Let the party begin! For the record, Elise was a wizard this year. She was more about the outfit than the character, though, as it involved a sparkly cape, sparkly hat and sparkly boa scarf.


Elise's school has this great Halloween tradition of walking through the historic, part of town past some amazing historic houses, to our district's main office (in a renovated old Victorian house). It's a great walk and the kids have fun showing off their costumes. An added benefit - they get a little tired out to offset all the sugar of Halloween! :)


Because of the insane amount of rain this year, the parade was moved inside. Wasn't quite the same, but fun nonetheless. (This is our last year in that school, none of the other schools in the district do this walk, so I was looking forward to one last time before Elise moves on....sigh.)


Elise did this during the parade. She was very intent on watching each kid. I asked her afterwards what she was doing...she was counting the number of kids in each class. OK...

Next came the class party time. Elise loved the craft and I put my camera away and chatted with the other moms.

It was a fun time. We quickly sped across town and caught the last 5 minutes of Carson's party but I didn't even time to whip out the camera to embarrass him.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

This is what happens when you give 10 year olds a video camera....

Carson and his friend have these new cars they enjoy racing but they wanted to take it to a new level and make a video. I let them borrow my Flip camera and this is the result.

Please note that I'd asked them NOT to run the car through high water as I didn't want to hear any belly-aching if it didn't work afterwards (even though they are billed as being waterproof and running them through creeks seems to be one of the big selling points).

Nice to know they listen, huh?

If you want to give the boys a thrill, please give the video a rating. They are getting a kick out of seeing how many times it's been viewed and how it's been rating (that 1-star rating didn't sit well!)

Here is the direct link (for rating purposes).

Happy Birthday Spencer!!!

My nephew Spencer turns 10 today!!! Happy Birthday, Spencer!


Think word is out that he likes football?


His party was at one of those giant trampoline places.

Carson was pretty pooped afterwards!

My sister and brother-in-law who are doing a fantastic job parenting 4 amazing boys.

Pumpkins!

First, I'm a lousy blogger these days. Lousy at putting up posts and lousy at commenting on the blogs I follow. I'm reading, just not commenting much.

We had company this weekend! Perry's folks, his sister and our niece came to visit. Elise only has a handful of girl cousins (and nothing but boy cousins on my side of the family) so she was pretty excited to have Jennifer to play with all weekend!



Believe it or not, this was a sunny day for us. We've had nothing but grey skies, rain and chilly weather lately. OK, it was downright chilly when we went pumpkin picking but not raining.

I love pumpkins. Love the warty ones.

Love the brightly colored ones.

Love the colorful (and warty!) ones.

Carson was determined to get a huge pumpkin. The rule was he had to lift it by himself into the cart (and I wasn't paying over $20!).

The kids spent lots of time searching for just the perfect pumpkin.

And a better mom would have dressed her child in a cuter outfit for pumpkin picking. (In all fairness, the kids both had soccer games earlier in the day and Elise's team is pink...hence the pink shirt and pink pants. The purple sweatshirt was an afterthought so she wouldn't freeze....she really needed a MUCH warmer outfit, though!)

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And...a better mom would have taken a picture of the pumpkins that were picked out. Sigh...Perhaps that will be another post.