Happy Halloween!

What a great day!  It was a really busy day.  Everyone had school -- including A.  She had preschool then we invited her preschool friends over for a little lunch and party.   We had a nice little lunch then had some fun crafty things planned.  However, the kids were having so much fun playing we let the kids play while we just had grown up talk upstairs.

Snow White, Ladybug Princess, Watermelon, and Scary Lion are preschool friends.  Almost a pirate and Transformer guy are older siblings who came along for the fun.  Those four girls are the sweetest group of 3 year old girls ever!  It is so fun to have them for preschool.

I forgot to tell you about the Trunk 'r Treat at K's school.  We TrT-ed our little hearts our then went in the gym for a dance.  Two of three kids felt the music was a little loud but they did eventually warm up to the idea and dance.  One crazy dinosaur thought it was great.  Here he is shaking his spikes to the Chicken Dance:

 He also went up front to demonstrate the Macarena for everyone.  He was awesome and I'm so proud of him for having the confidence to do that!

Of course last night was the main event!  It was fun taking the kids around the neighborhood and visiting our neighbors.  We finished off at Roy's secretary's house.  She is always so good to the kids on Halloween -- preparing special treat bags for them.  This year was no exception even though she just got back from a free trip to Hawaii.  WHAT?!  I know.  The kids Love LindaGill.  And they call her LindaGill all one word, never just Linda.  Funny.  

It was a good time but I tell you what, with all the extra activities leading up to Halloween it is starting to feel like a season rather than a holiday!

Boo Bash

My awesome friend, Heather, invited the kids and I to join her at the "Boo Bash".  It's where the kids can dress up and visit businesses along main street in a nearby town.  It sounded fun so we headed out to check it out.  It was cuh-razy.  I'm glad we went but it seems likely that we won't go again.  Heather was talking to one of the people giving away candy who said they plan for between 2,000-2,500 trick-or-treaters.  In a 2 hour window!  Still it was pretty fun to see all the costumes and the kids enjoyed spending time with their friends.

Dinosaur

"Scary Lion"

"Aargh! Me Hardy!"

Harvest Party

It's that time again where wards think to have an activity revolving around chili and candy.  Good times.  I took the kids while Roy went to get candy for the Trunk'RTreat because that's the kind of advanced planning that we've come to expect around here.  Fortunately he got there in time to have some of Drew's 5 alarm chili with ghost peppers.  Hot stuff.  I played it safe and ate the chili brought.  The kids played it even safer.  K chowed down on tomatoes.  I have no idea what D ate and A ate whatever was placed in front of her.  It was a lot like eating at home!
After eating the youth took the kids into another room to decorate pumpkins (we took small pumpkins for them to color and put stickers on.  No knives with the young men and primary kids.  Not a good plan.) and have their faces painted.  The adults were supposed to check out the 72 hour kit ideas in the back of the gym and get ready for the TRT.  Mostly though we stood around talking until the kids started coming back in -- about 45 seconds after they left (I'm pretty sure that's accurate).
Since it was raining (Inconceivable!) Roy stood in the church hallway to hand out candy and I herded the cats kids around the rooms to get their free candy.  It was a chaotic scene with kids coming away with way more candy than they should.  All in all, a pretty standard ward harvest party.

Plumbing

Today I was a plumber.  See, last night I put cucumber peels in the garbage disposal.  This was apparently more than it could take.  It isn't the toughest kid on the block.  Last night I fell asleep lulling myself into a false sense of security, "I'm sure the dishwasher won't make the sink overflow.  Water can drain, it is just really slow but surely.... besides, even if it fills to the top it will just spill over into the other side of the sink that isn't plugged.  Yeah, that's right.  It'll be fine."  Yeah.  Not fine.  But not as bad as it could have been either.  Just had water over the counter and the rug was half soaked.  Easy-peasy.
So after A and I got back from our morning errands I started taking the pipes apart under the sink.  Not my first time doing this (apparently tough-guy can't handle potato peels or egg shells either).  Somehow this time I managed to break a pipe though.  I loaded A back up into the van and headed to the nearby plumbing store, took a number and tried to figure out what part I needed while waiting for my turn to be helped.  After we got the right pipe, A and I headed back home to complete the job that shouldn't be this much trouble.
Pipe's too long.  It seems they only carry this pipe in one size and figure people can trim them down to fit.  Really, that's reasonable but just one more hurdle in this simple job.  Well, I plugged in the jigsaw (harder than it sounds in my garage) and fortunately it cut right through no problem.  Finally, after nearly 90 minutes I achieved proper draining function!  Yes!