Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet...

The Zombie Chic comes alive in the front yard graveyard. She was eating a foot with a bloody fork.

Texas cheerleader, hippie dude and zombie chic.

Leila (flapper), Conleigh, Campbell, Maria (Hermine), and Emma (Hermine)

 Our friends, the Schultzes hosted Halloween this year. We had chili and got going early.

The guys: Hayden (Harry Potter), and Alex

Campbell in front of the infamous castle house. A must stop house for Halloween.

Our family.  Peter is dressed as Hi from Raising Arizona??

The loot was heavy, so heavy that Alex's bucket handle broke and Campbell decided to get on the golf cart because her candy bag was so heavy she decided to be done.  It was a fun Halloween, even on a school night.

Alex is Seven!

Alex isn't a big cake eater, but he loves the cookie cake. Do you love the random monkey he chose to have on it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I cannot believe my baby boy is seven years old!  We had a very fun birthday party at our house on Thursday after school.  Ten boys came over and we played Minute to Win It games from the TV show.
We had eight games scheduled and two extra in case we needed more.  We ended up only doing six because we ran out of time.

OREO.  The Oreos proved too difficult to get from forehead to mouth, so we moved on to Ritz crackers. 

Baby blockin'.  The kids had to stack blocks on top of each other while balancing a paper plate on their head. Can you say Concentration?

Blow Ball.  We put 20 ping pong balls on a plate and marked two of them with stars.  You have a minute to blow all the balls off the plate except for the two that are marked.

Stack Attack. Build a pyramid and then take it down. You have "A Minute to Win it!"

Victory!

One of the funniest games was Junk in the Trunk. We got kleenex boxes, put slits in the bottom and a belt through the slits. The boys wore the box on their back and we put 10 ping pong balls in it. They had to dance and jump around to get the ping pong balls out. I have a very funny video of this but at the moment I can't get it to load.We got all the games from the TV show website.

It was a fun & funny party. Happy Birthday big boy!

Elephant March.  Pantyhose on head with a baseball in one leg and feet on either side of chalk line. Then the boys swing their head back and forth to knock over water bottles. 

 

 

 

 

Park playin' and picnic'in

 After Campbell's day of sick Saturday, and after skipping church Sunday morning, but

before Alex started the yucks Sunday night, we had fun at the park.

 We've gone to this park since the kids were little, but today there was all 

sorts of new playground equipment.

 Looks fun, right?

Campbell showed me over and over again how good at the monkey bars she is.  

We had a picnic and played.
Sunday night was a long one. Alex got sick several times and just felt B.A.D.
Conleigh got sympathy pangs and spent some time by the potty, but thankfully,
she didn't ever cave to the barfs.
After the late night, we all slept in a little bit. I took the girls to school late and Alex
stayed home today. By 11AM, he wanted to go to school, but I withheld.
Before picking up the girls this afternoon, he & I went and ordered his birthday cookie cake.
All the chickadees are back at school tomorrow.

Pumpkin Patchin'

Salvaged Saturday

Plan for the day:

9:45 Soccer game

11:00 Birthday party

12:00 Peter work at Gypsy Picnic

1:00 pick up from birthday party

Go down to the Gypsy picnic to eat, listen and have fun.

Reality of the day:

9:20 Peter & Alex leave for soccer game

9:40 Take Conleigh to friends so we can carpool to birthday party

As we pull into the driveway of friend, Campbell barfs all over the backseat

Come home. Miss soccer. Campbell feels better.

Alex comes home from soccer. They lost today.

Alex decides to go with Peter to Gypsy picnic. We'll get him when we go later.

Campbell & I leave to go get Conleigh and friend at birthday party.

While I go in to get the girls at 1:00, Campbell barfs in the car again.

Take Conleigh's friend to drop her off at a fall market where her mom is. 

Conleigh stays with her and they run around.

Call Peter and tell him we are not coming to picnic.

How will Alex get home? (Peter is staying until 10pm).

Father and son have a good time.

Campbell watches Spooky Buddies movie.

Conleigh arrives home about 4:00.

She watches Spooky Buddies.

I take a nap and start some laundry.

Peter calls. He ran into some neighbors. They will bring Alex home.

Girls watching ICarly. Mom watching World Series.

7:30 Alex gets home after a great time in the outdoors. 

He is filthy as all get out and not wanting to take a shower.

He goes for the five minute version.

I love having all my kids here.

I'd say for having one sick, the other two managed pretty good days.

Hardins Haunted Hollow

 Somehow we have accumulated quite the collection of Halloween decorations, and the kids LOVE it.

Mom's a junker. I admit it.  One day as we came home from school on the golf cart, we passed these white spindles lying in a bundle at someones curb.  Big garbage pick-up had been the week before and these were obviouly out for garbage. I passed the pile and then thought, "I can do something with those." So, I spun around and picked up the pile and put it on the laps of Alex & his friend who was riding home with us.  A couple of weeks later we discovered they would be perfect to use as the fence of our homegrown Halloween graveyard.

 Alex even put a hook from one of his costumes sticking out.



Front door wreath with the wacky purple cat.



This grave was designed by Conleigh. It is a little hard to see the hairless rat there by the skull.  Carefully placed, she got the reaction she was looking for. When our 6th grade girl neighbors came over, one of them was caught off guard and completely thought is was a real rat.



View from the street. We've gotten lots of compliments on our Hardin graveyard.

200 Tables

 Conleigh has declared that soon we will have 200 Tables that I want to take to Goodwill.  No, I say.  My affair with craigslist furniture continues and my interest in painting furniture is still there. Peter said he kind of likes the name of a store called, Two Hundred Tables.
For some reason, I have been frozen to just go for it. 
The Bible study I've been doing at church talks about how God wants to take us on a wild ride, but we have to go for it and live life. So, with that in mind, I got in gear yesterday and painted this chest of drawers that has been in our garage since August. 
I used Annie Sloan chalk paint in Paris Grey.  The great thing about this paint is that it doesn't require prepping or stripping.  Since the top of the dresser was laminate, I did use some 60 grit sandpaper and roughed it up a bit.
The weather was absolutely beautiful yesterday and painting in the quiet garage with no radio and just quiet was a wonderful way to spend an hour yesterday.

I took the hardware off and wiped down the piece. Then I painted. I do love the AS Chalk Paint. I thought I would love the Paris grey color.  Hmm.  It may be too dull. I need some advice and some suggestions from folks on where to go from here....the paris grey is too mellow for me.  Help!

Suggestions welcome!