one more Halloween picture

We were in such a rush to get to the ward Halloween party that we didn't get a family picture with all of us in our costumes. Thankfully a friend at the party got this picture of me and the kids or we wouldn't have gotten any pics at all. I have decided that trick-or-treating is a very inefficient way to get loads of candy. No wonder people are doing it so much less. Our kids got so much candy from the different parties we went to. We went up and down our street for the true trick-or-treating experience but it was not necessary to get more candy. Give it another week and hopefully all the candy will be gone. Just in time to start overeating at Thanksgiving. Can't wait!

Rapunzel

Here she is. Madeleine as Rapunzel. You may recall that this was her winning costume last year that she only wore to the gym and refused to put on again (see this post). Because it was such a great costume (in my humble opinion) and hardly anyone saw her in it (I didn't even get a picture of it for the blog), we agreed that she would wear it again this year. Some may say it's kind of rude to tell her what she would be instead of letting her choose, but thankfully she was really happy with her costume! In fact, she practically wore that braid in her hair for 3 days straight. And she's been begging me to put it in again. She wants to wear it all the time and tell people it's her real hair. I need to remind her that we shouldn't tell lies.

Carving Pumpkins

Last week for family home evening we carved pumpkins. Grandpa Paul and Ian worked hard on their ghost.
Madeleine and I carved a cat. We added some permanent marker to make it more striking in the light.
Spencer took a break from his studies to prove his carving abilities. We got the kit with all the patterns and there were so many cool ones so he just had to do one. He chose the pirate skull.
And here's the finished product. Can't wait to do it again next year!

Crazy Hair Day

The week of Halloween at Madeleine's school was full of fun activities. Each day had a theme and Crazy Hair Day was my favorite. Selfish, I know. If you have seen Madeleine you know she has amazing hair, and tons of it, so I knew we would be able to come up with something really awesome. This was the result:
Her's was easliy the craziest in her class, although I'm pretty sure it wasn't a competition. She wasn't actually all that happy about her crazy hair. Can you tell by her grumpy face in the pictures? Here's a video I happened to get since the camera was in video mode when I first got it out:

She was speaking quietly out of her frown, so in case you couldn't understand she was saying that she looked in the mirror and it doesn't look cool. Sorry, sweetie, but you are wrong. Your hair looked SO COOL!!

My new favorite workout

Does your gym offer turbo kickboxing? If so, have you tried it? And if so, do you love it as much as I do?? You know I must be obsessed with it if it's making it to the blog! I fell in love with it this summer when we were in Houston. I didn't have much going on this summer so I had plenty of time to spend at the gym. Which I loved because I was able to trim down a bit since I worked out so much and began obsessively counting calories. Thankfully Madeleine and Ian loved going there too. They made some good friends at the kids club and were thoroughly entertained while I worked out. Anyway, our gym in The Woodlands had a fabulous TKB instructor who made it so fun! Even though I will be the first to admit it took me a good 4 or 5 times to feel like I was actually doing the moves at the proper times. It is so fast-paced! You really need to give yourself at least a time or two to understand what they are telling you to do.Even though I don't agree with her 100%, this blogger gives a pretty funny account of her experience with TKB. I know where I'll be every Saturday morning at 8:30. And I know I'll be thinking about it in anticipation every Friday night as I fall asleep.

Field Trip/Sneak Peek at Ian's Costume

Grandpa Paul took Ian on a "field trip" to the firestation earlier this month. Ian was thrilled! He is going to be a firefighter for Halloween this year so we decided he might as well be in uniform for their visit.
Isn't this picture cool?
Of course the real firemen thought Ian was pretty neat.
They concluded their outing with ice cream and playing at McDonald's. Pretty much a perfect day!

Halloween Party

Can you believe Spencer and I were the first ones to attend a Halloween party this year and not the kids? I was kind of surprised too. Anyway, we got dressed up in our new used referee shirts and whistles to party it up with some of the other MBA students and their wives.

We always have fun with this crowd and this party was no exception. We started the night with a delicious spaghetti dinner eaten off of or out of random kitchen or hospital wares. My plate, for example, was a pink puke receptacle. I don't know what the proper name is, but that's what it's used for. One lucky person had a bedpan for their plate. Spencer's drinking cup was a urine sample collection cup. Sounds appetizing, huh? The really tricky thing was getting the food sucessfully into your mouth with the utensil at your seat. Spencer had an especially difficult time eating the salad with his potato masher. We also had a pumpkin carving contest. A 20-mintue time limit was imposed so it was a very high pressure competition! We managed to carve the skull despite our tools all breaking on us. I guess you can't expect too much from the $5 kit from Walgreens.

The highlight might have been when the wives finally won a round at Catch Phrase. We have played many times and the husbands always win, so we were very pleased with ourselves for a few minutes until the husbands came back and beat us again. Oh well! Thanks, Clarks, for putting on such a great party!!