Trick-or-Treat!

Here's my brood...the hippie, the baby, and the bat.

Beth, being such a big girl, went off to trick-or-treat with her friends this year. :-( But I took Mary and John out. Of course I was quite proud that my perfect children remembered their manners. At every house there was a "trick-or-treat" and a "thank you!" before we'd hit the next home. Although I have to be careful with John...that kid will take politeness to the point of beligerance. At one house, he did his normal "thank you" at the end. The guy was fairly oblivious and ignored his cute little comment, so of course John said it again...this time a little louder. When it still went unrecognized, he yelled "THANK YOU!" I finally chimed in and said, "Okay, John let's go" when he yelled back to me in a honked off reply "But that guy didn't say you're welcome!!" I tried not to laugh, but the other parents around me just lost it...

Pumpkin Night

We held our annual family pumpkin carving night earlier this week. We got a good laugh out of the differences between each child's reaction to scooping out "the guts."

Mary, my normal gagger on all things gross, dug in there to scoop the guts out with her bare hands! She hooped and hollered about it feeling cold & squishy, but she had so much fun.

Beth, obviously disgusted with her sister's lack of self control, decided to be a lady and use a spoon to scrape her pumpkin out. She was not about to put her hands in there...gross!

John, well we have no pictures of him scraping out the guts because the minute he saw (and smelled) the inside of his pumpkin he ran off screaming. Dad had to pitch in to do his dirty work.

We kept coaxing John to come back out and join us. I lit my pumpkin spice Yankee candle to help him with the yucky smell and we kept our jokes at bay. We just about lost him for good when he came back out just as Matt was dumping the slimy innards of John's pumpkin onto the table - of course he wretched and gagged. So I went running to him with my own slimy hands, keep in mind he's trying to stifle a puke, to take him into the kitchen while the yucky stuff on the table was disposed of.

Once the gross stuff was removed, John was happy to come back out and join the family for the drawing and subsequent carving of the jack-o-lantern faces.

It all ended well and the kids were proud of their finished products. :-)

Halloween - round 1

This weekend started the with the first of our Halloween plans...well, at least Beth & Matt's Halloween plans. Beth went to the 2nd annual Fiedler Bash on Friday night dressed to the nines in her fluorescent hippie attire.

The party rocked with a DJ, smoke machine, tables of munchies, scary decorations everywhere, and co-ed's (50 kids in attendance clearly divided with an imaginary line - girls danced on the chairs on one side, the much older boys, very cool 7th graders, all hung out at the food tables probably discussing football and who can fart on cue.)

My hippie was there to spread the word of peace and love... Matt and the rest of his band played a Halloween party at the VFW in Greenville Saturday night. All of the guys were good sports and decided to go in costume. Matt went purchased a latex head cover to be able to go as one of the Coneheads. Yeah, we all got a good chuckle out of the fact that he PURCHASED something to give him the appearance of a bald guy with a big head. What a stretch that one is!

The RocketDogs were good sports though. Here's my rockin' guys - the nun, the nerd, the pirate and the conehead.

A Day at the Farm

This year's outting to Brumbaugh's had me sweating at first...Beth was in the typical pre-teen mood and John was tired and whiney. I thought our "family day" was doomed for sure. But there's just something about cool air, sunshine and the smell of apples and cinnamon coming from the bakery to make a person, or even an entire family, forget their troubles and be "in the moment." Ah, we are never disappointed with a day at the farm.

We played in the dirt, the straw, & the corn; mastered every playset; pet the goats; walked the enchanted trail; snacked on apples we picked fresh from the tree (although I'm not so sure we were supposed to do that one!) conquered monster mountain....repeatedly; rode the zip line and topped off the day with scarfing fresh apple fritters from the bakery. Ah, life is good!

We even captured Beth on the zip line.

To check out more pictures, click the link below.

Brumbaugh's Oct08

Mary takes on Shockers...

My kids have never been too keen on sour candies. In fact, I think Beth's the only one that has even eaten them before.

Mary gets to pick a treat out of the prize box when she gets 100% on her spelling tests. Normally there's a jolly rancher or piece of taffy in her bag, but this time she brought home a little bag of Shockers. They are horribly sour for the first several seconds and then they get sweeter as you continue to suck on them. Mary had me in tears from laughing so hard when she popped the first one in her mouth. I couldn't find my camera so I started snapping pictures with my phone...

Was it mean of me to laugh at her suffering? Maybe. But she chose to eat every single one of those suckers because she was not about to admit defeat. By the time she was done, my stomach hurt from laughing so hard.

It's Spirit Week!

Ah, with the cool air of October comes homecoming...and the week of fun that leads up to the big game. This year's theme was "Neon Lights. Northmont Goes Neon." Can you tell from the picture above? It was taken after the homecoming parade Thursday night. Seriously though, these pictures almost do not even do those shirts justice. You should have seen our wagon coming down the street with the cheer squad, coaching staff and even a few of the parents sporting these things! We posed for more pictures than the homecoming court...

Here's a quick breakdown of how spirit week went.

They started with hat/stuffed animal day...

And then came "Crazy" Day...with mismatched, inside out clothes, and wildly spraypainted hair.

And there was neon day...

And finally, they celebrated with sporting attire to show their Green & White "Bolt Pride."

We had a lot of fun dressing according to the daily themes. The girls are going to be so bored when they have to resume the normal routine next week...