FHE Halloween Fun

The pictures are a little dark....sorry.
Every year we have a little Halloween party on the Monday before Halloween. The kids often invite friends, and we play games and bob for apples, but this year we had just the 3 of us since Jon was at marching band practice.
I made a great spread of witches brew (aka leftover wedding punch), taquitos, pizza bites, lil smokies, mozarella sticks, deviled eggs, chips and salsa, chex mix and candy corn....oh, and donuts (nothing healthy). We were STUFFED!!!
Josh decorated the family room, complete with spider web and black lights, skeletons and other scary stuff (hee hee)We watched spooky movies while we stuffed our faces...."Frankenstein" and "Hold That Ghost"....Jon enjoyed the food when he got home....it was a fun night!

Musical Saturday.....

I had a busy and FUN day as our school hosted the Makenzie Classic Band Competition. I began my day cleaning up the stadium at 6AM. There was rival football game the night before. Here I am with Richard in the evening after I finished working concessions. I was going to work the booster table, but they were short on help in concessions so I spent 4 hours there. 20 bands competed and we performed as well. The stadium was packed to capacity...more than I think they've ever had. A successful day!! Here I am with Richard dressed up in my green and gold and band shirt.We ended the evening by once again picking up garbage at the stadium. It went much quicker with many more hands helping. Jon had a fun day and I think he is getting a bit sad that his band years are nearly at an end (although a bit relieved to get some rest) Next Saturday is the final competition at the University of Oregon.

FUN AT GRANDPA'S

We had a fun night at Grandpa Drew's raking leaves with David on Monday night. Josh was very excited to jump in the leaves then cover himself up and jump out. He may be going into high school next year, but he will always be my baby....he finds such joy in the little things!! Grandma is in Vietnam visiting her family. David had a great idea to collect the leaves. He is putting them on top of his garden for mulch, so we raked them onto a big tarp pulled it over and dumped them off. Very clever AND easy!!!
We are in full FALL weather here. This morning as I was driving down the road it looked like it was raining leaves. I wish I had had my camera....it was beautiful!! Today is quite windy and you really notice it when there are thousands of leaves falling and blowing around. Tomorrow we host our big band competition here at our high school so I will be tied up all day with that. Josh has a campout (brrrr....) and then will be working on an Eagle project at the campsite. Have a good weekend everyone!!!

For Amanda.........

These trees were at the park in Spokane where the band practiced for several hours during our trip. They were so beautiful that I had to take a picture for Amanda.

Band Trip Part 2

Here is the much anticipated gym floor picture. This is a picture of the girls side. Each night Mr. Kuske (the band director) gave them lights out and the kids were so exhausted that they actually fell asleep pretty fast. He wouldn't even let them whisper after lights out. It was funny because the first night the kids tested the waters a bit. After lights out, someone coughed, then someone else and so on until there were ALOT of coughs going on. Mr. Kuske came in and put stop to that right then and there. He said absolutely NO more coughing. I was holding back my own cough (a real one) as hard as I could. I've been coughing for several weeks from a cold. I told him about it later and he laughed. The funniest thing about sleeping on the floor with 200 people is the SNORING!! It kept us chaperones in stitches. The girls were much worse snorers. And then there was the occasional outburst from someone talking in their sleep. The chaperones woke up early each morning to get in the bathrooms before the girls. That was interesting .... Even though Jons eyes are closed on this one, I wanted you to see him with his many admirers. For some reason (I keep forgetting to ask him), during snack outside, someone started singing happy birthday to him. The entire band chimed in and EVERYONE was singing happy birthday to him. I just shook my head.....he's taking after his Dad, who is always telling people it's his birthday. Then when he was inside and visiting the girls before lights out, they all started singing to him AGAIN!! He's a funny guy.......... The girl in the blue in the middle( who also has her eyes closed) is who he went to homecoming with. Her name is Jackie.

Marching Band Season is Upon Us!!!

When I'm not scrapbooking (which by the way I've done 5 books so far), we've had homecoming, football games, and band competitions! I got back Sunday from chaperoning a 3 day trip to Spokane (pronounced spo-can) Washington. It was a very fun trip. We were on the go the entire time, and the 8 hour bus trip was not very comfy, but it was FUN!!About 200 of us slept on the gym floor of a middle school. The kids were very good. We put the boys on one end the chaperones in the middle and the girls on the other end. It was wall to wall sleeping bags. I'll blog a picture later. We ate like kings...the people in charge of our food are amazing. Breakfast burritos, chicken fahitas, brownies and ice cream, turkey sandwiches.....it was all very yummy. I loved helping prepare and serve the food. The kids were very appreciative. The weather was BEAUTIFUL!! It got cold at night so we had to bundle up then, but it was perfect marching weather.

Oh....and we WON!! We came in first in our division and won the Grand championship.
Our competition this weekend will be more challenging....there are one or two bands that will give us a run for our money, so I'll let you know. But we are having fun!If you enlarge the picture of the band, Jon is on the top left.

Okay, Okay Okay......

So WHY have I not been blogging? Well, I have been spending most of my time SCRAPBOOKING instead. Since Jon is a Senior this year, and his scrapbooks have not been done for several years, for the boys for Christmas I'm catching up. Jon knows it's for Christmas, but because it's so all time consuming, I have to do it in the open. Josh doesn't know I'm going to do his, so he will think I'm doing Jon's when I do his. So far I've done from 1999-2003 and filled up 3 notebooks. Jenny has 6 or 7 scrapbooks and hers are pretty up to date, except her senior year. She has most of the stuff to do that. The bottom scrapbook is actually one of the ones I did last time I worked on them. It was ALOT of work. Now I am mostly using black cardstock....I'm NOT using any fancy scissors....I'm ONLY cutting the pics in squares with my paper cutter and I'm being simple so that I can get it done!!! They will still be nice, just not as pretty. Hey, boys won't care!!
I work on 1 year at a time. The table is a great workplace. I have stickers, scraps, cardstock, paper cutter and all the other supplies I need.
I have piles on the floor next to the table of each month...in each pile I put pictures, award certificates, church talks and any and all things I have saved for them to look back and remember their childhoods. Since I can't remember most of MY childhood, my kids will remember theirs!!As a note..... after I get all caught up I'm going to do one with all Jon's scout stuff and another one for band. Those will be for graduation.