Halloween 2011

 This was our first year without trick-or-treaters, being out in the country.  I really like trick-or-treating and will miss it, but it's OK because we miss most of the trick-or-treating hours while we're at the Trunk-or-Treat at our church's parking lot.  Because no one would see our jack-o-lanterns, we put it off and put it off and STILL haven't carved them, but hope to today :/  It's just been a busier week and a half than we're used to.  How tacky are we!??  We WILL do it, though.  My kids will have me hanged if I don't make it happen today.  But we had a great Halloween and lots of fun at our trunk-or-treat.  I LOVE getting to dress my kids up for Halloween. 

 Here's the bathroom mayhem where it all started...  

Miss Lainey getting her doll make-up and circles painted on her cheeks.

Brielle with shiny red locks of curls.  

She was the statue of liberty and copper hair worked for it!

My sharp little police man.

Ashton LOVED his costume. He and Brielle picked theirs out themselves.  

He loved blowing his whistle, arresting people with his hand cuffs, 

talking on his walkie talkie... he felt pretty cool.

At the Trunk-or-Treat. 

I love these- they are safe, quick, less time in the cold, you get to see everyone's costumes and mingle, have dinner (warm soups or hot dogs),  AND I love the donuts that the Nattress family traditionally make every year.  Elder Nattress and Cody Stevens serving fresh donuts below. 

I love my goofy boy :)

I love this girls hair!  I used to pray that I would grow up to have red hair when I was a little girl.  

I got a daughter with it instead!

This is the first year Lainey really understood what was going on, and she acted as though she had died and gone to Heaven.  Definitely the coolest holiday on the planet to a toddler.

Cousins Jayden and Raegan.

Cousins Camden and Drew with Aunt Katrina.

 Trick-or-Treating Grandma and Grandpa Stice.

Trick-or-Treating Grandma and Gandpa Lee.  

(Ashton arresting Uncle Adam.)

I let the kids have more candy than I normally do.  I was a stickler up until Halloween because everyone we know is getting sick and I didn't want the kids to miss out on Halloween from catching a bug they wouldn't have if they hadn't weakened their immune system with so much sugar.  The candy is almost all gone now, and I'm ready to throw out what's left!  Still, considering how many sweets they've had, they've been surprisingly good for the amount of sugar high they must be on.
I love my little monkeys :)
Still, time to give the digestive track a rest!  And time to carve those jack-o-lanterns!

Farm Man 5K & CrossFit Challenge

Todd and I spent a good chunk of Saturday in Meridian at the Farm Man Race.  We both ran the 5K together.  I pushed hard!  I like the thrill of races with so many people and everyone giving it their all.  So when I arrived and found out this one wasn't timed, I just made it my goal not to get passed by anyone.  Only one man passed me.  But in all of their defense, not being timed, who knows who else was really even running very hard...  I just figure I can jog with friends any time.  I wanted to give it my all!  I had a Candida flare up the weekend of the Run For The Hills race and felt terrible running, especially at the end.  I still did well, but not as good as I should have.  So I was really hoping I could redeem myself at this.

It turned out to be 3.65 miles long with no clock to be timed with whatsoever so I have no idea how things really went.  My knees were about shot by the end because my hips, being so offset, can't usually stand to be jarred for more than 3 miles.  But my body felt great- much better than the Run For the Hills Race.  It was fun- they had part of the race in a corn maze, parts where we zig-zagged up and down deep empty ditch banks (that was hard), tire jumps, climbed hay stack pyramids, army crawled, etc.  Todd was WAY ahead of me in the 5K. 

Todd and I with my CrossFit coach and the CrossFit gang.

On the registration web site, they advertised a CrossFit challenge to take place there that day as well.  And they offered a discount on it if you signed up for both the 5K and the challenge.  So I signed up for both.  I realized later that they were super close together not leaving very much time to cool down from the run!

About 30-45 minutes after finishing the run, they called people over for the CrossFit challenge.  I asked around how people's 5K went and none of the people I talked to had done it!  I was instantly feeling a little intimidated being wore out from my run and in the midst of a group of fresh lungs and legs.  THIS event was timed and WAS a competition.  I didn't struggle to be able to see the directions being given through the crowd because I figured I'd just be following the pack anyway.  I even let people start in front of me.  I was sure I'd do terrible!  

The race started with a bunch of walking lunges.  Those people in front of me ended up starting slower than I wanted to go but it took me some time to get through their wall of lunges. When I did brake free, I lost a little bit of time losing my way for a while in the course, because (now regrettably) I hadn't payed attention to where I was supposed to go!  There was a short run in the corn maze (not where I got lost- there were arrows in it), a run through a bumpy field while holding a pumpkin, more hay pyramid climbing, tire flipping, tire pushing and pulling across a bumpy field (hard), several other tire things, and hay bail facing burpees with push-ups.  By the end, I still took 4th place!  Even with my detours and being held back in the slow pack a long time.  I felt pretty small and wimpy compared to a lot of those other girls, so to say I was shocked would be an understatement.  I really wish I had taken it more seriously, but I'm still excited to have done my first CrossFit Challenge and done fairly well at it.

My First CrossFit Challenge 

After the competition, Todd and I went to lunch with the CrossFit gang.  I somehow lucked out that everyone chose Goodwood as it is my all-time favorite restaurant!  It was a fun morning/afternoon.  We spent a few hours at home with the kids before heading out again to the adult session of Stake Conference.  The kids stayed back with a babysitter and watched Halloween cartoons with a pumpkin shaped pizza.  The conference was awesome, as usual.  Elder Bowen of the 1st quorum of the Seventy presided at the meeting and spoke for most of the 2 hours.  Most of his time was a question/answer session where the audience could ask any gospel question they'd been wondering.  Todd got a question answered he'd mentioned a few years ago.  That meeting is my favorite in the church.  Elder Bowen said it best- it's a commandment to go to church on Sunday, but the Saturday adult session is where people who want to be there go.  And the leaders always speak differently because of it.  If you don't normally attend that meeting, you are missing out and I encourage you to go next time!  Don't forget to grab ice cream afterwards!

Play Date

Last week, Brielle invited her buddy, Ella to come over and decorate a pumpkin since she wasn't able to come to Brielle's Halloween party and had really wanted to.  They also had Amy join them, and it felt like a mini party.  I love this age.  They're so innocent and smart at the same time.  And easily entertained and had a great afternoon together.

Brielle's Halloween Party

This year, our elementary school is not doing a Halloween carnival due to lack of funding.  So we decided to do our first Halloween party.  This year was Brielle's turn, though Ashton and Lainey got to participate with her and her friends.  Next time will be Ashton's turn, etc.  Who says you can have too many parties?  I know I can't :-)

As the girls arrived they each got a little "string your own candy necklace bag" with candy skulls, bones, and beads. Joanne's big Halloween sale provided for that and our decor.

 

 Once everyone came, we had dinner- pumpkin shaped sandwiches.

Everyone took some of the scattered candy corns and extra candy necklace beads to make silly faces.  I love creativity!

 

 Next we decorated pumpkins. Todd sprayed whimsical metallic spray paint on the pumpkins for a cool affect.  I really liked the look of them.  They were different and fun.

Everyone had a cupcake.

I love my local Payette Albertsons.  They sell a lot of things that I can't find anywhere else.  Not even the Ontario Alby's carries my regular items like unsweetened almond milk, or RIPE avocados (always), my Alby's was the only store from here to Boise to sell Chobani greek yogurt for almost a year, and there are many other things.  Anyway, for this, they sold me orange and black frosting fresh from their bakery (black used later).  Who wants to make black frosting?  Not me.  Sounds like a long and kind of gross process.  I'd rather not know how much food coloring it took :) 

Lainey actually woke up from her nap after the party had just started.  So I never had a chance to re-do her hair- she looks pretty shaggy!

I didn't want to do a lot of candy since they'd get plenty on Halloween that next week.  But you can't have a Halloween party without sugar, so the sugar was all eaten AT the party.  Which brought us to our next activity- decorating cookies.

Then we made mummies.  Everyone got a turn being a mummy.

 

Todd mummified Ashton and Lainey too!

By the end, the mummies got pretty shaggy 

because they added the old torn paper to their wrap!

I loved these next few photos, even though they're blurry, because they show so much action and that is exactly what followed for the next ten minutes or so.  I let them all play in the mess of toilet paper and they LOVED it!  Good to their word, they cleaned up every speck when they were done.

This was our mummy "in a coffin".

It was a three hour party (5:00-8:00)- I really wanted the girls to have plenty of time to enjoy their evening together.  Our last formal activity was watching Scooby Doo- two 15 minute episodes while they each took turns getting their nails painted in Halloween colors.  After that, they played to their hearts' content until their moms came.

Don't miss the last 3 posts about our past week and a half- back one page!