Halloween 2012

I really lucked out with the kid's Halloween costumes this year.  Ella wore a beautiful Rapunzel dress for her dance recital in June, and after seeing the price tag on that beauty all of the dance class moms informed their daughters that they'd be wearing them again for Halloween!  Thankfully there were no complaints from Ella, who was happy to wear it and my old blond hair piece from Korea.  And she was happy to bump into her friends and fellow Rupunzels as she Trick-or-Treated!  Ruby figured she'd follow suit and be the most adorable ballerina ever, wearing her recital costume.  Tyler and his friend decided to wear their football uniforms and be studly football players.  Sweet!  Another costume we already owned!  You can't expect Spencer to be that easy, though, can you?  No.  He informed me with days notice that he was planning to be a "Goth," and wondered if dad had any black clothes he could borrow.  Uh, no.  Thankfully I was a similar child to Spencer, so had all sorts of creative ideas up my sleeve for his costume!  He was so happy with it!!  And we were told by several people that it was the scariest costume they'd seen all night.  We agreed!!  And have warned Spencer repeatedly - "don't even think about it!!!"  Halloween is actually a multi-day holiday these days.  We always begin with the church Trunk-or-Treat, where the kids always amass an amazing amount of candy in a very short period of time.  It's pure insanity!  But they love it.  Then we have the actual day of Halloween, which usually includes at least one "school costume" that is most certainly not the costume they'll be wearing that night!  This year Ella got to dress up as the Greek Goddess Hera, complete with her staff of lotus and bird.  Thankfully she was happy with how her homemade costume turned out, too!  Lots of Halloween food and treats were consumed, like our gourmet caramel apples, the homemade pumpkin donuts, and this year's mummy pizzas.  (Tyler did shed a tear over the lack of Mummy Meatloaf this year...).  The kids had a great time, and we were all exhausted and ready for bed that night!  The next few days of candy trading and excess were full of deals and bargaining, and (mostly) happy kids! 

Away!

Have I mentioned that Bryan and I went away for a week?  Left the four kids in the capable hands of Grandma Carlson and headed out on our first ever trip AWAY!  We flew to Long Beach, took a van to the cruise terminal, and boarded our first cruise.  We were joined by my good friends from Utah and their husbands, and we had 7 amazing days together.  OK, so we went through a Category 3 hurricane on day two (thank goodness for the ear patch...I never got sick!!), but even that is now a funny memory.  We spent 2 days in Puerto Vallarta, which has a great contrast of jungle and beach.  The first day we did a canopy tour, where we took 12 different ziplines over the treetops in the mountains.  It was awesome!  We at a delicious meal at the top of the mountain, and I even had a short massage in their outdoor spa.  On the second day in Puerto Vallarta, we paid to use the beach of an all-inclusive resort and we relaxed and ate chips and salsa while drinking fruity drinks on the beach.  It was pretty plush!  We headed to Cabo San Lucas the next day where we got up early, hired a driver, and went to a great snorkeling beach.  We were the first ones on the beach!  We snorkeled together and took a long walk on the beach.  It was just so enjoyable!!  On board the ship we ate until we could eat no more, we karaoked, we danced, we played cards, we took naps, we relaxed and laughed and had such an amazing time.  Thanks to Vicki for watching the kids, and to our good friends here who kept the kids for a few days too.  We couldn't have done it without everybody's help!

Fall Camping

We love camping.  Living in Texas you have a pretty big camping season, since it doesn't get insanely cold and snowy in the winter.  It does, however, get wicked hot in the summer!  So Fall and Spring are the perfect seasons to camp in Texas.  Unfortunately those are our busiest times of the year, with football and soccer taking up every Saturday.  This Fall we got lucky on one Saturday and didn't have any games until noon.  So we packed up the car on Friday evening and snuck away for a quick one-nighter!  We went to Guadalupe State Park, which is just about 30 minutes away, and the weather was really nice.  Cool in the evening and in the morning, and...well, that's pretty much all we were there for!  It was a quick trip, but we take what we can get. 

A couple weeks later we took our annual camping trip to Enchanted Rock for Columbus Day.  This particular weekend we had a major cold front roll through, and we had lows in the 40s and highs in the 60s.  That is cold for a Texas October, and cold to be sleeping outside!  But we bundled up, dug out the old winter parkas for the girls, and we had a great time camping and hiking.