Trick or Treat! Kinda late...

Puppy Shaming #2

Puppies are over rated.  Cats don't do things like this.   I owe the library way too much money.

Awana Grand Prix

So, these things are for the kids, right?  No.  Not at all.  They gave us our kits months in advance...which we thought was odd.  Until Simon actually tried to start working on it a few weeks before the race.  And we realized we were in trouble.  The only part the kids can do or help with is the painting.  For real.  And you need tools and stuff to make these cars. We won't talk about what we ended up spending so we could buy equipment to make these silly cars.  But its an investment...all 3 kids will do this so we have years of Grand Prix races to 'look forward' to.

Early attempt...not going well

As you can see.

Just look at Caelin helping Dad on the car!  Oh wait.  She's just eating Halloween candy.

Desperate times call for desperate measures!  Cheyanne's nail grinder was sacrificed for the cause.

In the end we decided to try and preserve the nail grinder and ordered an official dremmel (?) to work on the next one.  This one was given to Connor.

The only part the kids can actually do.

Race day!  Caelin's is #7 on the left.  She named her car, "The Chet".  Connor's car is on the right.  He named it, "The Off Button".  Yep.  No idea.  But he named it.

Race time!

Watching their cars finish!

Caelin ended up placing 7th overall at the end of the day.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.

Dialated Cardiomyopathy

So I was diagnosed with dialated cardiomyopathy just about a month ago.  Its been a long month.  I don't know how much I'll really talk about it on here.  But for now, I'll just share this song.  We saw Tim Timmons last January ( I think), at the Rock and Worship Roadshow.  I bought his CD and loved it!  This particular song always got to me...it made me think of Caelin and her heart condition.  Those 9 months between her diagnosis and her ablation were...hard for me.  While I felt somewhat in control during the day when I could see her and hear her, every night when I put her to bed, I had to give her over to God and pray...  So I remember now, as anxious and scared as I am, it could be worse.  And now of course, this song speaks to me again, in a new way.

The Glorious Unfolding Tour

In October, we attended The Glorious Unfolding Tour with Steven Curtis Chapman, Laura Story, and Jason Gray.  Luckily for us, it was at a church right down the road from us.  As we pulled in we thought it was very empty and then realized that I had booked the babysitter for an hour earlier then actually needed-I guess maybe I was planning on going out to dinner beforehand?  So we got to go out for dinner...at Wendy's, but hey, no kids!  So it counts.  When we came back and went to the concert we got our second pleasant surprise...apparently I had sprung for good seats!  So we had awesome seats, towards the front and in the center!  I was familiar with a good amount of Steven Curtis Chapman's music, but the main reason I wanted to go is that I read his wife's book  http://www.amazon.com/Choosing-SEE-Journey-Struggle-Hope/dp/0800719913  Choosing to See by Mary Beth Chapman.  Her honesty is so refreshing and meaningful.  Honestly I had put off buying the book for a long time because I knew that it would deal with losing their daughter.  But one day I saw it on the $5 table at Family Christian, so I decided to pick it up.  It is, of course, heart wrenching to read.  But it is inspiring and I was glad I read it.  I have never been able to listen to "Dance with Cinderella" on the radio again without tearing up though.  So of course I cried like a baby when he sang it in the concert.  And I had forgotten my tissues, which I planned to take because I was sure he would mention Maria.  But I was unprepared for the powerful testimonies from the other two artists.  I had no idea that Laura Story's husband had a brain tumor early in their marriage, and woke from surgery not remembering that he knew her.  To see these two artists, who have been through experiences that are honestly among the worst I can imagine-to lose a child, to essentially lose a husband when he doesn't remember you, but to hear them minister about how God is always good, we can always trust him!  It was powerful.  Jason Gray has my upmost respect.  He has a speech issue-he stutters.  And it is amazing because when he sings...you would never guess it in a million years.  But as he spoke between his songs, you could hear him stutter, and I can't help but be moved by how amazing and brave he is, to get up on stage and put it all out there.  To let everyone see this 'weakness' and imperfection.  He spoke of how important it is to let people see your imperfections, because it shows just how BIG God really is.  It was a great night, even if I cried a lot :)

Growing...

Wow!  Look how much she's grown!  She had such a cute little puppy face!!

Cinnamon Toast..and its a good thing we homeschool!

So Connor was enjoying his cinnamon toast (which makes me smile and remember who introduced me to cinnamon toast as a child, and even gave us the toaster we use to make our cinnamon toast today :) ), and of course he was eating around the crust (cause thats how my kids are...), when he suddenly said "look, its my gun PEW PEW!!, here mommy (hands me a different piece of crust) this can be your gun".  I could kinda sorta see it looking like a gun.  But I laughed to myself thinking he could get himself kicked out of school if he said such a thing about his toast!

Harvest Costume

So the Awana solution to the whole halloween/costume dilemma, is to have a Harvest Party.  Last year they told the kids to dress like a farm animal, which had me frantically searching online trying to find a chicken costume.  I ended up finding a chicken hat/mask thing at Party City.  This year it was 'dress as anything harvest related'.  Could my daughter be a farmer?  Or be a chicken again?  Or something like that?  Nope.  She wanted to be corn.  We discussed cutting out a corn shape and painting cotton balls yellow and gluing them on for corn kernels.  But I had reservations about how to actually get the cotton balls yellow.  So I found a home made ear of corn costume online that involved painting the bottoms of egg cartons yellow to use as the corn kernels.  This seemed like a better idea, and I dug through the recycling to find some cartons.  I should have asked my daughter before I did that.  I showed her the picture of the costume done with egg cartons, and she was not impressed.  So back to cotton balls.  I looked up how to dye them.  And I got started:

Looked pretty good.  But they wouldn't dry.  If I squeezed them out, they lost the yellow.  I probably could have tried with a hair dryer, but it didn't seem promising.  So I turned to facebook for suggestions on where I could buy yellow cotton balls.  Someone suggested yellow pom poms.  DUH!  That would be perfect, and had never occurred to me.  And it appeared that local craft stores would probably sell them.  But it looked like small quantity bags.  And in the meantime, I was given the suggestion to glue the cotton balls on and then spray paint them.  Then I tried to draw an ear of corn to cut out of cardboard, and well...it wasn't pretty.  So I begged my little sister to draw it for me (its not like she was busy having a birthday party for her two kids or anything.  She had nothing better to do then draw corn for me).  Her corn looked great!  So I went outside to spray paint the cotton balls yellow.

They looked really good!  Until I picked them up and realized there was now dead grass stuck all over them.  Unfortunately, I didn't have enough cotton balls to just throw those out.  So my sister in law came to the rescue and helped me, thank goodness!  We glued on the plain cotton balls I had left,  and then, God bless her, my sister in law sat there and picked grass off the spray painted cotton balls.  Then she taped a bag on so that when I spray painted I would only get the 'corn' yellow.

In the end it was all worth it

She loved it!  And she even won a box of candy for best costume :)

Halloween at Daddy's work.

Every year his company puts this on for the employees and their families.  This year was a little different for us since Simon no longer has an office!  Normally we go through everything and then sit in his office for awhile, which the kids loved!  But they still had a good time this year :)

They were very excited to finally be allowed to wear their costumes!

Cookie decorating

Playing games along the way

Caelin was so grossed out by this!  Luckily she did know that it was just food items in there.  I promised her that she didn't have to do it if they have it again next year, lol.

Bopping bats as they walk down the hall

This was supposed to be pumpkin bowling...Connor made it more pumpkin throwing!

This guy is pretty brave to take on this job!

Decorating a mask

Face painting

Claire wasn't cooperative for very many pictures, but she couldn't wait to jump in the chair and get her face painted!