YW in Excellence

Tanya sang a song at YW in excellence. She chose As I Have Loved You and Lauren helped her sing it. She was so nervous she couldn't eat all day, but as soon as she was done she ate her dinner and dessert in 3 minutes flat.

Refinery fire

Last week there was a huge bang in my house, it was so loud it felt like the house shook. I went out back to see if something had happened with the tractors building a rock wall in our neighbors yard. When I stepped out I noticed the workers taking pictures with their phones. There were huge flames at the refinery closest to our house and the smoke was floating over the kids Jr. High school. By the time I got my camera the flames were about gone, but because of a power outage north of the explosion the refinery further way burst into flames. Happy to note that is what it is suppose to do and the flames were all in stacks.

I did call down to the school and they said everything was fine and that the fire department had checked out the school and there was no damage to the school. On the news they showed a lot of houses down around the refinery had had windows blown out and a lot of damage.

Trick or Treating

Here are the kids in costume ready to go trick or treating. The tall one in back is Tanya as a witch, next tallest is Victor as the skeleton, next to him Ethan as a spy kid. Ana is on the other side of Tanya dressed as a nija and Morgan is sitting and she is little red riding hood. My amazing and brave mother picked up the kids and took them trick or treating so Troy could help me with Grant's party and answer the door for trick or treaters!

Grant's Halloween Party

Then Gang.
The food.

The Host and House.

Grant had his first boy girl party! He did the menu and decorating and we planned the games and movie together. The kids were awesome. They cracked me up though, I think they could have just sat around chatting all night and been just as happy as having any activities.

So the party started with golfing some mini pumpkins across the back yard. They never knew if one would blow up or if it would go flying and they seemed to enjoy that. They then had dinner and sat around chatting. They had wanted to go trick or treating so we scratched the games we planned and sent them on a candy bar treasure hunt. The black team was only missing the box of raisins, thus allowing the purple team to win. The prize? Minty fresh toothbrushes. Then off to the movies. Let me just say that was the hardest part to figure out! Troy and I watched a bunch of movies this week looking for something 13 year olds could watch and we still hadn't found anything by Saturday! My brother-in-law mentioned they lived by someone who worked for Clean Flix and we were able to borrow some movies from them. The kids picked The Others and I think it scared them pretty good! We then made eye ball ice cream for dessert and sat around talking until I broke it up and made kids go home. Very well behaved and fun kids, it's nice to see who Grant hangs out with at lunch every day.

Carving Pumpkins

Friday we had friends over and carved our pumpkins. It was a lot of fun and not too messy. Jennifer came with the idea to cut the bottom off the pumpkin instead of the top and that made gutting them (the kids who did it) a lot easier, less seeds to dig out. Then you just set your pumpkin over the candle. It was fun to hang out.

Trunk or Treat

Last Tuesday the kids went trunk or treating at the church. It was freezing cold outside, but Tanya, Victor and Ana made rounds until everyone left. Thus they came home with very full buckets of candy and in the 20 minutes they had to eat some before bed Ana and Tanya downed a couple pounds of candy! Tanya was bent close to the table and unwrapping it and putting it in her mouth as fast as she could. I don't think they had ever seen that much candy at one time.

They also had to do their own face paint... I think Ana's picture tells that story.

Snowman

With last Tuesdays snow the kids went out to build a snowman, they began with the traditional looking snowman and ended up with mr. skull head. They were hoping that it looked like a body was buried in the snow. No carrots for these kids.