Halloween Fun

It is the day after Halloween.  My house smells like pumpkin. I cut up our jack-o-lanterns this morning and am cooking them.  I like the smell of cooked pumpkin, it is a good fall smell.  The kids had fun cutting and making faces on pumpkins Monday afternoon.  The three older kids did their carving independently this year.  I helped Caleb with the knife, he designed it.  It was a fun activity.

We have had a busy couple of weeks.  Neal and Andrew went on a boy scout camp out on the 20th. They went to a scout camp with all the wards in the Stake.  They did service at the camp and did some trail maintenance work Saturday morning.  They camped by the trails and did a short back packing trip into the camp.  Andrew had the experience of putting all his gear on his back and hiking in.  He also decided to sleep out under the stars for the first time too.  They had a good trip. 

That Saturday morning I took Ruth and her friend Brianna to thrift stores to look for black clothing for their Halloween costumes.  They wanted to dress alike.  The girls had fun shopping.  I had Spencer and Caleb with me too and we enjoyed looking at decorations, toys and house wares.  We even bought a few things.  Sometimes it is hard not to when you go to places like that and see fun things at good deals. 

This last week I volunteered a lot at the schools.  I did an extra shift at the elementary school library and then I was helping with the middle school book fair.  I enjoy helping, but it did take up a lot of time.  I was also working hard to get Spencer’s costume made.  I had it done in time for the ward party, so I was thankful, and he was excited about it.

Last Thursday evening we had our ward Halloween party.  It was a nice event.  They did it outside, the weather was so nice for it too.  We had a simple dinner of hot dogs. The young women had some games for the kids to play. Then we did a trunk-or-treat. I sat at the back end of the suburban and passed out candy to the kids.  It was fun to see all the cute costumes.  I enjoyed seeing many adults costumes too.  Ruth dressed in black and was a character from a book called a “demon shadow hunter.” Spencer was Robin Hood, Caleb was a cowboy.  Andrew wanted something simple.  I had the help of a friend to do a vinyl cutting with her tools and ironed it onto Andrew’s shirt. Andrew drew the design and he was happy that it turned out well.

The evening before, Wednesday, I took Spencer and Caleb to the elementary school for a fall carnival.  The boys enjoyed going around playing games.  The teachers that wanted to participate had activities in their class rooms.  Any money they earned went towards their class rooms for supplies.  I thought it was a fun idea.  We got there at the beginning and only stayed about an hour, right as it was starting to get really busy.  It was fun to have some time with the boys.

Caleb was excited that he got to bring home the class room “pet” last week end. It is a stuffed animal. He had a notebook with it too that he needed to document what he did with Jax over the week end.  Caleb had a lot of fun with the toy and enjoyed writing his adventures too. The boys also have had some fun with dominoes this week. They watched a few youtube videos about dominoes and watching huge structures falling. They decided to try some of their own.

Last Saturday we took the family out to the Petroglyph National Monument, just west of the city.  It was a nice day and we were able to walk around and see many of the Petroglyphs.  The Volcanoes we went to earlier in the month are in the same park. So now we can say we have been to the National park close to us.  The petroglyphs were drawn on volcanic rock, so it was interesting to think of the connection to the volcanoes we visited.  The pictures on the rocks date back to early people in the area, over 1500 years ago and maybe older.  There were also a few things from the Spaniards (they drew pictures of crosses and sheep) and we even saw a few that were modern, peoples names with dates in the early 1900’s.  It was fun walking along the trail looking for the pictures on the rocks and trying to find things.  We enjoyed the day together.

Caleb with Jax. 

A view of the city behind the boys.

That evening Spencer went to a birthday party for a friend from school.  It was a costume party and he enjoyed wearing his Robin Hood outfit again.  He won a prize of a yo-yo. It is a nice one with bearings and rolls smooth. Spencer and Andrew have enjoyed practicing a yo-yo and learning how to keep it going.

Saturday evening there was a multi-stake dance in Santa Fe that Ruth wanted to go to.  She was trying to find a ride and made lots of phone calls and found out who was going but cars were filled.  So Neal volunteered to drive.  He gave Ruth and two other youth a ride the the activity. They all had a great time.  The dance had the theme of Willy Wonka and Ruth said it was decorated fun and the adult chaperones were dressed up as characters from the story. I am glad that the youth can have fun, clean activities to attend.

Sunday Ruth and I had been asked to help with a lesson during the third hour of church for all the adults and youth. It was a meeting on self reliance. They had six families present different areas of self reliance to the group, so we all had only about 5-7 minutes to present.  Ruth and I did a little thing on food storage.  It went well, but I felt it was hard to condense that topic into such a short bit.  But at least I shared a few ideas.

Monday and Tuesday Andrew was home from school. They were having parent conferences, so the kids didn’t have class. I went with Andrew for his conference. This school has what they call “student led” conferences.  Andrew had a paper he had filled out that he shared his thoughts about how school was going and what his goals were, for school and long term.  He then showed me some of his class work.  We had his advisory teacher with us and had a nice visit with him with how he felt school was going.  It is nice to do this, but I do think it would also be nice to have a traditional parent/teacher time where we can talk to his individual teachers. We can always set up meetings with teachers if we feel we need to.  Andrew is doing well in school and I am thankful he is a good student.  While I was with him Monday we went into the credit union and set up a saving account for him. He wanted to put money aside to start saving for a mission and college.  He was asking me a lot of questions about banking and money. He then told me he liked the meeting Sunday about self reliance and it made him think about all the things he needed to learn so he could be able to provide all those things for himself and his future family.  I thought that was great he was thinking about that. He is a good young man.

Yesterday for Halloween I was at the elementary school for my library shift. I stepped outside and watched the kids do their costume parade. The boys had fun wearing their costumes to school.  The elementary school classes had parties in the afternoon too.  The boys came home a bit tired.

Ruth also wore her costume to school. She went to get ice cream from Baskin Robin’s after school with friends.  She had fun being dressed up all day too. After dinner I took Spencer and Caleb out trick-or-treating.  We met with three other families in our ward who live near by. We enjoyed going around together. As I talked with the adults we realized we were with 9 boys, no girls were with us. Ruth was out with her friends and Andrew had stayed home to pass out candy. He didn’t want to go around this year to get candy. Some of that is that he doesn’t want to eat sugar much and said he got enough candy at the ward party. Neal stayed home with Andrew. We had a fun evening.

Ruth and Brianna

The kids all went to school today. I think Andrew enjoyed his quiet time off school but was ready to go back and be around his friends again. Now we are in a new month and are looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas activities coming.  It is a fun time of year.