Halloween

Rounding out October

Emery and Luke were invited to enter their artwork in the Windows on a Wider World Art Show in Amarillo. I think Emery has been invited for the last several years and won one year! This year she got an honorable mention in the middle school category. She is “into” snails lately and seems to love drawing them in various scenarios. I love her little throwback to the Beatles–look at the title for her piece. 🙂 Luke was working on his drawing when we were in Amarillo last and it turned out really well, too. Love that these kids are artistically talented along with their other skills!

Elle attended her first Homecoming dance in Tyler with her group of friends. Her date was a boy she’s good friends with, no boyfriend/girlfriend situation just yet. 🙂 According to reports, a great time was had by all.

I’m helping with the food pantry at our nearby elementary school this year and we were finally able to do our first food distribution to 25 families who signed up. One of the local high schools has a connection with a donor who gave us the shelving and our first big order of food. We packed up 25 backpacks of mostly canned and boxed food but I am hoping next time we can add some fresh fruits and veggies. The 5th grade is collecting items for a Thanksgiving box and we collected donations to purchase grocery store gift cards to add.

And Halloween….! I wish you could see the video of son in law David in his “alien abduction” costume. As he runs away, it seriously looks like he is actually being carried away by an alien. I have watched it so many times and laughed out loud. So just imagine it if you can. That’s Beck and Jack on the left, Bonnie’s family on the top right, and Elle with her friends at the bottom. They were too cool to go trick or treating. 🙂

Signs of the Season

Happy Halloween!

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Grandkids

Of course, we have lots of time with the Dallas kids and love watching them grow up, having conversations with them, taking part in their activities. I had a dream the other night that Rich and I were moving to Ft. Smith, Arkansas. I have no idea why I would dream about moving or about that particular location. I have never been to Ft. Smith and know nothing about it. And there was no reason given in my dream for the move. But the thing I remember the most is being heartbroken that we were moving away from the kids! So despite the fact that I don’t love Texas and I would, in some ways, dearly love to live elsewhere, I would be very sad to miss their day to day lives. I wish all of the other kids lived here, too. Even though we get to see them periodically, it’s still different than living in the same town.

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We had the boys one day and took a walk to our favorite nearby park, which was closed off. What??! We don’t know what happened, except maybe the creek had risen with the recent rains and the city was going to clean it up. So then we walked over to see the neighborhood chickens, who were still gone on their “summer vacation to beat the heat.” Beck noted, “It’s not even summer any more, AND it’s not hot!” The kids had fun hamming it up at both of their disappointing stops.

Halloween fun:

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Elle and I had a fun girls’ day when we went to the Etsy Dallas Jingle Bash and browsed all the booths of handmade goods. We were looking for gifts and we got a few small things but honestly it was so packed with people that it was hard to stop and look. We left there and went to get some lunch which ended up being a huge fiasco with traffic and my GPS sending me in the wrong direction and so on. We finally found a place but it was much further from home than we thought and she had to be dropped off at a friend’s for soccer right after. So we took our food to go and she ate in the car but was a sweetheart about our crazy day. We got home to change clothes with minutes to spare, then over to her friend’s just in time. Whew.

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Beck is thriving at a private school this year and although he has not been that thrilled with organized sports in the past, he decided to try playing on one of the school’s soccer teams. He has done great and really seems to enjoy it this time. He’s more of a creative kid instead of a sporty kid and is still taking piano lessons; also he recently tried out for a Christmas play at a local acting school and got the part of Bob Cratchit in “A Seussical Christmas Carol.” We are excited to see him perform this Saturday.

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Halloween fell on a Tuesday this year, which is the day I do volunteer work. We decided that those of us who wanted to dress up would, and we would all bring food. I wasn’t sure what to do for a costume because I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. I stopped in at my favorite thrift store and they had a scrub top that had “Day of the Dead” icons on it. I already had some leggings with skeletons on them from a previous costume so I bought the scrub top and settled on “zombie doctor” or some such thing. It was kind of a hodge podge of a costume and I am not sure it really worked but it was pretty funny. I ordered some face tattoos and some day of the dead earrings and a toy stethoscope to complete my random outfit. Although the scrub top was big on me and covered my rear, I figured I didn’t want to be inappropriate at a social service agency so I wore a skirt over the leggings. The best part was teasing my hair up in a crazy manner and hair-spraying it into place. The face tattoos were kind of an ordeal and I didn’t use as many as I thought I would. I went in to work and everyone was cracking up at the sight. Some of our clients were a little taken aback and one of the older male volunteers told me he just thought that’s how I came to work that day. LOL Gabriele was the only other one who dressed up but we had a lot of fun and a bunch of goodies to eat.

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I left my costume on and we went over to Sarah’s to see the kids before they went trick or treating. They thought I was crazy and cracked up over my look, especially the hair. Elle and her girlfriends were all going as a “Pickle Squad” and Sarah was not sure where they even came up with that idea but all ordered T-shirts and hats to wear. Jack was a “baby dill” and Beck, of course, had to be Captain Underpants. They were really cute and had a good time with their friends while Rich and I went home to hand out candy. Sadly, we did not have too many trick or treaters this year.

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Bonnie posted this picture of her kids, who went as Harry Potter, Hermione, and Hedwig. Bonnie’s sister in law’s mom helped her make the Hedwig costume for Ada–it was pretty involved!

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Halloween

Everyone’s been so busy that we were very last minute getting pumpkins to decorate for Halloween. We took Elle and Beck to pick out some pumpkins and then we babysat all three kids the night before Halloween while their parents went to a Dallas Cowboys game. Jack and Beck decorated their pumpkins with stickers while Elle and Grandpa carved a few more.

Halloween night the kids went back to their old and future neighborhood to hang out with friends and trick or treat while Rich and I stayed home to pass out candy. We put candles in the jack-o-lanterns and Rich cued up some scary music on his phone. Alas, we had very few trick-or-treaters on our street. We were sad. And now we are left with a ton of candy that we don’t need to be eating!