Happy Halloween!

Friday afternoon kicked off a jam-packed weekend. One of those weekends where you try to cram as much into 48 hours as you possibly can. That was ours! Friday afternoon after school, we went to the pep rally to watch Bethany sport her daddy's #22 football jersey from Morgan Academy. Since they got to dress up for Halloween, she and her friend Madeline decided to be football players. Grandmommy ever so kindly mailed J's high school jerseys for her to wear. I'm not sure who was more excited about them arriving on our doorstep...Bebby or her father!

I wish I could have gotten better pictures, but she did her daddy proud!
After the pep rally, I surprised the little ones with a two hour park trip...
Where this one tried every unconventional way under the sun to swing...
And where this one just wanted to show her babies a good time...
She was up to something in this one and was checking to see if I was keeping tabs on her...
Climbing up the slide instead of sliding down it!
So we had a lesson to remind her of how to do it the right way (aka - how to do it so you won't get in trouble at school)...
It turned into this...
I gave up.
They were following the "up the stairs, down the slide" rule (as opposed to the other way around), so I let them be. They found a friend to play with while we were there. I'm pretty sure her outfit is what really drew them to her...
I was a bit envious myself!
Saturday was pretty perfect and we thought we were going to round it out by doing a little trick-or-treating. Am I crazy or did Decatur not decide you could go any night this weekend?! I didn't feel so good about going on a Sunday night, and just knew the streets would be packed with trick-or-treaters Saturday night since I'd talked to tons of friends who felt the same way. We'd played it up big time. The girls were beyond excited.
They were dressed and ready at least two hours ahead of schedule...
So early, in fact, that Buggy had time to bust her lip as she was trying to swing Towns on the front porch and pinch her finger until it was black and blue on the plantation shutters. We were ready so early that it made no difference that the painted black dots on her face were smeared to smithereens. There was plenty of time to do her up again...
And then the unthinkable happened. We got everyone loaded in the car, rode around for a few minutes looking for at least one other trick-or-treating family in our neighborhood who had the same idea we had, but nothing. Surely this couldn't be happening. Two girls in the back seat begging us to let them out so they could go ring a doorbell, and still nothing. J and I were eying each other and in code trying to figure out what in the world we were going to do. The owl and the bumble bee in the backseat were onto us, though, and that's when the tears started flowing freely. Stupid me said "I've got an even better plan than going door to door for candy. We'll go trick-or-treating at TARGET and you can have your pick of anything and everything you want in the candy aisle." Genius. It wasn't one of my brightest ideas or finest moments, but it made them happy. And after they've just had their hearts stomped on by anti trick-or-treaters it was the only thing quick I could come up with. For some reason "let's just go home and try it again on Halloween night" didn't enter my brain. Call me a pushover. I'm fine with it. If you would have heard Towns asking "isn't there anybody that will give us candy?" in the most pitiful voice ever, you would have done the same thing...
We spent the rest of our night watching the second half of the Auburn game while we made this...
Which was better than trick-or-treating on a dumb Saturday night anyway.
This morning after church we spent a little time in the rocking chairs at Cracker Barrel...
Before we had cheer practice and an afternoon baking session...We're hitting the sidewalks hard tonight because if I have anything to do with it, the five of us are knocking on a door or two. Some how, some way!
Happy Halloween!

Fall Fastival 2010

Last Friday morning I got to do something that this time last year I never thought I'd get to do...attend another fall festival at church with Towns. When I did this post last year, I was so sentimental about it being the last one she'd get to be a part of. I love how our plans aren't always God's plans. I never would have guessed she'd be in kindergarten at our church. I just knew we'd be with all of our friends at Walter Jackson or Eastwood. We sure do miss seeing our friends every day, but know that we're right where we were meant to be.

The kindergartners didn't dress up this year. Towns attributed that to them being "so old" and I couldn't help but tell her she was most certainly right about that. Cate, on the other hand, got to dress up and picked it all out herself. She likes to believe that The Wizard of Oz (or Wib Oz as she calls it) is her favorite movie. Truth be told, she can't make it through the opening credits. She'll tell us that she's not scared, but that she's just not in the mood to watch it right then. Love it or hate it, she knew without a doubt she wanted to be "Dorfy" for Halloween...

When she saw the costume at Target, I thought she was going to hyperventilate. I told her that's what we'd get, but that I'd have to do some alterations. It had puffy white sleeves that were really shiny and a placket that was crooked that had to go. Next year if I have to make amendments to a costume, I'll do it when she's in bed asleep. When she saw me taking the scissors to it she nearly lost it. Lost it. I assured her I knew what I was doing (while I was praying I wasn't unintentionally lying to her) and after a few minutes she convinced herself it would be ok. God love her!
When it was time for her class to hit the fall festival, she went straight for the face paint...

She and her friends dug around in the hay to find tons of candy for a little while, and then it was time for a group shot...

That's it - just the three of them!
We played hopscotch...

And this had to be the favorite, hands down...

Dare devil...

And the face plant. She's a tough cookie, though...

A quick picture with my baby, and then the fun was over just like that. Taking her back to her class to stay for the rest of the morning wasn't easy (for me or her)!

But it was time for the kindergarten classes to have a go at it!
I'll tell you one thing. I've never seen kids scramble for candy faster than this bunch...

And when they hit the slide, they hit it fast and hard. They'd been confined to the indoors all morning and you could tell. They were w-i-l-d!
Here Towns is surveying it to see how she wants to go down...

The first time she went backwards...

Then she went like this...

Then head first...

I couldn't tell quite what she was going for here...

Either way, she was having fun and that's all that counts!

Getting a class picture was out of the question because they were all moving so fast.
But Conner will always stop long enough to flatter me with one...

This is sure to be our last picture together at Church Street Academy's fall festival...and this I know is true since kindergarten is as high as she can go!

We've got some fun things up our sleeve for this weekend. We'll kick it off this afternoon with a Halloween themed pep rally at DHS, painting pumpkins, baking Halloween sweets, trick-or-treating, and who knows what else we'll get into!
Happy Friday!

Just Call Her Grace

By now you're probably more than tired of hearing about cheers and stunting. But this one's too funny not to share. School let out early on Tuesday because of bad weather, and this is how Bethany and Towns passed the time...

Sort of reminds me of the time Towns was on a step stool (stage) with microphone in hand and had a little mishap mid-concert.
Bless her, it's a miracle she's still in one piece!

Redneck Bowling

The same day we brought a little 5 lb. Cate home from the hospital was the day I realized I was going to go crazy if we stayed in the house a second longer. I'd been confined to a hospital for a few days and couldn't take being indoors one more second! About an hour after we were home, Towns and I were at the grocery store buying something to cook for dinner. No exaggeration. I remember it like it was yesterday. And even after that, we still had to find something else to do. So we put Cate in the stroller and took off down the street for a walk. That's when we found these gems (they'd fallen off a tree in a neighbor's yard) that double as a bowling ball when there are storm drains close by...

A few Fridays ago we were getting a little restless waiting for J to get home from work, and it then it hit me. We haven't gathered those little green balls yet this year and there's only a small window of opportunity in which to do it (late September-October). We've done it every year and couldn't miss this one! So the girls hopped in their "cars" and down the street we went...

In this one Cate's telling me she can't get hers to go...

We figured out the problem before a major meltdown ensued...thank goodness!
The problem with them riding and me walking is that I can't hoof it as fast as they can drive. So I end up huffing and puffing my way down the sidewalk in a silly attempt to keep up. It's rather embarrassing, but what else is new? I need one of those things mall cops ride around on. There's a thought!

Back to bowling...
Once we've gathered an ample supply of the green things (anyone know what they are?), we proceed to stand in the middle of the street and try to roll them into the gutter for points...

Cate usually goes about it like this...

Is this not the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen?
I'm well aware that it is, but they love it!
The bonus of bowling our way is that you don't have to wear the gross community bowling shoes!
Speaking of shoes...
Remember those pink boots that I caved over? I just knew that it was the biggest waste of money and that we'd never get any use out of them. Turns out I was wrong! Bethany doesn't wear hers all that much, which is understandable. But these two live in theirs...
Who knew pink boots could be such a wardrobe staple?