Halloween Fun

Additional Halloween festivities included our ward party the Saturday before, complete with a costume parade, games/trick-or-treating in the back hallway, cookie decorating, and a movie.

Luke's favorite part about the party was that he got an entire can of fruit punch soda all to
himself.  And he had a pink spot on his Jedi tunic for the rest of the night to prove it.

Our whole crew - ready for the big costume parade.

Ant-Man looks on as Obiwan Kenobi challenges Kylo Ren.

On Halloween morning, Luke and I parked at the school right after dropping the kids off.  After having trouble parking on the days of previous Halloween parades, we wanted to be sure to have a spot that would allow a quick exit once the festivities were over.  So I put Luke in the stroller and we made a trip to a nearby grocery store, then walked over the library to check out a few books.  Then we went back to the school and I read the books to Luke while we waited for the parade to start.  It worked out great.  I chose to make a video instead of taking pictures of the parade this year, so here you go.  Look for the cutest of the Dorothys, the friendliest of the Obiwan Kenobis, and the tweenagerish of the Devils.

The parade stalled right behind us so I stood up to take a picture of Cat right after she'd walked by.
Here she is, pretending to not notice that I'm taking her picture.
P.S.  Isn't her teacher's costume so great?

When the parade was over, Luke and I went to Eliza's classroom to help with the class party.  I chose to put together a center for Mummy Races.  The idea was that we would divide each group into two teams, the rest of the team would mummify one person from their team using toilet paper, and the mummies would race each other.  Not surprisingly, almost all of the kids wanted to be mummified, so there wasn't much racing going on with the amount of time we had.  But they loved it anyway.  Next time, I'll just plan on wrapping up everyone and come up with a group activity like  "Who can do the most mummy-jumping-jacks?"  And I'll bring more than the 6 rolls I had this time.  It was barely enough - and we were wrapping very conservatively (read: sparsely).

Eliza had planned on being Dorothy this year (wearing the costume I made Cat 3 years ago)
but when a neighbor gave us a witch costume, complete with hat, about two weeks before Halloween,
Eliza was torn.  She ended up wearing the witch costume twice and the Dorothy costume once.

This is us after Eliza's classroom party.

Halloween Eve

We did some fun Halloween-prep the day before The Big Day.  The first major activity was pumpkin carving, which went even better than usual this year because the weather was nice enough that we could keep the bulk of the mess outside.  Yeah!  Cat had Ben help her with an ambitious possessed garden gnome design she found in a pumpkin carving book we got a few years ago.  Jack and Eliza decided to go free style and they both designed and carved their pumpkins on their own.  Eliza didn't love the results of her first attempt, so she even turned her pumpkin around, started over, and ended up with Two Face.  Very cool.

The other big fun thing was having cousins over for dinner.  We had a make-your-own pizza night, and I'd pre-baked enough mini pumpkin pizzas for all of the kids to make their own Jack-O-Lantern pizzas for dinner.  Most of the kids just decorated the pizzas like normal, though, haha.  But it was still fun to do something different for dinner.  I also made ghostly Rice Krispie Treats for dessert, which went over pretty well.  It was fun to have some time to hang out with family and hear about everybody's costume and party plans.

The Pumpkin Patch

In spite of rain and chilly temperatures, we ventured to the pumpkin patch on the last day of Fall Break.  It was colder and more wet than we would have liked, but there were no crowds!  And even though Cat decided she'd had enough after about an hour and chose to sit in the car while the rest of us continued our adventure, I'm still considering it a win.  Plus, we had an excuse to finally pick up that big tub of hot chocolate mix I've had my eye on at Costco, and make some warm drinkable deliciousness as soon as we could.

We jumped on the hay ride first.  We didn't bring our umbrella because rain in Utah is
usually of the drizzle variety.  This time, it wasn't.  It rained enough for us to stay cold and
wet for the rest of the visit, haha.

All smiles before we were completely soaked.

Look who we saw during the hay ride!
Did you know that Sasquatch actually lives in a corn field in Springville?

This picture was Cat's idea.  Love it.

Wallaby + 2 Billy Goats Gruff

Cat buried Eliza in feed corn.

And in case you're wondering, yes, we brought lots of corn kernels
home with us.  I found it in the car, scattered in the house, in the laundry...
It sure is fun to play in though!

I usually try to avoid corn mazes (I secretly like it when pumpkin patches charge extra to go through
the corn maze because it's my excuse to stay away) but this one was included in our super cheap admission
so I let the kids talk me into it.  That was a mistake.  After a test-run, we made it back to the entrance and Cat
decided to go hang out in the car.  The next time, the younger kids and I went deeper into the maze and
got so turned around that I really started to worry about how long it would be before we saw Cat again.
We might have even left the corn field altogether and started walking through the pumpkin
patch in our desperation to make it back alive...

Cat's Soccer Season, continued

In addition to being a group of talented girls led by a great coach, this soccer team gets along really well and they have a lot of fun together.

I think we can attribute at least some of their chemistry to the extra-curricular activities the coaches put together.  In addition to the camping trip in Roosevelt, the girls helped with a big corporate service project where they assembled aid packages.

When there was a long stretch of time during the season without a game, coach scheduled a time for the girls to do team-building activities at a nearby ropes course and took everyone out for ice cream afterwards.

After the last game, most of the families who were there went out for ice cream at a famous burger joint called Dairy Keen.  The kids loved the train motif with all of the cool things to see in the restaurant and the train table outside.

This weekend, coach hosted a cookout at his house and we found out that the team's record was good enough that they will be moving up one or two levels of competition for the spring season.  They are currently in the lowest of 6(?) state competition divisions, so they will be in either #5 or #4 in the spring.  He's concerned that they haven't been challenged enough in their current bracket and wants to have to really push the girls so they don't get lazy.  One of his favorite sayings is "I'd rather reign in a wild stallion than whoop a jackass" and he thinks he's been doing too much whooping, haha.

Speaking of Coach Scott Quotes, Cat likes this one: "Excuses are like armpits.  Everyone has one, and they all stink."  And I took a picture of Cat's white board over the summer when she wrote down a third Coach Scott Quote, so that I could share it with him.

I still feel so lucky that Scott found Cat and wanted her on his team.  It's worked out great for her and is really helping her to develop as an athlete and as a person.

Cat's Soccer Season

Cat's soccer team had a great fall season!  They smoked everyone so much in the first three games (winning 12-0, 9-0, 9-0) that they switched things around a lot to try to give other girls a chance to score in the fourth game.  That time they only won 1-0.  Coach also jokingly blamed the close game on the fact that the game was right after the Saturday afternoon session of conference and told the girls "not to watch any more conference!" before the next game, haha.  (Though there's probably some truth to it.  I'm guessing most of the team had spent a significant portion of the day sitting around watching TV and eating junk food.  I know Cat had..)

The next game will live in infamy as the worst game of the season not only because it was their only loss (0-2), but because it was played in cold, rainy, windy weather.  The temperatures had to be in the 30s and it was just miserable.  We played the same team again a few days later on our own field and won 2-0, so we felt great about that.  Cat scored one of those goals.  The next two games were wins also (4-0, 5-1).

Cat had really great ball handling, good passes, and lots of shots on goal.  She scored 6 goals total this fall.  She also has the distinction of being the only player on the team to get a yellow card, haha.  The ref called a legitimate foul on her at the beginning of the game, but the second foul that earned her the yellow card was completely ridiculous.  She was dribbling the ball toward the goal and the defender was running alongside her and fell.  I'm not sure how Cat would have tripped an opponent while controlling the ball, but oh well.  At least she was able to play the rest of the game.

Cat still mostly played forward, but was a back-up keeper and spent time at defense and midfield too.  Her teammates also elected her to be a team captain again this year.

(I shared this video once already but it's the only one we have of Cat scoring this season,

and this seems an appropriate place to include it...)

A New Sport

A friend of mine, whom I became acquainted with as her Visiting Teacher, is an officer for the Northern Utah Horseshoe Pitching Association.  Her husband is a champion pitcher, regularly bringing home cash prizes and trophies.  And if you're anything like me, you might be surprised that this really is a thing.

I don't remember who initiated it, but we decided to get together to try our hand at horseshoe pitching once the couple's competitive season ended.  It was a chilly Monday evening to have a picnic and training session at a park, but it was fun to learn about this sport.  It came in handy that this couple knows where the good pits are and always keep a set of horseshoes in the trunk of their car "in case an emergency game breaks out."  I love it.

The first thing I learned about horseshoes is this: it's just as hard as it looks.  I tried pitching a few times and never even managed to get a horseshoe in the pit.  Cat got close to the stake a few times, Ben got close also, and Jack and Eliza mostly just made us all really nervous.  Somehow, we all escaped unscathed, though.

And I wouldn't be surprised if certain members of the family seek out opportunities to play again.

I will have to add this to yesterday's post:

"I locked the door!"

On the way home from school yesterday Luke tried to kick the girls out of the car.  It was to be Boys Only.  But when Eliza was reading to Luke the other morning when I was hoping to sleep in a bit, he really appreciated her company.