Halloween

This year for Halloween Andrea chose to be Cinderella, well first it was a butterfly, but when I sat her down to look with me online she chose Cinderella.  I'm a little picky when it comes to Halloween Costumes, I don't like the "dress up" costumes made by the corporation.  To me they look cheaply made and often don't look like the actual chararacter.  Plus, then you have to wear the cheesy picture of the character on the neckline area.  What person wears a picture of themselves on their dress, I don't, I didn't see Cinderella have her picture on her dress in the movie!

I digress, anyway, so I talked her into a very fluffy light blue ball gown which I thought bore more resemblence to Cinderella's dress than the Disney produced costume.  When it arrived it was too big, which I thought it would be, but I want her to re-use it for playtime for quite a while. It had a big hoop skirt, so that was interesting to try and shorten and I had to shorten the midsection as well.  We also got some long gloves to keep her warm, which wasn't ended up not being all that necessary on this warm Halloween!

The week before Halloween her dance class had a Halloween Party while the Mom's decided on dance costumes for the year.  Those girls are all so stinkin' cute anyway, but to see them in their Halloween costumes and practicing their dance was adorable!

 

Don't you just love how Andrea's dress takes up the whole floor! Poor girl couldn't figure out where to color!

 

 

I would say that "we" carved pumpkins but really Mom carved three pumpkins for the family.  Andrea was more than willing to help, she did a lot of her own gut removal, but I was being too particular to let her scrape the face.  So finally I had to tell myself that this was her pumpkin, so I colored the hair parts with marker and told her to scrap it all off.  She did quite well when I backed away and let her try!

 

Ryans hands were hurting from a hard day at work, so he tried to carve his, but couldn't.  So I did it so I could get the mess cleaned up that night.  They all turned out pretty well I think even though we forgot to actually light them up :)

 

 Saturday before Halloween was our ward's Trunk or Treat. I thought this year I would participate in the fun and dress up as Garth from Wayne's World. Andrea didn't know who I was until I showed her the movie cover and then she got it.

 

It's fun that Andrea's cousins are in the ward so we can have fun together at the trunk or treat.  Their Mom always does such an impressive job, she realy out did herself this year with Roland as a truck driver! Brigitta chose to be the grim reaper, but a red grim reaper.  How would it be to know your Mom can make any costume you want, those lucky kids!  Amy even dressed up as Rosie the Riviteer and I'm mad at myself for not getting a picture!

Halloween night we visited Grandma Joan, Grandpa Jim, and the Lees came visiting to our house.  Andrea and I did some trick or treating around our neighborhood before we headed to Grandma "Bell"s (She'll never be LaVelle again to our family).  I had forgotten how much fun it is to go door to door trick or treating.  Andrea was always so excited to say Trick or Treat and to say "Thank you".  We also did the houses on Grandma Bell's street and that neighborhood was so much fun because it seemed like a lot of older or single people who put a lot of time into their treats and loved every vistor since there were so few.

So another successfull Halloween is gone and I'm glad Andrea got three uses out of that annoying dress... here's a tip for all other mothers, hoops skirts have to be lifted before climbing stairs, so that can old pretty quickly while trick or treating!

Camp Trailer

This year we brought new adventure into our lives by investing in a camp trailer.  Ryan had been talking about one for a while and I had no idea of how we could ever afford one.  However, our friend made us an offer we can't refuse which included a big price cut if Ryan would help him improve his lawn this summer.  So Ryan adjusted and replaced sprinkler heads, fertilized, aerated, even applied bug barrier to the house, and I think we are all satisfied with the deal.

Ryan and I look the trailer out in September without Andrea to make sure everything worked and to decided what we will need a regular basis for camping in the future. Everything but the heater works, and we'll figure that out soon enough.  But we came home with a big list of things like "soap, towels, salt and pepper, scissors, first aid kit" and so on that we needed for the next trip. 

The next trip we decided it was Andrea's turn to test out the trailer.  We didn't go far from home about a 20 minute drive south of town, and didn't have much of an agenda. 

 We cooked some yummy dutch oven and tried a chocolate dessert, did some exploring in the nearby hills, Andrea and Daddy spelled our names in Rocks by our campsite.

 When it go colder we went inside and played some games until it was time for bed.  We camped fairly close to a military base, so we got to hear taps that night and Ryan heard Reville early the next morning.  It got quite cold that night, and by quite I mean freezing! We had to turn on the stove occationally just long enough to take the chill out of the air. 

 

Both tables fold come down and make up three beds so it was just right for all of us. The next morning we didn't do much just packed up and went home, we all needed to thaw out!

 

Ryan has big plans for the trailer, a lot he would like to update and modify. We already painted the outside, and have added lots of accessories, Ryan would like to update the cabinets and walls.  My job is to re-upholster and make new curtains, good thing I have all winter! Let's hope this trailer brings lot of fun memories for our family, right now all is does for me is make me shiver from the memory of that cold night!