Things that make my heart sing

Ally to mommy the other day: "Mommy is my best friend...of ever".

Ahhhhh....need I say more?

Halloween and Stuff

You didn't think you'd hear from me again so soon, did ya!? Well, here I am. I was reading all my friends' blogs and everyone had their Halloween pictures up so I thought I better put mine up!

With Halloween on Saturday this year, all the school celebrations were on Friday, which, as some of you know, was my birthday. So after being surprised with 2 big breakfasts from oldest daughter and hubby (they did not communicate about doing breakfast for me), the rest of the day was dedicated to Halloween stuff. I made pumpkin bread and pumpkin cookies for the girls' class parties at school. At around1:30 Ally, who dressed up as Dora the Explorer, and I went to the school to watch a parade around the outside of the school. Always a fun thing to watch. There are some very creative costumes. The teachers always have a theme they work with. This year they were hippies, thanks to some new school merchandise (ie. tie-dyed shirts with the school logo). Anyway, that's not really relevant.....

Courtney wanted to originally be the wicked witch from Wicked/Wizard of Oz. But I didn't have time, money, or know-how to get/make that. We found a black/purple striped witches hat that's I'd bought for $1 last year and she decided to be a black/purple witch. We found a black/purple dress for $5 and a friend of our's had black/purple striped stockings. It was perfect and she looked nice.

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Jessica went for my idea for her to be something made out of a box. There are lots of things you can do with a box. We came up with an ipod. She loves to listen to my ipod nano, so that was appropriate for her. She decided to make it a green one, because she had an "Apple camp" tshirt she had received from attending a computer class at the Apple store this summer. She could wear that underneath since we were leaving the back open. It had the Apple logo on it. Then she wanted to spray paint her hair green.

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Ally would change her mind every day, sometimes twice a day, about what she wanted to be. Sometimes it was a princess, sometimes a monster, sometimes Dora...etc.... We finally settled on Dora since we had a costume that Jessica had worn when she was 3. She didn't wear the wig on Halloween night, but I did manage to get a couple of pictures of her in it at the school before she pulled it off.

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I usually get a bunch of nice pictures of the kids before they go out, but we never got our act together to do that.....too much to do!

Something cool happened for my birthday later in the day. My dad came to visit. He had been working in Pittsburgh for the week and made arrangements to get over to Philly and visit for the weekend. Such a nice birthday present! We didn't do anything too exciting while he was here, but it was so super nice to have him here! Thanks, dad, for coming!!!

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We attended our new ward's halloween party on friday night with my dad. We got there late, and had some chili and had the kids play games. It was weird because we didn't know very many people. Just a couple of families were there from our original ward. I did meet a couple of people, but it was weird to be at a new ward's activity.

On Saturday, Brian took my dad to go get a Philly cheesesteak and then Brian went to a Pearl Jam Concert in the afternoon/evening while we went with my dad to crash the new Broomall ward's (with part of our old ward) Halloween party. They also had chili and games plus they had trick-or-treating. It was a completely different feeling. I still didn't know everyone, because of all the people from the other ward, but it felt much more comfortable. I realized that this might be a harder move than I thought. I was trying to have a good attitude about switching wards but it is sad to not be seeing the same people each week that I've seen for the last 4 years. Especially since I did not actually move. I'm used to that....moving and going to a new ward, but knowing that all my friends are still in the general vicinity...that's different and a harder.

Anyway, enough about that.... We came home and made a quick dinner of frito salad and then got ready to go trick-or-treating. We have a tradition of going with the Murphy's and this year was no different except we didn't get going until 6:40 and they had to start without us. We met up with them eventually, but then it started raining. Not good for a cardboard ipod costume painted with washable paint....we only lasted about 40 minutes.

Courtney wasn't so much into the candy this year and only hit about 10 houses. She was ready to go home before the rest of us.

The Great Pumpkin came that night. He takes most of the candy away and replaces it with something more lasting and less tooth-decaying....this time it was a movie and stuffed animals. They get to keep about 20 pieces and have to give up the rest. Courtney actually only kept 15...just the KitKats and Smarties.

We had a nice Halloween weekend. And a nice visit with Grandpa!

Here are some fall pictures....I love this time of year here. I don't get the fantastic shots I want to of the trees, but hopefully you can get an idea of how pretty it is here.

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