A really cool caterpillar my sweet neighbor came to show the girls...
Ryan won a blue ribbon tonight for his bee keeper costume at the Fall Festival ) see post below.
Fall Festival...Webb Chapel...(church Ryan's parents attend).
I thank God for my family!!!
This was at Webb Chapel C.O.C.- where Bob and Linda go to church. (you can walk from their church to ours- it's so close) Yes- I got my hair cut.. the girls are ballet girls (Hannah kept saying she wanted to be "black girl" - Ryan is a bee keeper - he already had the outfit for work.
This was precious..we had some time to wait, so Faith went behind the food line and was helping Linda serve nachos...she really put the cheese on for a few people, and did a good job!
Yes, there was little to no nutrional value to anything we ate all evening!
They love to get their faces painted! See the guy in the background..with the black hair and moustache? That's Bob...Ryan's dad- with a wig/moustache piece!
Little Banana girl! At the end, they had a candy trick or treat, where the adults volunteers lined the hallways and the kids went along for candy...oh my, we came home and I filled 2 gallon sized bags full of the candy they got! Please come and get some!
Hannah learned to ride her bike w/out training wheels last week.
Sweet sister, helping her get started!
The guys got the big point item - a picture of the kids in the back of a police car.
Members of the team drinking out of the same soda......
Another big point item was a human pyramid with one of our church elders in the picture. When we saw this, we figured we would likely have to skip it. Well, the guys went to church and got Ronnie, our elder-preacher.
The girls had a more impressive story. We were walking out of Gander Mountain and Mal pointed in the parking lot and was saying, "Oh, Oh, Oh." Up walks an elder!! How amazing is that!!
Team members in a shopping cart.........
We had pizza for dinner.
Ice Cream Sundaes for dessert.
We chose two person teams for the remainder of the games. This is "Team Humble Winners." They named themselves before even having any events, but they were indeed the humble winners!!
"Team We the People"
The first event at home was a blindfolded drawing game. They actually did quite well!
The teams then sat across from each other and threw popcorn into their partner's mouth.
The Foosball event was won by Team We the People.
Identify the Candy game was quite yummy. The teams had 24 candy samples to identify. (And eat!)
This game about did everyone in. By this time there had already been quite a bit of eating. The thought of eating more was a bit much to all the kids. They had to eat as many spaghetti noodles as possible in 1 minute without using their hands.
It was a really fun 12th birthday party for Mallory. I have some good video, but it is acting up again and not loading. I might try again later.I needed to test the camera before Mal's party so I videoed this. I had to also test the upload so I just decided to leave it on. My camera got all messed up last night when M and M had Youth and Government. I was so excited to post video from it so that you all could see the process. For some reason, it was all messed up. Both Mason and Mallory did a wonderful job presenting their bills. They are doing the same bill, but that is okay since they are in different groups. The bill is to lower the age to be able to obtain a Concealed Handgun License from 21 to 18. Here is how the process works. They give an opening statement telling about their bill and why they think it should be voted into law. Next there is a question and answer period. The Chair has to recognize the Delegate who rises to ask a question, and the bill author has to agree to answer the question. If the Delegate says, "I rise to ask the bill author a possible series of questions'" the author can say yes, or he/she can say "I will agree to 1 question" (or two, etc.). Mallory only agreed to one question for the Delegates she knew would be challenging. They are learning to work the process! The next segment is the Pro/Con Debate. During the question and answer period, the delegates are getting up and signing their names on the list if they want to speak pro or con for the bill. They are also turning in any amendments they want to propose if they like the bill, but will only vote for it with certain changes. After the Pro/Con Debate, the amendments are presented and voted on. The last section is the Author's Summation. During this time the author is able to address the things that the Con speakers talked about. Both Mason and Mallory's bills passed. This was a practice for the District Y and G meetings that will be held in Nov. and Dec. This is where they will present their bills to Delegates from the Houston area. Hopefully I can get some pics then.
This dresser is from Terracewood Circle! I can't remember which sister had it in her room. Do any of you remember having the dresser with the double second drawer? This dresser has been many colors over the years. Mason, Mallory, and I primed and painted it on Saturday.
This is the table that Tim made, and it was originally blue. The kids and I painted it on Saturday also.
As you know, I have never painted before. There is quite a learning curve involved in painting rooms. It does not look awful, but it was clearly done by an amateur. There are mess ups that only I can see, mess ups that are hidden behind furniture, and mess ups that are clear for anyone to see if they even stand in the doorway! I don't think that the satin sheen was a good choice. The man at Lowes talked me into it saying that it would be show less stains and be easier to clean. I specifically asked if I could go back and touch up places without it being noticeable. He said yes. Well, I must not know how to do that. See the shiny areas on the wall in the picture below? I touched up places there, and it clearly shows. I could buy more paint and roll the wall again, but I am not thinking at this point that I will do that.
Please allow me to show you the only part of the room that I am proud of. Look at this line!! I taped it off and was very careful to paint slowly. I must say that these are the straightest baseboard lines in our entire house. Now..........lest I be too prideful........I did not know that rollers splatter. After I finished the entire room and was admiring my baseboard lines, I noticed tiny little specks of paint on ALL the baseboards. I was duely humbled.
I had ceiling issues. Since I felt successful with the tape on the baseboards, I thought I should tape the ceiling also. I was planning to do this on Tuesday morning. Well, I woke up at 5:30 and could not figure out where Tim was. I went upstairs to find that he was almost finished taping it off for me. This was so very sweet of him! He knew that it would be a neck issue for me tape and paint, so he was surprising me. Unfortunately, it did not work. The ceiling is so textured that the tape can't make a good seal. The first section I did with the tape bled onto the ceiling, and I had to prime and paint that part of the ceiling. Can I tell you the major crick in my neck from standing on the ladder with my head tilted in order to do the ceiling lines by hand?? I was initially quite proud of the lines until Ifinished and looked at them all together. You can't really tell from the picture, but I should have gone a bit closer to the ceiling. It looks like there is a 1/4 inch gap between the wall and the ceiling. I was quite discouraged about that, but not so discouraged as to redo it.
Lesson number 1,623 was provided after my attempt to patch some holes in the wall. The nice man at Lowes gave me the correct spackling and told me how to do it. He cautioned me to not smooth it out. He said that the walls are textured, and if I smoothed it out, it would look funny when I painted over it. How's this for not smoothing it out?? UGGGGG!!
Mason had literally hundreds of places where he just hung something up with push pins. Luckily, as evidence by the picture above, I did not patch those little holes. I figured the paint would just fill them it. Wrong. You can purposefully take your brush and dab paint into the hole to cover it, but just rolling over it will not necessarily do the trick. But, if you choose to take your brush and do that, you will have the patch spots from the earlier picture. Are you getting my issues here?
Like I said, it is not awful, but it was clearly done by me. Mason is so kind and is saying that he likes it. I suggested that we get some nice looking pictures of guitars and things like that that he is into and hang them on the walls over some of the problem areas. Turns out........ he wants the walls blank. He said he does not see a need to put anything on the walls. We will have to see if I can go with that plan given that everytime I walk in there these things glare at me.
